Bai Zhi's fingers hovered before the sphere of light, their tips reflecting that golden glow. She did not dare move. Chen Wuya's hoarse roar still echoed in her ears, and his grip around her ankle had not loosened. His skin was so scorching hot it nearly burned her.
Mo Feng rushed forward, intending to pull him away, but the heat forced him to recoil. He looked up at the sphere in the altar's center. The runes rotated slowly, like rings of countdowns carved into the air.
"It isn't a key... it's bait." Chen Wuya panted heavily, his voice broken yet exceptionally clear. "What it wants... is whoever tries to take it by force."
Bai Zhi neither moved nor withdrew her hand. She merely turned her head slowly, her gaze settling on Chen Wuya's face. His eyes had rolled white, yet a faint golden light flickered deep within his pupils, as though some kind of calculation was underway.
"How do we take it?" she asked.
Chen Wuya bit through his tongue and spat a mouthful of blood into his palm. With trembling fingers, he traced a crooked mark across his chest. The blood did not flow downward. Instead, it traveled along his meridians, forming a briefly glowing pattern.
"Don't touch it." He gasped. "First... let it vent."
Mo Feng abruptly understood. He immediately took a mechanism compass from his robes. The needle on its bronze casing shook violently. He swiftly adjusted its polarity and pressed the compass against the circular patterns at the altar's edge. The energy flow that had originally converged toward the center paused faintly, then began spreading outward in reverse.
A deep hum rose from the ground. The nine bronze bells remained still, but an extremely faint black mist surfaced over their bodies, as if something supporting them