96: Chapter 96 Embers

The ruins of the Law Pool shattered into countless tiny shards under Shen Ye's feet.

The Crown Prince's body had completely disintegrated; the dark gold patterns on the pitch-black bone armor lost all Law support after the Mirror Fire sparks were stripped away, turning into a pile of greyish-white powder.

The last remaining liquid Abyssal Energy at the bottom of the pool was slowly reverting under the continuous suppression of the Twilight Light Network. The dark purple liquid surface turned greyish-white layer by layer, and fragments of the Time Law peeled off from the pool walls, fluttering down into the ruins like a silent grey snow.

Shen Ye squatted down and used the tip of his sword to push aside the shards piled at the bottom of the pool.

The Crown Prince had left something in the deepest part of the Law Pool—not a weapon, not a Law fragment, but a tiny dark gold crystal.

The surface of the crystal was covered in dense Abyssal Patterns, but a faint twilight glow flowed slowly within the deepest part of the patterns.

Shen Ye recognized the frequency of that light—it was a remnant of the Mirror Fire.

When the Crown Prince stole the Mirror Fire sparks at the Abyss of First Birth, he had sealed a tiny portion of them within this crystal as a backup energy source for the final Fusion of the Perfect Abyss-Devouring Body.

He hadn't had a chance to use it before being defeated by Shen Ye in the core area.

"He kept a trick up his sleeve."

Bai Ye walked in from the entrance of the core area, the Time Law Array slowly rotating around him, its pure golden light illuminating every corner of the Law Pool's ruins.

He glanced at the dark gold crystal in Shen Ye's hand, his pupils constricting slightly. "This isn't an ordinary Law storage crystal. Its internal structure is almost identical to the twilight crystal you activated at the palace altar—the Crown Prince forged a replica of a twilight crystal."

Shen Ye placed the crystal in his palm, and Twilight Energy seeped into the Abyssal Patterns on the crystal's surface with very gentle force.

One by one, the patterns faded within the twilight halo, revealing the forcibly compressed Mirror Fire fragments inside the crystal.

The fragment was tiny, only the size of a grain of rice, but the twilight light within it was even purer than the Mirror Fire on the altar of the Abyss of First Birth—the Crown Prince had suppressed it with Abyssal Law for so long that it had instead completed a form of refinement on its own under the high-pressure environment.

"He wasn't replicating the twilight crystal. He was using Abyssal Law to reverse-engineer the structure of Twilight Energy."

Shen Ye carefully tucked the crystal into a compartment in his backpack, placing it alongside Gu Yan's broken sword, Second Lieutenant Meng Yan's resonator chip, and the Bai family's dark gold token. "The Mirror Fire fragment in this crystal has been refined by Abyssal Law. Tie Chui can use it to research how to make the spiral purification pill remain effective even in environments completely contaminated by Abyssal Energy."

Bai Ye fell silent for a moment.

"The Crown Prince is dead, but his experimental data remains. The remains of those mass-produced warriors on the outskirts of the base, the Abyssal Energy samples from the Law Pool in the core area, and the refinement data in this crystal—if these things fall into the hands of other high-ranking officials of the Abyssal Empire, the Perfect Abyss-Devouring Body project could be restarted at any time."

"So we must beat the Empire to it and recover or destroy all the experimental data."

Shen Ye stood up and pointed the detector toward the Abyssal Law residues deep within the base ruins that had not yet been reverted. "Tie Chui is already on it."

Outside the base, Tie Chui was squatting next to the remains of a mass-produced warrior, carefully scraping off Time Law fragment residues from the surface of the bone armor.

Little One lay beside him, clutching a spiritual power logbook and quickly recording the time decay curve and residual Abyssal Energy concentration of every fragment.

The Mobile Pill Room was parked behind them. A row of miniature twilight beacons on top of the room continuously radiated a stable Twilight Light Network, suppressing the activity of all residual Abyssal Energy within range to its lowest point.

"Boss!"

Tie Chui saw Shen Ye coming out of the core area and stood up, holding his small knife. "The Time Law fragments of these mass-produced warriors shared the same Law Pool as the Crown Prince himself. After the Crown Prince died and the Law Pool collapsed, all the fragments began to disintegrate on their own. But I found some primitive Abyssal Patterns on the inner layer of their bone armor that weren't covered by the Time Law—these patterns weren't the Crown Prince's work; they're from an earlier process, likely early experimental samples of the Perfect Abyss-Devouring Body project."

Shen Ye took the piece of bone armor Tie Chui handed him.

The Abyssal Patterns on the inner layer of the fragment were indeed completely different from the Crown Prince's Time Law fragments—cruder and more primitive, but there was a very familiar Law fluctuation frequency deep within the patterns.

He flipped the fragment over and saw a tiny mark where the patterns were densest.

