At the shattered gap in Meng Tian's arm guard, blue-gray sword qi bit like living serpents, making the tempered steel plates hiss with corrosion. The Chaos Sword Essence carried the fiendish intent to annihilate all things, piercing flesh and burrowing toward bone marrow. The agony made his vision darken, yet he still clamped tightly around the scorching body in his arms—every convulsion from Cheng Xi was like that of a dying trapped beast, while escaping sword qi carved crisscrossing blood stains between them.
"Let go... it'll devour you..." Cheng Xi's voice was hoarse as torn silk. Stimulated by the Ancestor Dragon's Power, the Chaos Sword Essence had completely run wild. The faint glow of the Tongtian Mark flickered through the cracks in the Qingping Sword Sheath like a candle in a gale, liable to be snuffed out at any moment. He felt like a clay jar packed with gunpowder, cracks spreading from within. All it needed was the last trace of tremor for jade and stone to shatter together.
Just as that out-of-control sword qi was about to pierce through Meng Tian's heart!
Whoosh—!
The sound of something cutting through the air tore apart the deathly silence. That crude bone arrow, wreathed in Savage Blood Qi, arrived after yet struck first, with precision that seemed ordained by heaven! Its arrowhead was not metal, but a fang polished from some colossal beast. At its tip, a pinpoint of dark-red blood light had condensed into substance.
Bang!
The dull impact did not sound like clashing metal, but more like a heavy hammer smashing into waterlogged soil. The bone arrow viciously nailed itself into the most violent node of the blue-gray sword qi! The dark-red blood qi coiling around its shaft came alive, instantly turning into countless fine blood threads that frantically entwined and seeped into the chaotic, razor-sharp blue-gray light. Amid sharp hissing, the brutal sword qi visibly dimmed and froze, like a venomous snake wrapped in filthy mud, twisting futilely yet unable to advance another inch!
Meng Tian abruptly raised his head, cold sweat mingling with blood as it ran down his face. From the towering shadows cast by the palace wall, a figure like an iron tower slowly emerged. He wore a beast-hide loincloth, his knotted muscles resembling ancient bronze, and carried a massive white bone longbow across his back. Moonlight outlined a face as resolute as if carved by an axe. His calm eyes swept over the corroded hole in Meng Tian's chest before settling on Cheng Xi, and he frowned deeply, like folds in rock strata.
"Houtu Tribe, Hou Yi." His voice was low, carrying the weight of earth and an unquestionable authority. "By the decree of Empress Pingxin, I came in search of the Zhurong Bloodline, only to encounter this... Chaos Fiendish Qi." His gaze blazed as he stared at the blue-gray sword qi pinned by the bone arrow, still hissing and struggling. "This power is vicious beyond mortal arts. It has even contaminated Pangu's legacy. Hand him over to me."
"No..." Cheng Xi struggled to raise his head. The Chaos Sword Essence was forcibly suppressed by the Savage Blood Qi, but the backlash power surged back like a tide, battering his already shattered meridians until the pain nearly made him pass out. He could sense the true nature of the blood qi on that bone arrow—heavy and turbid, carrying Turbid Fiendish Power that had settled in the depths of the earth for countless years! Though it could temporarily neutralize the sharp chaos of the Chaos Sword Essence, it was also further polluting the nascent foundation of his Dao within his body! It was like using mud to smother lava; the fire might temporarily die out, but what remained would be an even fouler wasteland.
Hou Yi spoke no further and stepped forward. The ground trembled faintly. His large hand, rough as tree bark, flashed like lightning. His five fingers spread, and an ancient witch script formed from flowing dark-red blood qi appeared in his palm—"Suppress"!
"By the earth's turbidity, seal the chaos within your body!" Hou Yi barked. With the blood-lit witch script "Suppress" revolving in his palm, he slammed his hand toward Cheng Xi's dantian sea of qi!
The side hall of Ganquan Palace had become an inferno. Amid the broken walls and ruins, blazing white flames mixed with strands of forced-out dark gold streams, raging and churning like mad dragons out of control. Scorched black pillars crackled, while glazed roof tiles melted into crimson slurry that flowed across the ground.
Yan Lingji knelt amid the ruins, her crimson dress licked by flames without suffering the slightest damage. Her hands clutched the back of her left hand tightly, her knuckles white from excessive force. Beneath her skin, the dark gold vertical-pupil pattern burned like a hot iron embedded deep in her bones. Every pulse brought soul-rending agony. The demonic voices in her skull clung like bone-clinging maggots, growing clearer and more frenzied:
"Burn! Burn away this prison!"
