The deepest part of the Cold Marrow Mine echoed with the dragging sound of iron chains.

  Li Wuhen moved between the cracks in the vein, his back hunched, the blood slave ring on his ankle glowing a ghostly blue. These titanium shackles engraved with divine script weighed seventy-nine catties and would release needle-like currents when they repelled the cold marrow essence within the vein - now his entire left leg had lost sensation.

  "Still four dou short for today's quota." Foreman Old Chen squatted on the beam, picking his teeth while the snow eagle feathers on his felt hat quivered. This wandering cultivator who had personally strangled three mine owners loved to emphasize: "Cold marrow is top-grade material for forging swords; if it rusts with blood, it will be devalued."

  The icicles hanging from the rock walls suddenly began to tremble.

  The young man abruptly gripped his trembling companion, Xiaoman, beside him. The decaying moss crept up the girl's neck through his fingers. "Be quiet," he said lightly, though his throat burned as if he had swallowed hot coals. Last night, the two who tried to escape were hung at the mine vent as an example, and Xiaoman's voice had already been hoarse from screaming in the sub-zero frost.

  A thunderous rumble came from the cave ceiling, awakening the ice-devouring worm cluster deep within three hundred zhang. These creatures that nested in the cold marrow veins went into heat collectively during every new moon, their viscous pale blue secretions corroding the cave walls. The blood slaves who hid the ore often melted together with the ore into acid water.

  "There are still two human pillars short in Tunnel No. 3." Suddenly, Old Chen took out a bronze bell and shook it. The tongue of the bell inscribed with Taotie patterns swept over Li Wuhen's nape, "You have a fine and upright skeleton, boy."

  Xiaoman suddenly bit down hard on Li Wuhen's wrist, her saliva mixed with pus and blood oozing from her teeth. This girl who was thrown into the mine field at the age of twelve pressed all her weight onto his axe-wielding hand—where the veins stood out prominently, the blade was only half an inch away from Old Chen's deer-skin boots.

  The foreman let out a hoarse laugh. He deliberately crushed a piece of ice crystal, the splashing shards cutting a fresh blood line along Li Wuhen's collarbone—"Your little protégé knows her place..."

  The wind-cutting sound came faster than the pain.

  That steel axe infused with six fire runes suddenly split upward from under Li Wuhen’s groin! The axe back precisely knocked off Old Chen's felt hat, with half a finger still hooked on the silver chain at the brim. As the youth turned around, his waist had already leaned against the handle of the ore car—his movements flowed like clouds and water, as if practiced hundreds or thousands of times.

  "You're asking for death!" With the four remaining fingers of Old Chen rapidly forming seals, the bound-demon ropes behind him rose into the air. However, before the runes could fully light up, there was a salty taste in his throat—Li Wuhen used his foot to kick up the mining pick at the moment of throwing the axe. Now, the pick tip was trembling as it was embedded in his right eye socket.

  At this moment, the blood slave ring began to flash wildly. Li Wuhen groaned as he knelt on one knee, the bursting bluish-black veins on his neck extending all the way to his chest. But he was still smiling, his teeth stained with ore ash grinding the last half of a curse into pieces: "...your phoenix bone hairpin is crooked."

  The entire mine suddenly fell silent.

  Xiaoman stared wide-eyed at the axe embedded in the foreman's skull. The crisp sound of the iron colliding with the skull was all too familiar—it was the sound her sister made last month when she was turned into a "human pillar"—a special technique used by the Divine Race to bury slaves alive at the vein nodes, said to suppress earth demons.

  Li Wuhen convulsed in fetal position, the purple electricity released by the blood slave ring wrapping his body like a spider web. Some kind of scorching pattern was climbing up from his coccyx, the protruding patterns on his skin resembling...hatching vertebrae?

  Old Chen's corpse was still spurting blood. Xiaoman suddenly realized that this executioner over sixty years old never begged for mercy from start to finish, and even retained a strange smile on his dying lips. She frantically pulled at Li Wuhen's collar: "Wuhen Brother! There's something wrong with this old dog's blood! He's intentionally..."

  The rumbling sound enveloped by ice chips drowned out the rest of her words. Three adult ice-devouring worms crashed through the rock wall, their translucent cavities filled with undigested human limbs. Their sensory antennae atop their heads swayed towards the direction of Old Chen's corpse, and their secretions poured down like torrential rain.

  Li Wuhen forced open his left eye amidst the excruciating pain. He saw Xiaoman tearing her clothes trying to wrap his rotting right leg, saw the reflection in the icicles where the melting foreman's corpse turned into black mist, and also saw the thing wriggling under his own back skin—that wasn't a wild bone totem, but more like some kind of reverse consumption.

