Consciousness drifted back to Yue Lianhua like fragments of a shattered dream, pulled together by a distant voice echoing through the cavern darkness.
"..System," the voice called out clearly, cutting through the haze of her awareness.
"Sy...stem..." she murmured weakly, the word slipping from her lips before she could stop it.
That single word triggered a cascade of memories, each one piercing through her like shards of glass.
She could see Lin Feng so clearly - her husband, the Son of Heaven - sitting by their small cooking fire during one of their final nights together.
His hands had been preparing their meal of wild roots and herbs—as usual, but his mind was elsewhere, lost in the frustrations of their seemingly endless war.
"If not for that system," he had said, stirring the simple broth with movements that betrayed his inner turmoil, "that demon, that Heavenly Demon possessed, I would have won this battle instead of being trapped in this endless cycle."
She remembered how confused she had been by his words.
Lin Feng often spoke of things that seemed impossible to understand - reincarnation, multiple lives, powers that transcended the normal boundaries of cultivation.
The steam from their humble meal had risen between them as he continued, his voice growing distant with the weight of cosmic knowledge.
"I am a reincarnator, Lianhua," he had explained, his eyes staring into the flickering flames. "The Son of Heaven—my present body—is blessed by the heavens themselves, chosen to stand against the darkness. But sometimes I wonder... if I had access to a system like that demon does, would I be able to end this once and for all?"
Those conversations had always left her feeling helpless and small.
She was just a cultivator, perhaps the most talented of her time—at least what Lin Feng used to refer to them as heroines or something—but she was not as legendary as he was—she knew this much.
The strange words he spoke of were beyond her comprehension, yet she, alongside others, had loved him enough to follow him into every battle, every desperate struggle against the encroaching darkness.
But she remembered his promise most clearly - spoken during their final embrace before the last battle, his voice heavy with determination and something that might have been prophecy: "It's fine. In the next cycle, when I still cannot defeat that man, I will make sure to get my hands on a system and put an end to that demon using his own weapon. I just need to let that demon get close to me first."
Now, hearing Cang Wuhen speak to a system of his own, those memories crashed over her with devastating clarity.
She tried to lift her body, to move even a single finger, but her eyes widened in stark terror as she felt the spiritual corrosion overwhelming her completely.
The place he had brought her to was suffused with death and contamination so potent that it was actively destroying what little remained of her shattered spiritual foundation.
Every breath felt like inhaling liquid poison.
Her dantian, already shattered from the final battle, couldn't provide even the most basic protection against whatever malevolent force permeated this cursed ground.
The spiritual remnants she had clung to - the last vestiges of her cultivation - were being systematically destroyed by the toxic atmosphere.
Her whole body became completely useless, reduced to nothing more than a witness trapped within her own flesh.
She could hear and see, but movement was beyond her now - she was paralyzed by the very air itself.
Through her blurred vision, she watched Cang Wuhen place her gently on the cold stone ground.
She noticed him cleaning the surface beneath her, the dark stains and grime vanishing under his touch. Confusion swirled in her thoughts. What was he planning? Why bring her to this place of all locations?
'It's good,' she thought with bitter satisfaction. 'He will die here too. After everything he's done to me - stripping me naked, humiliating me, defiling me - he'll suffer the same fate.'
She thought about how this man was going to die here due to poisoning, as she could see that this place was something far more terrible than either of them could have imagined.
This was the Death Cliff - the legendary source of corruption that stretched for kilometers in every direction, a place that surrounded the continent's heart with death.
Even Void Returning realm cultivators, masters who could split mountains and redirect rivers, feared to enter the outer edges of this zone.
Anyone who entered this circle, cultivator or mortal, died within minutes.
The closer one came to the source, the more certain and swift death became.
Stronger cultivators actually died faster than mortals here because their spiritual energy made them more susceptible to the corruption.
And they were right now within the source itself - the absolute epicenter of this spiritual disaster.
If her spiritual energy hadn't already been drained, if she still possessed her cultivation base, she would have died the instant they entered this place.
Her current state - spiritually crippled but not completely empty - was the only reason she was still drawing breath.
But breathing was all she could do now.
This place was designed to be both their burial ground.
A mortal body could not withstand such intense poisoning for long, and a cultivator would burn out like a candle in a hurricane.
But she again heard him speaking to his system, his voice carrying clearly in the poisoned air:
"System, can you open the gift that you gave me after the completion of the surgery?"
'Surgery?' The word confused her.
What surgery was he talking about?
And why did she seem to have heard this particular word before... strange it was but she had heard it from Lin Feng's mouth.
She couldn't understand what he was seeing, but she heard his responses to whatever the system was showing him.
His tone was flat, disinterested, as if he were reading the most mundane information imaginable.
"Okay," he said, sounding like he was reviewing grocery lists.
"Hmm. Nice," he continued, with all the enthusiasm of someone examining week-old leftovers.
Then his voice changed, becoming sharper with sudden realization, though she couldn't hear exactly what he was realizing.
But then came the sound that shocked her to her very core - his laughter.
It started as a small chuckle, barely audible, then grew into something wild and unhinged.
"AHAHAHAHAHAHA!" he roared, the sound echoing off the cavern walls like the cries of someone who had completely lost their sanity. "Are you fucking kidding me?! WHERE IS FOOD! I AM HUNGRY DAMN IT!"
'So he's finally cracked,' she thought with vicious satisfaction. 'Yes, die like that, you monster.'
After what he had done to her - stripping her naked, humiliating her, violating her in ways that destroyed her very sense of self - watching him lose his mind felt like cosmic justice finally manifesting.
"DAMN ALL THIS!" he shouted, his voice growing more frantic and unhinged.
She could hear him moving around frantically, his footsteps echoing through the cavern as he seemed to run from place to place in his madness.
"Pull! Pull! Pull!" he yelled, his voice sometimes distant and then closer again, as if he were racing around the cavern in his insanity.
'He's completely lost his mind,' she realized with cold satisfaction. 'The poison is driving him insane. Perfect.'
She waited for the inevitable end, resigned to her own fate but taking comfort in knowing her tormentor would suffer complete madness before death claimed them both.
Her fate was already sealed - she was going to die here, her shattered dantian unable to protect her mortal body from the poison indefinitely.
The remnants of spiritual energy she had used to try to kill this man were gone, leaving her defenseless against the corruption.
She lay there naked, staring up at the cavern ceiling, her body completely paralyzed by the poisoning, waiting for death to take them both.
Then something soft landed directly on her face.
The scent hit her immediately - pure, clean, and unmistakably medicinal. But this wasn't just any medicine.
Her eyes widened in absolute shock as she recognized the aroma.
This was a Heaven Grade elixir - one of the rarest and most powerful poison healing substances in existence.
Such treasures were spoken of in legends, hoarded by ancient sects, fought over by entire kingdoms.
Her voice trembled as she whispered, "What...?"