"Pangu is dead! The laws must perish!"
"Embrace chaos! You shall become eternal!"
The blazing white Zhurong Witch Fire instinctively rose to protect its master, yet the instant it touched the dark gold pattern, it was like ice water splashed into boiling oil, erupting into an even fiercer conflict! The two powers madly collided and tore at each other within her slender body. Her meridians wailed, her bones groaned. The remaining Pangu Imprint left by the Will of Pangu Hall was like a heavy, icy mountain, ruthlessly suppressing her boiling bloodline—but it also suppressed her own witch fire's power to resist, leaving her like a lamb nailed to an altar, enduring torment from both within and without.
The Qingping Sword Sheath in her arms was scorching like hot iron. The last wisp of blue light bursting from the cloud pattern at its opening pierced her brow like a fine needle, bringing a momentary clarity. Lord Tongtian's weak yet resolute voice mingled with a vast, weighty call from the distant depths of the earth—"Return..." —and exploded within her sea of consciousness:
"As long as the heart's lamp remains unextinguished, witch fire is not a flame that burns the world... It is... Civilization's Hearth Fire!"
Hearth fire?
Those two words were like thunder, splitting apart the chaos of the demonic voices. In that instant, she seemed to see Suirenshi drilling wood to make fire. She saw sparks driving away cold and darkness. She saw humanity's silhouettes struggling to seek survival in the wilderness... That flame was weak, yet it carried hope and inheritance enough to pierce through eternal darkness!
"Ah—!" Yan Lingji suddenly threw back her head and let out a long, resolute cry! She no longer endured passively, but actively gathered her strength! She no longer used all her remaining will to resist that cold Pangu Imprint, nor did she fear the invading demonic voices. Instead, she poured it all into that wavering blaze of white fire at her heart!
Burn away filth, not myself! Witch fire must become kindling!
Boom!
That weak flame at her heart suddenly exploded! It was no longer purely blazing white, but had taken on a faint, warm orange-red hue! Bearing a mournful intent to protect, the flame no longer violently scorched the dark gold patterns. Instead, it turned into countless delicate fire threads, like nimble weavers, precisely winding around and enveloping the dark gold veins spreading through her bloodline! Burning! Purifying! Neutralizing!
Hiss... sizzle...
Like cold water dripping into boiling oil! The sections of the dark gold patterns wrapped in orange-red flames twisted and struggled violently, releasing a piercing sound of annihilation! Wisps of filthy black smoke steamed from Yan Lingji's body. The crack of the vertical pupil on the back of her hand, which had been about to open again, suddenly shrank and closed as if burned! The dark gold patterns that had spread to her neck swiftly receded like a tide!
The price was heart-piercing, bone-deep agony! Every purification was like carving a piece of flesh from the depths of her soul! For every inch of demonic pattern burned by the orange-red flames, the source of her witch fire dimmed a bit, and her face turned a bit paler, as though her life itself was burning away with it.
Within the flames of the ruins, her slender figure violently trembled, yet she kept her spine rigidly straight. Blazing white and orange-red flames intertwined all over her, firmly suppressing the remaining dark gold streams beneath her skin, like a lamp stubbornly burning in hell...
Deep within the wilderness forest north of Mount Li, the silence was broken by heavy, agonized panting. Lu Buwei curled up in a hollow filled with rotting leaves, his splendid robes in tatters and smeared with mud and thick dark gold slurry. He tightly embraced the half of the Demon Lizard's Severed Skull in his arms, as if it were his last lifeline—and as if he were embracing a man-eating demon.
"Hah... hah... mine... it's all mine..." His eyes bulged, crisscrossed with blood vessels, as he greedily pressed his cheek against the cold, fetid cross-section of the skull. The residual corrosion from the Chaos Sword Essence burned within him, bringing endless weakness and pain. Only the cold, slimy sensation radiating from that skull could give him a trace of bizarre comfort and... the illusion of power.
Buzz...
The severed skull in his arms suddenly jolted! The dark gold slurry, long since congealed, stirred back to life like a poisonous snake waking from hibernation and burrowed even more frantically through the wound torn open on Lu Buwei's chest by sword qi! Cold, slick, and carrying a hunger that made the soul tremble!
"Argh!" Lu Buwei's entire body convulsed as though struck by lightning. Countless shattered, frenzied images filled with the desire for destruction flooded into his mind like a tsunami: stars shattered beneath colossal claws, gods and demons dissolving in slime, endless darkness and devouring... At last, the images fixed on a pair of incomparably vast dark gold vertical pupils, coldly looking down upon the entire primordial world! Merciless, greedy, viewing all things as food!
