Holy Emperor of the Golden Wheel

A spark sets the shackles ablaze; a golden wheel shines over the primordial age

When the first drop of divine and demonic blood seeped into the Eye of the Guixu Sea, the wheel of fate in the primordial wilderness was marked with nine cracks. The phantom of a golden wheel slumbering in Ye Xuan’s spine slowly turned to the wail of the North Sea’s winds of darkness. It was the primordial fetal embryo of the true self, cleaved from the body of the Ancient Sage Emperor, and also a heaven-slaying weapon forged from the bones of three thousand gods and demons at the dawn of chaos.

In this world, the souls of those who ascend are pierced by Primordial Chains, each link branded with a primordial violet seal. Deep within the spiritual energy drawn in by cultivators lie threads of karma left behind when the Goddess Nüwa mended the heavens. The blood splashed across the altar on the night the Ye clan was annihilated three years ago revealed the demonic markings of Luohou beneath the moonlight. The Nine-Rebirth Nirvana Flame surging in the Medicine King Valley’s alchemy furnace scorched the exquisite Dao seal over Xiao Li’s heart, where a fragment of the Goddess Nüwa’s cauldron is sealed, powerful enough to recreate wind, earth, water, and fire.

With each of the golden wheel’s nine revolutions, a tribulation takes shape. The abstruse Zhou Tian Star Battle Formation, inscrutable to Foundation Establishment cultivators, is in fact an ancient star chart shattered by the Primordial Chains. The immeasurable tribulation that even powerful cultivators avoid is no more than a shackle of divine consciousness branded on prisoners by the Heavenly Dao. When Ye Xuan stirred a damaged formation core during the trial at the Taixu Sect, the remains of the Sage Emperor slumbering in the frigid depths of the Northern Darkness suddenly trembled. The remnant souls of the Chaos Demon Gods suppressed in the depths of the Guixu had sensed the presence of a variable capable of breaking the Primordial Chains.

The Blood River of the Ninefold Underworld churned as if boiling, not because it feared the fragment of the Fallen Golden Wheel in the young man’s hand, but because it was terrified of the primordial battle intent awakening within its golden markings. In the frozen eyes of the Blood River Ancestor, who had perished long ago, was reflected the bloodiest tributary of the river of fate: the roots of the Jianmu Divine Tree pierced the thirty-third heaven, while Xiao Li’s burning Exquisite Heart became