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

There was no moonlight on the night of the Sixth Heaven.

After the cracks in the dome were repaired, the sky above the Devouring Demon Palace was covered in a hazy gray, like an old rag that could never be cleaned properly.

Occasionally, a few rays of cold white light would leak through the gaps in the repaired layer and fall on the cracked roof ridge, not even illuminating a complete shadow.

Zhou Ran sat cross-legged in the center of the side hall.

The Taihuang Black Blade lay across his knees, its last remaining pattern flickering uncertainly.

The black coffin in front of them had its lid open, with six Soul Abyss Stones stacked on the edge of the coffin, and a pale blue halo filled the room.

The primordial spirit is so empty that it emanates from the void.

After drawing seven drops of imperial blood, his sea of ​​consciousness was filled with repaired weld scars.

Huan Yin's soul imprint of the same frequency has been restored to a large extent, and the bloodthirsty ancestral blood has welded the broken meridians back together, but the hollowed-out soreness in the skeleton still lingers.

He closed his eyes and regulated his breathing.

True essence seeps from the dantian little by little into the limbs and bones, stopping in each meridian to confirm that the broken joints welded by the ancestral blood have not cracked again.

A deathly aura seeped in from under the door.

So fine it's almost imperceptible, flowing along the ground like dust on the floor.

However, when the death energy passed through the halo of the Soul Abyss Stone, the pale blue light shifted its hue, with an extra ring of very faint gray-black around the edge.

Zhou Ran opened her eyes.

Jiuyou stood barefoot at the door.

The black dress reached her ankles, and the hem was damp with night dew.

The black lines between his brows flickered, and his pale face, bathed in the glow of the Soul Abyss Stone, resembled porcelain at the bottom of a body of water.

She didn't push the door open when she came in.

The door opened by itself.

The deathly aura permeated the wood fibers at the bottom of the door panel, causing the hinges to come loose and the door to slide open to both sides without making a sound.

Zhou Ran looked at her.

As Jiuyou walked barefoot across the stone slabs, each step absorbed the warmth of a small circle of air around her feet.

The arches are narrow, and the joints of the ankle are so clearly visible that you can count the direction of each tendon.

They stopped beside the black coffin.

"hand."

Zhou Ran extended his right hand.

With the back of your hand facing up, spread your fingers naturally.

Jiuyou leaned down and grasped the back of his hand with her fingers.

Zhou Ran found that touch very familiar.

Jiuyou's fingers are constantly immersed in the deathly aura of the coffin burial law, and their temperature is more than ten degrees lower than that of ordinary people.

Last time, when she held down the edge of the coffin in the corner of the main hall to shield him from the backlash of the Emperor's rule, the dust reached her second knuckle.

The gray faded, revealing the skin beneath the fingertips—a very pale bluish-white, with veins faintly tinged with dark blue.

Jiuyou pressed his index finger against the coffin burial law mark on the back of his hand.

The engraving was done by her own hand.

The mark of the Black Coffin Law extends from the tiger's mouth to the base of the middle finger, with three curved lines intertwining to form an irregular ring.

After the great battle in which the Emperor's son descended, these three patterns were worn down by nearly 20%, and their edges became blurred and indistinct.

Death energy seeped into the engraving from Jiuyou's fingertips.

cold.

It penetrates from the epidermis into the dermis, and then travels from the dermis into the meridians.

The chill was the complete opposite of the scorching heat of the bloodthirsty ancestral blood, yet it was equally precise. The death energy only followed the path covered by the engravings of the coffin burial law, without touching Zhou Ran's own meridians.

The engravings were redrawn.

The sharpness of the three lines has been restored to its original clarity, the edges are neat, and there are no extra burrs at the bends.

But the coolness didn't stop at the back of my hand.

The death energy probed inwards along the engravings, passing through the wrist, forearm, and shoulder, reaching the edge of the sea of ​​consciousness.

The charred crusts welded by the bloodthirsty ancestral blood on the cracks in the primordial spirit were polished away one by one by the bayonet-like burrs as the death energy passed by.

