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

Mingcang leaned closer and scanned the area with the detection array.

There's something inside the screw.

Mingcang's voice was strained.

"Hollow, with a tiny array embedded in the nail core; the patterns at the nodes are similar to..."

He glanced back at the array imprint on the mine floor on the table.

"Exactly the same as that one."

The muscles in his spine were stretched to their limit.

The thing buried inside him during the period of bone swallowing was linked to an ancient formation from 30,000 years ago.

How many years has he been reformed?

When did the Bone-Swallowing Demon obtain the ancient formation?

The answers are all contained in the two characters "葬原".

Zhou Ran stood up.

Taihuang Black Blade leaned on the ground, his ethereal body casting a thin shadow in the halo of the Soul Abyss Stone.

"Bone-silent, don't pull out the screws."

Gu Ji loosened his grip on the back of her neck.

"The fact that it moved means it's receiving a signal. The frequency of the hair in the burial site can activate old objects buried during the bone-swallowing period, indicating that this system is older than the Imperial Court's communication network."

Zhou Ran tapped his fingers three times on the cover of the military brochure.

"Even the imperial court might not know this."

The bony, metallic spine creaked again.

The screw, deep within his spine, quietly completed its final rotation.

The following afternoon, Zhou Ran summoned Zang Yuan alone to a side hall of the Devouring Heaven Demon Palace under the pretext of allocating grain and fodder for the eastern front.

The side hall was small, with no windows on its four stone walls.

A long table stands in front, on which lie military registers and three stacks of transfer documents.

There are two pillars and a gate on the side, outside which is a long corridor in the shape of the Chinese character "回" (hui). The exits on the left and right sides are blocked by Qin San and Gu Ji, each with five personal guards.

Huanyin did not show up.

She sat cross-legged on the floor above the side hall, and the Formless Illusion Technique was projected from the outer layer of her consciousness, transforming into an invisible barrier that locked the magical fluctuations of the entire side hall within a radius of three zhang.

No change in aura could be detected within these three zhang (approximately 10 meters).

When Zangyuan stepped into the side hall, he scanned the stone wall.

His reaction was calmer than Zhou Ran had expected.

His 47 years of undercover work skills were not for nothing; he was mentally prepared for the possibility of having his escape route blocked as soon as he entered.

Zhou Ran sat behind the long table.

The Taihuang Black Blade lay on the table, its final pattern gleaming faintly.

"sit."

Zangyuan sat down opposite the long table.

The grain transport soldiers were still wearing their old armor, their shoulders covered in half-dried mud, just like the ones Gu Ji had seen when he checked the accounts yesterday.

His eyes were still those bronze eyes, polished for decades—clean, calm, revealing nothing.

Zhou Ran pushed a grain and fodder allocation order in front of him.

"The losses on the eastern grain transport route are 30% higher than last month. Where is the shortfall?"

"The repair materials for the third section of the roadbed were consumed in excessive quantities."

The craters left by the spatial fragments when the Emperor's son descended were too deep; the surface has been repaired, but the underlying cracks remain. Sixty more cartloads of Azure Profound Stones are needed.

Zang Yuan opened the document and pointed to each item one by one.

The report is well-organized, the data is solid, and there are no flaws.

For a veteran of 47 years transporting grain, this kind of work is a basic skill.

After listening, Zhou Ran reached under the desk and pulled something out, placing it on the table.

A Soul Abyss Stone.

The stone, about the size of a fist, was translucent with a pale blue halo emanating from its interior.

The light was so soft that when it shone on a person's face, one could feel a slight relaxation deep within their consciousness.

Zang Yuan's gaze fell on the Soul Abyss Stone.

His body involuntarily lurched forward half a step.

That half step wasn't intentional.

His buttocks left the stool, his knees pressed against the table legs, his back leaned forward two inches, and his entire center of gravity shifted towards the Soul Abyss Stone.

Zangyuan reacted within the third snap of his fingers and forcibly pulled his body back.

