Jiang Li stared at Cang Yaochen.
The man's spine was locked dead straight. Not a fraction of his former monastic serenity remained in his double pupils—only a near-cruel, unyielding clarity.
He had said, shatter the mirror.
This Mirror of Profound Inquiry had stayed by her side for three thousand years. It held the spilled blood of the Black Hero Sect, contained her three hollowed-out souls, and carried the wretched, knotted accounts the two of them could never clean up in this lifetime. If it broke, the threads of their past would have no anchor; they would truly be walking into the pitch-black of a point of no return.
"Li'er, trust me." Cang Yaochen did not look back, his voice low but striking with absolute finality.
Before them, Qing Xuzi raised his hand. Gray heavenly lightning flickered across his fingers like a nest of vipers looking to gorge themselves. Facing a monster that had successfully refined itself into a vessel for the Heavenly Dao, any mortal cultivation technique was reduced to a joke.
"Break it is, then. It's just a broken piece of glass anyway."
Jiang Li burst into a sudden laugh. Her right hand thrust the Mirror of Profound Inquiry high into the air, the sheer malice in her eyes flaring sharper than during her days as a newly born seed of evil. Without a heartbeat of hesitation, she clenched her fingers. The Evil God origin inside her condensed into a heavy sledgehammer, smashing brutally against the already fractured ancient relic.
CRACK—!
The crisp, violent shatter echoed sharply within the canyon.
The ancient mirror that had charted the rise and fall of the Black Hero Sect and witnessed the mutual destruction of gods and demons split into four pieces in Jiang Li's grip. There was no predictable eruption of spiritual energy; instead, a thick, unshakeable stream of black blood seeped slowly from the cracks of the broken fragments.
It was the final, concentrated tide of vengeful blood left behind by thousands of disciples when the Black Hero Sect was slaughtered three thousand years ago.
The instant the black blood touched the earth, the thunder inside the Valley of Ten Thousand Buried Swords died abruptly. The wind ceased entirely.
For the first time, Qing Xuzi's face changed. Across his otherwise plain, honest features, gray heavenly lines bulged and writhed. "You actually dared... to unleash this filth?"
"Filth?" Jiang Li tossed away the tattered remnants of the handle, letting the black blood crawl and spread up her own arms. "Qing Xuzi, when you traded our lives for a dog-tag from the Heavens, why didn't you find it filthy then?"
The black blood did not scatter. Behaving as though it possessed its own sentience, it surged frantically across the ground toward Cang Yaochen.
Cang Yaochen closed his eyes.
The black blood snaked up his ankles, staining the dark-gold armored phantasm on his bare torso into an eerie, total pitch-black. The War God's spine in his back erupted in a piercing, screeching wail; tens of thousands of vengeful souls who had died in the machinations of the Heavenly Dao finally found their host.
"The Asura does not worship Buddha, nor does he kneel to Heaven."
Cang Yaochen snapped his eyes open, his double pupils now entirely turned into a bottomless, solid black. As his demonic blade absorbed the stream of vengeful blood, the Nirvana Karma-Fire on the edge went dead out. In its place, a physical layer of black radiance emerged—one that seemed capable of swallowing light itself.
He took a single stride forward.
As his boot hit the dirt, half of the gray thunder domain deployed by Qing Xuzi collapsed instantly.
"Rebels. Nothing more than a desperate struggle," Qing Xuzi barked. The gray lightning at his fingertips condensed into a hundred-foot-tall greatspear. Carrying the universal weight of heavenly judgment, he hurled it ruthlessly toward Cang Yaochen.
This spear represented the absolute rules of this world. If the rules decreed your death, you could not live.
Cang Yaochen did not dodge, nor did he even bother to assume a defensive stance. He simply raised the pitch-black demonic blade and delivered a simple, brutally crude vertical hack directly against the approaching spear.
There was no flamboyant blade-glow, nor any earth-shattering boom.
The moment the blade edge met the gray lightning spear, the weapon representing the Heavenly Dao's will began to shatter and dissolve inch by inch, like a dry, brittle twig. The pitch-black blade did not stall; following the path of the disintegrating spear, it sliced clean through Qing Xuzi's chest.
Squelch.
The sound of cold steel biting into flesh.
Qing Xuzi stared dead at Cang Yaochen, the disbelief in his eyes spreading like ink in water. The gray robes at his chest tore open, revealing not red flesh and blood, but golden heavenly runes. Right now, those runes were being aggressively corroded by the black vengeful blood, emitting a sharp, agonizing hiss.
"You... how could you possibly cut through the rules?" Qing Xuzi clutched his chest, the golden light beneath his feet vanishing entirely.
"Because inside this blade are the wronged souls you slaughtered three thousand years ago." Cang Yaochen sheathed his blade and stood before him, the moonlight catching the hard, unmoving profile of his face like a stone statue devoid of human feeling.
"The Heavenly Dao owes us. Today, I collect the first payment from you."
Jiang Li walked over with measured steps, the tip of her Heart-Piercing Crossbow pressing firmly against Qing Xuzi's brow. Looking at the man she had once called uncle, even her hatred had dulled, replaced by a calm that could make one's spine go cold.
"The truth of what happened back then... it wasn't just that the Heavenly Dao wanted to destroy the Black Hero Sect, was it?" Jiang Li asked, her finger lightly brushing against the trigger.
Knowing his death was certain, the madness on Qing Xuzi's face receded, replaced by a twisted sense of liberation. He looked at the cinnabar mark on Jiang Li's brow—now completely turned a dark, bruised crimson—and let out a low, wheezing chuckle.
"Li'er, do you truly believe Cang Yaochen saved your life back then? Do you truly believe this heart of yours... was something the Divine Thrones of the Sacred Ground merely wanted to carve out? Hahaha... This heaven was always a gargantuan cage. We are nothing more than blood-rations grown upon the body of the Heavenly Dao..."
Before the words could finish, Jiang Li's finger squeezed down.
Puff.
The short bolt tore straight through his skull. Qing Xuzi's corpse did not fall; instead, it rapidly turned to ash within a cluster of gray fire, leaving not a single strand of a soul behind. The vessel of the Heavenly Dao had shattered, and the will inside had naturally dissolved.
An absolute quiet settled over the canyon.
Jiang Li stood before the ashes, turning her head to look at Cang Yaochen. The pitch-black ink on the man's body receded, exposing his scar-ridden frame. He swayed slightly but held his ground, using his clear double pupils to quietly look back at her.
"The mirror is broken. Where do we go next?" Cang Yaochen asked.
Jiang Li walked to his side, taking his calloused hand in hers. The karmic threads of the Mirror of Profound Inquiry were gone, yet the warmth passing through his palm felt more real than anything they had ever shared before.
She looked up at the completely shattered thunderclouds above the canyon, and toward the translucent, illusory outline of the Nine Heavens emerging behind them.
"To the Nine Heavens," Jiang Li said, her gaze steady. "Let's go see what this 'old cage' Qing Xuzi talked about actually looks like."