Jade marrow nourishes the soul, and the first signs of unusual activity are heard.
Deep within the Frost Camp, in Yun Zhiyu's temporary meditation room, the atmosphere was so heavy it was almost as if frost had formed.
Before him lay three batches of moonstones that had completely lost their luster. These ores, which should have emitted a soft, moon-white glow, were now dull and rough, indistinguishable from ordinary rocks, their pure energy completely drained. In just seven days, the energy that Mo Xiaoyu's remnant soul had instinctively absorbed was equivalent to the consumption of the entire Frost Camp for nearly half a month.
Yun Feng, the captain of the personal guard in charge of supplies, a composed Snow Owl warrior with a scarred face, was holding a roll of animal hide inventory. His voice was hoarse as he reported, "Chief, this is the last batch of Moonstones we've stockpiled this month. At this rate of consumption, the core of the 'Demon-Suppressing Array' maintaining the camp's perimeter will cease functioning due to insufficient energy by the day after tomorrow at the latest. At that time, the lingering demonic energy will..."
He didn't say what he was going to say next, but everyone understood the consequences. Without the protection of the formation, this last gathering place of the demon race would quickly turn into a dead land under the continuous erosion of demonic energy.
Yun Zhiyu remained silent, his icy blue eyes sweeping over the pile of discarded stones. His fingertips tapped unconsciously on the cold stone table, producing a rhythmic, soft sound. Each batch of discarded moonstones felt like a heavy hammer blow to his heart. Resources were dwindling, his people were struggling to survive, and as their leader, he was forced to invest precious resources in a seemingly bottomless pit of hope.
He knew all too well that this was a risky gamble, a wager on the survival of his entire tribe.
After a moment of silence, he raised his head, his eyes regaining their usual calm and decisiveness: "It's alright. Dispose of these stones that have lost their spirituality, grind them into powder, and perhaps they can be used to reinforce the camp walls." He paused, then unfastened a token carved with ice and snow patterns from his waist, a token from his private treasury as a confidant of the former young master. "Yunfeng, you personally lead a team and use my private treasury to exchange with other tribes that still have the resources. Spare no expense to acquire all the Moonstones that can be traded, as well as any other spiritual materials containing gentle energy."
"Chief!" Yun Feng couldn't help but look up, his eyes filled with shock and disapproval. The chief's private treasury was the accumulation of his family over generations, a trump card to save the lives of his clansmen in the final moments, and now it was going to be...
"Execute the order." Yun Zhiyu's voice was not loud, but it carried an undeniable authority. He waved his hand, signaling Yun Feng to step back.
When the door to the quiet room closed again, leaving him alone, that deep weariness returned to his brow. He walked to the table, picked up a moonstone that had just been delivered and had not yet had its energy absorbed; the soft glow flowing within it seemed particularly warm in the dim room. He gently pressed the young master's jade pendant, which he always wore close to his body, onto the cool surface of the mineral.
This is his daily routine, both to nurture the remnants of their souls and to observe their changes.
However, the moment the jade pendant touched the moonstone—
Buzz!
A faint yet clearly penetrating sound resonated deep within his soul!
The icy sword intent that had been dormant for so long, belonging to Yun Zhixue (Xie Yunzhi), suddenly began to tremble without warning! It was neither a repulsion nor an attack, but a strange resonance with a certain rhythm! Its chilling coldness and the warm radiance of the glassy flames intertwined instantly, and the two lights, as if they had come to life, began to slowly rotate around each other, forming a small but stable energy vortex!
Even more shocking changes followed.
Previously, the energy absorption by the glassy flames was incredibly aggressive, like a whale swallowing its prey, inevitably causing irreversible damage to the object it contained. But now, under the influence of this tiny vortex, the energy within the moonstone is being extracted and guided with extreme precision and evenness, trickling into the jade pendant like a gentle stream. Not only does it no longer cause any damage to the ore itself, but its energy absorption efficiency is at least three times higher than when the remnant soul of Mo Xiaoyu absorbed it alone!
Yun Zhiyu's pupils contracted sharply, she held her breath, and focused all her attention on sensing the changes within the jade pendant.
In this efficient and peaceful flow of energy, some extremely blurry and intermittent fragments, like sediment washed up from the bottom of a river, flowed into the jade pendant along with the energy flow, and flashed briefly in his consciousness, which was closely connected to the jade pendant—
[Fragment 1: The scorching sword energy tore through the dim sky, and a massive spatial rift, deep enough to see bone, continued to spread. A figure in blood-stained blue robes resolutely stood at the forefront, blocking the way. She seemed to glance back, and the viewer (Yun Zhixue) felt a sudden pang of pain in her heart. In the instant she turned, countless poignant blood-red lotus flowers bloomed on her robes...]
