Who Says You Get to Burn Incense at My Grave?

At the bottom of Nether Eye Reef, the dark door formed from enormous boulders slowly opened amid a low rumble, revealing a bottomless stairway lit only by faintly glowing stones.

A damp, frigid chill rushed toward them, like a sigh from some primordial abyss.

Xuan did not hesitate in the slightest and stepped inside.

The instant his toes touched the ground, the Mangekyō Sharingan in his right eye silently spun. The low-power Myriad Phenomena Return to the Eye began analyzing this unknown domain.

In the air, it precisely detected soul tremors finer than hairs. They were formless and intangible, yet carried an aura from the same origin as the lingering souls in the stele forest outside—only far more vast and ancient.

At the same time, the biological crystal implanted in his spine rippled with rings of deep blue light, and the system's cold prompt sounded in his mind: "Warning: High-density composite genetic resonance field detected. Analyzing field source... suspected energy residue from the full activation of the Seven Profound Sealing Array. The structure of this place is not naturally formed. It is a massive forbidden-art barrier."

Xuan's steps paused slightly, and his gaze suddenly sharpened like a blade.

He understood in an instant. This was no mere tomb. It was an unimaginably vast prison—a forbidden-art barrier that had used some earth-shattering method to divide and suppress the true body of the existence known as "Xuan"!

"Those... those seven characters..." White Lotus, lightly bound half a step behind him by ropes formed from iron sand, could not stop her voice from trembling. Looking at the four glowing red "Xuan" characters on the stone wall, terror nearly spilled from her eyes. "They aren't titles. They're containers! Containers that seal different parts of you! Every crossed-out red character represents a fragment of you that they devoured or completely destroyed. The Kazama Clan wasn't worshipping you. They were afraid of you... afraid of the day you truly became whole!"

A cold curve touched Xuan's lips, but he said nothing.

He raised his hand, his fingertips brushing over the four "Xuan" characters still giving off a faint glow on the wall.

The wall felt cold and rough beneath his fingers. When he traced the final stroke of one character, his movement halted.

Along the edge of that stroke was an almost imperceptible fresh scratch, still carrying an extremely faint trace of Kazama Genichiro's chakra.

So that was it.

Xuan saw through everything at once.

Before his death, Kazama Genichiro had attempted to use some method to erase the final seal, but he had failed.

That proved that completely destroying or opening the core of the seal required a particular key.

And that key had to be the bloodline of its holder, deeply bound to the sealing array!

Kazama Genichiro's self-destruction just now had appeared to be the madness of mutual destruction, but it had also been a desperate attempt—to use his life and bloodline to forcibly activate the final barrier he could not control!

He withdrew his hand and continued downward, his steps steady and resolute.

At the end of the stairs, roughly a hundred meters below sea level, the passage suddenly opened up.

A magnificent circular stone hall, so grand it was suffocating, appeared before them without warning.

Its dome towered overhead like the inside of a giant's skull, while the surrounding walls were engraved with runes so intricate they made one dizzy.

At the center of the stone hall stood seven massive obsidian pillars, arranged in the pattern of the Big Dipper.

Six of them had long since shattered, their surfaces covered in scorched cracks and signs of melting. Clearly, they had endured an incomparably brutal battle.

Only the central pillar, corresponding to the position of Dubhe, remained intact.

Its top was not connected to the dome. Instead, a dried-up eyeball the size of a fist floated above it.

The eyeball's surface was covered in spiderweb-like cracks, as if it would crumble into dust at the slightest touch. Yet wisps of blood mist still seeped from it, radiating a pressure that made souls tremble.

The instant he saw that eyeball, the system in Xuan's mind erupted with unprecedentedly violent vibrations!

"Highest-priority target discovered: Primordial Eye Fragment!"

"Genetic source tracking match complete... 99.4% compatibility! It possesses an absolute causal connection with the host's right-eye ability!"

"System recommendation: Recover immediately! This fragment is the key to stabilizing the Mangekyō Sharingan's future evolution path and completing the host's soul essence!"

Xuan's pupils shrank to pinpoints in an instant.

This was the source!

This was the true source of his strange right eye and this mysterious power!

It was the other half of him—the vessel formed from the other half of his severed soul!

Suppressing the surging desire in his heart, he was about to step forward.

"Cough... cough, cough..."

Behind him, a fit of violent, gut-wrenching coughing interrupted him.

Kazama Genichiro, who should have been dead, had somehow used his last few chakra shadow threads to hold together his shattered heart meridians. Like a maggot, he forcibly crawled out from the ruins in the passage!

