610: Chapter 610 Since they've marked me, they're now under my protection.

Blood Butcher sat slumped in the cold ruins, gravel and bone shards digging into his wounds; every breath felt like someone was sawing back and forth between his bones with a dull blade.

Blood had long since soaked through his tattered robes, spreading into a dark red, viscous, damp stain beneath him.

His aura was as weak as a candle in the wind, liable to be extinguished at any moment.

Inside his body, his Meridians, eroded by golden power, and his shattered Bloodline core sent waves of hollow, agonizing pain, constantly reminding him of just how thoroughly he had been crushed.

He struggled to lift his head, his neck making a clicking sound like a rusted gear.

His vision blurred and then cleared, finally fixing on the orange figure walking away from him toward the Bone Hall.

The young girl's figure was light, her sleeves fluttering.

This long chase, which had made him wish for death, was nothing more than a post-meal stroll for her.

Blood Butcher's mouth twitched, wanting to pull into a self-deprecating curve, but it only tugged at the wounds on his face, making him hiss in pain.

In the end, he squeezed a short, hoarse, bitter laugh from the depths of his chest.

"Heh..."

This bitter laugh was exceptionally jarring in the deathly silent ruins.

It contained the helplessness of facing absolute crushing power, the sorrow of falling from the clouds into the mud, the irony of his own previous arrogance and ignorance, the confusion about the road ahead, and a complex sense of calm that came with resignation.

But he did not regret it.

Yes, not even a little.

In the process of being stopped repeatedly, repeatedly heavily wounded, and repeatedly subtly spared at the edge of death—like a dull blade slowly cutting flesh—in the gaps of fear and despair, in those few moments when his Divine Soul was most tense but his thoughts were exceptionally clear, he realized one thing: he, Blood Butcher, must absolutely not die here.

He had never thought he was afraid of death before.

As a Prodigy of the Bloodline clan known for his decisive killing, how much blood of living beings had he stained his hands with?

How many times had he been tempered in Secret Realms, on the battlefield, and in perilous situations on the verge of life and death?

He had always treated death as a whetstone for his Dao Heart.

He even clearly remembered that before entering this Primordial Secret Realm, faced with the advice of the clan Elders, he had once said with the sharp spirit and arrogance peculiar to a youth, dismissively: "If I truly die here, it is merely because my skills are inferior and my Luck is poor. I can blame no one, and no one needs to avenge me."

At that time, he thought this was called being free-spirited, called fearlessness.

Not until just now, under the gaze of Luo Xiaojiu—playful on the surface but actually controlling everything—and at the moment of being truly face-to-face with death, did he suddenly wake up: that so-called "free-spiritedness" was nothing more than a fragile bubble supported by the youthful spirit of someone who had never experienced a true desperate situation.

He was the only pure-blooded heir of this generation of the Bloodline clan, the one "favored by a hundred thousand years of clan Luck."

These seven words, he used to take as pride, as the crown of a born king.

Now he understood with heart-wrenching clarity: what kind of halo of glory was this? It was clearly a shackle soaked in the blood and tears of his ancestors, heavy enough to make one unable to breathe.

His life had never been his own alone.

Behind it was the ancient Bloodline inherited by the clan for 120,000 years, the foundation developed by thirty-six generations of ancestors through blood and sweat, and the vast Luck cultivated by countless clansmen with their lives and loyalty... These things had long been connected to his bones and blood, linked to his fate, impossible to push away.

If he died and the pure Bloodline was broken, the clan's Luck would inevitably fluctuate violently, leading to a terrifying chasm.

The Elders who had poured countless resources into him, the side branches and affiliates attached to the Bloodline clan, and even those clansmen whose fates were vaguely linked to his... would all suffer backlash and bear immeasurable losses because of his death.

His arrogance, his wildness, his seemingly unassailable confidence—to put it plainly—were all given to him by the accumulation of the Bloodline clan over tens of millions of years.

And one of the meanings of his existence was that in any desperate situation—even if he had to kneel and crawl, even if he had to live like a dog—he had to survive.

He must never let the entire clan's massive and heavy "investment" go to waste just because of a moment of his own impulsive spirit or "fearlessness."