But it was too late.

Zhou Ran placed one hand on the hilt of the Taihuang Black Blade.

"You recognize this thing."

Zangyuan's pupils contracted for a moment.

The cracks on the bronzeware deepened further.

"Imperial Court inspectors don't have an instinctive reaction to cultivation materials. A cultivator in the late Nascent Soul stage won't be led astray by a stone."

Zhou Ran lowered his voice to the bottom.

"Unless this stone was once part of your body."

The formless barrier of the illusory sound hummed twice above his head.

Fine dust particles leaked down from the cracks in the ceiling from the aftershocks of the magical clash.

Zangyuan's Adam's apple bobbed.

He didn't say anything in his defense.

Zhou Ran didn't give him a chance to explain.

He pressed down on the hilt with his right hand, and the patterns on the Taihuang Black Blade surged.

Emperor-level dark patterns spread out from the blade, covering the entire long table and the military records on it.

The Unified Army register was turned to the page about the burial site.

The pale gold characters of the military identification badge glowed steadily.

The characters changed color.

A layer of bluish-black underglow emerged from the pale gold edges.

The underlying light seeped outwards from the base of the characters' strokes, exactly matching the hue of the ancient magic runes.

The military register tells Zhou Ran that beneath the military records of Zangyuan lies an even older mark.

Zangyuan's aura began to spiral out of control.

The magical power fluctuations of the late-stage Nascent Soul stage surged from the dantian, crashing against Huan Yin's formless barrier wave after wave.

The barrier hummed twice, then stabilized.

But the pressure was still rising.

Late stage of Nascent Soul transformation.

Peak of the Divine Transformation Realm.

Early stage of tribulation.

Dark blue veins appeared beneath Zangyuan's skin.

It is fine and ancient, and it shares the same lineage as the ancient inscriptions carved on the foundation of the Devouring Heaven Demon Palace that have been inscribed for 30,000 years.

The veins extend from the side of the neck to the temples, climb up the cheekbones to the temples, and finally converge at the center of the eyebrows.

A crack appeared between his brows.

Fragments of the Emperor's armor were pulled out from under the skin.

The cold white light on the dark gold fragment had completely disappeared, replaced by a dense bluish-black glow.

The fragment was embedded in the crack between the eyebrows, standing upright like a third eye.

But the fragments were just the beginning.

What is truly changing is the burial ground itself.

His body began to swell.

The old armor of the grain transport soldiers was torn from the inside, with the shoulder armor and breastplate breaking apart one after the other.

What was revealed was not flesh and blood, but layers upon layers of bluish-black bone armor.

The surface of the bone armor was covered with ancient magic runes.

The pattern is extremely primitive, with rough strokes and stiff transitions, a product of a completely different era from the exquisite dark patterns on the cover of the Unified Army's official document.

Qin San sensed a surge of energy outside the door. He drew his Taihuang Black Blade, and the patterns generated by the Domain Heart Pill lit up, ready to break down the door at any moment.

The screw inside the spine was spinning wildly.

The sound of metal grinding against bone came from the back of his neck, loud enough for the neighbors to hear.

Huanyin frowned upstairs.

The barrier of formlessness creaked under the impact of the magical power fluctuations at the early stage of the tribulation, but it held firm.

Zhou Ran stood up from the chair.

His body was so weak it felt like paper, and his primordial spirit was so thin it was translucent, yet the way he lifted the Taihuang Black Blade from the table was as steady as if it were cast in his own hand.

The background texture is extremely bright.

The light of the Emperor-level dark patterns enveloped the entire side hall.

The ancient demonic runes on the dark blue bone armor resonated violently when they touched the Emperor-level dark runes of the Primordial Black Blade, just like the reaction of the demonic puppets on the third level of the Soul Abyss when they encountered the blade.

The Blade of Night Bears the Sky recognizes things from the era of Night Bears the Sky.

The surge in prices in Zangyuan was largely suppressed by the resonance effect.