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

The underground passage was relatively normal. The runes on the array walls glowed with a dark blue light, and when you stepped on them, you could hear the mana shield humming as it operated.

The second basement level started to smell bad.

Large pieces of the runes peeled off and crumbled into powder, covering the ground.

The air was filled with a metallic stench; inhaling it felt like swallowing a handful of iron filings.

The magic shield was mostly broken, and cracks appeared on the array wall, with dark golden rust creeping out from the edges of the cracks.

Traces of the overflow of Emperor-level rules.

The hidden nails grew for seven days, corroding the entire underground structure to its core.

Xiao Rou slowed down.

The golden gu perched on her shoulder, its five broken wings all raised, its mouthparts half-open, and the dark golden light emanating from its barbs growing brighter and brighter.

It was excited, but also nervous.

It tasted the sweetness of the silver thought fragment of the Moon Emperor last time, but this time the thing is obviously harder and hotter.

The passage gets narrower as you go down.

At the junction of the second and third floors, the passageway, which was originally two zhang wide, was squeezed into a narrow gap by the collapsed array wall, barely wide enough for one person to pass sideways.

Xiao Rou squeezed in sideways, the Gu box scraping against the gravel with a piercing sound.

The moment it passed through the gap, the fluctuations of Emperor-level rules slapped towards it, forming an invisible wall.

Xiao Rou's knees buckled, and she almost fell over.

The true energy in my dantian was churning violently, and I felt a sharp, needle-like pain on the walls of my meridians.

A cultivator at the early stage of the Nascent Soul realm is like a paper umbrella blocking a waterfall when faced with the suppression of rules at this level.

She bit her tongue and stood firm.

His mouth tasted of blood, and his fingers gripped the edge of the Gu box tightly.

Three underground floors.

The space was larger than she had imagined.

The dome was over two zhang high, and the runes on the four walls were not peeled off, but charred.

The charred marks spread from the bottom to the top.

The core of the formation, a black iron base, stands in the very center of the space.

The first thing Xiaorou saw wasn't the base, but the back of the person in front of it.

Lin Qingxue leaned against the side of the base.

The word "damn" is too polite; she was pressed against the base by the backlash of magic, her back pressed against the black iron, her whole body almost embedded in the metal surface.

With his arms hanging at his sides, the skin from his forearms to his wrists was covered with dark gold corrosive lines, as if something had gnawed at it from the inside.

The silver light in his eyes had faded to a thin, transparent film at the base of his eyes, and the silver in his pupils had almost completely disappeared, only occasionally flashing a little.

His face was deathly pale, his lips were chapped, and his hair was loose and covered with a layer of dark gold dust.

She is still alive.

His breathing was so shallow that you couldn't see his chest rising and falling, but he was alive.

When Xiao Rou lunged forward, her knees hit the black iron ground, causing her to gasp in pain. Ignoring that, she reached out to check Lin Qingxue's pulse on the side of her neck.

My pulse is beating.

Extremely weak, with extremely long intervals, and still beating.

"Sister Lin!"

Lin Qingxue's eyelids twitched.

The process of opening my eyes was as slow as moving a mountain, and it took several breaths for my pupils to focus.

When she finally saw the face in front of her, her chapped lips twitched slightly.

"Zhou Ran...sent you?"

Xiao Rou nodded vigorously, her eyes stinging.

"The Emperor has sent me to remove the hidden nail."

Lin Qingxue tilted her head and looked at the golden Gu on Xiaorou's shoulder.

"We're late."

Her voice was dry, and each word sounded like it had been ground up.

"The hidden nail wasn't a nail three days ago."

Xiao Rou followed Lin Qingxue's gaze to the center of the base.

The crack has expanded to two feet wide.

The rubble at the edge of the crack was pushed aside, revealing a nearly complete sphere underneath.

Black and gold eyes.

The image shows the size of a walnut five days ago—now, it has grown to the size of a fist.

The surface of the sphere is covered with dense patterns, each line pulsating, its rhythm no different from that of a living creature's heartbeat.

In the center of the black and gold iris, a vertical pupil took shape, reflecting the entire underground space.

It is watching.

Sweat seeped from Xiaorou's hair roots and dripped down her cheeks onto the Gu box.

"The police have been suppressing the matter for seven days, but they can't suppress it anymore."

Lin Qingxue closed her eyes and then opened them again; this action took most of her breath.

