Transforming into a stunningly beautiful fox spirit, leaving a scar on the heart of a prodigy.

Su Chang'an's third tail gently placed Chen Xuan on the rock at the entrance of the cave.

The rock surface was rough and prickly, covered with fine particles, and also had dark red dried bloodstains.

The tail retracted.

Su Chang'an turned around. The hem of his red robe brushed against the ground, creating a slight gust of air.

Chen Xuan leaned against the rock.

His spine was broken, and he lost all sensation below his chest. He could only tilt his head to one side, his gaze fixed on Su Chang'an's back.

His left hand rested on the edge of the rock. It was the same hand that had been gripping Su Chang'an's sleeve so tightly just moments before.

Slowly bend your fingers. Press your fingertips against the rough rock surface.

Hard.

The skin on his fingertips was chafed raw. Dark red blood seeped out and flowed down the rock's texture.

He didn't stop. His fingers continued to dig downwards relentlessly.

The edges of my nails curled and cracked, tiny pieces getting stuck in the cracks in the rocks. A piercing pain shot through my nerves and into my brain.

He didn't even frown.

His eyes were wide open, and the corners of his eyes were torn due to excessive force, with blood vessels covering the whites of his eyes.

He watched as Su Chang'an walked further and further away, watching that flamboyant red color gradually melt into the dark red halo of the cave.

Powerless.

An overwhelming sense of powerlessness washed over him, almost overwhelming his reason.

He couldn't save her. He was a useless man now, lying there like a dead dog, watching helplessly as she walked alone towards a quasi-emperor.

Their fingers tightened again.

A white mark was scraped into the rock surface. Bloodied fingertips left five shocking bloody marks on the stone.

Su Chang'an did not turn around.

She knew Chen Xuan was watching her. The gaze from behind was terrifyingly hot, filled with the extreme obsession and despair of a mad dog.

She continued walking forward. Beneath her feet lay a mountain of broken chains.

More than 350 remnants of chains lay scattered on the ground, each one engraved with deathly runes and stained with Li Changgeng's gray-black quasi-emperor essence blood.

Su Chang'an stepped directly onto it with the sole of his boot.

"when."

The sound of metal scraping against metal echoed through the empty cavern. Though not loud, the sound reverberated through the rock walls, creating layers of reverberation.

"Clang. Clang. Clang."

She made no attempt to walk quietly. With each step she took, the broken chain on the ground was kicked away by half an inch, making an extremely jarring sound.

Beside the stone platform.

Li Changgeng's body suddenly stiffened.

With his hands still on the last main lock, he turned around abruptly the moment he heard the noise.

His eyes were bloodshot, with dark brown blood vessels running around them. His white hair was disheveled, and his face was contorted in a rage, a result of being forcibly interrupted from casting a spell.

The quasi-emperor's aura triggered an instinctive outburst.

There were no hand seals, no starting stance. Pure power of law surged from his body, transforming into a tangible pressure, like an invisible Mount Tai, madly crushing towards the source of the sound.

The air crackled with a tooth-grinding sound, and the rubble on the ground instantly turned to dust. The broken chains trembled violently on the ground, clanging and clattering against each other.

That oppressive force, powerful enough to crush the Great Sage, rushed straight towards Su Chang'an's face.

Su Chang'an didn't stop. He didn't raise any protective qi, nor did he use any defensive techniques.

She simply lazily raised her seventh tail.

A dark red light shone from the base of the tail, instantly flowing to the tip. The light was not dazzling, but it carried an extremely ancient and heavy sense of vicissitude.

The Celestial Fox Origin. The pure essence left behind by the nine-tailed celestial fox on the snowy plains of the far north three thousand years ago.

The pressure of a quasi-emperor collided head-on with the dark red light.

There was no earth-shattering explosion, no surging air.

The overwhelming power of the laws disintegrated the moment it touched the red light. Like ice and snow meeting a red-hot iron, it silently melted into the most primordial spiritual energy.

The red light continued to spread forward along the remaining spiritual veins in the air.

It swept past Li Changgeng, and past the stone platform.

On the stone platform.

The withered body, reduced to a shriveled shell, miraculously trembled.

The dozen or so main locks that pierced his chest cavity made a very faint clanging sound. His shriveled chest rose and fell slightly, forcing out an extremely weak gasp.

Resonance.

Forced resonance caused by shared origins.

Li Changgeng's eyelids twitched suddenly.

He stared intently at the dark red light, his gaze slowly moving upwards until it settled on Su Chang'an's face.

The cave was dimly lit, but even the quasi-emperor's eyes could count a speck of dust.

That face. Those five tails. That aura that he had been searching for with a madman for three thousand years.

Li Changgeng's expression completely changed.

