Jiang Li's spine stiffened instantly. She spun around, snatching up her Heart-Piercing Crossbow and shielding the dying Cang Yaochen behind her.
Under the violet sky, the floating statues remained deathly still. But from behind a massive, cleaved statue of a War God, a semi-transparent shadow slowly emerged. It was a remnant soul clad in dark gold robes; his lower half had already dissipated into the phosphorescent soil, leaving only a torso that maintained the silhouette of his former life.
"Who are you?" Jiang Li's finger hovered over the trigger, her voice cold and hard.
"Who am I? It has been too long; even the Heavenly Dao has erased my name from existence." The remnant soul let out a low, hollow laugh. His gaze bypassed Jiang Li, settling on the Mirror of Profound Inquiry gripped tightly in Cang Yaochen's hand. "That mirror was forged from the divine bone of my kin. Once meant to suppress that seed of evil, it has now become the fig leaf for your escape."
Jiang Li's heart sank. This old ghost knew the mirror's origins—and by his tone, he was no saint in life.
"Put away your crossbow, little girl." The soul waved a weak hand. "In this graveyard where even gods rot, I haven't the strength to kill you even if I wished to. But if I wanted to save this Asura, I might still have a way."
Jiang Li glanced at Cang Yaochen in her arms. He was barely breathing. The demonic runes on his skin were fading rapidly, and the gashes from the void storm were no longer bleeding, replaced by a gray, desolate aura of divine exhaustion.
"State your conditions." Jiang Li didn't lower her guard, but her voice softened.
"Conditions?" The remnant soul shook his head self-deprecatingly. "This soul-form won't survive tomorrow's void tide. I want you to take my 'Divine Marrow' and go to the Pillars of the Nine Heavens. Bury it in the Pit of Ten Thousand Gods. I want the Heavens to see that the general it once betrayed... has someone to see him off in the end."
Before he finished speaking, the shadow shuddered violently. A walnut-sized sphere radiating a dark gold luster slowly drifted from his chest.
"Inside this marrow lies not only my life's comprehension of divine power, but a spark of the origin of 'Nirvana Karma-Fire.' This Asura forcibly fused with the Evil God's origin; his body is on the verge of imploding. Only this power of Nirvana can allow him to break and then rebuild."
Jiang Li stared at the marrow, sensing the terrifying energy within.
"You can refuse, and watch his soul dissipate within half an hour." The soul's voice grew fainter, his body becoming more transparent.
Jiang Li looked at Cang Yaochen. This man had gouged out half his heart for her three thousand years ago, and just now, he had nearly shattered himself to stop the Cloud-Ascension Throne. She gritted her teeth, stowed the crossbow, and reached out to grab the cold Divine Marrow.
"I accept."
"Good... very good..." The last trace of the soul's aura vanished completely, dissolving into shimmering fragments beneath the purple sky.
Without a moment's hesitation, Jiang Li pried open Cang Yaochen's locked jaw and forced the Divine Marrow inside.
The moment it entered his body, Cang Yaochen's withered frame erupted with a blinding dark-gold light. The crisscrossing cracks on his skin writhed rapidly, not just healing, but restructuring. His heartbeat grew louder, every pulse shaking the surrounding wasteland.
THUMP—THUMP—
In the silence of the God-Graves, the sound was chilling.
Jiang Li stood guard. The mirror hovered above them, trapping the leaking energy of the marrow within their immediate vicinity. She could feel Cang Yaochen wasn't just waking up—the destructive aura within him, sparked by the marrow, was undergoing a qualitative metamorphosis.
Suddenly, heavy footsteps echoed from the depths of the graveyard.
The floating, broken statues began to tremble. The Grave-Keepers—or rather, the walking corpses refined by the Heavenly Dao—had sensed the fluctuation of the Divine Marrow.
"Priest, if you don't wake up now, we're both getting buried here for real."
Jiang Li gripped the handle of the mirror, a ruthless red light flickering in her eyes as she watched the black mass of puppets surge toward them.
Cang Yaochen's finger twitched.
He snapped his eyes open. Deep within his double pupils, the purple-red was no longer alone; a trace of ancient dark-gold was spinning frantically. He slammed a palm against the ground, soaring into the air. The Asura Phantasm behind him was no longer a shadow—it was clad in a layer of dark-gold armor.
"Li'er, get back."
Cang Yaochen's voice was no longer raspy. It carried a dominant, heavy weight, the hallmark of someone who had returned to their peak. He grasped at the air, and the demonic blade reappeared, now entwined with the terrifying Nirvana Karma-Fire.
He didn't even look at the approaching puppets. He simply made a casual horizontal sweep.
A crescent wave of fire exploded outward, incinerating the Grave-Keepers within a hundred paces into nothingness.
"Is this the power of a Divine Throne?" Jiang Li let out a long breath, watching the towering back of the man standing before her.
But the trouble was far from over. At the edge of the God-Graves' horizon, the divine sense of the Cloud-Ascension Throne had locked onto them like a maggot in the bone.