  When the three icicles simultaneously pierced into the rock wall, Li Wuhen was just stuffing Xiaoman into the compartment of the ore car. The acid secreted by the ice-devouring worms corroded the iron frame of the cart, and the floating broken human faces in the sizzling smoke were—the vengeful spirits of the swallowed blood slaves materialized.

  "Crawl towards the western side fissure." Li Wuhen snapped the chain of the blood slave ring, the rusted nails tearing off large chunks of flesh. The blood beads seeping from his wounds suddenly hovered in mid-air, projecting the preliminary shape of a bloody totem on the ice wall.

  Xiaoman clutched half a piece of cold marrow ore and cut her palm. When the warm blood of the young girl dripped onto Li Wuhen's spine, the originally dark blue vascular patterns suddenly contracted into a vortex. This descendant of the witch clan wouldn't know until death that what she unconsciously drew was a variant of the witch sacrificer's soul-sealing blood talisman.

  The dome of the mine collapsed with a thunderous roar.

  The giant worm's jaw narrowly grazed past Li Wuhen's ear, tearing a strand of his gray-white hair. The foul-smelling acid burned honeycomb-like holes in the miner's uniform, revealing the scarred back of the youth—the intersecting whip marks glowed with an eerie blue, resembling moving runes.

  "So you're here." The female voice was like a gentle ringing of jade chimes. Ling Qingchao's silver-threaded shoes lightly touched the edge of the ice abyss, her folding fan opening and closing to shatter the acid rain flying towards her. This envoy of the Divine Race who should be seated on the cloud terrace narrowed her eyes in the stench of blood, the inscription on the gold lock around her neck showing a line of small characters: Chenshen Year Frostfall early morning third hour.

  Li Wuhen's pupils suddenly dilated. He felt as if someone had thrust a red-hot iron rod into his coccyx, and some kind of compound-eye structure visual nerve was growing inside his cranium. Through these newly born "eyes", he saw a three-inch-long golden snake coiled around Ling Qingchao's heart, saw the black insect eggs curled up in Xiaoman's throat, and also saw two fighting light masses inside his own chest cavity.

  "Number seventy-nine of the Holy Blood Pursuit Order." Ling Qingchao's fan bone propped against the youth's chin, her tone soft as if coaxing a child to take medicine, "What a sorry state, Lord Demon."

  Her toe suddenly crushed Li Wuhen's left ring finger. Before the sound of bone breaking dissipated, twelve gold cones inscribed with lightning runes had penetrated the major acupoints of the youth's body. This torture tool originating from the Nine Skies Thunder Pool would dissolve the pain nerves of the rebel first, ensuring that the tortured person was conscious while being refined into ashes.

  Li Wuhen's Adam's apple moved up and down. His vocal cords were burned through by the thunderfire, and each word he spoke sounded like rusted iron rubbing against each other: "Have you... smelled...rotten divine blood?"

  The instant Ling Qingchao raised her eyebrows, the youth's chest exploded!

  It wasn't self-destruction, but a more terrifying kind of ingestion. Those gold cones that had pierced into his body suddenly softened and twisted, like noodles sucked by a beast, sinking into Li Wuhen's chest. The special envoy of the Divine Race finally changed expression; retreating quickly, she threw out seven life-saving talismans, which turned into gray-white butterflies in mid-air.

  Li Wuhen's spine arched into an unnatural curve, and dark gold spines erupted from his previously rotten skin. A third vertical pupil grew on his forehead, and those bloodshot eyes were staring straight at the golden lock around Ling Qingchao's neck.

  "Wild bones..." The Divine Race envoy gritted out these two words between her teeth. The fan surface she unfolded revealed a nine-headed giant bird totem, and the temperature in the entire mine began to rise wildly.

  Xiaoman suddenly emitted a shrill crow-like scream. The frail girl's limb joints twisted in the opposite direction, and her fingertips shot out silkworm silk only puppet masters possessed. Seventeen incomplete blood slave corpses emerged from the ground, using their bodies as shields to protect Li Wuhen—no one noticed the scorpion-shaped birthmark behind her left ear was bleeding.

  The ice abyss began to sink. When the first ray of moonlight pierced through a thousand layers of rock and illuminated Li Wuhen's brow, the bone spines on his back suddenly grew three inches longer, accurately piercing into Ling Qingchao's left pectoral muscle. The unique amber-gold blood of the Divine Race sprayed onto the ice walls, instantly blossoming into ten thousand lotus flowers.