The rage vanished instantly, replaced by utter confusion and disorientation. His lips trembled violently, and the muscles in his cheeks twitched uncontrollably.

"master……"

He murmured. His voice was hoarse, with a heavy nasal tone, and even a hint of a sob.

He loosened the main lock with both hands and slowly turned his body around. His knees buckled, and he was about to kneel down, facing Su Chang'an.

Three thousand years of inner demons, three thousand years of arduous searching. He thought he had finally found that person in this dark and sunless underground.

His knees were just an inch off the ground.

He abruptly stopped.

The tears in Li Changgeng's eyes evaporated instantly. The Quasi-Emperor forcibly suppressed the raging waves of emotion with his divine sense; he recognized him.

The face is exactly the same. The aura is exactly the same.

However, the look in his eyes was off.

The person in my memory always looked at me with an unyielding sense of helplessness and compassion. Even when he finally burned away his own essence to seal himself away, those eyes remained gentle.

The eyes before me were cold, clear-headed, and filled with undisguised mockery, as if they were watching a huge joke.

This is not his master.

This is the wandering ghost in the consciousness of that little beast from the Chen family. It's a thief who has taken over his master's essence!

Li Changgeng slowly stood up straight. His knees were ramrod straight.

The confusion on his face vanished completely, leaving only extreme coldness and murderous intent.

Su Chang'an stopped three zhang away from the stone platform.

She looked down at Li Changgeng with disdain, her gaze sweeping over him, then across the gruesome body on the stone platform, before returning to his face.

"Kneel down," Su Chang'an said, her voice crisp and piercing in the deathly silence of the cave. "Why aren't you kneeling anymore? Didn't you call me 'Master' so smoothly just now?"

Li Changgeng stared at her expressionlessly. The Quasi-Emperor Laws re-converged around him, silently sealing off all escape routes.

Su Chang'an smirked, his eyes full of mockery.

"Over three hundred and fifty secondary locks, you were having a blast chopping them down. You've made yourself look like a ghost." She raised her left hand, pointing to the chain piercing the heart on the stone platform. "What about these dozen or so deadly main locks? Why aren't you doing anything about them?"

Li Changgeng's eye twitched violently.

"Afraid to move?" Su Chang'an took a step forward, directly stepping into Li Changgeng's oppressive aura. "Are you out of your mind, Quasi-Emperor? These chains are all connected to her heart. If one breaks, her heart will crack an inch. If you cut them all, she'll die right in front of you, not even ashes will be left."

"Shut up." Li Changgeng squeezed out the two words through gritted teeth, his killing intent almost uncontrollable.

Shut up? Su Chang'an not only didn't stop, but went all out.

"You're afraid." She stared into Li Changgeng's eyes, speaking rapidly, each word piercing his heart. "Three thousand years ago, you didn't dare acknowledge her, watching helplessly as she was sealed away. Three thousand years later, you've cultivated to become a quasi-emperor, thinking you're so powerful you can save her, only to find out you still can't!"

Su Chang was blind, completely ignoring the increasingly violent turbulent flow of laws around him.

"You kneel here, putting on this act of dying with unwavering love. You've cut hundreds of those outer chains, and you're just here wallowing in self-pity?" Su Chang'an's voice was icy cold, full of contempt. "You know perfectly well that she won't last a month. You're too afraid to break the main lock; you're just a coward who can't face her and die."

"To put it bluntly, you don't even have the will to face her death." Su Chang'an delivered the final blow. "You're just a piece of trash. You were a piece of trash three thousand years ago, and you're still a piece of trash now."

boom!

The rocks beneath Li Changgeng's feet instantly shattered.

Without any flying debris, it was directly crushed into nothingness by the laws in mid-air.

Break the defense.

The most hidden, the worst, the most unbearable scars were torn open by Su Chang'an with his bare hands in the most brutal way, and slapped bloodily onto his face.

Li Changgeng stared intently at Su Chang'an, his chest heaving violently, panting like a leaky bellows.

He didn't refute. Because every word Su Chang'an said was the absolute truth.

He stared intently at Su Chang'an, at the five gray-white tails behind her, and at the seventh tail that shimmered with dark red light.

The rage in his eyes gradually faded, replaced by a chilling, morbid greed.

"You're right." Li Changgeng actually admitted it, his voice regaining the calm of a quasi-emperor, but revealing a mad, obsessive side. "I really can't save this body. It's locked to the heart; if the lock is broken, it dies; if it's not broken, it withers away."

He took a big step forward.

"But I can save her!"

Li Changgeng's gaze, like that of a venomous snake, was fixed on Su Chang'an's chest.

"Your essence is too pure... so pure that it can actually awaken her seventh tail." His speech quickened, his eyes flashing with an alarming light. "You and she share the same origin; your heart and blood will absolutely not repel her!"

