His robes burned away at the sternum, revealing translucent bone beneath skin. Dark blue threaded with crimson script. The ancient markings writhed like living serpents, pulsing with each heartbeat.
The jade slip began to shriek.
A psychic wail that tore through the chamber. The spatial formations cracked under the pressure. Reality bent around the noise.
"NO. No, it cannot be!"
The Emperor's voice carried genuine terror now.
"That aura at your core! The devouring void! The bone that drinks DESTINY!"
The jade slip's light flared blindingly bright. A spectral form began manifesting around it, spatial energy coalescing into the ghost of something that had once been human.
"You carry the Calamity Bone! The End of Eras! The thing even Heaven fears!"
Jue Xuanyi's smile widened. A flicker of genuine surprise crossed his face, then settled into something colder. "You recognize it. How interesting."
"I felt its echo in the ancient texts!" The Emperor's form solidified, trying desperately to intervene. "Thirteen holders, thirteen apocalypses! The bone that doesn't just take power, it threatens to erase fate itself!"
He tried to move toward his disciple. Spatial blades formed around him, reality warping at his command. "You're not just a thief! You're the doom that walks! Every holder before you brought calamity upon the world! Some became gods! Some became monsters! ALL brought the age they lived in to its knees!"
Jue Xuanyi's voice dropped to a whisper. "And you are my first course."
The Origin Devouring technique activated.
Three hundred paces above, at the ruins' entrance, Old Maid Chen materialized from the mist.
Her Peak Saint cultivation was suppressed to barely a whisper. She'd been following at a distance, as ordered. The young master had entered ancient ruins with a merchant's son. Odd behavior, but not alarming. Until the spatial formation activated.
She'd sensed it immediately. Not the formation itself, that was hidden well, but the absence it created. A dead zone where her senses couldn't penetrate. She moved toward the entrance.
"Leaving so soon? The show hasn't even started."
Chen's eyes snapped to the source. A woman, young but dangerous, sat perched on a collapsed pillar like she'd been waiting for hours. Purple robes with serpent-green accents. A dagger in her hands, terrifyingly beautiful, being cleaned with casual intimacy.
Du Qianmeng. Poison Valley's heir. One of the young master's fiancées.
"Poison Valley. What business brings you to these ruins?"
Du Qianmeng's smile widened. "Oh, the same as yours, I imagine. Just Watching and Waiting. Making sure nothing untoward happens to our dear prince."
She hopped down from the pillar. Landed without sound. "Though I have to say, I'm far more interested in what he's doing down there than what you're doing up here."
"The Grand Elder tasked me with…"
"Surveillance. Yes. How tedious." She twirled the dagger. Poison glinted on its edge, iridescent in the filtered sunlight. "Tell me, Old Maid. If you go down there right now and interrupt whatever's happening… what will you report?"
Chen remained silent, calculating.
"That he's eliminating a potential security risk? That he's securing resources for the clan? Or that he's doing something you don't understand, and your interference ruined a crucial moment?"
Below them, beneath hundreds of feet of stone and spatial barriers, something pulsed. A wave of power so dense it made the air vibrate.
Both women felt it.
Du Qianmeng's smile turned predatory. "There it is. The real him."
"You know what he is."
"Of course I do. That's why I'm here." She sheathed the dagger. "The question is, Old Maid, do you know? And more importantly, does the Grand Elder want to know?"
The spatial barrier pulsed again. This time a scream accompanied it. Muffled, distant, but unmistakable.
Terror and agony, being slowly extracted.
Chen's hand twitched toward her weapon.
Du Qianmeng stepped between her and the entrance. "I wouldn't. He's enjoying this. Interrupt now, and you won't just earn his ire. You'll earn his attention. And trust me, Old Maid, you don't want him looking at you the way he's looking at whoever's screaming down there."
Silence stretched between them.
Chen calculated, weighed her options. Considered consequences. Finally, she stepped back.
"The Grand Elder will hear of this."
"I'm counting on it." Du Qianmeng turned back to the ruins, settling against the pillar again. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a show to watch."
Chen vanished into the mist.
Du Qianmeng's smile never wavered.
Below, the screaming continued.
In the sealed chamber, the Calamity Bone sang.