[Fragment Two: Chillingly cold, countless icicles fell from the dome of the magnificent palace, shattering with a crisp sound. Vision swayed unsteadily. A bloodstained hand trembled, pressing a smooth, translucent glass object, exuding a familiar aura, firmly into "its" (Yun Zhixue's) chest. An indescribable grief and a resolute determination to protect instantly overwhelmed consciousness…]
"Ugh!" Yun Zhiyu suddenly pressed his temple, which was throbbing with pain, and staggered back a step, bumping into the stone table.
These scenes were too brief, yet they carried a powerful emotional impact and incredibly realistic details! That woman in green... was clearly Mo Xiaoyu in her attire before the final battle! And the palace where the icicles fell was none other than the main hall of the Suspended Mirror Palace! This is... this is a fragment of the young master's memory when he observed the anomaly of the meteorite's mark and when Mo Xiaoyu sacrificed the Glazed Heart!
He was panting, his gaze fixed on the two faint lights in the jade pendant that were still slowly rotating and nestled together. A possibility he had never considered before surfaced in his mind.
“I see…” he murmured to himself, his voice filled with realization and a deeper sense of gravity. “What you need is not just a massive amount of energy to repair your broken origins… but more importantly, you need each other’s presence as a catalyst, you need this kind of resonance and intertwining at the soul level to stably absorb power, and even… awaken the dormant memory imprints.”
Alone, they are incomplete, rootless duckweed. Only when they come together, like the fusion of ice and fire, like the perfect fit of sword and sheath, can they form a temporary, tiny, complete cycle, thus truly beginning the process of revival!
This discovery surprised him, but it also increased the pressure on his shoulders. It meant that he not only had to find energy, but also had to ensure that the two remnants of his soul remained together and find a way to promote their fusion and resonance.
Meanwhile, deep in the swamps of the southern frontier of the human realm.
Su Xiaolou squatted beside a branch of the "Fountain of Youth" that was still slowly reversing time, a blade of grass dangling from his mouth, his brows furrowed. In the puddle before him, the turbulent flow of time, which should have been spiraling inward and collapsing, now presented an extremely unnatural twisted posture—as if it had been forcibly twisted into a pretzel by a pair of invisible hands, and the direction of its twisting was faintly pointing towards the hideous streak of a falling star in the northern sky!
“Something’s not right, something’s really not right…” He spat out a blade of grass, dipped it in the little bit of cheap wine left in his flask, and rapidly calculated various runes and trajectories on the broad banana leaf. His face grew increasingly grim. “This isn’t natural evolution, this is… a forced detour? Which insane madman is trying to pull this kind of spacetime grafting trick? Trying to divert the turbulent flow of time here directly into Star Mark? What is he trying to do? 'Feed' that damn thing time?”
Just when he was completely baffled, and even began to wonder if he was hallucinating from drinking too much—
Buzz!
The old copper coin in his arms, which had resonated with Mo Xiaoyu's glass heart, suddenly became scalding hot! It even burned his chest skin with a stinging sensation!
"Hiss—!" Su Xiaolou frantically pulled out the copper coin. The square-holed coin, covered in verdigris, was now emitting an eerie dark red light and vibrating rapidly. But this time, the fluctuations emanating from the coin were no longer the lively and warm aura of Mo Xiaoyu; instead, they came from something... more ancient, more obscure, more violent, like a ferocious beast that had slumbered for millennia, unintentionally disturbed, impatiently yawning with a sense of destruction!
The aura emanated through the copper coin. Although faint, it sent chills down Su Xiaolou's spine and a primal fear surged from the depths of her soul!
"Oh no! Oh no!" He jumped up from the ground, his face ashen, no longer caring about the time turbulence. "A mistake! A complete mistake! It wasn't feeding... those two little guys were messing around down there (in the jade pendant), and they alerted the real 'watchdog' inside the Star Mark! This is a huge problem!"
He was so anxious that he kept pacing around in circles, he had to warn Yun Zhiyu immediately!
At almost the same moment that Su Xiaolou noticed something was wrong.
In the mortal realm, at the Heavenly Mystery Pavilion, a thousand feet underground, lies a secret chamber entirely constructed of divine-forbidden stones.
