Through the symbiotic contract, Xie Lin’s left eye suddenly exploded in a mist of blood.
Via the contract, he clearly saw Xiao Jin’s main body going berserk in the Spirit Beast Garden.
That semi-transparent, refined body had torn apart the black-robed person’s bronze mask, revealing a face identical to Palace Master Xie’s.
But even more horrifying was Xiao Jin’s current state: seven golden threads were bursting out from his chest, each piercing through the crown of one of the besiegers’ heads!
“Xie Wujiu, you’ve nurtured the Heart-Eating Lotus for three hundred years, yet you don’t know who its true master is?”
The berserk Xiao Jin gripped the black-robed person’s throat, his voice carrying an eerie, dual-tone effect.
The black-robed person’s face suddenly melted, revealing features underneath stitched together from black lotus petals: “Good nephew, you can’t even recognize your own uncle?”
Xie Lin’s field of vision was suddenly pulled back to reality, because the “book-spirit Xiao Jin” in front of him was fiercely slapping his forehead with the Guide to Rearing Spirit Beasts:
“Don’t look! He is using the parent stock to pollute you in reverse!”
As the pages fluttered, Xie Lin suddenly saw the signature on the front page.
“Nether Palace · Xie Lin”.
“This is… my handwriting?”
The book-spirit Xiao Jin sneered: “Of course.”
“Three hundred years ago, you personally wrote this rearing manual specifically for today.”
Xie Lin’s temples throbbed violently as fragments of the original owner’s memories flooded in—
In the Nether Palace’s forbidden area, the teenage Xie Lin stuffing a lotus seed into Xiao Jin’s eye socket;
In the Spirit Beast Garden bath, a blood-soaked Xie Lin whispering to Xiao Jin: “Tear yourself into pieces… this is the only way to deceive Xie Wujiu…”
“Understand now?”
The book-spirit Xiao Jin’s voice began to distort: “You aren’t saving him; you are completing a plan from three hundred years ago.”
The cellar suddenly collapsed!
Twenty ice coffins shattered simultaneously, blood coalescing into a giant palm that grabbed toward the three of them.
Lin Miaomiao’s black lotus whip had just been lashed out when it was corroded and shattered; she screamed as she was dragged toward the depths of the earth:
“Brother! He’s coming!”
Xie Lin’s Frost Flower Sword slashed out seven residual shadows, but the sword light turned midway.
The symbiotic contract was forcing him to attack his own left leg!
“Beautiful!”
The black-robed Xie Wujiu’s voice came from underground: “Worthy of being Palace Master Xie’s proudest work you can even strike your own direct disciple!”
When the sword edge was only three inches from his knee, the Guide to Rearing Spirit Beasts suddenly spun and jammed the blade.
The book-spirit Xiao Jin transformed into golden light and submerged into Xie Lin’s brow: “Catch the main body!”
Xie Lin’s left leg suddenly caught fire.
It was the left leg that Xiao Jin had been robbed of by Palace Master Xie, now resonating!
Within the flames, dense golden runes emerged they were the complete version of the Cultivation Method for the Parent Stock of the Heart-Eating Lotus!
“So it was hidden here.”
Xie Wujiu’s true form broke through the soil, rotten lotus whiskers entwining Xie Lin’s burning left leg: “Many thanks, nephew…”
His wild laughter stopped abruptly.
Because Xie Lin had suddenly dug out his own left eye with his bare hands!
“Don’t you want the parent stock?”
Xie Lin leveled his bleeding eye socket at Xie Wujiu: “Come and take it.”
That Heart-Eating Lotus eyeball exploded in mid-air, and a thousand golden threads pierced through Xie Wujiu’s lotus whiskers.
Even more terrifying, the berserk Xiao Jin main body in the Spirit Beast Garden suddenly froze; the seven golden threads reversed direction, piercing across the void into Xie Wujiu’s back!
“You schemed against me?!”
Xie Wujiu’s rotten flesh fell off in clumps: “This isn’t the parent stock at all, it’s…”
Xie Lin stared at him with his one remaining eye: “It’s a lure.”
“I knew it three hundred years ago the true parent stock of the Heart-Eating Lotus has always been in…”
His blood-stained fingers suddenly stabbed into his own heart area.
There was no blood.
Only a golden lotus bud waiting to bloom.
At the location of Xie Lin’s heart, that golden lotus slowly bloomed.
The instant the lotus petals unfurled, the entire Nether Palace’s subterranean veins trembled violently, and countless golden pillars of light shot into the sky from underground, illuminating the night sky like daylight.
