Deepest within the forbidden area, before the bone-piled altar.
Samui's icy blue eyes stared fixedly at the Covenant Stone fragments in Hyuga Xiao's palm, her breathing as rapid as a drowning person grasping at the last straw. She reached out, her fingertips trembling as she wanted to touch the faintly glowing crystal, yet stopped three inches away.
"Sister... is she really inside?"
Her voice carried an incredulous yearning, along with a fear suppressed for who knew how many years.
Hyuga Xiao did not answer.
He sat cross-legged, placed the Covenant Stone fragments in his palm, and closed his eyes. The azure light of the Tenseigan leaked through the cracks of his eyelids, and chakra surged into the interior of the Covenant Stone like a tidal wave.
--Communicating with souls, this was something he had never attempted before.
The space within the Covenant Stone was far more vast than imagined. That was not a space in the physical sense, but a spiritual realm constructed from countless soul fragments. Hundreds of weak consciousness light points floated within it, mostly already blurred, leaving only instinctive pain and resentment. They were like flying insects trapped in amber, eternally repeating the memory fragments of the moment of death.
Hyuga Xiao's spiritual power traveled through them.
He "heard" the screams when his Byakugan was forcibly extracted, "saw" the cold gazes of the Main House before his execution, and "felt" the excruciating pain of his brain being churned when the curse mark erupted. These memory fragments were like sharp glass shards, and every contact brought a stinging pain to his consciousness.
Yet this was not what he sought.
He required a clearer response.
The chakra of the Tenseigan diffused within the Covenant Stone, like casting a beam of light into the dark deep sea. Those sleeping soul