Chapter 311

For a full half-shir (half an incense stick's burning time), the impacts outside the cave fell silent, yet that low hum within the fissure lingered at the edges of everyone's hearing like a fine needle. Ye Fan's fingers, dangling over his knees, curled slightly; the burning ache of the Starfall Seal on his palm had spread up his forearm. He could sense the small sapling within his Inner World sprouting upward—when that low hum had sounded just moments before, the golden flecks on the sapling had suddenly flared for an instant, causing even his Sea of Consciousness to tremble along with it. That dark-robed figure from his past-life memories floated up once more, standing before the rift between the two realms, speaking of "nurturing something capable of shattering the shackles of Changsheng," and later... later, he had been torn to pieces by that very thing. "Brother Ye." Su Qingxue's voice brushed across the back of his hand like a feather. She had drawn close at some unknown moment, leisurely binding the short flute—snapped into three sections—with silver thread, her blood-stained fingertips tapping gently against a crack in the flute body. "That commotion is gone."