The Kunlun Ruins, ravaged by the Chaos storm, resembled a rusted, festering wound. The air hung heavy with a sickly, sweet stench of scorched metal and rotting flesh, while the collapsed earth was crisscrossed with solidified lava trenches and crystal thorns—a scene mirroring an abandoned mechanical jungle. The sole testament to the war's outcome was the unhealed deep purple scar slashed across the sky. At the edge of the fissure where Chu Xiyan had finally plummeted, countless fragments of shattered space condensed into warped, bluish-gray light prisms, pointing slantwise toward the earth like a forest of broken spears.
Little Nianyao struggled. What made up her body was no longer the Glazed Bone frame, but a bizarre alloy form forcibly forged from Dao Marks and stellar shards under the scouring of the ultimate light blast. Every inch was covered in cracks, bleeding a dark red, furnace-like glow of light that seemed ready at any moment to disintegrate into a pile of burning metal scrap. Her limbs dragged across the ruins, leaving a trail of flying sparks. She felt almost no pain; only the cold, stubborn clarity deep within her consciousness—like a final rivet rusted fast inside a gear assembly—supported her nearly decaying body, dragging her inch by inch toward that destination—
The core of the storm's eye. Floating within the collapsed spherical vacuum was Yun Qingyu's shattered Remnant Soul Lantern.
Chapter 34