In a fragment of soul-memory, Jiang Ding saw a scene.
It took place here, in the Ancient God Hall at the mountain gate of the Ancient God Path. A gray-haired dwarf elder sat in the center of the hall, his hair hanging in tangled locks that had gone untended for a long time.
"Wrong. Wrong again..."
The Ancient God Patriarch muttered to himself.
Hiss, hiss~
Hiss, hiss, hiss~
While he sat in a daze, black soul-serpents spread from the palm of the severed arm from another world. They traveled along the rules of the Heavenly Dao, born as bodies that reflected those rules.
The soul-serpents burrowed into the Ancient God Patriarch's soul, devouring and chewing it bit by bit.
Deep within his soul, snake eggs that had lain dormant for hundreds of thousands of years broke open. They pierced his soul, devoured his body and flesh, and slowly consumed him whole.
That outcome had been sealed the moment the Void Refining cultivator of that era chanced upon the severed arm.
Slowly, bit by bit, the Ancient God Patriarch was devoured until nothing remained. Not a strand of hair, not a splinter of bone. Even his Daoist robes were torn apart and chewed to pieces.
Hiss!
"Son of the Ancient God..."
"Rise to glory..."
Amid the swarms of soul-serpents, one far larger and stronger than the rest hissed out those words.
The hissing sounded chaotic, yet it conveyed clear thoughts. It was an extraordinarily intricate language, and the soul-serpents around it hissed in reply.
They were expressing their joy.
After hundreds of thousands of years of plotting, they had finally succeeded. Their race had hatched anew from a human prodigy raised to carry on his people's legacy, and it had emerged stronger than before.
Suddenly!
"Hiss, hiss..."
"Ah! No..."
The soul-serpent