The elder's body froze in midair, the sound in his throat cut off abruptly. The chant that had been suppressing the star map seemed to have been forcibly strangled by something, and the entire cave fell into dead silence.
Chen Wuya remained seated cross-legged beside the stone platform, both hands pressed against the array core stone, his palms burning hot. He did not move or raise his head, merely stared at the faint yet steadily pulsing speck of light within the crystal. In that instant just now, he had forcibly suppressed the resonance of the secondary array core with Misaligned Force, preventing the seal from collapsing on the spot. Now, the black stone shard that had split out of the elder's chest lay quietly at the edge of the platform. Its patterns resembled those of the main array core, but were cruder, like an imitation.
Mo Feng crouched down and lightly tapped the stone shard with his mechanism pen. The tip scraped across its surface with a faint scratching sound. "This thing... wasn't naturally formed," he said in a low voice. "It was carved by someone."
Chen Wuya finally spoke. "Who would make something like this?"
"Someone who wants to control the Myriad Demons Cauldron." Mo Feng put away his pen and spread a yellowed beast-hide scroll across the stone platform. "Do you remember this? The fragment of a prayer we burned in the fire in Chapter 1160."
Chen Wuya glanced at it. Several lines of charred writing remained upon it, crooked but still easy enough to make out.
"It says, 'Sacrifice ninety-nine people; use blood to guide the heart home.'" Mo Feng's finger traced the words. "There's another line after that—'The cauldron will surely devour the one who wields it in return.'"
Bai Zhi stood nearby, tightening her grip