The golden light receded like a tide, and for an instant, the air in the secret chamber seemed to draw taut. Chen Wuya still knelt on the seventh depression, his left hand pressed to the ground, the Misaligned Force not yet withdrawn. A faint tremor lingered between his palm and the floor. The scroll lay against his chest, its warmth unspent, as though a pulse beat in time with his own.
Bai Zhi gritted her teeth and forced herself upright, the tip of her sword braced against the ground, her right arm trembling faintly. She did not look at Chen Wuya, only at the leader among the six gray-robed men ahead—the mechanism folding fan in his hand was fully unfurled, silver threads suspended in the air like a spiderweb, gleaming with a cold light.
"Still going to stand in our way?" Chen Wuya slowly straightened, his voice quiet but cutting through the silence.
The leader's gaze did not shift. "The Heavenly Machine Scroll cannot be held by outsiders. This is the ancestral precept."
The moment his words fell, the three men on the left stepped forward at once. The silver threads abruptly tightened, fine strands shooting from different angles straight at Chen Wuya's limb joints. Before he could dodge, the Misaligned Force instinctively flowed in reverse into the Foot Shaoyin Kidney Meridian. The system responded immediately: Reverse guidance pathway detected. Judged as an unconventional defensive stance. Activating 'Misaligned Channel Shift' compensation mechanism.
His body swayed slightly, as though he were about to fall, but his center of gravity suddenly dropped. His whole body sank half a foot as if collapsing inward. Three silver threads skimmed past his shoulders, striking sparks from the stone wall. He lunged forward with the momentum, shielding Bai Zhi behind him.
"Don't take them head-on!" he