Before the two remaining Sin-Slave assassins could fully comprehend the bloody horror of their companion’s severed hand splashing into the black mud, the dark sky above Blackstone Town violently ruptured.
A blinding, blood-red beacon exploded in the upper atmosphere, staining the leaden clouds and the falling snow in a sickening, crimson hue. The light was so intense that it cast long, eerie shadows across the ruined town, reflecting off Shen Yi’s calm face like the glow of an ancient altar.
The air itself seemed to freeze, turning into a heavy, static-charged wall of spiritual pressure. High above the ruined rooftops, dozens of silver streaks of sword-light began to converge, weaving together with terrifying, automated precision. Within seconds, the Disciplinary Sword Array of the Cloud-Soothed Sect was fully formed, locking the entire town within a massive, shimmering cage of silver steel.
Standing at the center of this silver array were three elder deacons of the Disciplinary Hall. They did not ride flying beasts; instead, they hovered in mid-air, their pristine, flowing purple silk robes immune to the howling mountain winds and the sulfur-choked ash of the wasteland. Each of them radiated the dense, suffocating aura of a half-step Golden Core master.
To these high-ranking cultivators, the three thousand mortals huddled in the stone ruins below were not human beings. They were merely numbers on an ledger, a harvest of "blood-slag" that had dared to escape their designated slaughterhouse. Their cold, clinical eyes held no anger, no hatred, and no mercy—only the detached scrutiny of a craftsman assessing a broken tool that needed to be discarded.
"Gu Yao, you have overstepped the boundaries of the dirt," the lead deacon’s voice boomed from the heavens, amplified by his spiritual qi until it hit the chest of every mortal like a heavy hammer. "You were given the mercy of exile, yet you chose to drag these three thousand pieces of slag along a path to death. You have disrupted the spirit-balance of the northern region. Your existence has become an inefficiency."
"Shen Yi... get back... cough..."
Gu Yao’s massive, soot-stained hand shook violently as he reached out, desperately trying to pull her behind his broad torso. But the moment his muscles tensed, the third Immortal-Locking Nail—the Ling-Xu Nail embedded deep within his thoracic spine—abruptly erupted with a blinding, white-hot agony.
It was a pain that defied mortal understanding. It felt as though a serrated steel saw, heated to a white-hot glow, was being dragged back and forth through his central nervous system, tearing his mind into jagged fragments. The raw, neurological shock paralyzed his left side, his knees buckling beneath him as he collapsed heavily onto one knee, his broad chest heaving as he drew in desperate, wet bursts of freezing air. His vision began to blur, spinning into dark, overlapping shadows—a visceral signal that his burning lifespan was finally running dry under the pressure of the nails.
Shen Yi did not retreat toward him. She remained standing in the snow, the burning hardwood stick in her left hand and the rusted iron shard in her right hand held steady against the descending storm. Her slender shoulders were straight, her posture holding an unyielding, bone-deep calmness that rose far above the thundering roar of the sword-qi above.
"A-Yao, do you still remember?" her voice was remarkably soft, yet it bypassed the screaming wind and the shrieking silver steel, dropping directly into his mind with absolute clarity. "Fifty years ago, at the very end of that ninety-seven-mile road of blood... do you remember what you said to me?"
Gu Yao froze, his fingers digging deep into the frozen dirt.
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Deep within his mind, the heavy, suffocating fog of memory that had been sealed by the Immortal-Locking Nails for half a century suddenly developed a tiny, hairline fracture. A rush of cold, ancient wind seemed to blow through his consciousness, clearing away the soot of the decades.
"You said..." Shen Yi turned her head slightly, looking back at him with a gentle, beautiful smile—a smile that carried the heavy, weary sorrow of three thousand years, yet remained as pure and innocent as a young maiden's, "...the fireseed of this world should never be gifted by the gods. It must be lit by the hands of mortals themselves."
CRACK—!
A tectonic event occurred within Gu Yao’s mind.
In that single, miraculous heartbeat, a vision of absolute grandeur and despair flashed before his eyes: He saw a sky filled with falling, burning constellations, of high and mighty gods being dragged down from the clouds by their golden collars. He saw millions of iron-clad mortals, their faces covered in blood and grime, charging up a massive, sky-connecting ladder of bone and red light. And walking at the very front of that army, leading the charge against the heavens, was a tall, slouched giant—and the weapon in his hand was this very same, half-broken warhammer.
The memory was raw, bloody, and magnificent. It was the memory of the Spine-Breaker Battalion, of the rebellion fifty years ago that had nearly shattered the sky before the seven nails were driven into his spine.
"You... you remember?" Gu Yao’s voice shook violently, his chest heaving as the memories threatened to shatter his mind.
"I have never forgotten," Shen Yi said softly.
She turned back to face the sky, her gaze locking onto the three half-step Golden Core deacons who were beginning to descend from the clouds, their silver swords humming with killing intent.
"This mortal vessel of mine is far too weak; it cannot sustain this power for long," Shen Yi murmuring, her voice rising in volume until it rivaled the thunder above. "A-Yao, grasp your hammer."
She violently swung the burning hardwood stick in her left hand, drawing a perfect, glowing semi-circle in the mud and snow before her boots.
VRUMMM—!
An incredibly pure, untainted, and warm pale-gold aura erupted from her calloused palms.
It carried no spiritual qi, no elemental law, and no bloody stench of sacrifice. It was the original, primordial breath of the earth itself—the Primal Mother Rhyme, the last remaining spark of unpolluted vital energy that the Immortal Sects had hunted across the Great Desolation for three thousand years.
The pale-gold stream flowed along the ground, wrapping around the handle of Severed Head before surging directly into its iron core.
The effect was instantaneous and earth-shattering.
The originally dead, pitch-black, and rusted warhammer let out a low, vibrating hum that quickly escalated into a roaring, dragon-like howl. Under the wash of the golden light, fifty years of accumulated rust, dried blood, and dirt instantly peeled off the metal, revealing a deep, star-shadowed obsidian surface that seemed to swallow the light of the torches.
"This... this is the Primal Mother Rhyme?!"
High in the sky, the lead deacon of the Disciplinary Hall let out a shriek of absolute, hysterical greed. His eyes turned completely bloodshot as his hand shook atop his flying sword.
"She has it! The key to the ancient well is in her hands! Capture her! Cut down the blacksmith and seize the woman at all costs!"
"Seize her!"
Dozens of silver flying swords lunged downward like a metallic storm, carrying a killing intent meant to grind all of Blackstone Town to dust.
But beneath that storm, Gu Yao felt a warm, colossal tide of energy flooding his shattered meridians. The Primal Mother Rhyme was like a gentle, healing river, widening his dried veins, knitting his fractured bones back together, and completely suppressing the malevolent backlash of the second Ju-Que Nail.
He stood up.
His dark-crimson hair whipped wildly in the wind, his stone-grey eyes burning with a dark, judicial fire that seemed to freeze the descending sword-qi in mid-air. He reached down and wrapped his thick fingers around the clean, obsidian hilt of Severed Head, feeling the heartbeat of an old friend returning from the dark.
"Since you want this 'fireseed' so badly..." Gu Yao stepped forward, the earth beneath his boots collapsing into a thirty-foot crater as he raised the six-hundred-pound weapon with a single hand.
He looked up at the descending storm of silver steel, his voice echoing across the silent valley like a death toll rising from the underworld:
"...then let's see if your souls are hot enough to burn!"