Stranger Danger

Chapter 832: The Earthly Sovereign Suppresses The Four

This was the first time he encountered such a situation. The Profound Yellow Mother Qi was the origin of all qi and the mother of all creation. Its karmic weight was immeasurable, and its power was unimaginable. Despite this, it was gentle, profound, dignified, and universally accepting. Something like this had never happened before.

At first, Ye Qing was quite worried. But over time, he realized that his Profound Yellow Mother Qi was only stirring restlessly. It did not harm his internal organs or veins at all.

In fact, he was beginning to realize that the reason the Profound Yellow Mother Qi was reacting like this was because it was... excited? It was like the excitement one felt when meeting a friend or relative after a long separation, or the joy of meeting one’s soul mate, or the inexplicable heart throb one felt when encountering a kin.

Is there something inside this treasury that’s drawing the Profound Yellow Mother Qi’s attention? Ye Qing thought to himself as he walked forward using the qi’s stirring as his guide.

The deeper he went, the more restless the Profound Yellow Mother Qi became. Right before he was about to walk past a black, dirty-looking object, the Profound Yellow Mother Qi positively churned like boiling water. It was to the point where the qi was leaking through his pores.

Ye Qing immediately stopped in his tracks and examined the object. It was about an adult male’s height, and it was covered in a thick layer of mud and rust. He could not sense any origin energy or spiritual energy from it whatsoever, nor could he tell what it was. For all intents and purposes, it was just an ordinary chunk of metal.

“What on earth is this thing?”

Despite a close examination, Ye Qing could not find anything special about the chunk of metal whatsoever. The growing restlessness of the Profound Yellow Mother Qi spoke a different story though.

A moment of hesitation later, Ye Qing decided to take a risk. He touched the chunk of metal.

A reaction occurred instantly. His Profound Yellow Mother Qi immediately started flooding into the metal. Before he could react, a bell chime resounded throughout the treasury.

THANG!

The bell chime sounded ancient as if it hailed from a distant time. It lasted for a very, very long time. It was neither high-pitched, loud, disturbing or violent, but the second the chime resounded, every item inside the Dragon Radiance Pavilion instantly disintegrated into dust[1].

Strangely, Ye Qing was completely unharmed despite standing right next to the bell.

The next moment, the mud and rust covering the chunk of metal slowly fell off bit by bit. Dark yellow light peeked through the gaps as this happened.

An image suddenly appeared before Ye Qing’s eyes. It was a tall, muscular man with a plain but elegant countenance.

The ground shook, and what looked like a black tide rolled in from the horizon. When they got close, Ye Qing abruptly realized that it wasn’t water at all. It was an innumerable number of Strangers and evils.

Despite facing what looked like an endless number of Strangers, the man pressed forward instead of retreating. Profound Yellow Mother Qi circulating throughout his body, he charged into the ocean of Strangers and evils in one step.

There was a loud boom like a tidal wave crashing against a rock. Countless Strangers scattered into pieces and died just like that.

The man proceeded to launch a series of attacks. When he threw a punch, the sky crumbled, and the stars were knocked out of position. When he stepped on the earth, the ground crumbled, and countless earthen pillars smashed into the Strangers like dragons and serpents, killing them all in one strike.

The Strangers’ numbers seemed infinite, but not even infinity could stop the lone man.

The battle lasted three days and nights. Only the heavens could count exactly how many Strangers the man had killed. But not only did their numbers not decrease over time, it was actually increasing.

At one point, after shattering a Stranger’s head in one punch, the man spat out a glob of blood and laughed. “It’s your turn, old friend.”

As soon as he said this, a dark yellow bell that looked like it was made from brass appeared in the sky. The exterior of the bell was surrounded by a sun and moon surrounded by earth, water, fire and wind. The interior of the bell showcased long expanses of mountain ranges and countless races.

THANG!

The bronze bell shuddered a little and emitted a chime so grand it felt like it could be heard from the ends of the universe. Both heaven and earth became discolored as the entire world shook quietly.

Five-colored light illuminates the heavens, the sacred might of Primal Chaos shakes the universe.

The ocean of Stranger surrounding the man abruptly disintegrated into ash. Every single one of them. When the dust settled, the sky was bright, and the earth slowly returned to calm. It was almost as if nothing had ever happened.

