bioinnovel Chapter 372 Donghuang Taiyi's Heart
Chapter 372 Donghuang Taiyi's Heart
The heart that was suspended in the center of the sealed room suddenly started beating faster.
Su Fan took half a step forward, gripping the Pangu Axe.
My feet were in the void of the secret chamber, with no ground beneath them, only a very thin layer of dark gold law membrane supporting my feet.
Each time the membrane wall is stepped on, a ripple spreads outwards.
Ripples crashed against the walls of the secret chamber, bounced back, and overlapped with the rhythm of a heartbeat, making the entire chamber vibrate and buzz.
Xu followed behind Su Fan.
The fragments of its left and right atria had completely fused with the core, and a pale golden network of veins extended outward from the center of the sternum, covering the entire chest cavity.
With each step it took, the veins on its chest would flash once, synchronized with the beating of its suspended heart.
"The third fragment is the interventricular septum of the heart. The interventricular septum is neither an atrium nor a ventricle; it is the membrane that separates the left and right ventricles. Without it, the beating of the left and right atria cannot be synchronized."
Ruins' voice was now completely fluent.
The newly formed vocal cords had lost their last bit of rawness during the conversation with the remnant soul of Xing Tianwei, and now it could speak as fast as a living person.
How do I obtain the ventricular septum?
Su Fan stared at the suspended heart.
The surface of the heart was covered with dark golden law patterns, which spread from the tip of the heart to the bottom. Each pattern was a seal of time.
The seal was so densely packed that it was indistinguishable to the naked eye; all that could be seen was a constantly flowing dark golden light.
"The interventricular septum was sealed by the last drop of lifeblood of the Eastern Emperor before his fall. It was not someone else that was sealed, but himself. Before the bell shattered, Taiyi realized that the Yellow Emperor sent Yinglong to assassinate him not because he wanted to restart the timeline, but because he discovered that those ancient beings deep in the chaos had their eyes on the primordial world."
"He wanted to use the sound of bells to wake up all the ancient gods in the primordial world in advance, so that they could return to their places before the ancient gods descended. But the Yellow Emperor did not know this reason and thought that He wanted to rewrite the timeline."
Xu raised his right hand and pressed it against the pale gold line in the center of his chest. The resonant frequency of his core was transmitted into the secret chamber through his palm.
"Before Taiyi died, he cut his heart into three pieces. The ventricular septum contains his last consciousness before his fall. To obtain the ventricular septum, someone must go in and talk to him face to face."
"What does 'going in' mean?"
Nezha carried his Fire-Tipped Spear and walked to the side of the ruins.
The wound on his left hand was still bleeding. The three cuts from the dragon claw extended from his wrist to his forearm. He tore off a sleeve and wrapped it around his arm several times, biting it tightly with his teeth. The bleeding stopped temporarily.
"The interventricular septum is an independent time bubble. Before he died, Taiyi used the sound of a bell to seal his last moments of consciousness within this time bubble."
"Once inside, you will relive the final moments before Taiyi's fall: the shattering of the bell, Yinglong's attack, and the Yellow Emperor's questioning—all three events occurring simultaneously. You must find Taiyi's true consciousness within these three fragments of time and persuade Him to hand over the chamber partition."
Xu looked at Su Fan.
"The entrance to the time bubble is in the crack right in the center of the heart. But the flow of time inside the time bubble is completely different from that outside. If you stay inside for the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, only one breath will pass outside. The chaotic pressure that the chamber experiences will only increase by one breath. But how long you can stay inside depends on whether you can find Taiyi in the three fragments of time."
"What will happen if we can't find it?" Nezha asked.
"Forever trapped in the time bubble, repeatedly experiencing the final moment of their fall along with Taiyi's remaining consciousness."
Su Fan stuck the Pangu Axe into his back.
Without hesitation, he stepped directly beneath the suspended heart and looked up at the crack.
At the apex of the heart is an extremely fine slit, the edges of which are sealed by a membrane of laws formed from the sound of bells.