"So... I cannot die..." Blood Butcher's Adam's apple rolled as he swallowed the surging bloody taste, whispering, as if giving a death order to his own Soul, "Live... no matter what, live..."

To live, to live in humiliation, to live like a dog after acknowledging a master, was still better than becoming a dim name on the family tree, a sinner who caused the decline of the clan.

As long as there was one breath left, there was still a slim hope—whether for revenge, for breaking free, or for something else.

"As long as I live..." He repeated again, his voice hoarse and bloody, yet inexplicably possessing a trace of strength.

He raised his trembling hand and used the back of his hand, which was still relatively intact, to messily wipe the blood constantly overflowing from the corner of his mouth.

In this bitter smile, the despair receded bit by bit, and a near-cold clarity slowly surfaced.

Just then, Luo Xiaojiu in front seemed a bit impatient and casually brushed dust that did not exist off her sleeves—even though this abyss ruin was filled with flying dust, she remained spotlessly clean.

She pursed her lips toward the brightest part of the golden light at the Bone Hall, her tone carrying a bit of urging: "Alright, alright, stop acting all sentimental and reflecting on life over there."

"Hurry up, follow me. This lady will take you into the hall to open your eyes."

Blood Butcher was stunned, subconsciously looking up, a flash of astonishment crossing his gray, defeated eyes.

Luo Xiaojiu had already turned around, leaving him with only her back.

Her orange clothes were absurdly striking against this gray, dilapidated background.

Her sleeves fluttered slightly with her movements, tracing a clean arc.

Just when Blood Butcher thought she would not look back again, she suddenly turned her head halfway, glancing at him from the corner of her eye.

Her eyebrows raised slightly, a half-smile hanging on her bright face, her eyes filled with understanding, and also a trace of something indescribable and playful.

"What?" Her voice was crisp. "You've already called me 'Master,' so how could I, as your Master, just watch my newly acquired, miserable little servant wait for death here?"

"Shouldn't I find you some good things to mend your broken body?"

"...What does Master mean?" Blood Butcher's voice was dry, unable to react for a moment.

Opportunity? Mend his body? After just beating him to the verge of death and crushing all his dignity?

"Literal meaning, don't you understand?" Luo Xiaojiu withdrew her gaze, no longer looking at him, and walked straight toward that towering bone gate that seemed to be condensed from pure golden light.

Her steps remained unhurried, her tone as relaxed as if she were talking about what to eat today. "I don't have many great merits, but I am protective of my own."

"Since you carry my mark, you are someone under my protection."

"My own people won't be mistreated."

As her voice fell, she had already walked to the edge of the majestic golden light, her figure cast in a somewhat hazy glow.

Blood Butcher was completely stunned on the spot, the intense pain throughout his body seemingly pausing for an instant.

He gazed at that orange back about to disappear into the golden light, his heart churning—humiliation, unwillingness, anger, confusion... and a trace of an extremely faint, complex emotion that he refused to admit even to himself: relief.

For a long time, he just stared, as if his eyes were stung by the golden light, before suddenly snapping back to reality.

"Cough, cough cough..." He suppressed his voice as he coughed, coughing out more blood clots.

Then, he used his better arm to dig tightly into a protruding, blood-stained rock nearby, using all the strength remaining in his body, bit by bit, to drag his falling-apart, broken body up from the ruins.

His broken leg could not support him, so he used his slightly better leg in coordination with his arm, moving forward bit by bit, extremely wretchedly, and extremely slowly.

Every step left a trail of blood mixed with dust behind him.

He kept his head lowered, his messy, blood-stained long hair covering most of his face, making his expression unreadable.

Only his tense jawline and slightly trembling body exposed the immense pain he was enduring and the violent turmoil within his heart.

He dragged this broken body, limping, silently following that orange figure that seemed out of reach.

Luo Xiaojiu never looked back from beginning to end.

Her pace was light, even carrying a bit of the casualness of a stroll, yet it was as if she had eyes in the back of her head, certain he would follow, and certain he... had no second choice.

Yes, Blood Butcher had no choice.