His entire body was drenched in blood, and his eyes had long lost focus. Yet he still stared fixedly in Xuan's direction, growling and muttering like a beast, "I... all my life... I was also a 'Nameless One'... Why... why were you born with everything?! I refuse to accept this... I won't become dust in history... I'll become... the one who writes history!"

Before he finished speaking, he viciously bit through his tongue and sprayed his last mouthful of vital blood onto the ground!

"Forbidden Art: Shadow Burial: Final Echo!"

In an instant, his remaining life force and chakra transformed into a pitch-black signal and shot into the passage they had come through.

The next second, the earth shook and the mountains trembled!

The three hundred puppet wreckages Xuan had compressed into iron blocks with Magnet Release were unexpectedly reactivated by that power. They became three hundred torrents of blackness and surged wildly out of the passage!

They did not attack Xuan. Under Kazama Genichiro's control, they instead surrounded the entire circular stone hall in a bizarre sequence, forming a massive reverse array whose energy flow was completely opposite to that of the Seven Profound Sealing Array!

Using his own life and the wreckage of every puppet as fuel, Kazama Genichiro intended to detonate this sealing hall, which had accumulated energy for thousands of years, and bury Xuan and the Eye of Origin together at the bottom of the deep sea!

Yet in the face of this deadly situation, Xuan's expression did not ripple in the slightest, as though everything before him had long been written into his script.

Not only did he not stop the array from forming, he actively spread his arms and pushed Myriad Phenomena Return to the Eye in his right eye to its limit!

"Perfect."

The Mangekyō pattern in his right eye spun madly, turning into a bottomless black vortex. An invisible gravitational force that devoured everything erupted from within!

In the instant before the reverse array exploded, the hundred years of resentment accumulated by three hundred puppets, the berserk and uncontrollable chakra currents, even Kazama Genichiro's unwillingness and obsession before death... every tangible and intangible form of negative energy was drawn into that eye like water swallowed by a great whale!

The system roared: "Warning! Absorbed ultra-high-purity negative spiritual energy ×800 standard units! Emergency fusion protocol triggered! Forced conversion in progress..."

At the very moment he drew in all the energy, Xuan's left hand slammed onto the ground!

"Magnet Release: Iron Sand Boundary Method: Reversal!"

The iron sand on the ground instantly surged upward, transforming into three black spikes that pierced through the chests of the three nearest puppet wreckages with speed beyond lightning!

Those three puppets happened to occupy the three most critical nodes in the reverse array's energy circulation!

Xuan did not destroy them. Instead, he turned them into conductors and forcibly connected them to the energy circuit of the previously dormant Seven Profound Sealing Array!

Using the enemy's art to turn their own array against them!

BOOM—!!!

An incomparably muffled explosion erupted within the stone hall.

The reverse array instantly collapsed. The berserk energy lost its target for detonation and instead rushed back along the conductors Xuan had laid, flooding entirely into Kazama Genichiro's body!

Kazama Genichiro's body swelled violently like an overinflated balloon. Then black blood gushed from all seven of his orifices. With a final trace of disbelieving terror, he crashed heavily to the ground, his consciousness completely extinguished.

At the exact same moment the reverse array collapsed, the eyeball floating above the obsidian pillar began trembling violently.

The cracks on its surface spread madly. Finally, with a sharp crack, a strand of golden-red chakra drifted out from the fissure like a living thread. As if drawn by some fatal attraction, it shot straight toward Xuan's right eye!

The system alarm shrieked piercingly: "Foreign god-tier bloodline energy detected invading! Energy source... unknown! Initiate highest authority and forcefully devour?"

"Yes."

Xuan made his choice without hesitation.

In an instant, the strand of golden-red chakra entered his right eye.

A violent pain struck. His Mangekyō pattern solidified to the extreme in an instant. Around the original spiral vortex eye, a ring of savage bone-spike patterns slowly emerged, revolving once around the center before finally settling into place.

A brand-new name, along with brand-new power, engraved itself deep within his soul—Bone Mirror: Life Severance!

The system interface refreshed wildly: "Emergency fusion complete. Mid-stage Phase II Mangekyō Sharingan achieved. New module unlocked: Bloodline Suppression. Can temporarily suppress the rejection reaction caused by devouring foreign bloodlines."

The storm subsided, and everything seemed to have settled.

Yet deep within the shadows of the stone hall, among the seven obsidian pillars, the seventh pillar—the only one that had never lit up, never broken, and had always existed like a ghost—suddenly trembled faintly.

Dust fell in soft streams, and a relief carving of a pair of closed eyes slowly opened atop the pillar.

Those carved eyes seemed to cross the span of endless ages, silently watching the descendant at the center of the stone hall, who was about to begin devouring the other half of his own soul.

It had once belonged to the Sage of Six Paths.