"Less than 10% of the original essence remained, and it was all used to slow down its growth rate. Without the suppression of the Dharma Eye, it could grow to maturity in three days."

The seven-day Dharma remedy was replaced with a four-day extension period.

Xiao Rou unfastened the clasp of the Gu box.

The golden gu sprang out of the box, its six legs bracing against her palm, and its five remaining wings fully extended.

Its mouth opened wide, and the dark gold barbs were aimed at the black gold eyeball.

"Eat it."

The golden Gu remained unmoved.

Its mouthparts hovered over its eyes for two breaths, its tentacles dangled out and swayed before retracting.

The insects were scared.

The concentration of rules in this eyeball far exceeds that of the fragment of the Moon Emperor's silver will.

The silvery thought was a small wisp of embers left behind by the Moon Emperor, and biting into it was similar to cracking a nut.

The object before us is the physical form of the Emperor's Hidden Nail, which has grown for seven days under the nourishment of the Earth's veins on Blue Star.

It's like letting an insect gnaw on a red-hot iron ingot.

Xiao Rou held the Gu worm in front of her, her nose almost touching the worm's shell.

"If you don't eat it, it will grow."

Once it grows out, the imperial prince will be able to see everyone here across the two realms.

The coordinates of Earth will then be impossible to hide.

The tentacles of the golden gu were retracted to the sides of its mouthparts, and the barbs opened and closed.

Xiao Rou's voice lowered.

"The Emperor entrusted you to me to raise, from the size of a finger joint until now."

Every piece of your shell, every barb, was fed to you day by day.

If you break your wings, I'll sew them back on; if you crack your shell, I'll mend it.

If you're scared, I won't force you.

She spread her palms out, meaning you can leave if you want.

The golden gu lay in her palm, its six limbs gripping her skin.

Once you grab it, it will launch you forward.

With its five broken wings fully extended and its mouthparts wide open to the limit, the dark gold barbs exploded outwards, and the entire Gu worm transformed into a thorny golden meteor that crashed into the black gold eyeball.

The moment the carapace touched the Emperor-level rules, cracking sounds came from every bone in Xiao Rou's body.

The feedback from her natal Gu was tearing her internal organs apart.

Two of the seven cracks that had been stitched up repeatedly on the surface of the Golden Gu shell burst open again under the suppression of the Emperor-level rules.

A slit ran through the insect's shell from its back to its abdomen, and the dark golden liquid inside gushed out.

The golden gu did not loosen its grip.

The barbs pierced the gaps in the imperial markings on the surface of the eyeballs, the mouthparts locked shut, and it began to devour.

The imperial markings on its eyes struggled violently.

The black-gold light surged threefold, and the temperature in the entire underground space rose by more than ten degrees within half a breath.

The surface of the black iron base began to turn red, and the gravel at the edge of the crack cracked and popped.

Xiao Rou knelt on the ground, supporting herself with her hands.

His fingernails dug into the cracks of the black iron, and all ten fingers were bleeding.

The pain of the natal Gu is her pain; every time the Golden Gu bites through a layer of imperial patterns, her internal organs are twisted.

Lin Qingxue braced herself against the side of the base, using the last bit of her divine silver light to cover the cracks around her eyes, blocking the Emperor-level rules from launching a counterattack from the side.

The silver light was as thin as a cicada's wing; it would shatter at the slightest touch, and after being repaired, it would shatter again.

The shell of the golden gu was expanding violently.

After being swallowed by the insect, the fragment of the Emperor-level rule began to collide, merge, and recombine with the foundation of the Domain Heart Pill.

The original dark gold patterns on the shell were stretched and cracked, and then filled with new patterns.

When the eyeball was halfway swallowed—

A voice emanated from within the Golden Gu.

It's not the chirping of insects, nor the vibration of shells.

It was a sentence squeezed out from the depths of that half-shattered eyeball.

The Emperor's voice.

"I have seen you, you little thing."

The sound waves, imbued with the crushing power of Emperor-level rules, spread directly from the Golden Gu's body.

All the remaining runes on the walls of the entire underground space shattered.

Xiao Rou's eardrum was ruptured by the shock, and two streams of blood flowed down from her ear.

The golden gu's mouthparts stopped.

The barbs flashed with a crazy golden light, and it held a thunderbolt in its mouth that was about to explode at any moment.

The emperor's son saw it.