Deep in the Eightfold Sea.
The seawater rippled, and fish swam with glinting scales.
Dressed in white, Qin Lingxiao stood alone, graceful in the dark depths.
She stared blankly at the man in the Black Scale Robe before her, whose figure had grown increasingly insubstantial, even somewhat transparent.
The man in the Black Scale Robe looked at her impassively. Though they were less than a few dozen feet apart, his voice seemed to come from another world:
"You... came... for what?"
Qin Lingxiao woke as if from a dream. She lowered her head, then looked up at him again, her voice slightly subdued:
"You are one. If the original body's disposition changes, will the incarnation change with it?"
The man in the Black Scale Robe remained expressionless:
"You... sought out... the original body?"
Hearing his halting voice, Qin Lingxiao finally noticed something amiss. Her Divine Sense swept over him, only for her to discover in astonishment that she could not detect his existence at all.
It was as though the person speaking to her was merely a projection without physical substance.
"What happened to you?"
She hurriedly asked.
"Assimilated... by the boundary membrane... cannot escape..."
The man in the Black Scale Robe's voice did not change in the slightest.
"Assimilated by the boundary membrane?!"
Qin Lingxiao's heart jolted. Instinctively, she flashed forward and reached out to grab him, but sure enough, her hand caught nothing.
She looked at the man in the Black Scale Robe in disbelief:
"You... you're still alive?"
Being assimilated by the boundary membrane meant meeting the same end as those predecessors who had used their bodies to mend the heavens when the sky collapsed.
Their true spirits had been extinguished, and their Dao Domains had become part of the boundary membrane.
Yet although the man in