Chapter 113

The Star Marks seeping from the Bronze Sarcophagus crawled up Su Jiuli’s ankles, coiling around her limbs like living serpents. She tore the markings away with her bare hands, and the dark golden blood that sprayed from the ruptures condensed in mid-air into three hundred and sixty Bronze Divination Bamboo Slips. The inscriptions on the slips linked head-to-tail, piecing together a map of the Star Ruins—the fissure at the center of the map aligned perfectly with the jagged edge of the jade pendant at her heart. "So, it was you who was the key all along..." The sigh emanating from the sarcophagus carried the echoes of the North Sea’s abyss. A palm covered in Star Marks reached fully out of the casket. A silver bell on the wrist jingled; its clapper was half a charred Fox Tail Bone. As the ripples of the bell’s chime spread, the collapsing rock strata of the abyss suddenly froze, and the scattering Star Sand flowed backward into a vortex. At the center of the whirlpool, an armillary sphere made of bronze emerged.