  "So it is." Ling Qingchao allowed the bone spines to pierce through her body, her fingertips gently caressing the cracked face of the youth, "Your spirit-devouring power must be born from hatred."

  She broke the bone spines and stabbed them into her own heart, the snake-shaped heart emitting a baby-like cry. Before consciousness faded, the Divine Race envoy whispered in Li Wuhen's ear with bloody lips: "Beware...the Heavenly Dao Contract...will find you..."

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  The explosive wave flipped the entire top layer of the vein.

  As Li Wuhen embraced the unconscious Xiaoman falling into the cold marrow mine shaft, he caught a glimpse of Ling Qingchao's body turning into gold powder disappearing. Her final lip movement clearly said "hour," and from the heavens above came forty-nine tolls of mourning bells—the sound of the Xuantian Bell only rang when a divine respector of the Nine Skies realm fell.

  When the acidic secretion of the ice-devouring worms solidified into blue amber, Li Wuhen was falling into the throat of hell.

  The gale force winds of the Abyss Forbidden Zone carved away his right ear cartilage, exposing white bone. The blood flowing from Xiaoman's seven orifices gathered and ascended against gravity, condensing into three hundred and sixty blood-colored bells—witch clan's self-preservation forbidden technique "Blood Nightmare Substitute" which now transformed into countless wailing infant spirits under the erosion of the abyss.

  "Your fate has forked."

  Suddenly, a hoarse voice of the blind man resonated in the void, carrying an ancient echo. Li Wuhen bit his tongue fiercely to regain consciousness, but tasted the sulfur-like bitterness instead—he finally saw the route of his fall, and below, the winding bone Great Wall was contracting and expanding with his heartbeat, like a living creature swallowing and exhaling.

  Xiaoman's puppet strings suddenly danced on their own. The girl rolled her eyes upwards, carving wedge-shaped blood patterns in the air with her ten fingers, and the dismembered limbs swallowed by the abyss suddenly converged into a bridge. And when Li Wuhen staggered onto the first white bone, the whole bridge emitted a dazzling green light, illuminating three thousand ancient corpses embedded in crystals on the rock walls.

  All these corpses lacked lower halves.

  Nine zhang deep in the ice crystal, the lizard-like bodies from the pelvis downwards turned into root-like muscle fibers, vibrating synchronously with the entire vein. Li Wuhen's Wild Bone Totem suddenly became hot, and he recognized these forgotten craftsmen—the pioneers eight thousand years ago who laid the foundation for the Canglan continent, whose bone marrow flowed with the forbidden blood of gods and demons.

  "Bloodline purity nine points eleven parts, inferior quality."

  From the sound of the stone coffin opening, a green jade skeleton walked out. Its jawbone opened and closed, spewing out emerald-green fireflies. In its hand was a bronze lantern flickering on and off, the wick actually a living gecko, its tail tightly wrapped around the shadow of Li Wuhen's heart.

  The abyss began to boil.

  Li Wuhen's spine felt as if it were filled with molten lava. Those fireflies from the jade skeletons drilled into his back wounds, rewriting the Wild Bone Totem into the shape of thorny vines. In a daze, he heard the nursery rhyme his adoptive mother sang before her execution: "The crescent moon cuts the wheat ears, the gods eat flesh and the demons devour light..."

  Xiaoman suddenly emitted an inhuman howl. She was lifted into the air by an invisible force, the black eggs in her throat bursting out and transforming into winged insects that flew towards the jade skeleton. Amidst the severe pain, Li Wuhen swung the broken blood slave ring, the sparks from the metal collision igniting the abyssal black mist.

  The skull cap of the jade skeleton slowly opened, revealing a brain soaked in jelly—a mass of grayish white grooves wriggling with silver threadworms, each representing the memories of the dead.

  "Look, piglets bred by Heaven." The jade skeleton pointed a finger bone at Xiaoman's forehead, "The last true blood of the witch clan, refined into a container."

  Li Wuhen's right arm suddenly acted without control, plunging into Xiaoman's abdomen. Blood splattered everywhere as the girl's skin cracked inch by inch, revealing the interwoven emerald-colored puppet strings inside—her internal organs had long been replaced by marionette puppets, with a blood-dripping gold lock tied to the left ventricle.

  The abyss resounded with the clamor of shattering chains.

  The blood-red whirlpool in Li Wuhen's pupils spun rapidly, and he saw every vein in Xiaoman connected to some altar in the void, saw the silver threadworms inside the jade skeleton's brain rewriting the patterns of the Wild Bone Totem, and also saw scales growing on his left fingertips belonging to the demon race.

