After I stopped trying, a rich woman trained me into a demon emperor.

Zhou Ran didn't speak, but simply gripped the hilt of the knife and nodded.

The silver light receded.

Xiao Rou's figure shrank, faded, and disappeared at the end of the passage.

The moon's path begins to narrow.

A silvery-white beam of light rolled from the ground toward the dome, like a piece of silk being pulled back.

The pebbles floating on the wasteland fell to the ground, making soft, shattering sounds.

In the final moments before the passage closed, a voice fell from the void.

It sounds like a casual remark, but every word carries immense weight.

"The fourth mark on your body is older than those three women's."

The voice of the Moon Emperor.

Zhou Ran gripped the knife handle tightly with all five fingers.

The fourth mark.

The bloodthirsty ancestral blood mark is on the side of the neck, the soul imprint of the same frequency as the illusory sound is in the sea of ​​consciousness, and the coffin burial law of the Nine Netherworlds is on the back of the hand.

He knew perfectly well the three marks and the three empresses.

What is the fourth one?

The silver light completely dissipated.

The cracks in the dome closed again, and the sky returned to its deathly gray hue.

Zhou Ran lowered his head and looked at his left wrist.

The gray pattern on the return path jumped three times the instant the moon path closed.

It wasn't the usual weak throbbing; it was a pounding, leaping motion. The force was so great that the blood vessels beneath the skin bulged.

After three taps, the gray lines quieted down.

Immediately afterwards, a symbol appeared at the end of the gray line.

Extremely small. Embedded in the skin texture, it is almost unnoticeable unless you look closely.

Zhou Ran had never seen the shape of the symbol before. It was neither a demonic rune of the Sixth Heaven nor a regular script of the Imperial Prince system.

The strokes are archaic, as if carved out stroke by stroke on a stone with fingernails.

Qin San came closer.

"My lord, that thing on your wrist..."

"Never mind."

Zhou Ran pulled down his sleeves to cover the gray pattern.

He gripped the Taihuang Black Blade, turned around, and walked towards the Devouring Heaven Demon Palace.

After taking two steps, I paused.

The Moon Emperor said, "He's older than those three women."

The black lines on the return path connect to Blue Star, and to the passage maintained by Lin Qingxue.

These lines have been there since the day he arrived in the Sixth Heaven.

It is older than the marks of the three empresses.

Zhou Ran gritted his teeth and strode forward.

Beneath the cuff, the ancient pattern was still slightly warm.

The day after Xiaorou left.

Zhou Ran's primordial spirit could not hold on any longer.

Seven drops of imperial blood were extracted. Although the three cracks were sealed with a charred shell by the bloodthirsty ancestral blood, the cracks on the surface of the primordial spirit were still spreading outwards.

Adding to the hidden injuries accumulated from his head-on clash with the Emperor's son a few days ago, his sea of ​​consciousness was riddled with cracks, and the Demon Emperor's essence was leaking out from the cracks.

He sat cross-legged in the side hall and meditated for two hours.

It's no use. The crack is expanding faster than it can heal itself.

Huanyin's footsteps stopped for a moment outside the side hall door.

Zhou Ran put down the Taihuang Black Blade.

"Come in."

The door opened.

Huanyin changed into clean clothes, washing away the dirt and bloodstains from her dark red dress, and tied her hair into a loose bun.

She carried a spirit lamp in her hand, its wick burning with a pale blue flame. Wherever she went, the air became warm and moist.

She placed the spirit lamp next to the black coffin and sat cross-legged behind Zhou Ran.

"There's a delay in the connection between the Soul Imprint of the Same Frequency and your primordial spirit."

Huanyin's voice was very low and a little hoarse.

"If it is not repaired properly, the soul imprint will fall off your sea of ​​consciousness within three days."

Zhou Ran knew she was telling the truth.

After the great battle when the Emperor's son descended, Huan Yin's soul imprint of the same frequency was subjected to several rounds of impact, and three stripes appeared.

The battle damage report from the Underworld Warehouse clearly stated: "The connection between the Soul Imprint of the Same Frequency and the Emperor's Divine Soul was delayed by about half a breath."

A half-breath delay is nothing unusual in daily cultivation.

When it comes to the life-or-death struggle, half a breath can mean the difference between life and death.

"How do I fix it?"

"Perfect resonance".

Huanyin's ten fingers rested on his back.

Zhou Ran was wearing an undergarment, the fabric of which was very thin.

Huan Yin pressed her fingertips against the sides of his shoulder blades through the thin cloth, and dark red soul power seeped out from her fingertips, warm and hot, probing inward along the meridian openings on both sides of his spine.

"The clothes are in the way," Huanyin said.

Zhou Ran slipped her inner garment down from her shoulders to her waist.

A large portion of her back was exposed.

His skin was covered with marks of old injuries.

The scars left by the fragments of the Emperor's space, the bruises from the backlash when the name was erased, and the blood that spurted from his nose when the Emperor's blood was extracted, which splattered onto his shoulder and dried into dark red spots.