Xuan Chengzi, disheveled and looking like a madman, stared intently at the boiling, churning blood pool in the center of the secret chamber. Within the pool, the fragment of the *Myriad Manifestations of the Netherworld* scroll floated erratically, emitting an eerie light. Above the blood pool, three orbs of light, forcibly refined and compressed, hovered: one was gray dust collected from the edge of the "Desolate Realm" in the North, containing the law of accelerated time; another was a transparent liquid taken from the core of the "Fountain of Youth" in the South, rippling with waves that reversed time; and the third was a jet-black crystal, just refined, collected from the ruins of the final battlefield, formed from the resentful souls of countless fallen warriors!
"Found it...finally found it! Hahahaha!" Xuan Chengzi let out a hoarse and fanatical laugh, his bloodshot eyes filled with obsession. "The ancient records are correct! 'The Gate to the Ruins is neither real nor illusory; its path can only be revealed by using the moment of paradox as the key and the thought of life and death intertwined as the covenant...'"
With trembling hands, he stretched out his withered hands and formed countless complex and strange hand seals, forcibly squeezing and merging the three orbs of light in the air with completely opposite and even conflicting attributes towards the center point!
"And you—" He suddenly looked up, his gaze seemingly piercing through thick layers of rock, looking towards the northern demon realm, a smile mixed with greed and cruelty on his face, "You two struggling, indomitable special souls are the best... guiding candles to illuminate this path!"
Boom—!!!
The blood pool suddenly exploded, splattering viscous blood throughout the entire secret chamber! A dark red bloodline, condensed to the point of being tangible and exuding an ominous and filthy aura, like a venomous snake with life, pierced directly through the forbidden stone ceiling of the secret chamber, penetrated the thousands of feet of earth, ignored the distance of space, and shot towards the north, towards the direction of the Frost Camp of the Demon Realm, in an inconceivable way!
Frost Camp, Quiet Room.
Yun Zhiyu had just calmed down the turmoil in his blood and qi caused by the impact of the memory fragments and was preparing to carefully study the energy vortex formed by the two remnant souls.
Buzz—!!!
The jade pendant on his chest suddenly became scorching hot! It felt like holding a red-hot branding iron!
He looked down and saw that inside the jade pendant, the wisp of glassy flame that had just stabilized was now flickering wildly at an unprecedented frequency, conveying no longer longing, but a violent tremor that was almost fear and extreme disgust! And the icy sword intent was also showing such an active and intense reaction for the first time. The chilling sword energy uncontrollably pierced through the jade, not attacking the physical object, but drawing deep, invisible sword marks that exuded a bone-chilling cold in the air around him and on the stone wall!
The temperature in the quiet room dropped sharply, and tiny ice crystals condensed in the air.
"What's going on?!" Alarm bells rang in Yun Zhiyu's mind, and a strong sense of unease gripped his heart. He pressed down on the violently vibrating jade pendant, which was almost flying off his body, and suddenly stood up and rushed to the window.
Outside the camp, the night sky was being visibly stained with an eerie dark red! It wasn't the glow of sunset, but an energy filled with filth and misfortune! The pale blue "Demon-Suppressing Array" shield surrounding the camp was groaning under the impact of this dark red light, its light trembling violently and flickering unpredictably, clearly unable to hold on for long!
What chilled him to the bone was the distinct, heart-pounding tremor emanating from the direction of the streak of fallen stars in the distant northern sky! That cold, lifeless, greedy, and malicious will he had once felt in the Hall of Rebirth had awakened once more! And this time, its invisible, terrifying gaze was more clearly and coldly fixed on the land he stood on than ever before!
Just then—
puff!
With a soft click, a communication talisman left behind by Su Xiaolou for emergency contact in his arms spontaneously combusted without fire, instantly turning into a small pile of ashes. As the ashes drifted down, only Su Xiaolou's ten hastily written, panicked words remained, branded onto his mind like a mark:
"Leave immediately! Someone is taking things from your fishing spot!"
Yun Zhiyu looked down at the faint light of the jade pendant in her hand, which was still frantically warning and trembling together, and then looked up at the approaching dark red sky outside the window and the terrifying sense of oppression coming from the direction of the starfall mark.
He understood everything in an instant.
This arduous journey of the soul was never the end, nor even a relief from the crisis. From the very beginning, he and the two wisps of remnant soul within the jade pendant were drawn into a far larger and more dangerous predicament!
There are hunters lurking in the shadows, holding fishing rods that will use them as bait.
And the true terror deep within the Star Mark is... about to take hold!
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