He extended his left hand, aligning the chevron scar on his palm with the tear, and golden blood seeped from the gap in the scar, dripping onto the membrane of the tear.
The membrane wall was eroded by golden blood, creating a hole just big enough for one person to pass through.
He turned and glanced at Nezha.
"You can handle the outside. If those eyes of Chaos manage to break in before I do, they don't need to wait for me."
"Don't worry. I'll guard this door no matter how long you stay inside."
Nezha slammed his Fire-Tipped Spear into the void, the spear's tail striking the dark gold law membrane, creating a ripple.
He stood at the entrance of the secret chamber, spear in hand, with his back to the door and his face to the seven chaotic rifts that were closing in.
Su Fan leaped into the ruptured heart.
The moment the time bubble burst before his eyes, three fragments of time simultaneously crashed into his consciousness.
The first fragment of time is the sound of a bell.
The moment the Eastern Emperor Bell shattered, the sound of the bell did not come from the outside, but exploded from inside his own chest cavity.
Su Fan looked down at his chest. The dark gold scab at the broken ribs had been shattered by the sound of the bell, and golden blood was gushing out from the crack.
His mouth was filled with the taste of blood, mixed with the burnt smell of the collapsing laws in the air of the Eastern Emperor Ruins.
He stood in the center of the main hall of the Eastern Emperor's Palace, with shattered jade tiles beneath his feet and a collapsing dome above his head.
The dome is carved with 365 reliefs of three-legged golden crows, and the eyes of all the reliefs have turned from gold to dark, and one by one they go out.
A person stood at the far end of the main hall.
The humanoid figure was dark gold, enveloped from head to toe in the light of the laws formed by the sound of the bell, making its features indistinct except for its eyes.
Those eyes were exactly the same as the two wet, glistening eyes that Su Fan had seen in Xu's eyes when he first met Xu at the Guixu Altar.
"You are not Taiyi," Su Fan said.
The humanoid did not answer.
The human figure raised its right hand and pointed to the side door on the left side of the main hall.
The side door was open, and outside the door was the second fragment of time.
Su Fan passed through the side door.
The second fragment of time is the battlefield.
It's not an ancient battlefield of gods and demons, but another battlefield altogether.
The final battle between Donghuang Taiyi and Yinglong.
Taiyi stood on the battlefield, and Yinglong pounced down from the sky. Its dragon claws tore open Taiyi's chest, and Taiyi crushed the Donghuang Bell with one hand. The bell's sound exploded and shattered Yinglong's wings.
The two people fell at the same moment.
In the empty space where the Yellow Emperor had removed the reverse scale from Yinglong's chest, Taiyi pressed a fragment of his own ventricular septum into it.
Before Taiyi collapsed, he said something to the dying Yinglong.
The words were drowned out by the sound of shattering bells, and could not be heard.
Su Fan walked to the fallen Taiyi and looked down at him.
Taiyi's features had become blurred, with only his eyes remaining lit.
Those eyes were completely different from the humanoid figure in the main hall; they weren't dark gold, but pale gold, and the pupils reflected a three-legged golden crow with outstretched wings.
"Yinglong didn't hear what you said on the battlefield. It guarded your fragment for 30,000 years, and only let go today when Nezha told it that Wuzhiqi was still alive."
Su Fan squatted down, aligning the 'human' character scar on his left palm with the wound on Taiyi's chest.
Golden blood seeped from the scar and dripped onto Taiyi's wound.
The dark gold law patterns on the edge of the wound began to tremble after coming into contact with Su Fan's blood.
Taiyi's eyes, which were almost extinguished, lit up again.
He spoke, his voice so soft it could be drowned out by any noise, but Su Fan heard him clearly.
"The third fragment is in the third fragment of time. It's not a battlefield, not a divine palace, but the Zhuolu Camp where I was questioned by the Yellow Emperor. There, I will tell you what I saw with the sound of the bell."
The entrance to the third fragment of time is at the edge of the battlefield, right in the center of the pool of blood where Taiyi fell.
A pool of blood and sweat from 30,000 years ago that has never dried up.
Su Fan stepped into the pool of blood and was sucked in.
