92: Chapter 92 The fire in her mind was cold.

Shen Xiao's spine, however, stiffened abruptly as he froze.

A chill surged up from his tailbone, burning all the way up his spine to the back of his head, like a cold snake drilling through the gaps in his bones.

Xia Lengbai's gaze was nailed to his face.

No, not "nailed," but "chiseled."

That gaze carried a precision bordering on anatomical, as if she would slice open his skin the next second to count exactly how many ribs he had and what kind of fate lines were carved into each one.

The smile remained.

The curve was perfect, impeccable, yet it lacked even the slightest warmth that a living person should have.

Shen Xiao did not retreat.

Even as that chill climbed, he silently channeled the pitiful amount of spiritual power remaining in his Dantian along his Meridians to the Yongquan acupoints under his feet.

He slightly adjusted his center of gravity by three inches and bent his knees, ensuring that he could run the instant any unexpected situation occurred.

Stop kidding yourself.

With his current body, whose internal organs felt like they had been sanded down with sandpaper, let alone fighting, even sneezing could cause himself internal injuries.

But his face remained calm, and he even quickly calculated in his heart:

At this distance of less than three feet, if Xia Lengbai suddenly lashed out, the probability of him dodging the first strike by dodging left was forty percent, dodging right was thirty percent, and retreating...

Behind him was that quagmire of information emitting a decaying aura; retreating into it was basically equivalent to voluntarily jumping into a pot of unmelting paste.

Forty percent.

A bit risky.

But it would have to do.

His gaze did not shift from Xia Lengbai by even a fraction, yet he monitored every subtle movement she made: the frequency of her breathing, the degree of her pupil contraction, the rhythm of the Tomb Guardian Seal flickering between her brows, and...

She released the hand that had been clutching her chest.

Those five fingers unfurled one by one, like some creature that had been imprisoned for a long time finally breaking free from its shackles.

Her palm was empty, with nothing there, yet she lowered her head to look at that Void Realm, as if something invisible to ordinary people was hidden there.

Then, her fingertips began to tremble.

Subtle, uncontrollable, as if she had just touched something scalding yet icy, wanting to shake it off, yet reluctant to let go.

Shen Xiao saw it clearly; the trembling spread from her fingertips to her wrist, only to be forcibly suppressed by her, rippling slightly along the muscles of her knuckles for an instant before returning to calm.

It was too quiet.

Abnormally quiet.

A person whose Soul had just been washed over by a torrent of ancient memories should not return to calm so "quickly."

Either her mind had been completely shattered by the impact and she was now just an empty shell like a walking corpse; or—

"...So, that's how it is..."

Her voice suddenly rang out, hoarse and broken, like a remnant sound squeezed out of a throat that had just been burned by fire.

Shen Xiao's heart skipped a beat.

Xia Lengbai slowly lifted her eyes; the wild joy in those ice-blue pupils had settled, replaced by a deeper, almost morbid focus.

Her gaze toward Shen Xiao no longer looked like she was looking at a person, but rather like she was looking at a rare treasure that had just been appraised—or perhaps, a hair-raising experimental specimen.

"Stripping... then injecting..."

She murmured, each word seemingly squeezed out from between her teeth, carrying a kind of crazy, almost pious admiration.

"Container... truly... exquisite."

Container.

These two words were like a cold nail, driving fiercely into Shen Xiao's eardrum.

He had a good memory.

Just a moment ago, this term had appeared in the Consciousness Entity's mental fluctuations—it was the "positioning" for the Gravekeeper clan, the vessel on the heavenly dao chessboard used to hold the "Fruit of Heavenly Destiny."

And now, Xia Lengbai was using the same word to define... what?

Define herself?

Or define him?

Shen Xiao didn't have time to think deeply, because the Light Cocoon exploded.

It wasn't a real explosion, but the floating dark gold Light Cocoon fluctuated violently at this moment, the human outline curled inside twisting crazily, and countless dark gold light threads, like enraged tentacles, probed wildly from the surface of the Light Cocoon, attempting to reconnect with the Tomb Guardian Seal between Xia Lengbai's brows.

