Chapter 28: Phantom in the Mist

That figure staggered forward through the thick fog, each step accompanied by the harsh screech of metal scraping against rock and suppressed, painful gasps. Stooped, dragging one leg, her movements were stiff and sluggish, like a corpse just risen from its grave.

Lin Mo’s heart pounded wildly in his chest, threatening to shatter his ribs. He curled up tightly in the shadowed hollow of a broken stone pillar, scarcely daring to breathe. In his left hand, he gripped a sharp-edged black bone shard, his knuckles white from the force. The cold, predatory aura that emanated faintly from it was his only anchor in this moment.

Who was it? Zhou Xiaoxiao? Impossible! Even gravely wounded, Zhou Xiaoxiao would never move with such clumsy sluggishness. Su Li? That woman was always swift and elusive… Could it be another intruder in the Burial Abyss of Immortals, someone else who had somehow survived? Or was it… some creature, wearing human skin, corrupted by the aura of death?

The thick mist swirled as the hunched figure drew closer. Lin Mo could already smell a heavy stench, a blend of blood, filthy earth, and—a faint trace of something cold and strangely fragrant—wafting on the mist.

Just as the figure was about to step into the shadow of the stone pillar where Lin Mo hid—

A stifled groan of pain!

The figure seemed to trip on something, lurching forward violently. The dense fog cloaking her body was briefly scattered by the sudden motion.

Lin Mo’s pupils contracted to pinpoints.

Not Zhou Xiaoxiao!

It was a woman.

Her plain white dress was tattered, drenched in dark red and almost black stains, the original color and style long lost. Sopping black hair clung in disarray to her pale cheeks and neck. One leg was clearly gravely injured—the fabric below her knee torn away, exposing a horrifying wound, deep to the bone, with flesh peeled back and the edges tinged an ominous gray. Viscous black mud clung to the wound, exuding a stench of rot and death.

She supported herself with a long sword, its entire length glowing dark blue, ancient in design, yet broken in the middle. The tip was missing, leaving only half the blade and the hilt. Each time she leaned on the broken sword for support, it scraped across the slick rock with a shrill noise, provoking her painful, ragged breaths.

Her face—mostly veiled by tangled, wet hair—revealed only a delicately shaped jaw and pale lips, pressed tightly together, with dried blood at the corners.

But Lin Mo could never mistake her.

It was Su Li.

The proud prodigy of the Hehuan Sect—Su Li—the one who had given him that indifferent glance in the martial arena, spied on him from the herbal shed, fought for the fragments in the Wailing Gorge, and whose spirit had been crushed by a falling boulder.

How could she be here, so grievously wounded? Shouldn’t she have fled far from Qimu Sect after her spirit was destroyed in the Wailing Gorge? Or… had she never left at all, her true body lurking nearby? Was her injury caused when the deathly aura of the Burial Abyss of Immortals burst through the formation? Or had she been wounded during the scramble for the fragments in the Wailing Gorge?

A tidal wave of shock overwhelmed Lin Mo. His mind was in chaos. What was the Hehuan Sect plotting? Why was this woman so obsessed?

Su Li clearly hadn’t noticed Lin Mo, who was hidden in the shadows, nearly blending with the stone itself. She seemed at the end of her strength; her body trembled, and, unable to hold herself up any longer, she slid down against the cold rock wall, sitting heavily on the ground. The broken sword clattered from her hand onto the slippery moss.

She began to cough violently, each spasm pulling at her wounds, a feverish flush rising on her pale face. Dark red, icy blood frothed at her lips. Her left hand, still relatively uninjured, trembled as she groped in a mud-stained, tattered storage pouch at her waist, her movements weak and clumsy.

As she bowed her head, the wet hair covering her face shifted aside for an instant.

Lin Mo’s breath caught.

On Su Li’s pale, smooth temple, close to her brow, was a thumb-sized, charred, bone-deep wound—shaped hideously, edged with fractures from a violent impact, as if something had smashed into her skull. Within the wound, blood vessels throbbed faintly beneath exposed bone. Clotted black-red blood and ashen deathly aura coiled around it like living things, thwarting its healing.

The boulder! The Wailing Gorge! The boulder Zhou Xiaoxiao had hurled to smash her spiritual avatar—not just destroying her avatar, but the wound had reflected directly onto her true body? What sort of sinister sorcery was this?

Her search paused, halted by agony. Su Li squeezed her eyes shut, trembling from cold and blood loss. The gruesome wound on her temple looked all the more ghastly in the shadowed fog.

Lin Mo’s emotions churned like a deep pool struck by a boulder—shock, confusion, and a strange, inexplicable tremor in his heart. Was this woman an enemy, or an ally? What was her true purpose in seeking the Void Scripture fragments? Now, as she hovered on the brink of death, should he… strike while she was weak, and finish her off?

The thought had barely formed when a violent turmoil erupted within him.

At the very instant Su Li collapsed and her aura faded—

A cold, vicious, and greedily powerful suction erupted without warning from deep within the fragment of the Void Scripture embedded in Lin Mo’s chest.

