When will-o'-wisps danced over Langya Mountain's mass graves, Ethan Chen sealed the bloodline between Sylvie Su's brows with silver needles. Over three days, serpent scales had crept behind her ears. At each midnight's yin peak, she'd shriek in ancient Jiang dialect, clawing at the love-bell whose blood droplets corroded stone.
"Past this charnel house lies the dandelion stele." Ethan tightened the vines binding Sylvie to his back. His bronze cauldron vibrated urgently—the dilapidated "Virtue Hall" ahead bore hundreds of copper coins nailed to its plaque, each threaded with faded crimson cords.
The rotting door's creak unleashed an overpowering medicinal aroma. Moonlight through roof holes illuminated seven black coffins arranged as the Big Dipper, each topped with celadon jars. Ethan gagged—the preserved fetuses inside bore Sylvie's likeness.
"Pharmaceutical Tomb!" Sylvie regained lucidity, nails digging into Ethan's shoulders. "Mother was strapped here when—" Her pupils fully serpentine now, she convulsed violently, snapping vines. Ethan crashed into coffins, his blood seeping into coffin carvings.
A blood array ignited. Coffins exploded. Through dust, Ethan saw seven rotting corpses—each wearing Sylvie's face, bronze bells at their throats with miniature cauldron clappers.
"Young master's heart has hardened." The lead corpse caressed decaying cheeks, phosphorescent light leaking between fingers. "When you gifted me dandelions by the river, didn't you promise…" Her voice merged with Sylvie's as the horde screeched, shaking medicinal manuscripts from rafters like snow.
Ethan raised the cauldron. Its missing handle emitted cyan light, reconstructing scattered manuscripts into Thousand Gold Formulas pages—text rearranging into the Jiang Clan's Foundry Manuscript: "When Nine Infants weep blood, stonefire lights the abyss…"
The corpses knelt, tearing open chests to offer pulsating hearts embedded with bronze shards. Ethan's jade tablet summoned these into the cauldron. As the final shard clicked, the earth trembled.
"Destroy it!" Sylvie's rasp came from shadows—half her face scaled, half tear-streaked. "Mother's…" Black blood sprayed a corpse, melting flesh to reveal a bronze compass.
Ethan lunged as Lucien Lu's laughter seeped from below: "Thanks for completing my Abyss Compass, junior brother!" The hall collapsed, plunging them into an underground cavern. The dandelion stele split, exposing a crystal coffin housing a woman resembling Sylvie—nine bronze nails piercing her heart.
"Mother!" Sylvie's wail tore the air. The coffin projected visions: fifteen-year-old Lucien nailing her mother down during a blood moon.
"Game over." Lucien emerged from magma, taotie tattoos writhing. "Each clone you kill awakens Xiangliu…" He hurled Celestial Academy-sealed bronze nails.
Sylvie took Ethan's lethal strike. The nail rebounded into Lucien's left eye as her bloodied hair wove bronze chains over lava: "Jiang Foundry Art's seventh layer… Bloodline Symbiosis Curse!"
Ethan slammed the cauldron onto the stele. Sylvie's mother dissolved into light merging with the relic. As Lucien fell into magma, Ethan glimpsed hundreds of bronze coffins—each engraved with Sylvie's birthdate—floating in molten rock.
The quaking stele erupted with light. Sylvie, petrifying into jade with stone dandelions at her ankles, shoved Ethan into the beam: "Find… true abyss…" Lucien's final snarl echoed: "Junior sister remains mine…"
Three months later, Ethan woke in an East Sea fishing village, the cracked cauldron in his arms. At low tide, shell-carved messages appeared on reefs: "Full moon opens the abyss." Deep below, nine colossal cauldrons circled Sylvie's jade-petrified form—stone dandelions in her hair glowing with Lucien's bloodied eyeball at their cores.