Cang Yaochen dragged the carriage forward, the pulling sensation beneath his feet growing heavier with every step. Countless broken swords and rusted armors bobbed beneath the surface of the black water like a legion of restless ghosts refusing to close their eyes.
"Cang Yaochen, I can't feel my feet anymore," Jiang Li's voice trembled. She could feel the black water seeping through her ankles and into the marrow of her bones.
"Don't look at the water. Look at me." Cang Yaochen exerted a sudden force, gripping her hand so tightly his knuckles turned white. With every step, the divine power radiating from him forcibly repelled the seawater beneath his boots.
A-Mu lay half-dead on the Dharma carriage, blue smoke still curling from his severed mechanical shoulder. He stared at the giant, glistening black rocks ahead, his voice squeezed out from the depths of his throat.
"That's it... the Eye-Hiding Grotto. Master is in the stone cave at the very bottom. He's watching you... he's been waiting ten thousand years for you. Hehe, Holy Monk, don't you dare disappoint my Master."
Cang Yaochen ignored him, silencing the chattering youth with a swift blow to the neck. He could sense that the closer they got to those reefs, the more frantically the Red Sand Imprint on Jiang Li's forehead pulsed—like a beast starved for millennia catching the scent of fresh blood.
BOOM—!
The calm surface of the sea suddenly exploded.
Dozens of rusted iron chains erupted from the black water, lunging like vipers toward the two of them. These chains were studded with eyeballs of all sizes—some human, some demonic—each bloodshot and fixed in a death stare upon Cang Yaochen.
"Since you've come, stay and keep this old man company!"
A decaying voice echoed across the sea. A monster composed entirely of countless violet-black tentacles crawled slowly from behind the reef. It had no face; instead, a massive blue-violet crystal was embedded in its chest—a fragment of the Abyssal Mirror: [Pupil of the Past].
"A thing that hides its head and shows its tail... you think you're worthy of being called my Junior Brother?" Cang Yaochen sneered.
He sliced his palm open, splashing his dark red Buddhist blood into the void.
Violet light erupted like a waterfall behind him. The moment the encroaching chains touched the light, they emitted a piercing sizzle and rapidly dissolved.
But the monster's target was never Cang Yaochen.
With a violent whip of its tentacles, a surge of eerie blue light instantly enveloped Jiang Li.
"Li'er!" Cang Yaochen reached out to grab her, only to find her body becoming nearly transparent within that blue radiance.
Jiang Li felt herself falling into a massive vortex.
The black water vanished, replaced by a sky filled with dancing red lotuses and a sacred, inviolable golden Buddhist temple.
She saw herself from ten thousand years ago.
Back then, she was a naive girl in red, clutching the sleeve of a young monk as they ran through the Spirit Mountain without a care in the world.
"Yaochen, once I become a Buddha, will I be able to stay by your side forever?" The girl in her memory tilted her head back, her eyes curving into beautiful crescents as she laughed.
The young Yaochen did not speak. In his eyes, usually filled with compassion for all living things, was hidden a cold resolve that made the modern-day Jiang Li's blood turn to ice.
The vision shifted violently.
It was the same temple, but it had turned into a slaughterhouse.
She was nailed to an altar by ninety-nine Soul-Sealing Spikes. The man she trusted and relied on most—wearing pristine, moon-white robes and holding a burning red seal—walked toward her without a trace of emotion.
"The Demon Seed has manifested. To save all living beings, Li'er, you must die."
The youth's voice was cold, devoid of a single shred of mercy.
"No... Yaochen, save me... it hurts so much!" The girl in the memory shrieked in soul-crushing agony.
With one final, piercing scream, the girl's body was incinerated into ash by the Red Sand, leaving only a wisp of a remnant soul to be forcibly sucked away by the artifact known as the "Abyssal Mirror."
In reality, Jiang Li's eyes snapped open. They had turned a complete, heterodox dark red.
"Who are you?" She looked at the blood-stained man before her who was trying to rush forward and embrace her. Her voice carried a deathly chill that made one's skin crawl.
Cang Yaochen froze.
Due to their [Pain-Sharing Resonance], he felt the sheer weight of Jiang Li's hatred in that instant. His soul began to fluctuate violently, and the Love God persona suffered a frantic backlash under the strain of such distorted emotions.
"Li'er, those memories are fake! It's a trap!" Cang Yaochen roared, his eyes beginning to leak tears.
"Fake?"
Jiang Li let out a hollow, tragic laugh. She wrenched her hand from Cang Yaochen's grasp and transformed into a red blur, charging directly at the tentacled monster on the reef.
She ignored the chains lashing out at her. As the iron pierced through her shoulders, she hooked her slender fingers like talons and slammed them into the blue crystal in the monster's chest.
"Get... OUT!"
Jiang Li let out a roar like a cornered beast. In that instant, every meridian in her body ruptured, and blood dyed her silver hair crimson.
With a sharp, crystalline crack—
She tore the blue-violet [Pupil of the Past] raw from the monster's body.
The monster's shriek shattered the surrounding reefs.
Holding the fragment, she turned her head and stared fixedly at Cang Yaochen, who lay collapsed in a pool of blood. She slammed the fragment into her own chest.
A terrifying power, enough to rip the entire Black Sea asunder, erupted from Jiang Li's frail frame. Her long black hair transformed into a blinding, snowy silver.
Across the black surface of the sea, the mournful wail of a falling deity rang out.
Cang Yaochen lay among the ruins, watching the girl floating in mid-air—her gaze as cold and alien as a Demon God's. Suddenly, he felt very, very tired.