Its target—Su Li’s worn storage pouch at her waist.

The suction came so suddenly, so fiercely, like a ravenous beast abruptly awakened by the scent of a peerless delicacy within reach, instantly driven to madness. Lin Mo had no time to react before a ferocious force seized what was left of his consciousness. His body, as if yanked by invisible cords, lurched forth uncontrollably from the shadows of the stone pillar.

“Who’s there?!” Su Li’s reaction was astonishingly quick. Even on the verge of death, the vigilance and ruthlessness of a Hehuan Sect elite were etched in her bones. The instant Lin Mo lurched forward, she snapped her head up. Those peach-blossom eyes, dulled by pain, suddenly flared with a cold, poisonous light—sharp as daggers laced with venom.

Not a moment’s hesitation—her left hand, which had been groping for the pouch, shot out like a viper, the fingertips crackling with condensed, faintly pink spiritual power, exuding a strange, mind-bending aura, thrusting straight for Lin Mo’s throat—a killing move from the start.

A mortal sense of peril crashed over him like icy water. Lin Mo’s body, driven forward by the insatiable pull of the Void Scripture fragment, could not dodge. The pink-glowing fingertips were about to pierce his throat.

A hair’s breadth from death!

In that instant, the fiendish “Reverse Seed” attached to the cold “stone” in his chest was utterly enraged by the imminent threat. Its eerie green light blazed forth, and a surge of life force, mingled with a chilling, sinister energy, erupted violently from Lin Mo’s chest.

Instead of confronting Su Li’s lethal strike directly, this demonic vitality instantly enveloped Lin Mo’s left hand—the one clutching the black bone shard.

“Open—for me!” a hoarse, wrathful roar burst uncontrollably from Lin Mo’s throat, sounding both like his own voice and that of some slumbering, furious soul within.

His left hand, shrouded in that green light and gripping the razor-edged bone, moved with strength and speed far beyond Lin Mo’s limits. With a shrill whoosh, it slashed toward Su Li’s attacking wrist.

Pure speed and power—not Lin Mo’s own, but forcibly unleashed by the Reverse Seed’s unholy vitality.

A sickening rip, like leather being torn apart.

The bone shard’s sharp edge cleaved through the faint pink aura at Su Li’s wrist and bit deep into her flesh—down to the bone.

“Aaah—!” Su Li’s agonized scream echoed in the gloom. The pain disrupted her killing blow, her left hand veering off course, the pink aura dissipating.

But Lin Mo’s body, still under the Void Scripture fragment’s greedy control, continued its forward plunge. The two were too close—

Crash!

His body slammed hard into Su Li’s, knocking her off balance. The pair tumbled together across the slick, icy stone beam, crashing into the rocky wall.

In the chaos, Lin Mo’s left hand, driven by the Reverse Seed’s power, clamped down like an iron vice on Su Li’s battered storage pouch at her waist. The cold, tyrannical suction from the Void Scripture fragment surged down his arm and into the pouch.

“No!” Su Li shrieked in rage and terror, her uninjured right hand clawing at Lin Mo’s wrist in a desperate attempt to stop him, but her strength was sapped by her wounds.

A faint tearing sound—the tough fabric of the storage pouch was ripped open from within by that icy suction.

A few dim golden fragments, mixed with some low-grade spirit stones and broken medicinal vials, burst forth from the torn pouch.

A sliver of the Void Scripture fragment—though only a speck, barely larger than a grain of rice, and tinged with a dull gold.

It was this, the golden fragment, that had provoked such wild hunger from the Void Scripture remnant in Lin Mo’s chest.

The moment the golden speck was exposed to the air, it transformed into a barely visible golden thread, streaking straight into Lin Mo’s chest as if drawn by fate, ignoring all distance.

“Ugh!” Lin Mo stiffened as if struck by a bolt of icy lightning. The cold “stone” in his chest throbbed violently, sending a wave of savage, replete tremors through him before subsiding into a state of “digestion.” The force controlling his body vanished.

Su Li, witnessing the golden fragment being devoured by Lin Mo, her eyes blazed with searing fury—and a hint of despair. Ignoring the blood streaming from her wrist and temple, she summoned the last of her strength with her uninjured right hand. Her fingers, like claws, slashed at Lin Mo’s throat.

“Give it back!” The killing intent was palpable.

Lin Mo, only just freed from the Void Scripture fragment’s control, was still paralyzed. Her claws were about to tear open his throat.

At that moment—

A thunderous, earth-shaking rumble erupted from the depths below, without warning.

The entire vast stone beam shuddered and rocked violently, as if struck by an invisible giant’s hammer. Rocks and dust rained from the walls; the slick moss on the ground rippled like waves.

Crack—crack-crack!

A chilling chorus of splitting stone rang out from where the beam was anchored to the cliff. Giant fissures, like spiderwebs, spread instantly across the rock face and the joint of the stone beam. Pebbles and boulders poured into the abyss like a torrential rain.

The ancient stone beam, which had existed for countless millennia… was about to collapse.