The sky above the third fragment of time is blood-red.
Zhuolu Xingyuan, the central command tent of the Yellow Emperor.
There were only two people inside the tent.
The Yellow Emperor sat in the main seat, Ji Xuanyuan, with a human head and a snake's body, his dragon robe embroidered with the ancient star map from the first operation of the Heavenly Dao in the primordial world.
His face was young, but his eyes didn't have the maturity a young person should have.
Taiyi stood in the center of the tent, blood still flowing from the wound on his chest torn open by Yinglong, dripping down the hem of his robes onto the carpet inside the tent.
"I saw the future with the Eastern Emperor Bell. In the deepest part of chaos, there is a group of things that are more ancient than chaos itself. They are not beings of chaos, but the creators of the 'nothingness' that existed before chaos was born."
"When Pangu separated heaven and earth, he cleaved the chaos and also awakened them. Within 30,000 years, they will all awaken. If all the ancient gods of the primordial world cannot return to their positions at the same time, the primordial world will not be able to withstand the first wave of impact."
Taiichi's voice was calm.
"So you used the bell to restart the timeline, trying to awaken all the ancient gods ahead of time." The Yellow Emperor's voice was also calm.
"Yes. But the price of restarting the timeline is erasing the existing causal chain of the primordial world. After time restarts, the Battle of Zhuolu will not have happened, the Jiuli will not have been destroyed, Shennong will not have died, Fuxi will not have drawn the Eight Trigrams, and the Human Emperor will not have been born—or they will all be discovered and erased by the ancient gods at the same time. You will not allow it."
"I will not allow it. I killed the people of Jiuli with my own hands. How many people died in the Battle of Zhuolu? If you restart the timeline, all their deaths will have been in vain."
The Yellow Emperor stood up, stepped down from his seat, and walked to Taiyi. The two stood face to face.
"Then there's only one way. Divide the primordial world into two layers. The surface primordial world continues along the existing timeline. In the inner primordial world, all the ruins, remains, and relics of the ancient gods are sealed into a time rift, to be returned to their places after 30,000 years. This way, the causal chain won't be erased, and no one will die in vain, but someone needs to use their own life as the anchor point for the time rift. This person must be the owner of the bell."
Taiyi placed his hand on the wound on his chest and tore out the last fragment of his heart.
Interventricular septum.
The dark golden fragments danced in his palm, and with each dance, the entire marching tent trembled.
The Yellow Emperor gazed at him for a long time, then took the Xuanyuan Sword from his waist.
The scabbard is inlaid with the reverse scales of Yinglong.
He took the scabbard off and placed it in Taiyi's other palm.
"My men cut off your reinforcements, and my generals plucked the scales from your garrison commander. Yinglong owes you nothing, but this scale is what I owe you. Take it to guard your secret chamber."
After speaking, the Yellow Emperor withdrew his hand and returned to his seat.
Taiyi, holding Yinglong's Reverse Scale and the fragment of the chamber partition, turned and walked towards the edge of the third time fragment.
The void of the secret chamber emerged from the pool of blood there.
The ventricular septum transformed into the suspended heart that followed.
He sealed away his entire consciousness.
Su Fan stood at the edge of the third fragment of time.
He had been watching this scene unfold from a corner of the tent while Taiyi and the Yellow Emperor were talking.
Now that Taiyi has sealed the chamber into the core of the secret room, he takes advantage of the fact that the connection of consciousness sealed in the moment has not completely dissipated and quickly walks towards Taiyi.
"Taiyi. The Void is outside the secret chamber; your mother fluid condensed it. It has pieced together two of the three fragments. Yinglong's remnant soul, hearing that its descendant was still alive, voluntarily returned its right atrium to the Void. Xingtian Guard saw blood flowing from its feet and the entire camp shouted out its unit number. You come and tell us that now these three heart fragments are completely pieced together, and those things from the depths of chaos have arrived—"
Taiyi turned around.
The blood gushing from His wounds reflected the scene outside the secret chamber.
The Ruins stood in the very center of the void within the secret chamber.
