The moment the eleventh tail bone tore through the charred skin of the fox corpse’s spine, the Star Sand at the bottom of the North Sea froze. Unlike the cold, rigid texture of bronze, the tail bone radiated a translucent, jade-like luster, and the Star Marks shifting between its joints aligned perfectly with the incomplete tribulation mark on Su Jiuli’s chest. As the tip of the tail tapped the void, ripples spread outward, revealing a Giant Bronze Gate. The surface of the gate was covered in the funerary scriptures of the Wu Clan, and from the cracks in the text, dark red beads of blood oozed out, falling into the sea to solidify into the phantoms of three hundred child corpses.
These corpses had fragments of an Astrolabe embedded in their foreheads, and they knelt in prayer, cradling Bronze Divination Bamboo Slips. The inscriptions on the slips snaked toward Su Jiuli like living serpents, only to petrify the instant they touched her tribulation mark. She channeled the chaos energy to shatter the stone shells, the shards coalescing into a miniature armillary sphere. The bronze rings of the sphere spun in reverse, and the shadow of the Sundial Needle pointed diagonally toward the Giant Bronze Gate—wherever the shadow passed, a rotting, giant palm reached out from the seams of the gate, its palm bearing a Star Mark identical in origin to the eleventh tail bone!
"The Gate of Tribulation finally opens... ten thousand bones return to the vessel..."
Chapter 111