After killing countless Strangers with the bell, the man spat out another glob of blood and laughed, “Are you afraid? If you are, then run back to your dens with your tail between your legs. I’m in a good mood today, so I can spare your lives.”

“Your arrogance is unbecoming, Hou.”

As soon as the man finished, a gigantic bulge suddenly rose up from the ground to the east. It was over three thousand meters tall and carried literal mountains and rivers on its back. It was a gigantic dragon turtle with a dragon’s head and a turtle’s body, and it was slowly walking toward the man. Every time it took a step, the ground trembled, the mountains collapsed, and the rivers sank into bottomless chasms.

“Spare us? You?”

To the south, the sky was scorched black by some sort of black flames. Then, a fiery phoenix with a human’s face but a bird’s body descended from above.

Every time it flapped its wings, black flames would burn mountains and boil seas. Countless living beings were killed by its mere presence.

“I am here, Hou. What are you going to do about it?”

To the west, a poisonous black fog stretching from one end of the horizon to the other slowly rolled in like a tidal wave. Behind it was an even bigger face that stitched together using countless corpses. Every time it squirmed forward, the plague would spread, and the poisonous fog would corrode both the forest aboveground and the earth underneath it.

“Keke... today is the day you die, Hou.”

To the north, a gigantic nine-headed serpent rode the waves and slowly made its way over toward the man. Its spittle were toxic liquid the size of a lake, and every time a drop hit the ground, the earth was eaten through like it was nothing, and countless died as a result.

“Is that... the Earthbearing Dragon Turtle, the Undying Nether Phoenix[2], the Endless Lord of Plagues, and the World Ender Jiuying?”

Meanwhile, Ye Qing was watching the scene happening inside the dark yellow light with a stunned expression. When he put two and two together, he blurted, “Could this man be the Earthly Sovereign? According to the ‘Book of the Earthly Sovereign’, his true name is Hou.”

There was a story in the “Book of the Earthly Sovereign” that went something like this. During the first year of the Earthly Sovereign’s reign, there used to be four great Strangers occupying each cardinal direction of the world. They were the Earthbearing Dragon Turtle, the Undying Nether Phoenix, the Endless Lord of Plagues, and the World Ender Jiuying.

The Earthbearer Dragon Turtle occupied the east and carried vast stretches of land, rivers and mountains on its back. Its exhalation was a storm that affected tens of thousands of kilometers of land, and its inhalation was the death of everything in front of it. If it shook, the ground would shake like an earthquake, and if it moved, the earth would tear into pieces.

The Undying Nether Phoenix occupied the south and constantly burned with black flames. If it flew over a mountain, the mountain would burst into black flames. If it flew over a sea, the sea would boil. So long as the black flames did not fade, the phoenix would never perish.

The Endless Lord of Plagues occupied the west. It had a body of rotten flesh and limbs that were composed of pus. Its rotten flesh naturally created deadly plagues that annihilated all life, and its pus gave off poisonous fog that engulfed anything and everything.

Finally, the World Ender Jiuying occupied the north. It had nine heads that possessed a unique power each. It commanded water and frost that could flood over entire continents, and its venom was so toxic that the fumes alone could corrode the earth with ease.

These four Strangers viewed humans as slaves and livestocks and possessed no restraint whatsoever. Their wanton slaughter caused untold destruction and innumerable casualties to the human race. That was why they came to be known as the Four Evils.

It wasn’t like the humans had never dispatched their elites and armies to suppress the Four Evils, but they were simply too strong. Every attempt had resulted in massive casualties and failure.

Later, the Earthly Sovereign personally took to the battlefield with his trusty Earthly Sovereign Bell by his side. He was ultimately able to defeat the Four Evils at the Mountains of Extinction. However, the Four Evils were so powerful that they could not be killed, only sealed away. So, the Earthly Sovereign sealed the Earthbearing Dragon Turtle at the Sky Beyond Sky, the Undying Nether Phoenix at the Mountain Beyond Mountain, the Endless Lord of Plagues at the Westmost Desert, and the World Ender Jiuying at the Blue Hole of Primal Chaos. And so humanity was saved from their eternal threat.

Unless he was gravely mistaken, the four Strangers he was seeing right now were most likely the Four Evils. In that case, the man could only be the Earthly Sovereign, and the bell the artifact that forged his Dao, the Earthly Sovereign Bell.

1. Ah. ☜

2. If you remember, the Mortician has one of its feathers. ☜