Seven chaotic rifts converged above its head, and from each rift emerged a giant claw covered in scales of primordial laws, its tip pointing toward the completely assembled heart within the Ruins' chest cavity.
Nezha stood at the entrance of the secret chamber, his Fire-Tipped Spear sweeping back the first wave of Time Hunters who rushed in. His left arm was scratched by the hunters' Time Distortion Law, leaving a deep, bone-revealing wound.
The ruins did not recede.
Barefoot, he stepped on the constantly shattering dark gold law membrane of the secret chamber. The three-in-one heart network in his chest cavity shone with a dazzling dark gold light through the sternal wall, piercing through seven chaotic cracks.
Seven roars, scorched by the sound of bells, echoed from the depths of the rift.
Taiyi placed his right hand on the void of the secret chamber, on the suspended heart.
"I agree to give it the ventricular septum. But it has to do one thing first. When the ventricular septum is put in place, the heart must beat three full beats."
"The first strike will seal all the chaotic rifts simultaneously. The second strike will cause the bell to toll throughout the three layers of ruins. The third strike will bring the three-legged golden crow back to its place. Whether the Ruins can withstand these three heartbeats depends on its age; it's only a few hundred thousand years old and is still learning to speak. Let it answer that question itself."
Taiyi extracted the ventricular septum fragment from the heart crystal and teleported it outside the void of the secret chamber.
Xu stood in the very center of the void within the secret chamber, and the network of pulses in his chest cavity sensed Taiyi's question the instant it touched the fragments of the interventricular septum.
It raised its head, its pale golden pupils aimed at the blurry human figure inside the third fragment of time.
"My name is Xu. It was given to me by the remnants of Pangu's consciousness. Xu means desolate and ruined. I have guarded the Ruins for 30,000 years, and I have witnessed the shattering of sixteen generations of white bones. Each generation has recorded its fatal weakness in the teeth marks. Three heartbeats, that's enough."
Fragments of the ventricular septum were embedded in the rubble of the chest cavity.
The three fragments fit together perfectly at the core to form the entire heart of the Eastern Emperor.
My heart skipped a beat.
The seven chaotic rifts were locked simultaneously, trapping the giant claw within them, unable to move forward or backward.
The second time.
The bell tolled from every fragment of the laws of time within the three layers of ruins, piercing through all the remaining pieces of the Eastern Emperor Bell, through every broken weapon on the battlefield, through every shattered stone pillar in the Divine Palace, and through the law barrier of the myriad phenomena of the Heavenly Dao deep within the Ruins of Return, rebounding from the very bottom of the Ruins of Return and pouring into the entire primordial world.
At the summit of Bone Mountain in Beiju Luzhou, a human warrior drawing his spear looked up towards the east.
The bell tolled through the Demon Emperor Spear in his hand, and the three Demon Emperor heads pierced by the spear tip opened their eyes simultaneously with the sound of the bell.
Outside the Tai Sui star, the guardian deities formed a battle formation with their hands, their arms numb from the sound of the bell.
He has held the mountain gate and single-handedly withstood the first wave of siege from the Chaos Rift for a full hour.
After the bell rang, the chaotic gray mist outside the Tai Sui crack suddenly poured in.
The third time.
The fissure in Zhenxing exploded.
What descended from the crack was not dark golden light, but a complete, living three-legged golden crow, its size blotting out the sky, every feather of which was dark golden.
The feathers were covered with the complete patterns of ancient star maps.
Jinwu opened his eyes, and in them was the reflection of Xu, perfectly synchronized with the beating heart in Xu's chest.
Taiyi's original form has returned to its place.
Xu looked up at the golden crow.
The Golden Crow lowered its head and gently touched the pale gold line running through the center of Xu's chest with its beak, then folded its wings down to shield Xu's head.
The giant claws in the seven chaotic rifts were snapped off at the root by the third chime of the bell. Those beings in the chaotic gray mist, even more ancient than the Lord of the Well, roared in shock and anger. The rifts began to collapse outward layer by layer, forced back tens of thousands of miles by the third chime of the bell.