Huan Yin placed her hands on it.

It's not the kind of light touch used for mana detection.

It's the pulse of the entire palm, all ten fingers, and even the wrist, felt inch by inch.

The dark red soul power seeped into Zhou Ran's body from the point of contact with his skin, spreading along the meridian lines on his back.

The Soul Imprint of the Same Frequency began to hum at the edge of his sea of ​​consciousness, resonating with the Mother Imprint within Huan Yin's body.

Their breathing rates began to synchronize.

Zhou Ran inhaled, and Huan Yin inhaled.

Zhou Ran exhaled, and Huan Yin exhaled.

Their heartbeats matched. Their magical energy surged in unison.

Even the slight tremor at the edge of Zhou Ran's primordial spirit crack was captured, enveloped, and smoothed out by Huan Yin's soul power.

Huanyin's palm slid from her shoulder blade to her waistline.

The fingers would pause for a moment as they passed over each old scar, the dark red soul power swirling around the scar, gradually pulling out the accumulated death energy and remnants of the Emperor's rule.

Zhou then bit down hard with his molars.

The side effect of resonance is that one's consciousness is completely opened.

Huan Yin's consciousness and his consciousness intertwined, reading each other.

He could feel the warmth of Huan Yin's palm, and he could also feel her fingertips trembling slightly. That trembling had nothing to do with magic.

The crack in his primordial spirit narrowed by one-third.

Huanyin's fingers moved up along his waistline and pressed on an acupoint in the middle of his spine.

As the dark red soul power poured in, Zhou Ran's body involuntarily stiffened for a moment.

The resonance of the soul imprints at the same frequency penetrated to the very core.

At this moment, the boundaries of their consciousness almost overlapped.

As the soul power was poured in more intensely, Zhou Ran could smell a faint bloody scent on the ends of Huan Yin's hair.

She gave her innate musical note to the Taihuang Black Blade, causing her cultivation level to drop by half a level. After her foundation was damaged, her soul power, mixed with blood energy, would overflow from time to time.

Huanyin was behind him, her hands pressed against his back, her chin almost touching the back of his neck.

When her lips brushed against the skin on the back of his neck, Zhou Ran's entire body hair stood on end.

"What I cultivate is the soul, what I touch is the skin."

Huan Yin's voice was extremely low, and her breath was hot against the back of his neck.

"If you pretend you don't know, I'll really just focus on cultivating my soul."

Zhou Ran gripped the hilt of the Taihuang Black Blade resting in front of his knees.

The dark red soul power penetrated deep into the inner layers of the sea of ​​consciousness, repeatedly polishing at the boundary between the soul imprint of the same frequency and the wall of the primordial spirit. Cracks closed one by one, and fragments returned to their places one by one.

Just as the repair process was halfway through, a frame flashed through the depths of Zhou Ran's consciousness.

Extremely fast.

The light flickered for only half a breath.

moonlight.

A long passageway.

A woman's profile.

The face was so blurred that only the outline remained. The features were indistinguishable, the expression was indistinguishable, and even the color of the hair was indistinguishable.

The entire frame was sanded clean, and all the details were scraped away.

But one detail survived.

The woman had a black mark wrapped around her arm.

It's very thin, extending along the inside of the forearm to the wrist.

The color was dark gray, and the pulsating frequency was extremely familiar, exactly the same as the black pattern on Zhou Ran's left wrist.

The scene was shattered by the aftershocks of the soul imprint's repair.

The fragments churned in his sea of ​​consciousness a few times before completely dissipating.

Zhou Ran opened her eyes. Her pupils contracted slightly.

Huan Yin's hand was still on his back, and she could feel the violent tremors of his primordial spirit.

She didn't ask, but tightened her grip slightly, and her dark red soul power steadily enveloped the outer wall of her sea of ​​consciousness.

"What did you see?"

Zhou Ran remained silent for three breaths.

"uncertain."

Huanyin's fingertip paused briefly at his waist.

She had cultivated soul techniques for three thousand years, and the fluctuations at the primordial spirit level could not deceive her.

Although the image in Zhou Ran's mind was shattered, she still captured all the remaining emotional ripples.

The wavy background color had the same feel to it as when Zhou Ran was clutching the cover of the military register in the main hall.

Huanyin did not ask any further questions.

Her fingers started moving again, and she continued to repair the remaining cracks.

The dark red soul power gently enveloped the cracks in Zhou Ran's primordial spirit, filling them inch by inch.

The palm is pressed against the skin.

Breathing close to breathing.

In the side hall, only the blue flame of the spirit lamp flickered gently.

Within the rift in the primordial spirit, the remnants of the Emperor's blood were even more restless than before the repair.

The base of the three hidden nails was made unstable by the soul power, and black gold liquid surged at the edge of the crack, like frozen mud warmed by a stove fire in winter.

Zhou Ran suppressed the unusual movement, preventing Huan Yin from noticing it.