Xiao Jin crushed the pill, his expression obscure and unreadable.
Taking advantage of the moment, Xie Lin closed the distance by a step: “As for Chief Xiao, won’t you explain why you know a forbidden technique of demonic cultivation?”
“And what about the soul lamp that went out three hundred years ago?”
His fingertip poked against Xiao Jin’s chest, touching an uneven scar.
Xie Lin suddenly froze.
This shape… was a sword wound!
And it matched the exact spot where he had pierced Xiao Jin in the illusion, down to the millimeter!
“You…”
Having woken up at some point, Lin Miaomiao stared in terror at the two of them: “In our past lives, we were clearly enemies to the death [incompatible to the death] why now…”
Before she could finish, she suddenly curled up in agony.
The phantom of a heart-devouring lotus surfaced between her brows, and Xie Qingyu’s voice echoed through her mouth, eerie and ghostly:
“Because Xiao Jin used a forbidden technique to reverse the cycle of reincarnation~”
“He personally swapped the destiny grid of ‘Army Breaker’ [Po Jun] for the destiny grid of ‘Wolf’ [Tian Lang], and the price was…”
Xiao Jin thrust his sword straight toward Lin Miaomiao’s glabella!
“Clang!”
Xie Lin’s dagger intercepted the Frost Flower Sword, sending a shower of sparks flying.
“Let her finish.”
Xie Lin stared fixedly at Xiao Jin’s abruptly constricting pupils: “What price?”
Lin Miaomiao’s body hovered into the air with eerie bizarreness, the heart-devouring lotus blooming across her seven apertures:
“The price is that in every lifetime, he cannot live past thirty, and he will never remember the truth of the swapped destinies~”
The karst cave suddenly shook violently, and falling rocks tumbled down like rain.
Swinging his sword to cleave apart a giant boulder hurtling toward Xie Lin, Xiao Jin shouted harshly: “He’s agitating the underground ley lines!”
Xie Qingyu’s laughter echoed among the rock walls: “Guess right~”
“Beneath this mountain is suppressed the left arm of ‘That Being’, after all…”
Blood burst from Lin Miaomiao’s body in a spray of flowers!
Seven wisps of black Qi shot like sharp arrows in different directions, and the entire mountain body began to collapse.
Dragging Xie Lin, Xiao Jin leaped into the underground river, catching a final glimpse of Lin Miaomiao being enveloped by the black Qi and rising into the air, her left eye completely transformed into a bloody lotus.
“She’ll die!”
Struggling, Xie Lin tried to turn back.
Gripping his waist with lethal force, Xiao Jin pulled him close: “She won’t.”
“Xie Qingyu needs a living vessel.”
In the freezing underground river, Xie Lin’s interrogation mixed with bubbles spilled out: “Just how many things have you kept hidden from me?!”
Without answering, Xiao Jin suddenly kissed him.
While passing breath, a cold, icy bead was pushed down Xie Lin’s throat.
It was a seed of the heart-devouring lotus!
“Swallow it.”
Biting his lower lip, Xiao Jin commanded: “Unless you want to be contaminated by ‘That Being’.”
Forced to swallow, the instant the seed entered his abdomen, countless unfamiliar scenes flashed before Xie Lin’s eyes:
Immortal sect ruins floating in a sea of blood, himself kneeling on an altar with iron chains piercing his scapulae, Xiao Jin holding half a golden lotus with hands full of blood…
The final scene froze on a pair of golden pupils opening from the abyss. Locking gazes with them for even a fraction of a second made Xie Lin feel as though his divine soul was about to be torn apart!
“Don’t look!”
Xiao Jin covered his eyes: “That is the sealed…”
A deafening roar interrupted his words.
A crack appeared at the end of the underground river, and dazzling daylight poured down.
Swept out of the mountain body by the fierce current, the two plummeted down an abyss thousands of feet deep!
Mid-air, Xiao Jin abruptly pulled Xie Lin into his arms, his own back slamming heavily against the cliff face.
Xie Lin heard the crisp snap of breaking bones, followed by Xiao Jin’s suppressed groan.
“You!” Trying to roll over to cushion the impact for him, Xie Lin was instead hugged even tighter.
“Don’t move.”
Xiao Jin’s voice brushed past his ear: “There’s something down below.”
Amidst the rapid descent, Xie Lin saw that the bottom of the cliff was actually a bloody lake—
No, that wasn’t a lake; it was countless writhing vines of the heart-devouring lotus!