It was the same mark found on the Abyssal Cores in the Northern Mining District—before launching the Perfect Abyss-Devouring Body project, the Crown Prince had conducted a large number of early experiments in the Northern Mining District.

These earliest experimental samples were reactivated and incorporated into the mass-production sequence for the new type of warriors.

"The Crown Prince even deployed early experimental samples to the battlefield."

Shen Ye put the fragment into his backpack. "These early samples share the same origin as the Abyssal Cores in the Northern Mining District. The Law data Cang Ming collected at the Northern Mining District monitoring station can be used to reverse-track their original experimental records."

He sent an encrypted message to Cang Ming, attaching the Law fluctuation frequency of the Abyssal Patterns on the inner layer of the fragment, asking him to perform a deep match in the Cang family's monitoring station database.

Cang Ming's reply came quickly: "Frequency match successful. There is a backup file of the experimental records for these early samples in the Eternal University Core Heritage Hall, and the file number belongs to the same collection area as file EW-071. Jiang Yue is currently accessing it."

Qin Youyou walked over from the other side of the canyon, her ancient war spear slung over her shoulder, with fragments of bone blades she had shattered while clearing out the remaining soldiers still clinging to the spear's tip.

A tear in the sleeve of her combat uniform revealed a section of her forearm grazed by Abyssal Energy. The edges of the wound had already been treated with twilight purification pill powder, and the dark red marks of Law erosion were slowly fading.

"The rifts at the back of the base have all been sealed. Qin Shu and General Lin Yuan are setting up the final beacon defense line on the outskirts. The activity frequency of all Void Tribe Scouts within range has dropped to zero."

She thudded her war spear onto the ground, the butt of the spear leaving a shallow indentation in the rocky earth. Then, she unhooked a flask from her waist, took a small sip, and handed it to Shen Ye. "Where's Yan Shan?"

"In the core area."

Shen Ye took the flask. "He found an Abyssal Crystal in the ruins of the Law Pool that hadn't been fully reverted. Hou Tu said the density of that crystal is higher than the Ash King's bone blade, and he plans to take it back to the Body Refining Cave to test the endurance limit of his new Rock Patterns."

He handed the flask back to Qin Youyou. The two of them stood side by side at the edge of the canyon ruins, looking at the sky over the base's core area, which was fading from deep red to greyish-white.

This battle was over; where the next one would be, no one knew.

But at least at this moment, the wind from the canyon blew from the northwest, carrying the extremely clean scent of ash purified by the Twilight Light Network, dispersing the lingering burnt smell of the battlefield.

That evening, General Lin Yuan gathered everyone at the outpost canteen.

Second Lieutenant Meng Yan prepared a table full of dishes—Spirit Beast steaks, spirit plant stews, spirit grain porridge, and several steamers of freshly cooked spirit plant buns.

Tie Chui and Little One parked the Mobile Pill Room at the canteen entrance. The kiln was refining the last batch of bone armor fragments recovered from the base ruins. The dark golden light of the twilight beacon mingled with the cooking smoke drifting from the canteen window, enveloping the entire outpost in a very warm twilight.

Qin Shu sat in a corner, silent as always.

Cang Ming sent an encrypted file from Eternal University. The early experimental records from the Northern Mining District monitoring station had been matched, confirming that these early samples belonged to the same batch as the Abyssal Cores that had previously appeared in the mining region.

Jiang Yue sent a message simultaneously. The backup files from the Core Heritage Hall had been accessed, and at the end of the file was an encrypted note: "The core data backup for the Perfect Abyss-Devouring Body project is stored deep within the core area of the Abyssal Empire; coordinates locked."

Bai Ye updated the parameters of the Bai family's Time Law Array and sent them to Lin Tianyin of Wanxiang University.

At the medical station, Qin Youyou entered the refinement data of the last batch of ancient war spears into the frontline shared database.

Yan Shan sat in a corner of the canteen with a bowl of spirit grain porridge in front of him. Hou Tu squatted beside him, and the father and son were quietly discussing the hardness parameters of the Abyssal Crystal brought back from the Law Pool ruins.

Jin Lin, Mu Sheng, and Daoist Quan were each leading their teams in post-battle reviews within the Cultivation Divine Kingdom. Xiao Zhi's Spirit Synchronization Net transferred the review data into Shen Ye's Sea of Consciousness in real-time.

Shen Ye stood up and pushed open the canteen door.

The night in the Sea of Thousand Realms Mist was no longer as thick with fog as before. The Twilight Light Network stretched from above the outpost toward the northwest, covering all the lands that had once been stained deep red by the scorch marks of the Ash Law.

The Crown Prince's Perfect Abyss-Devouring Body had been defeated. The tracking data for the early experimental samples had been handed over to Cang Ming, and the coordinates for the core data backup had been locked.

There was still a long way to go, a path he couldn't walk alone, but at this moment, everyone was here.