The path ahead was an unknown Master who held his life and death, and the potential Opportunity; the path behind was a cold, deathly silent abyss of ruins filled with the marks of his failure and humiliation.

He could only move forward, even if every step was taken on his own shattered pride.

Finally, one after the other, the two figures gradually approached the golden gate that seemed to lead to another world.

The brilliant light swallowed their outlines, casting two long, intertwined shadows on the ground.

Just at the moment before Blood Butcher's figure was about to be completely swallowed by the golden light, he seemed to use his last bit of strength to tilt his head slightly, using his one good eye to take one last look behind him—at these ruins where he had once fallen, struggled, and finally knelt.

This deep hole in the cliff wall where he had once hidden was still shedding small gravel, as if providing a silent and cold footnote to everything that had just happened.

Recording how a Prodigy who was once unassailable and viewed all living beings as ants had been completely knocked into the dust, and how, for the sake of something heavier than personal dignity, he had chosen the most humble... survival.

The next moment, the golden light completely swallowed them.

From behind the gate, faint, completely different sounds drifted over—not the deathly silence of the ruins, but the low humming of some ancient artifact awakening, the whistling of flowing energy, and even more faint sounds, seemingly from afar, of metal clashing and shouts of struggle.

A new world, perhaps more dangerous, and perhaps containing a turning point, slowly unfolded behind the gate.

Outside the Secret Realm. Before Yuyao Pass, on the plains soaring with Evil Qi.

Patriarch Xueming remained seated cross-legged in the center of that churning, viscous, scarlet blood pool.

His brows were furrowed into a deep " river" shape, his face covered in an inseparable gloom, and the low pressure radiating from his body caused small blood bubbles to constantly burst on the surface of the pool.

He had completely lost contact with Blood Butcher.

Whether it was the Bloodline connection or the secret mark left on him, both were like stones sinking into the sea, completely isolated by some incomprehensible power deep within the Secret Realm, resulting in nothingness.

This feeling of being out of control made him extremely uneasy, and there was an evil fire burning uncomfortably in his chest.

But amidst this anxiety and rage, a faint, never-extinguished anomaly tugged at his most sensitive nerves.

In front of him, an ancient bronze lamp floated quietly.

Its style was ancient, its surface covered in blood-colored runes, and there was no oil in the lamp, only a small cluster of dark red flames, like solidified blood, burning silently.

This was Blood Butcher's Life Lamp, connected to his Divine Soul Origin.

At this moment, this flame of the Life Lamp was pitifully weak.

Its light was dim, the flame shrunk to only the size of a bean, teetering, as if a breeze could blow it out—completely different from the previous scene of blazing, intense burning.

But it was still lit. It had not been completely extinguished.

This light, weak to the extreme yet incredibly stubborn, in this dim space shrouded in Evil Qi, stubbornly proved that a certain existence had not completely perished.

It was as if in the boundless, desperate darkness, it was holding on to the last shred of slim, almost invisible vitality.

Patriarch Xueming's old and deep gaze was locked tightly onto that faint but persistent flame.

His fingertips were unconsciously tapping on his folded knees, making a dull, rhythmic "thud, thud" sound, exposing his inner unrest.

"The Life Lamp has not gone out... but the aura is completely gone..." His low, hoarse voice sounded slowly, like worn-out sandpaper rubbing, carrying deep doubt and a trace of profound apprehension.

"What on earth... has happened in the depths of this Primordial Secret Realm?"

The ominous premonition in his heart grew stronger and stronger, like gathering dark clouds, pressing lower and lower.

An existence capable of forcing Blood Butcher into such a bizarre situation—on the verge of death but not dead, lost contact but still alive—no matter who it was or what its background was, was definitely not simple.

Deep in Patriarch Xueming's murky eyes, a cold glint flashed.

He seemed to have already seen that in the near future, this unknown variable would surely bring the mysteries and storms of Blood Butcher's encounter today, walk out of the Secret Realm, and stand defiantly in front of everyone.

By then, what would be stirred up would likely not be just a few ripples... It would be a monstrous wave capable of overturning many established situations and catching countless people off guard.

His fingers tapping on his knees suddenly stopped.