The char shell is still there, the burrs are gone, and the weld scars have become smooth.

Zhou Ran felt a chill run down his spine.

The method of polishing the edges of the cracks in the primordial spirit with death energy is no different from sanding a rough blank. Every time a burr is smoothed out, it jumps in the brain. It doesn't hurt much, but it makes people's teeth ache from the numbness.

Jiuyou's fingers did not loosen.

She simply sat on the edge of the coffin and placed Zhou Ran's right hand on her knee.

The fabric of her black dress draped over her knees, and the back of her hand pressed against her leg through the fabric.

The death energy flowed faster from the expanded contact area, significantly improving the efficiency of the polishing process.

The distance between the two people was reduced to within an arm's length.

The pale blue halo of the Soul Abyss Stone shone on Jiu You's profile.

Zhou Ran had been looking at this face for over half a year, and it always had only two expressions: expressionless, and expressionless.

She lowered her head, her gaze falling on the marks on the back of his hand, tracing them stroke by stroke.

Every place your fingertips touch carries the hissing sound unique to death, almost like carving words on stone.

Zhou Ran could see that the dark lines between her eyebrows were fully exposed when she lowered her head.

The black lines were deeply rooted, extending more than half an inch from the center of the eyebrows toward the hairline. At the end of the lines, two branches split off, disappearing into the temples on the left and right.

Only the faint hissing sound of deathly energy flowing through the side hall could be heard.

Jiuyou suddenly spoke.

"The previous Demon Emperor died inside my coffin."

Zhou Ran's breath hitched for a second.

Jiuyou kept his head down, his fingers still tracing the engravings, each stroke meticulously executed.

"When Ye Futian was alive, he never touched the coffin of the original body, because he thought it was bad luck."

Thirty thousand years ago, after his final battle with the Moon Emperor, most of his bones were shattered. He carried his sword back, collapsing three times at the entrance to the main hall.

Her tone remained flat throughout, as she read from an old military report.

But the speed at which she traced with her fingers slowed down, almost to the point of stopping.

"After falling down for the third time, I couldn't get up again."

He lifted his head from the ground, glanced at the real person, and uttered two words.

Zhou Ran waited.

""Open.""

Jiuyou raised his head.

Her pale face was indeed expressionless, but the faint blue light of the Soul Abyss Stone was reflected in her pupils. The light distorted for a moment and then stabilized, as if something had pressed down on it.

"I have opened the coffin lid."

He climbed in and grabbed the original's hand.

The force was so great that it cracked two of the main character's finger bones.

Zhou Ran looked down at his hand resting on her lap.

Jiuyou pressed his index finger firmly on the intersection of the engravings at the base of his middle finger, until his nail turned white.

"I held hands with him for three days."

From being scalding hot to the same temperature as the original hand.

It only loosened up after it cooled completely.

Silence enveloped the entire side hall.

Zhou Ran opened his mouth, as if to say something.

Jiuyou spoke before he could.

"So you're not allowed to die out there."

The six words struck the stone slab with the same weight as the closing of her coffin lid.

She lowered her head and continued to trace the last engraving with her fingers.

The sound was even softer than before, so soft that it was almost indistinguishable from the deathly hiss.

"I will hold you in my hand as you die in the coffin."

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

His knuckles bulged, and the remaining imperial bloodline pattern beneath his palm twitched.

The woman finished speaking the longest sentence of her life, yet her expression remained that chillingly cold look.

But her fingertips, which had been pressing on the back of his hand, finally loosened their grip.

Five fingers traced across the back of Zhou Ran's hand, pausing for a moment as the fingertips brushed against his palm.

That brief pause had nothing to do with data recording, nor with law repair.

Jiuyou stood up.

Barefoot on the stone slabs, there wasn't a single trace of blood on the soles of my feet.

As she reached the door, Zhou Ran called out from behind her.

"Nine Netherworlds".

She stopped.

"I'm not returning the coffin to you."

Jiuyou did not turn back.

The glow of the Soul Abyss Stone in the side hall illuminated her back, and the hem of her black dress swayed slightly.

gone.