124: Chapter 124 Memory Puzzle (Part 1)

But Shen Xiao read the lip movement...

"Road..."

That word seemed to exhaust the last shred of clarity in Xia Lengbai.

The next instant, Shen Xiao felt his Qi, which was pinned to that critical node like a fragile thread ready to snap at any moment, jolt violently.

It wasn't repelled.

It was pulled in.

The rampaging energy of the Tomb Guardian Seal, like a shark that had caught the scent of blood, suddenly shifted its attack stance.

The once wild and chaotic collisions now turned into purposeful coiling, clinging, and enveloping; it was attempting to completely absorb and assimilate Shen Xiao's intruding Qi, dragging it into that out-of-control frenzy.

Shen Xiao's pupils constricted.

In the face of that power, his Qi was like a grain of sand falling into a meat grinder.

It was too late to pull out now.

That power had already latched on, following his Qi, crawling frantically up his fingertips, wrists, and forearms...

"Damn it!"

He squeezed the word out through gritted teeth.

The next instant, the world exploded into white.

It wasn't white light in the visual sense, but on the level of consciousness. It was like a silent atomic bomb detonating in the center of his mind, the shockwave carrying countless fragmented images, sounds, sensations, and smells, pouring frantically and unreasonably into his Sea of Consciousness.

Ice Abyss.

A pitch-black, bottomless Ice Abyss.

But it was different from his memory.

At the deepest part of the Ice Abyss, it wasn't the guardian beast he had killed.

It was an altar.

Built from cold black stone, about three zhang high, its surface was covered in dense carvings. The shape of those carvings was identical to the Tomb Guardian Seal on Xia Lengbai.

The altar was empty.

But Shen Xiao "saw" a figure.

Lin Yun.

The Child of Destiny from the original story was kneeling before the altar at this moment.

His posture was respectful to the point of being devout.

His head was bowed low, his forehead almost touching the ground, his palms facing upward, resting flat on his knees, as if waiting for some kind of coronation.

And above the altar, a blurry phantom was coalescing.

The phantom had no specific form, just a mass of Chaos light and shadow, but Shen Xiao could feel that the aura it emitted was exactly the same as that pitch-black "hand" that had reached out from the depression in the ground earlier.

Cold.

Vast.

Indescribable.

Lin Yun raised his head.

His eyes were full of awe and fanaticism.

The phantom reached out a "hand".

It landed gently on Lin Yun's head.

The scene shattered.

Like a mirror struck by a hammer, countless fragments splattered in all directions, and Shen Xiao's consciousness was violently pulled back to reality...

Then, it was swept away by another torrent.

This time, it wasn't his memory.

It was Xia Lengbai's.

He saw a woman.

Standing before a Pill Furnace, the furnace fire reflected on her profile, flickering.

Her features were exquisite and cold, but there was a gentleness between her brows that didn't belong to her temperament...

Nangong Li.

Shen Xiao recognized her.

The woman whose Alchemy talent he had plundered.

At this moment, she was carefully placing a Spiritual Plant into the Pill Furnace, her movements as gentle as if she were treating some precious treasure.

The furnace fire licked the surface of the Spiritual Plant, making a faint sizzling sound, and a light medicinal fragrance filled the air.

The corners of Nangong Li's mouth curled up slightly, revealing a smile that was almost obsessive.

"Bear with it a little longer..."

She muttered to herself, her voice so low it was as if she were speaking to herself,

"Refine the best pill... for him..."

For him.

But Shen Xiao saw it.

Deep within that smile, deep within those eyes reflecting the furnace fire...

Something was wrong.

It was fear.

It was bewilderment.

It was a deep, silent fear of "I don't know why I'm doing this, but I can't stop."

Her body was moving instinctively—adding herbs, controlling the fire, regulating her breath—but her Soul seemed to be covered by a veil by something, visible yet untouchable, yet omnipresent.

The scene changed again.

An ancient stone chamber.

The stone walls were carved with patterns similar to the Tomb Guardian Seal, but more complex, more intricate, densely covering the entire wall.

In the center of the stone chamber stood a woman.

Bailian.

Gravekeeper Bailian.

She wore a plain white dress, her black hair draped down, her face cold and clear like the moon.

But Shen Xiao saw...

Her eyes.

They were hollow.

Completely hollow.

Like a puppet without a Soul, only the shell remained, operating mechanically.

Her lips parted slightly, chanting a spell that Shen Xiao couldn't understand.

The voice had no emotion, no ups and downs; every syllable seemed to be poured from a mold—precise, cold, and devoid of Life Qi.

But Shen Xiao "heard" and understood it.

It wasn't understood with his ears.

It was that ancient power overflowing from the Tomb Guardian Seal that automatically "translated" those syllables for him...

"With blood as the guide, with the Soul as the sacrifice..."

"Offered to the Heavenly Dao, offered to the chessboard..."

"The sacrificer shall fall into Reincarnation forever, never to be reborn..."

Bailian was chanting the sacrificial spell.

But she wasn't doing it willingly.

That power controlling her—the cold, vast power identical to the phantom on the Ice Abyss altar—was like an invisible hand, gripping her Soul, controlling her body, making her chant the spell to sacrifice herself of her own will.

The scene shattered.

"Hum!"

Two forces clashed violently within Shen Xiao's body, like two snakes tearing at each other frantically.

His Meridians endured this conflict, letting out a groan of unbearable strain, and his vision was swallowed by a sea of scarlet...

The real world.

Shen Xiao and Xia Lengbai, hunched over almost simultaneously.

"Pfft!"

Both of them spat out a mouthful of blood.

The blood landed on the ground, instantly freezing into ice beads, bouncing off with a clatter, shattering into countless tiny, deep red ice crystals.

The recoil from the opposing energy forces knocked them both back.