  "Choose." The lantern in the jade skeleton's hand suddenly exploded, the gecko corpse transforming into a blood sword hovering above Li Wuhen's brow, "Use this girl's witch blood to nourish the Wild Bone, or..."

  A cold gleam flashed.

  Li Wuhen gouged out his left eye with the newly grown scales. The moment the milky white eyeball fell into the abyss, the malevolent qi of the entire Forbidden Zone surged violently in reverse flow, and black flames surged from his damaged eye socket, burning all the puppet strings inside Xiaoman's body.

  "I choose the third path." The youth chuckled hoarsely, broken ribs piercing through his chest, "The taste of the Demon Lord's bloodline—" he tore apart the ribcage prison of the jade skeleton with his bare hands, "Why don't you taste it first?"

  The abyss erupted.

  When Li Wuhen bit through the jade skeleton's cervical vertebrae, the silver threadworms crawled into his body following the throat. Mixed with the intense pain were fragments of memories not his own: the signing site of the blood oath contract, the nine-headed giant bird tearing apart the Heavenly Dao barrier, the first generation witch priest gouging out both eyes to seal the abyssal gaze...

  When Xiaoman woke up, she saw Li Wuhen carving his own vertebrae with the jade skeleton's finger bones. Seven ancient corpses drained dry lay beneath his feet, and the Wild Bone Totem on his back had transformed into an eerie pattern of double-headed snakes entwined around a blood moon.

  When the youth turned around, a silver threadworm slithered out of his left eye hole: "It's time to settle debts, Slave."

  The bronze gate of the blood slave camp collapsed at midnight. Anu was combing the hair of a corpse.

  Suddenly, the thirty thousand resistance fighters immersed in the corpse pool opened their eyelids, the wall fluorite casting their eyes into an eerie green. Stepping through the blood waves into the camp, Li Wuhen found all the rotted heads turning toward the northwest direction—there stood the Divine Race's beast-taming Soul Refining Cauldron, the continuously burning flesh rising three zhang high columns of resentful qi.

  "Forty-seven steps southeast corner." Anu's voice came mixed with the sounds of mechanical gears turning. She sat atop the gallows, thin puppet threads sewing up the ruptured barriers caused by the rebellion, moonlight rippling across the bronze lock peeking out from her collar.

  Li Wuhen's spear point pierced through the guard's crown, but the black blood congealed in mid-air into ghost-face totems. These guards in the condensed sha phase froze in the act of sealing their gestures, their half-inch long red nails pricking the brocade pouch at his waist—inside was the silver threadworm corpse brought from the abyss.

  "Watch out for the Hou Qing level!"

  The harsh voice of the blind man exploded. Li Wuhen spun around, severing the iron chains of the yin soldiers behind him, but caught a glimpse in the mirror light of the corpse crawling out of the pile—it was Old Wu, a fellow miner turned into a human pillar three days ago. The putrefied corpse now had bulging eyes, and its split abdominal cavity was filled with egg sacs of abyssal worms.

  Infernal fire erupted from the ground crack. It wasn’t ordinary fire, but the purple flame of sha energy conjured by the Wild Bone Totem. As the flames climbed the camp flag, the embroidered nine-clawed dragon suddenly flapped its tail and took flight, becoming a real demonic beast attacking the rioters—the camp flag was actually the Xiantian Seal used by the Divine Race to suppress qi.

  The sound of bodies being torn apart continued incessantly. Anu's puppet threads weaved through the battlefield in the air, reassembling flying organs into combat puppets. When she cut her long hair for the third time to fill the gaps in the fine threads, the silver threadworms inside Li Wuhen suddenly ached—an alert from the abyss resonance.

  "The array's focal point is the Demon-subduing Pillar." The blind man appeared ghostlike on the eastern watchtower, corpse beetles crawling out of his broken wine pot, "Coat the blade with demon blood."

  Li Wuhen clenched his teeth and bit into the war spear. The blood droplets splashed from his right wrist artery were purplish-blue, shooting star-like towards the runes on the Demon-subduing Pillar. The Buddhist sacred artifact emitted a dying hum, the Bodhi seeds on the staff exploding into bone spines, pinning the Divine Race elder to the bronze cauldron.

  As the boiling human oil poured over the elder, his skin rapidly inflated with dragon scale patterns. A bronze order token fell from the sky, inscribed with "C Grade Livestock Permit", with smaller characters below stating: permission granted to the Canglan Continent branch to create three thousand scaled humans for naval warfare.