"Decoding... completion... insufficient..."

The Consciousness Entity's mental fluctuations became rapid and irritable, carrying a kind of almost greedy craving.

"First Child's... memory core... you must... read it all..."

A stronger mental pulse shot out from the Light Cocoon, rushing straight at Xia Lengbai's brow.

That pulse was visible to the naked eye—a stream of dark gold light, like a viper with a gaping bloody maw, carrying a kind of forced "injection" intent, intending to shove more memory fragments and more information pollution all at once into Xia Lengbai's Sea of Consciousness.

Shen Xiao's pupils constricted sharply.

But he did nothing.

It wasn't that he didn't want to, but he couldn't.

At this moment, any action could break this delicate balance.

If Xia Lengbai had already "lost control," his intervention might accelerate her collapse; if she still had residual self-awareness, his help might instead be viewed by her as "interference," inviting an even crazier counterattack.

He could only watch.

Watching that dark gold mental pulse, with lightning speed, crash into Xia Lengbai's brow.

And then be bounced off.

Shen Xiao's breath hitched.

Xia Lengbai tilted her head.

The movement was small, just a slight turn of her face, but the Tomb Guardian Seal between her brows erupted at that same instant with a blinding, ghostly blue light, like an invisible barrier, forcefully blocking that dark gold pulse.

"Quiet."

Two words, spat out from her lips.

No anger, no fear, only a condescending, unquestionable tone of command, as if scolding a disobedient dog.

Inside the Light Cocoon, the Consciousness Entity's mental fluctuations suddenly stalled.

In that instant, Shen Xiao could even "feel" that curled human outline reveal a trace of... astonishment?

Being scolded like this by its former "prey," by the "container" it had personally crafted—for an ancient existence that had once been high and mighty, this was probably worse than death.

But Shen Xiao had no heart to gloat.

Because Xia Lengbai's gaze locked onto him again.

This time, the morbid focus in that gaze was even deeper, as if that brief confrontation with the Consciousness Entity just now hadn't consumed her spirit, but instead made her even more "clear-headed," even more "certain" of something.

Her body leaned slightly forward, taking a small step in Shen Xiao's direction.

The viscous quagmire of information rippled slightly due to the unstable energy fluctuations around her, like an invisible Domain expanding beneath her feet, carving out a "path" for her toward Shen Xiao.

That step was as light as a feather, yet as heavy as Mount Tai.

All the hairs on Shen Xiao's body stood on end.

Not fear, but instinct.

It was the body's most primitive stress reaction when prey was locked onto by an apex predator.

"Shen Xiao."

She called his name.

The tone was flat, without any fluctuation, as if reading a number off a list.

"Do you want to know..."

She paused.

Deep in her ice-blue eyes, countless tiny streams of data seemed to flash by, too fast to be captured.

"...what one must lose first to become a 'perfect container'?"

Shen Xiao did not answer.

His hand pressed unobtrusively against the damaged Storage Pouch at his waist.

Inside the pouch lay a few trump cards for saving his life, though he had no idea how effective they would be in this Chaos space.

But he had to maintain the posture.

Sometimes, "preparing to counterattack" itself was more intimidating than the "actual counterattack."

Inside the Light Cocoon, the Consciousness Entity seemed to be completely enraged.

A sharp mental screech, similar to metal scraping against glass, burst out from the Light Cocoon, shaking the entire Chaos space slightly.

That sound was full of irritability, anger, and a kind of...

Deep unease.

What was it afraid of?

Shen Xiao didn't have time to delve deeper, because Xia Lengbai had already spoken again.

Her lips parted slightly, and ice-blue breath spilled out from between them, like white mist exhaled in the depths of winter, yet carrying a kind of bone-chilling, inhuman coldness.

"The answer is..."

Shen Xiao suppressed the metallic, bloody taste surging in his throat, forcing himself to meet those unsettling ice-blue pupils.