Ah Yin Entrusted Her Infant Son at Death's Door; Tang Hao Gained Her Ring and Abandoned His Own Flesh and Blood

At the final moment before Ah Yin faded away, her gentle voice wound through Tang Hao's mind like a severed thread, echoing over and over with her last lingering love and plea:

"Hao, I'll always be with you... You must take good care of our child. Don't let him suffer. Don't let him live on the run the way we did..."

Tang Hao held the swaddled child, an expression of "utter devastation" on his face. Tears slid down his cheeks and dripped onto the child's soft swaddling, his voice so choked that he could barely speak coherently:

"Ah Yin, don't worry! I'll raise him to adulthood and make him a man who can hold up the heavens and stand firm upon the earth! It's all Spirit Hall's fault! If they hadn't hounded us at every turn and poisoned us, you would never have been forced to sacrifice yourself! I'll use the power you left me to make Spirit Hall repay this blood debt in blood!"

He repeated his vows again and again, as though determined to make heaven and earth hear this "hatred carved into his bones."

But only he knew that these words were nothing more than an act performed for the fading Ah Yin and the people from Spirit Hall in the distance.

With every extra second Ah Yin's lingering consciousness echoed, his irritation grew-he feared that it might sense his desperate desire for the Hundred Thousand Year Soul Ring and ruin this "sacrifice."

He held the child tightly, yet his fingers unconsciously clenched, his nails almost digging into the cotton swaddling-he was waiting for Ah Yin's consciousness to vanish completely, waiting for that aura of soul beast origin he dreaded to merge fully into his body.

Within the blood-red sea of clouds surrounding the Asura God