  "Tao Tie livestock!" One of the rioters, a scar-faced man, shouted furiously as he ripped open his shirt to reveal full-body fire-branded runes. Li Wuhen recognized them as the most vicious "Earth Listening Curse", which amplified every ounce of pain a hundredfold throughout the body.

  Anu suddenly fell off the gallows.

  Her delicate neck encircled by severed puppet threads, her limbs spread like petals. When the first Divine Race cavalryman was incinerated by the sha energy flames, the girl tore open her chest—there were no internal organs or bones, only a dense network of gears operating inside.

  Li Wuhen stumbled and knelt to the ground. The Wild Bone Totem was voraciously consuming his liver, and in the distance, the sound of horns heralded the arrival of Divine Race reinforcements. The silver threadworms on their armor suddenly began to combust en masse. Each burning worm revealed a blood moon mark identical to the patterns on the lantern of the abyss jade skeleton.

  The blind man splashed wine on the remnants of the Demon-subduing Pillar, creating the preliminary form of the Return Void Array on the ground. When his turbid blind eyes turned towards Li Wuhen, the youth who never bowed finally understood—this uprising was merely the prelude to a grander sacrifice.

  When Li Wuhen crushed the seventh puppet core crystal, a thunderstorm was drenching the blood-engraved Tao Tie totem on the Divine Race altar.

  The Thousand Puppet Pavilion was the true core beneath the blood slave camp. Nine hundred and ninety-nine suspended puppets were engaged in fierce battle. Their skulls housed the lingering spirits of their former hosts, cries and screams mixing with the clash of mechanical locks, echoing like lanterns in the nine hells.

  "When Heng Tian Column C-3!" Anu whispered on Li Wuhen's back, her severed right leg dripping with silver mercury. With each word, a piece of the amber gear in her eyes fell out, a sign that the witch clan's soul-binding art was about to fail.

  Li Wuhen's spine began to protrude with sword-like scales, feeling the Wild Bone Totem transform into different forms every thirty heartbeats. When the soul-severing knife shattered the diamond seal protecting the puppet king, the broken seal paper floated to his palm and ignited, revealing a hidden spiritual energy trail.

  The blind man scattered a handful of iron caltrops (a special type of projectile), the reflective projectiles showing anomalies: the throats of every severely wounded insurgent were crawling with silver threadworms, modifying their vocal cords into some kind of resonator.

  "Guanyin inverted!" The roar of the scar-faced man stirred up a great wave. The main beam of the Thousand Puppet Pavilion broke, and seventy-two green-faced puppets formed a lotus formation. When the lotus bloomed, the star chart on the pavilion roof projected the shadow of a blood-oath contract—thenine-headed giant bird pecking at the chains of heavenly law.

  Li Wuhen's stomach suddenly convulsed. He spat out a large mouthful of black water, in which live red threadworms swarmed, crazily drilling towards the exposed spinal cord interface of Anu. The girl suddenly burst into silver-bell laughter, and eight puppet strings extended from her damaged throat into the back of the youth's neck.

  When all the floor tiles of the Thousand Puppet Pavilion flipped over, a blood pool soaking three hundred children was exposed. Their hearts had been replaced with gears, and their fontanelles were carved with the words "shared karma". Li Wuhen broke the puppet string inserted into his neck, and the bloody smell made the Wild Bone Totem transform into a double-headed dragon.

  The old blind man suddenly tossed a bone flute. The rotten flute emitted a night owl's mournful cry when played, causing the nearly dead silver threadworms to explode. Just as everyone thought the danger was over, the mechanical children in the pool opened their amber pupils, and all living beings were instantly immobilized by a binding spell.

  "Sacrifices are sufficient." Anu's voice came from the dome of the Thousand Puppet Pavilion. She hovered in the center of a golden-thread woven puppet net, her chest gear cluster transforming into a blood-red octagram, "Li Wuhen, you should know—"

  Nine bolts of lightning shattered the roof when the Divine Race pursuit troops' iron boots stepped into the blood pool. In the electric light, Li Wuhen saw the golden snakes surging within each enemy's body, and also saw the end of Anu's broken puppet strings tied to star trajectories—they were the coordinates of the celestial magic surge eight thousand years ago.

  When the Wild Bone finally awakened to its second form, Li Wuhen crushed all the residual soul fragments in the puppet core crystals. Every drop of his blood transformed into black flame arrows, and Anu's final lip movement before vanishing into ashes was: "Remember..."