The serpent-patterned sacrificial pillar broke through the soil, reaching toward the heavens. The bronze chains coiled around its body were saturated with moonlight. Su Jiuli’s residual ashes swept across the eroded marks on the pillar, and the Netherworld Decree Mark peeling from her wrist suddenly surged like a blood-colored serpent. The dark red lines seeped into the cracked, scale-like serpent patterns, burning with the long-lost Wu Clan’s "Soul-Suppression Canon." The moment the chains shuddered, three hundred glazed urns rose from the depths of the earth’s veins. Inside the urns, it was not Gu insects that drifted, but the shattered fragments of Lin Xuan’s Destiny Soul, each piece bitten by the serpent patterns into a hole filled with Star Sand.
"Sister, how dare you disturb the Soul-Suppression Pillar..."
Lu Xiaopang’s phantom seeped from the mouth of an urn, his withered fingers crushing a serpent fang. The fragments fell to the ground, turning into snakes; before they could reach her, the chains shredded them. The shattered scales coalesced into the phantom of an armillary sphere. Amidst the grinding sound of the rotating dial, nine bronze Soul Lamps emerged from the top of the sacrificial pillar. The lamp wicks flickered with the liberated benevolent souls of the Heavenly Fox elders, each forehead marked with a Marriage Covenant.
Chapter 173