The wind and snow in the Extreme Abyss stopped.
Not because the bitter cold had receded, but because light had come.
That light slowly spilled from the depths of the rift, no longer an intertwining of ghostly blue and pitch black, but a gentle silver radiance, like spring waters first thawing, like dawn first breaking. It did not dazzle, yet it pierced a thousand years of ice, washing the darkness of the Extreme Abyss into a hazily luminous realm. At the edge of the rift, the flameless lamp Xiaoman had left behind pulsed softly, like a sleeping heart beginning to awaken.
At that same moment, across Jiu Zhou, ten thousand lamps resonated as one.
The ancient lamp in the Nanming Lamp-Guarding Shop suddenly ignited on its own, its flame silver-gray, the same color as the light of the Extreme Abyss; the Bronze Remnant Array in the Western Wasteland Return Ruin hummed and trembled, its inscriptions lighting up one by one and actually rearranging themselves into an unfamiliar passage of Star Language; at Starfall Shoal in the Southern Sea of the Eastern Sea, sunken fragments of star lamps rose to the surface, then ascended like fireflies, gathering into a path of light that pointed straight north.
The Light-Language Monument Array rang out in unison at midnight, golden light surging like a tide. The central Jade Talisman abruptly blazed, and the stellar paths rewove themselves, revealing a new prophecy:
"When the Twin Lamps awaken, language and light unite.
Silent Language emerges from the abyss, and all Jiu Zhou burns as one.
The shadow of void-devouring shall perish in starlit fire.
—An omen of Blazing Prairie Fire."
Yunqi stood atop the altar on the Starfall Continent, gripping the Star-Whisper Scepter tightly, stellar paths turning in her eyes. "He succeeded... Xiaoman, you lit the