The altar's tremors had yet to subside when wisps of grayish-white mist seeped from the cracks in the nine bronze bells, like the first foul breath exhaled by something slumbering that had been disturbed. Chen Wuya's fingers still hovered in midair, the golden threads unbroken, his fingertips trembling faintly as though wrestling against some invisible force. His breathing became exceedingly light, yet no longer erratic. Instead, like water flowing through a deep pool, it settled inch by inch into stillness.
Bai Zhi slowly straightened, her left hand pressing against an old wound on her shoulder while her right had quietly settled on her sword hilt. She asked no more questions, merely watched Chen Wuya's back—his body, once hunched beneath the system's backlash, was now gradually straightening, like a bowstring pressed to its limit at last finding the direction in which to release.
Mo Feng folded away his fan and lightly tapped a fan rib with his fingertip. His gaze swept across the altar. The four descendants of the guardians still stood at the four points, palms pressed to the ground's patterns, their true qi continuing to flow in. Yet their expressions had changed. Sweat beaded on some foreheads, while others' knuckles had turned blue; clearly, they were struggling to hold on.
"It's over." Chen Wuya suddenly spoke. His voice was low, yet every word rang clear.
He drew back his hand. The golden threads snapped and scattered like dust. Then he sat cross-legged, closed his eyes, and sank his consciousness into his body. Misaligned Force surged downward through his meridians like rivers flowing in reverse, only to be intercepted by an unfamiliar route of cultivation—a formula from a fragment of the Heavenly Machine Scroll, the "Reverse Meridian Origin Return Art." It had originally been meant for orthodox martial artists to