Dormancy

Absolute darkness, eternal cold.

Time had lost its meaning amid Jingtian's nearly frozen state of life. His consciousness sank into an abyss of nothingness, without dreams, pain, or perception. Only the most primal insistence on "existing" remained, like a dying star at the edge of the universe, sustaining the faintest gravitational pull, so weak it was almost nonexistent.

The lair in the Western Silent Sea Abyss returned to deathly silence. There was only the faint murmur of slowly flowing seawater, and... deep within that fissure, the Scorpion Tail Soul Bone, its glow dim yet still exuding its distinctive, weighty aura.

The Soul Bone lay quietly beside the skeletal remains. The earlier energy storm had severely damaged its vitality, dropping its energy level to that of a mere twenty- or thirty-thousand-year Soul Bone. Yet it was, after all, an external Soul Bone, a crystallization of rules and immense energy. Within it still lay a vast reserve of pure origin soul power from an ancient master of the path of poison. That soul power had merely fallen dormant, like a frozen ocean. It had not vanished.

An unknown span of time passed, perhaps days, perhaps months.

Within Jingtian's utterly dormant, cold, rigid body, in the deepest recesses of his poison source, the spark of core spirituality that had briefly resonated with the Soul Bone—and had likewise fallen dormant after being exhausted by Dan-Devour—suddenly pulsed, ever so faintly.

No consciousness drove it. It was more like a final struggle born of life's instinct in utter desperation, or a hungry attraction toward "energy of the same origin" deep within that spark of spirituality.

Not long before, that spark of spirituality and the Scorpion Tail Soul Bone had established a brief yet profound "connection" through the sacrificed tentacle. Though the tentacle's destruction and the energy impact had nearly severed that connection, at the deepest level of energy and rules, an almost imperceptible "imprint," or lingering echo of "resonance," remained.

Now, with Jingtian's vital activity all but stopped and every defense and barrier of will reduced to nothing, the faint pulse of that spark of spirituality was like striking an almost rotten drum in absolute silence.

Thump...

That imperceptible echo of "resonance" seemed to have been activated by this "drumbeat."

The Soul Bone was not "actively" doing anything. It was more like an unconscious process of "seepage" and "filling" on a purely energetic level. Just as a highly concentrated solution would naturally diffuse toward an area of lower concentration, just as a void would naturally tend to fill with matter.

Within the Soul Bone, that vast, dormant reserve of pure soul power began following the nearly nonexistent "trace of resonance." Extremely slowly, in minute amounts, like water molecules passing through a semipermeable membrane, it flowed into Jingtian's dying, almost completely "empty" body, thread by thread, wisp by wisp.

There was no violent infusion, no painful impact.

Only silent, cold, deathlike "nourishment."

The soul power flowing into Jingtian's body was not immediately absorbed or refined. His body was already "dead," its meridians blocked, its soul power circulation stalled. It merely settled, depositing itself in his cold blood, between his rigid muscle fibers, and upon his nearly withered meridians and the ruins of his soul power core.

It was like a riverbed that had lain dry for hundreds of millions of years beginning to receive an exceedingly sparse fall of rain and dew from the sky. That moisture could not immediately restore life to the riverbed. It only slowly dampened the sand and soil on its surface.

Yet this "rain and dew" was the origin soul power of the Scorpion Tail external Soul Bone—energy of exceptionally high quality, tempered a thousand times over by its original owner and containing a trace of the poison rule. Moreover, it possessed a natural affinity with Jingtian's poison-attribute origin.

As this soul power settled and accumulated little by little, quantitative change began to bring about an exceedingly slow qualitative change.

The first thing to come "alive" was the spark of spirituality in the deepest recesses of Jingtian's poison source. Like an ember on the verge of going out, it had received the purest "fuel" of the same attribute. Though the supply was maddeningly slow, it was continuous, stable, and of exceptionally high quality.

The spirituality's "burning" became a fraction steadier, and an exceedingly faint sliver of its "perception" of the outside world returned—not consciousness, but something more like a sense of touch on an energetic level.

It "sensed" the "path" along which the soul power flowed in.

Instinctively, it began trying to guide that incoming soul power, not to force its way through and repair his gravely wounded body—that required vast amounts of soul power and active control, neither of which it could manage—but to nourish and connect with itself, to stabilize that undying "ember."

This process was even slower and more difficult than the soul power's natural seepage. But it was happening.

The soul power within the Soul Bone remained dormant, yet continued "flowing" outward, slowly and without end. Like a tireless, cold water pump, it unconsciously supplied another dying existence with the "moisture" needed to sustain its last thread of life.

Jingtian's condition did not immediately improve as a result. He remained utterly dormant, his body cold and rigid, his injuries unchanged. But at the most fundamental level of energy, he had stopped sliding into the abyss of complete death. That spark of spirituality was like an insect sealed in amber at absolute zero. As threads of outside energy from the same origin seeped in, its final signs of life ceased fading away.

It was a bizarre balance:

Unconsciously, the Soul Bone continued depleting its own dormant soul power, its vitality slowly declining.

Unconsciously, Jingtian passively received that soul power, keeping his last spark of life from going out.

Between the two, a one-sided, silent relationship of "parasitism," or "sustenance," had formed on an energetic level. Jingtian was the insensible, dying "parasite," and the Soul Bone was the silent, passive "host."

Time continued passing at the nearly frozen pace unique to the deep sea.

Perhaps half a year passed, perhaps a year.

The Soul Bone's soul power deposited within Jingtian's body accumulated to a critical point. The nourished spark of spirituality seemed to have grown a little stronger, and its ability to "guide" the flow of soul power had likewise increased by an insignificant fraction.

It began trying to use that faint strength to "touch" what lay closest to it, which was also Jingtian's life core—the ruins of his poison source.

The poison source had long since dried up and shattered, like a furnace blasted apart. The spirituality guided threads of soul power into those ruins like the finest trickles of a stream, not to repair them, but merely to soak them.

Miraculously—or perhaps inevitably, since this soul power already contained the rule of "poison" and shared an origin with Jingtian's poison source—the soul power neither caused conflict nor dissipated after flowing into the ruins. Instead, like wanderers who had found their way home, it naturally joined with the most fundamental particles of poison power remaining there and settled.

At the center of the ruined poison source, where that spark of spirituality resided, a tiny cluster of dark-purple energy began condensing, exceptionally pure and dense despite its minute size. This glowing speck formed as the Soul Bone's soul power and the remnants of Jingtian's own poison source naturally mingled and settled through the long dormancy.

It was weak, and slow, but it was "growing."

Jingtian's vital signs still showed no indication of "coming back to life." Yet if an expert skilled in detecting life and energy had been present and examined him with the utmost precision, they would have discovered an exceedingly faint, cold, slowly beating "pulse" within this "corpse," at the energy core that should have been utterly dead and still.

It was the pulse of spirituality, a sign of energy gathering anew in the midst of dormancy.

He was no longer "dying," but had entered some deeper state of "energetic suspended animation," sustained by soul power from an external source. Awakening remained indefinitely distant, but complete death had also been postponed for the time being.

Until one day, when the Soul Bone's soul power had been depleted through "seepage" to a certain level, or a drastic change in the outside world broke this silent balance.

The deep sea was soundless, the fissure dark.

In this corner unknown to anyone, the ancient Soul Bone and the even more ancient Poison Hunter maintained a silent, one-sided symbiosis in a bizarre fashion.

The hunt continued, in the most silent way of all.

Only this time, the prey was the dormant soul power within the Soul Bone, and the hunter was a poison beast that had itself fallen into eternal slumber, "feeding" on nothing but its last shred of instinct.