Su Chang'an narrowed her phoenix eyes slightly, her left hand clenching quietly. The wound on her palm reopened, and blood dripped down between her fingers.

"This is simply divine intervention!" Li Changgeng laughed maniacally. "Heaven has delivered this body of yours to me. As long as I capture you alive, I'll drain your nine-tailed essence!"

He suddenly pointed at the mangled body on the stone platform.

"I will use your heart's blood and essence to personally forge a vessel! I will transfer the last bit of consciousness within her body into your heart!"

Li Changgeng spread his arms wide, and the Quasi-Emperor Laws intertwined wildly in mid-air, outlining complex and bizarre array patterns.

"When the container is complete! When the destined celestial orbits align! I will be able to take this container, shatter the river of time, and return to the far northern snowfields three thousand years ago!"

He burst into wild laughter in the cave: "I'm going to bring her back! I'll bring her back to life, fully intact! And you—"

He suddenly pointed at Su Chang'an.

"Your body, your three souls and seven spirits, everything about you, will become the stepping stones for her resurrection! This is a blessing you've accumulated over many lifetimes!"

Su Chang'an listened quietly to this rambling nonsense.

There was no fear, no anger, only utter disgust at the sight of flies.

"Neuropathy."

Su Chang'an coldly uttered three words.

The fervor on Li Changgeng's face froze instantly.

"For your own shady desires, you're willing to use the lives of the living to fill the pits of the dead. You keep saying you want to save her," Su Chang'an sneered. "Did you even ask her if she wanted to be a monster? You created this ridiculous rule of the Supreme Forgetfulness Sect just to cover up your selfish cowardice, didn't you?"

"court death!"

Li Changgeng completely lost his patience and unleashed his Quasi-Emperor cultivation without reservation.

Without further ado, he suddenly stretched out his right hand, his five fingers forming a claw, and fiercely grabbed at Su Chang'an from a distance.

The Quasi-Emperor Law instantly materialized! Hundreds of gray law chains burst forth from the rock walls on all sides, intertwining to form a massive cage of despair, crashing down on Su Chang'an!

All escape routes are blocked, and the space is locked!

The air around Su Chang'an instantly froze into an iron plate, making even breathing a luxury.

The insurmountable gap between the Great Saint Realm and the Quasi-Emperor Realm was laid bare at this moment. Faced with absolute power suppression, even the purest origin is of no use.

The cage of laws contracted rapidly, and the chains screeched as they rubbed together.

In the distance. The entrance to the cave.

Chen Xuan lay sprawled on the rock like a lump of mud.

He stared intently at Li Changgeng's hand, at the law-enclosed cage descending upon him, and at the red-clad figure trapped in the center of this deadly predicament.

"ah--!!"

A beastly roar, unlike any human voice, was ripped out from deep within Chen Xuan's throat.

He suddenly exerted force with his left hand, which was resting on the edge of the rock face.

"Snap!"

Five fingers were broken off at the base! The stark white bone fragments pierced through the flesh and embedded themselves deeply in the rock.

He completely ignored his crippled hand and, relying solely on his sheer willpower, used his broken arms to firmly support himself on the ground, managing to lift his upper body an inch!

The fractured spine was violently rubbing and dislocating inside his body, causing excruciating pain that could kill someone on the spot, and his vision instantly went black.

No.

We can't let her die.

Nobody the hell is allowed to touch my people!

Chen Xuan clenched his teeth tightly.

"Snap!"

He bit off half of his tongue himself!

A mouthful of blood mixed with fragments of internal organs spurted directly from his mouth.

The essence and blood did not land on the ground; instead, they exploded into a blinding cloud of blood mist in mid-air.

Chen Xuan's eyes turned completely black. There were no whites, no pupils, only a murderous and violent intent that devoured everything.

"Break for me!!!"

He was screaming wildly in his mind.

Inside the body, deep within that long-dried and shattered dantian.

A faint, yet pure, black sword intent was ignited by this mouthful of blood essence!

That was the strongest killing intent he had infused into his soul when he rebuilt his Dao foundation. His last trump card.

The Qi Sea trembled violently, and the remaining meridians shattered inch by inch under the impact of this violent force.

Chen Xuan's skin instantly burst open with countless tiny bloody gashes, and in the blink of an eye, he was covered in blood.

The broken black sword hanging at his waist.

"Buzz—!"

A high-pitched sword cry ripped through the deathly silence of the cave! The fragments of the heavy sword burst forth with a dark red light, and a monstrous aura broke through the quasi-emperor's pressure, heading straight for the dome!

He was about to draw his sword.

Even if my spine is shattered, even if my meridians are completely destroyed, even if I burn out my last second of life.

No one in the world can touch his fox in front of him!