"No! Get out! This is my body! My power!" The last remnants of his reason screamed madly. The chancellor who had held sway over the court instinctively resisted this complete corruption. He tried to fling away the demon skull in his arms, but his fingers seemed welded to it by invisible slime, utterly unmoving! The dark gold slurry that had seeped into his body spread and rooted itself wildly through his flesh and meridians like greedy roots. Wherever it went, his sense of being human swiftly faded, replaced by a cold, chaotic, inhuman sensation.
Rip...
A faint yet hair-raising tearing sound came from the edge of the wound on his chest. Lu Buwei lowered his head in terror.
At the repeatedly soaked edges of his flesh, several tiny dark gold scales with razor-sharp edges were stubbornly piercing through his gray, ruined skin like newly sprouted poisonous mushrooms, slowly emerging! Under the bleak moonlight, they gleamed with a metallic, icy luster!
"No... no—!" Lu Buwei let out an inhuman howl, filled with despair and terror. He could clearly feel something awakening within him, something that was... replacing him!
As though answering his fear, the half of the Demon Lizard's Severed Skull in his arms stirred from its silence. The charred flesh remaining around the eyelid of its sole scarlet evil eye, which had been split open for the most part, suddenly... twitched almost imperceptibly.
Very deep beneath Mount Li, time seemed to have frozen. Only the vast golden Dragon Vein Earth Energy flowed soundlessly through ancient rock tunnels like the blood of a sleeping giant dragon, nourishing the land and sustaining the National Foundation of Great Qin's fate.
That heavy, viscous droplet of Dark Gold Demonic Blood had already seeped soundlessly through the finest cracks in the rock to the edge of the dragon vein's main artery. Like a venomous insect possessed of intelligence, it waited patiently, seeking the moment when the rushing dragon energy was at its most surging—and its defenses at their most lax.
It's here!
A mighty flood of dragon energy rushed past. Its momentum slowed slightly, precisely at the point where power shifted during its cyclical flow!
Right now!
The Dark Gold Demonic Blood abruptly spread apart! It was no longer a droplet, but exploded into billions of dark gold patterns as fine as silk threads and as twisted as living snakes! Like leeches that had caught the scent of blood, they precisely and frantically pounced toward that pure golden flood of dragon energy, winding around it, piercing into it, and merging with it!
Hiss, hiss, hiss—!
A silent corrosion raged fiercely at the level of laws! Violent, chaotic, and destructive elements were forcibly injected into the majestic, boundless dragon energy! Countless twisting dark gold patterns instantly stained the golden torrent, like a blood vessel of rot swiftly spreading across a healthy body! The once warm and vast earth-vein power suddenly became scorching, restless, and filled with ominous fiendish intent!
Rumble...
From deep within the Mount Li range came a muffled, agonized roar, as if a giant dragon's heart had been pierced by poisonous fangs in its sleep. Across the mountain's surface, countless birds and beasts scattered in panic, while invisible terror enveloped the forest.
At the earth-vein core, within the rapidly corrupted golden flood, a gigantic and indistinct phantom of a vertical pupil condensed from pure Dark Gold Demonic Qi rapidly took shape. Its pupil was not solid, but formed from billions of struggling, wailing resentments and chaotic Law Fragments. The instant that vertical pupil fully formed—
Buzz!
The vertical pupil suddenly "turned." Its cold, merciless, utterly greedy gaze became a tangible probe, instantly piercing through thick rock layers and earth qi, ignoring the barriers of space as it locked onto the northwest!
At the end of that line of sight stood—beneath the shroud of night—the towering palaces of Xianyang Palace, faintly entwined with remaining Ancestor Dragon qi and an even denser, chaotic demonic aura!
The vertical pupil's "gaze" swept across the palace wall, passed over the un-dried blood stains in the square, and pierced through layer upon layer of halls... before finally falling precisely upon a secluded palace chamber—where a dense scent of blood, Chaos Sword Qi, and the sealing aura of earth's Turbid Fiendish Power filled the air!
Target locked: Cheng Xi! And... the witch tribe's turbid blood that was suppressing the Chaos Power within him!
Deep within the dark gold vertical pupil, Cheng Xi's pain-wracked, curled body and the blood-lit "Suppress" witch script in Hou Yi's palm were reflected. A pure desire for destruction grew and spread like poisonous vines.
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