Gan Province, a certain forbidden area.
An underground Secret Chamber, sinister and dim.
Within the Secret Chamber stood an Altar, and upon the Altar was enshrined a huge, bone-white skull, human-faced and goat-horned, with savage fangs and mottled bloodstains.
Mr. Tu knelt before the skull.
His face was pale, tinged with green; his fingers were long and slender, as if they had been soaked in blood for too long, the cracks in them steeped in crimson.
Mr. Tu's pupils were hollow, as if something had parasitized him, and he rasped under his breath, muttering words, as though speaking to someone, yet also as though talking to himself:
"That man is dead. His Dao Bone has been stripped. The gates of Return Ruins will open sooner or later..."
"The living are going to die, and the dead are going to live..."
"The great plan of ten thousand years is about to place its first stone..."
"Everything had originally been calculated..."
"That child... must be obtained. Goodness is the hotbed of evil. His blood, his flesh, his Sea of Consciousness, are the finest offerings. His Divine Consciousness is the finest 'Divine Fetus'..."
"But... he was 'snatched' away..."
Mr. Tu's numb expression suddenly twisted with pain and fury, and blood seeped from his eyes.
It was as though he had received some rebuke, leaving his heart terrified, ashamed, and resentful.
"It is not my fault, not my fault..."
He said it tremblingly. Only after a long while did he calm down and continue:
"That child is gone. No one knows where he went. To search again, Celestial Pivot is hard to find; it would be fishing a needle from the sea..."
"But that child still has a mother, and also a father..."
"They can have another..."
"The Four Symbols Demonic Array, the Ascension