Shen Xiao stumbled back two steps, his knees went weak, and he fell heavily onto the cold gravel.

He braced his hands on the ground, his knuckles turning white from the effort, gasping for air. Every breath felt like swallowing broken glass.

His mouth was full of the taste of blood, mixed with the dryness of gravel and the stinging cold.

Xia Lengbai's state was even worse.

Her body seemed to have had all its strength drained, her back slamming heavily against a rock with a dull thud.

Then, she slid down along the rock, curling up, hugging herself with both arms, as if suppressing something.

Her breathing was rapid and chaotic, her chest heaving violently, and with every exhale, a wisp of pale blue mist was released.

But those ice-blue patterns...

Were fading.

From her neck, cheeks, and temples, they were receding bit by bit, like the receding tide, slowly retreating back into the depths of her left arm, eventually hiding beneath that dark red Tomb Guardian Seal.

The rampage was temporarily contained.

Not suppressed.

It was forcibly interrupted by the impact of those memory fragments.

It took Shen Xiao quite a while to barely steady his breathing.

He raised his head and looked at Xia Lengbai.

She was also looking at him.

Their gazes met in the dim night.

Shen Xiao saw the things in her eyes: shock, confusion, and a hint of faint, lingering fear that hadn't completely faded yet.

She had also seen those fragments.

Those memories that didn't belong to her.

Shen Xiao didn't speak.

He was ruminating on everything he had just seen.

Ice Abyss. Altar. Kowtowing. Phantom.

Nangong Li's mumbling to herself, the fear and bewilderment deep in her eyes.

Bailian's hollow eyes, the controlled sacrifice, chanting the spell to sacrifice herself.

These fragments were spinning, colliding, and piecing themselves together in his mind frantically.

The memories he had plundered before, Nangong Li's Alchemy talent, the secret Bailian had guarded for ten thousand years, Xia Lengbai's destiny value and partial memories.

That information swallowed by the System but not fully parsed was now, as if activated by some switch, beginning to resonate with the fragments from just now.

A vague outline emerged in his mind.

The patterns on the altar were of the same origin as the Tomb Guardian Seal.

The power controlling Bailian's sacrifice was of the same origin as the phantom on the altar.

Lin Yun knelt before the phantom, accepting the "coronation" of that power.

Nangong Li involuntarily refined pills for Lin Yun, with fear and bewilderment hidden deep in her eyes.

These fragments pointed in the same direction...

Shen Xiao's pupils slowly constricted.

He had always thought that the Child of Destiny was the "protagonist" chosen by the Heavenly Dao, and the side characters were the "stepping stones" arranged by the Heavenly Dao.

But what if...

What if the Child of Destiny himself was also a chess piece?

What if that phantom Lin Yun knelt before was the true chess player?

What if the so-called "Opportunity", "Legacy", and "Destiny" were from the very beginning a top-down, systematic harvest and manipulation?

Those who "volunteered" to sacrifice themselves—Nangong Li, Bailian, and even Xia Lengbai—was their "willingness" truly voluntary?

Or was it that their will had been tampered with, blinded, and manipulated by that power from the very beginning, making them willingly walk onto the altar and offer up everything they had?

Shen Xiao slowly braced his knees and stood up.

His body was still swaying, his legs feeling like they were filled with lead, each step taken unsteadily.

But his eyes were sharper than ever before.

He looked at Xia Lengbai.

She was also looking at him.

In her eyes, something was also coalescing; it was what she had "seen" in her own memory fragments.

Shen Xiao opened his mouth, wanting to say something.

But before he could speak...

Inside his body, that thing moved.

That residue of the Tomb Guardian Seal's power, which had overflowed from Xia Lengbai's body and infiltrated through his Qi...

It suddenly stirred deep within his Meridians.

It wasn't a rampage.

It was more like a... response.

As if it had sensed something, triggered by something.

Shen Xiao let out a muffled groan, dropped to one knee, and slammed his right hand against his chest.

In that instant, he saw that altar again.

But this time it was different.

This time, he "saw" the bottom of the altar...

That phantom seemed to have sensed his gaze.

It slowly turned its "head".

It had no eyes.

But Shen Xiao knew it was "looking" at him.

The scene shattered.

Shen Xiao opened his eyes wide, gasping for air, cold sweat soaking his back.

Xia Lengbai braced herself against the rock, stood up with difficulty, and walked toward him.

Her steps were unsteady, each one swaying, but some color had returned to her face, and her eyes were a bit clearer.

She walked to Shen Xiao and stopped.

"You saw it too?"

Shen Xiao raised his head and met her gaze.

He didn't answer.

Instead, he raised his right hand and opened his palm.

In the dim night, something was flickering slightly at his fingertips.

It wasn't the glow of the Silver Pattern; the Silver Pattern had long since dimmed.

It was a tiny, pale blue thread of ice, like a living thing, moving faintly beneath the skin of his fingertips.

The residue of the Tomb Guardian Seal's power.

It hadn't dissipated.

It had taken root in his body.

Shen Xiao slowly clenched his fist, and the ice thread at his fingertips seemed to sense his intention, retracting into the depths of his Meridians and disappearing from sight.

But he knew it was still there.

He looked at Xia Lengbai, his voice as hoarse as if it had been ground by sandpaper:

"That thing on you... shared a bit with me."

Xia Lengbai's gaze fell on his clenched fist, her pupils constricting slightly.

She didn't speak.

But her fingers curled involuntarily, gripping the hem of her clothes at her side.

The night wind howled past, whipping up black sand that blurred their vision.

Shen Xiao withdrew his gaze and looked down at his hand.

The Silver Pattern was dim.

But the chill at his fingertips was slowly, slowly spreading deeper into his Meridians.

As if looking for something.

And as if waiting for something.