Xie Wujiu’s remnant body crumbled inch by inch in the golden light, letting out a shrill scream: “Impossible!”
“How could the Heart-Eating Lotus parent stock recognize you as its master—”
“Because three hundred years ago, it belonged to me in the first place.”
Xie Lin closed his five fingers, and golden lotus flames wound up from his fingertips, re-condensing into a brand-new eyeball in his left socket.
In the depths of his pupil, the monstrous blood-red light from the direction of the Spirit Beast Garden was reflected.
There, Xiao Jin’s main body had completely lost control.
The seven golden threads were strangling every living thing within a ten-mile radius like living creatures; even the elders who had come to support the Xuan Tian Sect were instantly pierced through their brows, turning into dried corpses and falling to the ground.
“Brother!”
Lin Miaomiao broke free from the black lotus cocoon, but the lotus pattern on her neck suddenly turned crimson: “H-he is devouring the essence and blood of the cultivators…”
Xie Lin grabbed her wrist, the Heart-Eating Lotus’s perception spreading along her blood vessels, his complexion changing drastically:
“Not devouring—it’s a sacrifice!”
Every corpse pierced by the golden threads had its essence and blood flowing back along the threads toward Xiao Jin’s heart.
And where his heart should have been empty, a blood-red rune was now emerging.
It was the Ten Thousand Souls Returning to Evil Formation, long lost to the Ghost Realm!
“Xie Wujiu, you madman…”
Xie Lin’s Frost Flower Sword was unsheathed with a roar: “You had already carved a reversal formation inside Xiao Jin’s body!”
The instant the sword light split the blood mist, a sky-shaking explosion came from the direction of the Spirit Beast Garden.
Xiao Jin’s main body suddenly threw its head back and let out an inhuman roar, the seven golden threads snapping back into his body, and dense black curses appeared on the surface of his skin.
“The Heart-Eating Lotus is backlashing against the host!”
The book-spirit’s voice exploded in Xie Lin’s sea of consciousness.
“You must return the parent stock to its place within a quarter of an hour, or he will completely degenerate into a slaughter puppet!”
The golden lotus in Xie Lin’s left eye suddenly erupted in rage.
The memory fragments of three hundred years ago finally linked into a line.
That was no rearing manual, but a forbidden technique notebook he had written to nurture the parent stock using his own body as a vessel!
“Lin Miaomiao, black lotus whip!”
The girl swung the whip at the sound, but the tip of the whip shattered the moment it touched within three yards of Xiao Jin.
Xie Lin seized the opportunity to leap into the center of the blood formation, his Frost Flower Sword stabbing straight at Xiao Jin’s brow: “Wake up!”
The sword tip bent freakishly the moment it touched the skin.
Xiao Jin’s hollow eyes suddenly focused, his right hand accurately pinching Xie Lin’s throat: “Mas… ter?”
His hoarse voice mixed two different vocal tracks, the other being Xie Wujiu’s hideous laughter: “What a deep master-disciple bond…”
Xie Lin was squeezed until his bones creaked, yet he suddenly curled the corner of his mouth: “Are you done acting?”
The golden lotus in his chest suddenly flew out of his body, drilling crazily into Xiao Jin’s body along their touching skin.
The golden lotus flames and black curses clashed fiercely on Xiao Jin’s body surface, the resulting shockwave tearing the ground for a hundred yards away!
“You actually…”
Xiao Jin (Xie Wujiu)’s pupils contracted violently: “Refined the parent stock into a life-bound magical treasure?!”
Xie Lin coughed up bloody foam and sneered: “How else could I have deceived an old fox like you?”
The instant the golden lotus completely submerged into Xiao Jin’s heart, the seven rampaging golden threads suddenly hung down submissively.
The runes of the sky-filling blood formation crumbled inch by inch, and the devoured essence and blood flowed back along the golden threads—
Pouring into the mouths and noses of the fallen cultivators!
“Reversing life and death?!”
The Xuan Tian Sect elders watching from afar retreated in horror: “Th-this is ancient…”
Before they could finish, golden brilliance erupted from Xiao Jin’s entire body.
When the brilliance dissipated, the violent aura had returned to calm, save for a lifelike golden lotus mark on his chest.
He looked down at his hand, which was still pinching Xie Lin’s throat, and released it as if electrocuted: “Master, I…”
Xie Lin staggered to the ground, the golden lotus in his left eye already dim.
Just as he was about to speak, a fishy sweetness surged into his throat, and he vomited a mouthful of blood mixed with golden threads.
“Brother!”
Lin Miaomiao hurriedly supported him, but her touch revealed that his meridians were shattered.
“Your cultivation…”