It wasn't sound but feeling. A vibration that resonated through reality itself. The chamber's walls cracked. Dust fell from the ceiling in steady streams. The formations on the floor pulsed in response, ancient power recognizing something older.
His hand on Lin Fang's chest began to glow. Crimson-blue light, the same as the bone. Threads of energy extended from his palm, pierced through cloth and skin, sank into Lin Fang's dantian.
Lin Fang screamed.
Not from pain yet. From violation. Something fundamental was being touched. Something that should never be touched.
The Origin Devouring technique didn't just take cultivation. It unraveled the very concept of you. Every choice, every moment, every thread of fate that made Lin Fang who he was began to flow backward.
Into him.
Into the bone.
Jue Xuanyi's eyes rolled back. The sensation was exquisite, warm and dangerously intoxicating. Not just power flowing in, but life itself. Lin Fang's memories flickered through his mind. A father's smile. Sister's laughter. The first time he held the jade slip, the wonder in his young eyes.
Then they dissolved like sugar in water.
Twenty years. Twenty years of isolation. Twenty years of this power sleeping inside him, waiting, starving. This was what he'd been denied. This was what the cage kept from him.
This was freedom.
The voices in his mind erupted.
War Devil: "Twenty years in that fucking cage, watching you pretend to be gentle! FINALLY you're showing your fangs! RIP HIM APART!"
Soul Devourer: "Yes… yes… his thread is so thick… I can feel it already… more… give me MORE…"
Schemer Supreme: "You're doing this despite my advice. Fine. At least make it count. Take everything. Leave nothing for Heaven to reclaim."
Heartless Sage: "Optimal efficiency would dictate killing him quickly and moving to the soul remnant. But you're not aiming for efficiency. You're feeding something deeper."
Fate Weaver: "His destiny is unraveling. I can see it fraying. Keep going."
Seduction Emperor: "The way you smiled when he called you brother… You're not just cruel, darling. You're an artist."
Nameless One: "…You chose this path knowing the price, good. Heaven needs to know you can't be controlled by fear."
And he slowed it down. Deliberately trying to make it last. Savored every second.
The chamber tilted, not in the physical sense, but with a profound, spiritual displacement. Like reality itself was bending toward him, toward the bone, toward the point of consumption. Lin Fang's shadow on the floor began to stretch unnaturally, pulled by the devouring technique.
The murals on the walls cracked. Fissures spiderwebbed across ancient paintings. The Azure Void cultivators' faces seemed to scream silently as the cracks bisected them.
"NO!" The Emperor's spectral form lunged forward. Spatial blades formed around him. Reality warped at his command. Void rifts opened like wounds in the air.
He attacked.
The attacks never reached their target.
Something rose from Jue Xuanyi's shadow. Skeletal and massive. Wreathed in spectral flame that burned without heat. A presence that made the air itself scream.
Soul Devourer's Dharma body channeled through his form.
"No." The voice was layered, ancient, hungry beyond measure. "You will watch your disciple die. Then I will give you the pleasure of being eaten."
The Emperor's spatial blades struck the Dharma body, caught and crushed like paper in a fist.
"I said watch."
An invisible force slammed into the Emperor's spectral form. He wasn't paralyzed just consciously helpless. He could see everything. Move his eyes. Understand what was happening. He just couldn't stop it.
Jue Xuanyi didn't even glance at the battle behind him. His focus remained entirely on Lin Fang. On the warmth flowing into him. On the satisfaction blooming in his chest like a flower made of ice.
Lin Fang's lips moved. Blood poured from his nose, his ears, his eyes. But he still tried to speak.
"Why?"
The word was barely a whisper.
Jue Xuanyi leaned close. His voice was gentle again. "Because I can."
He let the technique slow even further. Watched Lin Fang's eyes dim gradually. Watched hope die by degrees.
"This is going to take a while." His smile was soft and warm. "I want to enjoy it."
And in the darkness, something ancient and hungry began to feast. Lin Fang's throat tore with screaming. The sound ricocheted off ancient stone, layered and multiplying until it seemed like dozens were dying instead of one.
Above, perched on a collapsed pillar, Du Qianmeng's fingers drummed against her dagger's hilt in time with the screams. Her smile widened with each diminishing note.
Three hundred paces below, the Origin Devouring technique carved deeper.