At the threshold of life and death, Xiao Jin suddenly bit the tip of his tongue, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the Frost Flower Sword.
Blinding golden radiance erupted from the blade, transforming into a barrier of light that enveloped them both.
“Hold onto me tight.”
Xiao Jin’s hand forming the incantation was trembling: “Time to take a gamble.”
Instinctively wrapping his arms around the other’s neck, the next second, Xie Lin watched as the golden light smashed like a meteorite right into the center of the bloody vines!
The anticipated excruciating pain did not arrive.
Opening his eyes, Xie Lin found that they were suspended in a bizarre space.
No heaven visible above, no earth beneath, surrounded by countless crystal-like fragments floating about, every single fragment flashing with a different scene.
“Is this… a spatial rift?”
Shocked, Xie Lin looked toward the nearest fragment, inside which the younger version of himself was holding a snowman, standing beside someone wearing Xuan Tian Sect attire…
Xiao Jin?
“Not a spatial rift.”
Wiping the blood from the corner of his lips, Xiao Jin said: “It’s the memory corridor of the heart-devouring lotus.”
He pointed to a massive black crystal in the distance: “That’s where our past lives are hidden.”
Just as Xie Lin stepped forward, the black crystal suddenly cracked with spiderweb-like patterns.
A hand covered in golden armor punched through the crystal, violently grabbing toward Xiao Jin’s chest!
“Careful!”
Xie Lin slashed out with his blade, but the edge was crushed to powder by the golden armor.
At the critical moment of life and death, a silver spellmark lit up on Xiao Jin’s chest.
As if scalded by burns, the golden armor retracted, and an angry roar echoed from within the black crystal:
“Traitor! How dare you use this seat’s forbidden technique”
The entire space began to collapse.
Dragging Xie Lin, Xiao Jin sprinted toward a glowing fissure: “Jump!”
The instant the two tumbled out of the fissure, Xie Lin cast one final look backward.
Inside the black crystal, those golden pupils were staring dead-set at them, the pupils reflecting two intertwined lotuses one golden, one red.
When he opened his eyes again, night had already fallen.
Xie Lin found himself piggybacking on Xiao Jin’s back, traversing a vast expanse of reeds.
In the distance, lamp lights flickered, and the faint sound of wooden clappers drifted over.
“Where is this?” Struggling, he moved to climb down.
Xiao Jin’s voice was weak: “Mortal territory, at the border between Yanzhou and the Demonic Realm.”
Only then did Xie Lin notice the injuries on Xiao Jin’s back—
His white robes were soaked through with blood, and gleaming white bones were faintly visible.
His heart tightening, he forced himself down and pressed the other to sit by the riverbank.
“Have you got a death wish?”
Tearing open Xiao Jin’s clothes, his hand froze the moment it touched the wound.
Tiny golden threads were writhing around the wound, burrowing into the flesh and blood like living creatures!
Panting, Xiao Jin grabbed his wrist: “Don’t look.”
Throwing off his hand, Xie Lin leaned straight down and sucked the golden threads out with his mouth!
The heart-devouring lotus immediately went berserk.
Enduring the agonizing pain, Xie Lin spat the golden threads onto the ground mouthful by mouthful.
Wriggling, those golden threads turned into mist, condensing into the phantom of a small golden lotus in mid-air.
“As expected…”
Staring at the golden lotus and recalling the roar within the black crystal, Xie Lin asked: “You secretly learned ‘That Being’s’ forbidden technique?”
Tying his sash in silence, Xiao Jin suddenly asked: “How much of the memories did you see?”
Xie Lin pressed in close to him: “Enough to let me know you’re lying.”
“The destiny swap is real, but it’s not some ‘unable to remember the truth’ you remember every single detail crystal clear in every lifetime, don’t you?”
The reed thicket suddenly stirred without wind.
His expression changing abruptly, Xiao Jin tackled Xie Lin to the ground!
“Whoosh!”
An iron-black arrow nailed itself into the exact spot they had just occupied, its fletching wrapped in the exclusive black mist of the Netherworld Palace.
From the opposite bank came a cold, icy chuckle: “How ruthless of the young master, even able to abandon his own younger sister.”
Xie Lin’s pupils shrank to pinpricks.
It was the Netherworld Palace’s Left Envoy, Li Hanxing!
Standing behind him were dozens of black-robed cultivators, and what was most hair-raising of all…
Lin Miaomiao, suspended mid-air and supported by the black mist, was smiling at them at that very moment with Xie Qingyu’s expression.