The fated ones

Chapter 67

After securing the celestials and her family inside the golden mist to protect them from hellfire, feng jiu in her phoenix form flew towards the eastern desert bell. The celestials watched as instead of going directly to the top of the bell, feng jiu instead flew directly beneath it. Underneath the bell and directly above the roushi river's surface, the phoenix form of the queen started flying in a circular formation. Perplexed as to what was happening, the spectators looked at each other to see if anyone had any clue as to what was happening. Rather than a clue, what they found was the presence of high god Zhe yan in their midst. He was standing with high god bai zhi, high god bai yi, and high god bai zhen.

It hadn't been long before the celestials noticed his presence. Zhe yan had just arrived back from bihai cangling and found the whole of the realms had gone into chaos in his absence. Every place he went to was covered under those red shields of feng jiu. Annoyed at being evicted out of his own home too, zhe yan had tried to find bai zhen. Detecting his presence at the ruoshi river bank, he had immediately rushed over. The scene he had witnessed on arriving was beyond anything he could have ever imagined and that was after considering the things dong hua had done over the millenias. On one side, there was a fire pit formed of three celestial dragons wherein one was the current sky emperor, one the war god, and last but not the least, the current imperial minister of qing qui. If seeing these three omnipotent dragons being used as pit stones was not enough there was also the domineering and all-powerful celestial army standing under what looked like a golden rainbow. What blew his mind, even more, was while all these people were focused on watching the now-ringing eastern desert bell, nobody was doing anything about it.

Frustrated over all this, zhe yan made his way over to bai zhen's side.

"what has happened to the realms in my absence? I was gone for a couple of days and this forsaken bell has opened up again?" He exclaimed.

Bai zhen took stock of his bearings before he answered him with a swift shake of his head. "as much as you would dislike hearing this but this is not because of your absence. The demon army attacked again."

"explain, zhen zhen."

At length, bai zhen explained the whole situation to zhe yan. Starting from the moment, they had received the news of an attack till the current point of opening of the bell. By the time he finished reporting the entire series of events, zhe yan had a pensive look on his face.

"xaio jiu shouldn't be doing this right now. " zhe yan muttered to himself.

With an empathetic look on his face, bai zhen answered, "I understand your worries, zhe yan. We all do. But the point of the matter is that this bell needs to be destroyed right now and the only person who is capable of destroying that bell full of hellfire is xaio jiu. You know that even dijun can only control and restrict hellfire, he too can't destroy it completely. As the source of it, all only xaio jiu can do it. So, no matter how reluctant we are, we have no choice but to let her do it."

Unsettled at the truth of this statement, zhe yan looked out towards eastern bell where feng jiu had flown off to. What seemed like just a circle moments ago, was now taking the shape of an inverted tornado. Feng jiu hadn't started flying in a circular motion, instead, she had taken to a spiral formation wherein as she flew, her wings were leaving behind a trail of their own hellfire. She had originally started with a wide-open circle and as she flew towards and around the eastern bell she had gradually reduced the size of each ring of the spiral. This had effectively formed an inverted tornado of red and golden hellfire which blazed with fury and ferocity.

Zhe yan whispered askance watching this mind-numbing view, "what is she trying to do with this?"

Just as befuddled at the scene in front of him, bai zhen replied, "none of us know. The last thing she said was to make sure that everyone stayed inside this golden mist."

"I have a bad feeling about this. With her situation right now, she shouldn't be doing something like this." Zhe yan mumbled to himself.

But as it happened, bai zhen heard it and with worry evident in his voice he asked, "situation? What situation are you talking about, zhe yan?"

As zhe yan fretted over what to tell him, they heard multiple screams from the direction of the eastern bell. Harried they looked over towards it and only to find everything that had gone wrong

While zhe yan and bai zhen were talking, multiple things had happened at the same time. Nearing the top of the bell, feng jiu had completed her fire spiral and completely encased the entire bell in it and had then flown directly towards the top of it. Keeping a decent gap between the bell and her, she had enlarged the size of her phoenix form.

As everyone watched the phoenix had opened its beak and started to suck in the entire spiral of hellfire. A few moments later, everyone had heard several screams from inside the inverted hellfire tornado which the phoenix was set on consuming and from the bell that sat within. What nobody knew was that inside the bell there was a space that qing cang had created for himself when he was connecting the hellfire to his life. He had created this particular area to keep himself safe from the effects of hellfire. As it had happened the demons fighting today had found this space and had sat inside it to reactivate the bell. Being inside the bell they knew nothing about what had been going outside, so they had been waiting for a chance to escape after the bell had opened completely. But before they could have escaped, they felt themselves being sucked away by an external force, and without a moment's gap to take all this in, the bell had started to collapse. Anywhere they saw, whether inside or outside, there was only hellfire everywhere. Thus, the screaming had begun.

Hearing these screams, it took feng jiu only a few moments to understand what had gone wrong and where those screams were coming from. Still in her phoenix form, consuming the hellfire and the eastern bell along with it, those few moments were too much, too late. With the situation she was in now, she couldn't stop the process of swallowing down the fire torrent. To stop now would mean ejecting out this much hellfire on all the realms which would effectively destroy not only the heavens but possibly the entire universe. So, no matter how much she wanted to, she couldn't stop now. To save the realms she had to swallow this fire torrent whole even if it meant swallowing the demons inside too. In that moment, she recalled the conversation she had had with Zhong lin, few hours earlier. When she had told him that swallowing a demon meant immediate death for an immortal, she had no clue that something like this was waiting for her, so soon.

Seeing what was about to happen, she remembered what she was about to tell dong hua after he had arrived from his trip. The good news that she had been so excited for, she might never get the chance to share it with him. Thinking about it, she felt a tear slip down her face and evaporate into the air. With the thoughts of dong hua in her mind, she opened up her mouth wider and swallowed everything in one go. When the sun had started to rise on the banks of ruoshi river, the eastern bell had finally been destroyed.

While this had felt like hours to feng jiu, all of this had taken place in a matter of minutes. By the time, zhe yan understood what the screams meant and what had happened, she had swallowed everything.

Stumbling back the only thing that came out of his mouth was, "she swallowed up demons."

Among the spectators, only a couple of immortals understood the consequences of this and those were bai zhi and Zhong lin. The others were left confused as to what had actually happened but before someone could put up this question, they saw the phoenix dropping out from the sky.

In a complete state of disarray, zhe yan quickly transformed into his own phoenix form and took flight. At the same time, the three dragons had also understood what had gone down and the moment the fire burned out, they also flew straight in the direction of feng jiu.

As they took off in her direction, they heard a loud dreadful bellow. The source of that sound was none other than donghua dijun, himself. He had appeared back at the ruoshi river bank, the moment after feng jiu's phoenix form had started dropping and the "no" had emerged from him involuntarily. Quicker than the others, he raced for her but it was all for naught.

Right before their eyes, they saw as the falling body of the phoenix caught fire and disintegrated into ashes. In a moments' gap, against the backdrop of the rising sun, in place of the phoenix queen, all that was left, were her ashes.