The dome of the East Sea Dragon Palace shattered with a thunderous roar. Sun Wukong, in his true form as a Demonic Ape, stood with feet planted in Guixu, his Ruyi Jingu Bang churning the vast, tempestuous waters. The Yuwang inscriptions on the staff illuminated the purgatory of the seabed—at the center of a blood array formed from the nailed souls of one hundred thousand children, the Exquisite Pagoda was refining spirits into golden threads. These threads pierced through the Thirty-Three Heavens, finally winding around the jade beads of the Jade Emperor’s crown.
"Old man Jade Emperor! What a crown you wear!" The Demonic Ape’s fangs gnashed together. The memory of his havoc in the Heavenly Court five hundred years ago suddenly sharpened: out of the alchemical furnace he had overturned, it was not the Nine-Turn Golden Core that drifted out, but the essence of the monkeys from Flower-Fruit Mountain! He swept his Ruyi Jingu Bang through the army; nine dragons, manifested from dark ice chains, lunged at him, only to be pulverized by the wind of his staff. The ice shards recombined in mid-air, revealing the scene of Wuzhiqi’s suppression by Yuwang—the Sea-Pacifying Divine Needle had been forged for the very purpose of toppling the Heavenly Court!
Li Jing threw his Exquisite Pagoda in fury, and the soul-snatching bells on its eaves echoed through the Three Realms. The phantoms of one hundred thousand heavenly soldiers and generals surged from the pagoda, and at their head stood the Pagoda-Bearing Heavenly King’s own three-corpse manifestation! Nezha’s pupils contracted—the faces of those soldiers were clearly those of the Shang and Zhou generals who had fallen in the Investiture of the Gods, their souls eternally imprisoned in the tower as slaves.
"Universal Heaven Ribbon, shatter it!" Nezha tore the golden hoop from his neck, unleashing his full divine power for the first time in five hundred years. The hoop expanded like a solar disk, its edges revealing the secret scripts taught to him by Taiyi Zhenren: "Heaven is Qian, Earth is Kun; break all evil!" Wherever the golden light passed, the phantoms of the soldiers dissolved like snow, revealing the horrifying truth at the heart of the tower—the remnant soul of Madam Yin was pinned to the center of the array by seven soul-locking nails, each inscribed with Nezha’s birth date!
Sun Wukong let out a sudden, piercing howl, his fur transforming into thirty-six thousand golden needles that rained down into the ley lines of the Dragon Palace. Each needle bore the name of a monkey from Flower-Fruit Mountain, and from the tips ignited the Karmic Fire that would consume the heavens. Ao Guang’s massive dragon body writhed in the sea of fire, and where his scales fell away, bleached white bones were exposed—bones that had been stitched together from the corpses of children from Chentang Pass!
"Yang Jian! Strike now!" The Demonic Ape’s roar shattered the pillars of the Crystal Palace. A five-colored liquid flowed from the Heavenly Eye on the Judicial True Lord’s forehead, and under the impetus of the Eight-Nine Profound Art, his Three-Pointed Double-Edged Blade transformed into a mountain-splitting axe. It was not the seawater the blade cleaved, but the long river of Karma! The river reflected the scene of Yaoji having her soul extracted to mend the heavens: for every strand of emotion torn from her, another child’s soul was nailed into the East Sea blood array.
Xiaotian Hound suddenly leapt into the core of the blood array, crushing three dragon-coiled pillars with his fangs. The "Destined by Heaven" talismans on the pillars crumbled, revealing the trapped essences of the Twelve Ancestral Witches. The remnant soul of Gonggong transformed into a monstrous tidal wave, while the essence of Zhurong ignited a world-consuming flame; the two forces intertwined and surged toward the Exquisite Pagoda, burning Li Jing’s three-corpse manifestation into ash.
