Chapter 148

The bronze altar trembled amidst a torrential storm of Star Sand, Su Jiuli’s toes sinking into stone steps carved with prayers of the Wu Clan. The Netherworld Decree Mark on her wrist had already crept up half her cheek, the dark red patterns resonating with the Stellar Sundial at the center of the altar. Suddenly, the Sundial Needle spun in reverse, and Lin Xuan’s fragmented soul drifted out from the face of the dial, only to be pierced through its limbs by nine bronze chains. At the end of the chains hung the Black Tortoise Turtle Shell, from the cracks of which seeped the whispers of the First Generation Patriarch. "Gouge the heart, or gouge the soul." A phantom of Lu Xiaopang emerged from the fissures of the shell, the bronze bell in his hand vibrating with a piercing chime. Su Jiuli’s glazed bones cracked in response, and from the fissures sprouted dense Bronze Roots, their tips coiling around a blood-stained wedding ring—the very one she had cast off three hundred lifetimes ago!