Outside the crack in the dome of the secret chamber, the golden light of Mars finally stabilized.
The Daoist heart of the Primordial Celestial Venerable suppressed the warning signal.
With Zhenxing returning to its rightful place, the countdown to the closure of the Eastern Emperor Ruins has begun.
Su Fan emerged from the third fragment of time, his right arm braced against the shattered law membrane of the secret chamber.
On the dark gold scabs on his chest, where the two ribs had been reattached, was embedded a fragment of the original core of the Eastern Emperor Bell that Taiyi had peeled from his own broken bell core before parting.
"Here's the core. I gave the ventricular septum to Xu, the right atrium was given to me by Yinglong, and the left atrium was found by Xu, one stone pillar at a time. This core is of little use."
"But it can be rung once. Only once. It's not to summon me, but to summon all the ancient gods still slumbering in the time rift. One summons, and they all return to their places. Whether you use it, and when you use it, is up to you."
Taiyi's remaining consciousness completely dissipated the moment Su Fan stepped out of the third time fragment, along with the Yellow Emperor and the entire Zhulu Xingyuan, and returned to the deepest bottom of the time rift.
Xu stood barefoot under the wings of the Golden Crow, his newly grown soles slashed by the fragments of the secret chamber, inflicting his seventeenth wound.
It looked down at its chest, where a dark gold network of veins had spread throughout its chest cavity, perfectly synchronized with the pulse of the golden crow above its head.
Nezha leaned against the door of the secret chamber, blood still seeping from the wound on his left arm, half of his body pressed against the handle of the Fire-Tipped Spear, muttering to himself.
"A golden crow is bigger than the entire South Heavenly Gate. Could Laozi see it if he stood on the ridge?"
Su Fan walked to the door of the secret room and answered Nezha.
"It's invisible. The Golden Crow is still inside the Zhenxing Rift, breathing in sync with Xu's chest cavity, and won't fly out for the time being. Laozi's Dao Heart can sense it, but it's invisible to the naked eye."
Nezha used his spear to support himself as he stood up straight, and looked down at the wound on his left arm that had been scratched by the Time Hunter.
"The bone isn't broken, it's just a superficial wound. But the hunter's time distortion law has left its mark on the wound, making it heal very slowly."
"Go back and have Laozi cleanse you with his whisk."
Su Fan tore off a strip of cloth from his sleeve and handed it to Nezha.
Nezha took the strip of cloth, bit it with his teeth, and wrapped it around the wound, speaking indistinctly.
"I wonder how things are going with the Great Sage. When the gatekeeper general blocked the rift in chaos, the shockwave from that bell rang out and reached the Grand Duke Jupiter. As soon as I heard it, I knew that Xu's three heartbeats pierced through the entire prehistoric world."
Su Fan took the Pangu Axe off his back, the triple light on the axe blade still shining.
He glanced back at the ruins standing beneath the golden crow's wings and the ancient golden crow with its wings folded atop the ruins, then turned and strode toward the exit of the Eastern Emperor Ruins.
After the golden light of Mars stabilized, the countdowns of the three ancient stars on the star chart all returned to zero.
The Grand Duke Jupiter has returned to its position, the Morning Star has returned to its position, and the Saturn Star has returned to its position.
The Primordial Celestial Venerable stood up from the ridge of the South Heavenly Gate, his movements still very slow.
Only the last strand of the whisk remained, still gleaming.
He placed the whisk on his lap, sat down cross-legged again, and said in a low voice.
"With all three lanes back in place, the full Protoss map should be lit up."
As soon as he finished speaking, all the remaining annihilated star positions on the ancient star map of the primordial world flickered in unison.
Many distant stars, such as Fuxi Star, Nuwa Star, Suiren Star, Shennong Star, Youchao Star, and Zhuanxu Emperor Star, appeared one after another. Under the guidance of the pale gold core law chain of Zhenxing, Chenxing, Tai Sui, and Yinghuo Star, which had been fully restored to their original positions, they gradually moved towards the outer layer of the primordial world to appear.