"Rebellious son! How dare you!" Li Jing tore open his celestial armor, the Spirit Pearl Fragment embedded in his chest glowing with an intense, violent light. Within that fragment, the imprisoned soul of Nezha suddenly awakened, seizing the Fire-Tip Spear and turning its point! At that critical moment, the Universal Heaven Ribbon spontaneously wrapped around the shaft, the blood-written words "Nezha, my son" from Madam Yin glowing gold, scorching the brand of the Investiture of the Gods from Li Jing’s body into nothing but wisps of smoke.
The eye of Guixu at the bottom of the sea suddenly opened wide, reflecting the truth of how Empress Nüwa mended the heavens: the missing Five-Colored Stones were not lost, but had been forged by the Jade Emperor into the master copy of the Investiture of the Gods! Yang Jian’s divine light pierced the void, revealing Yaoji’s spine serving as a substitute for the Mending Heaven Stone, each vertebra inscribed with the curse: "Eternally Suppress the Heavenly Dao."
"So we were all merely abandoned tools for mending the heavens..." Sun Wukong’s Ruyi Jingu Bang suddenly softened, transforming into a rule for measuring the four seas. A vision of Yuwang’s final moments appeared on the staff: the Saint King of Humanity had not died of illness, but had been blasted to death by the Heavenly Court’s Thunder Department at Longmen Mountain! With his final breath, he had used his own blood to carve two words into the divine iron: "Slay Heaven."
Nezha suddenly plunged his hands into his own chest and tore out his lotus-root heart. The heart took root in the Blood Sea, blooming into its true form—a Red Lotus of Karmic Fire, created when the World-Purifying White Lotus before Empress Nüwa’s palace had been stained by blood! The roots of the red lotus entwined the one hundred thousand child souls, guiding them into Samsara. The lotus-root body, now missing a soul, began to disintegrate, but under the binding of the Universal Heaven Ribbon, it was recast—not with lotus roots this time, but with the dust of the Mending Heaven Stone shed from the Sea-Pacifying Divine Needle!
Ao Guang’s dragon head exploded, and half a piece of the Empress Nüwa’s stone flew out from his dragon pearl. Yang Jian’s Three-Pointed Double-Edged Blade flew out on its own, its Taotie-patterned hilt biting into the divine stone as the blade cleaved the master copy of the Investiture of the Gods. The moment the jade slips shattered, the sound of breaking glass echoed through the Thirty-Three Heavens. The immortal trees in the Flat Peach Garden withered in an instant, and the waters of Yaochi dried up, revealing the skull of Xingtian suppressed at the bottom of the pool!
"Qitian! Unbound! Clear and bright!" The roar of the three shook the East Sea barrier. Where the Ruyi Jingu Bang, the Fire-Tip Spear, and the Three-Pointed Double-Edged Blade met, a light burst forth—the same light from the dawn of Chaos. Xiaotian Hound transformed into a colossal beast within this radiance, his fangs catching the Jade Emperor’s crown as it fell from the nine heavens. The souls embedded in the jade beads were liberated, and one streak of light merged into Yang Jian’s Heavenly Eye—it was Yaoji’s final strand of emotion!
Twelve altars of the ancestors rose from the seabed; the Youchao clan built a ladder to the heavens, the Suiren clan ignited the fire of hope, and the Shennong clan scattered the five grains. Sun Wukong’s Ruyi Jingu Bang stood rooted in the central altar, and upon its surface appeared a new Heavenly Law: "All things have spirit; all may seek the Dao." Nezha’s Universal Heaven Ribbon spread out like ten thousand miles of morning clouds, guiding the dead to rebirth. Yang Jian’s Three-Pointed Double-Edged Blade hung in the ninth heaven, its light illuminating the darkness of the Three Realms.
As the first ray of dawn pierced the surface of the sea, ten thousand acres of peach blossoms bloomed along the shores of the East Sea. Every blossom reflected a liberated soul, and deep within the peach grove, one could faintly see Yaoji playing the zither, Madam Yin threading a needle, and the old monkeys of Flower-Fruit Mountain brewing wine. Sun Wukong plucked a tuft of his fur and blew it toward the four great continents: "Children, look to this day—"