Chapter Thirty-Six: Awakening the Furnace

A piercing clang shattered the silence, the cry of the No Return Sword slicing through the gloom. It was no longer a clear, penetrating sound, but a shrill screech, as if metal on the verge of breaking, laced with fury. The sword trembled violently, and the grey-black ice crystals and shifting sword patterns covering Lin Mo flickered wildly. From the blade erupted a sword intent, cold and furious to its core—a force like a provoked beast, unleashed with terrifying power.

The sword intent swept over the huddled Su Li.

She was struck as if by an invisible hammer to the chest, her battered body spewing another mouthful of black blood, flecked with fragments of her organs. Her uninjured left hand dug desperately into the shattered stone floor, nails cracking, barely anchoring her from being thrown aside. Terror, bone-deep, drowned out the last embers of her greed. She stared at Lin Mo—not at him, but at the dreadful sword wailing in his grasp.

The trembling of the abyss did not cease; it only grew more intense. It was no longer just the shaking of stone, but the entire space groaning under unbearable strain.

Cracks spidered across the stone chamber walls, spreading like living things. Massive chunks of rock crashed down with a dull roar, like hail. The ground heaved and twisted, boiling like a storm-tossed sea. Beneath Lin Mo, the floor surged up and then collapsed, hurling him and the sword skyward.

A massive boulder, thick with blue-black moss, thundered down from above, its shadow engulfing Lin Mo midair.

At that critical instant—

The No Return Sword in Lin Mo’s hand, quivering and shrieking, seemed utterly enraged by the impending destruction. The blade flared with a ghostly light, and an icy will, intent on severing all things, seized what remained of Lin Mo’s consciousness. His arm, covered in grey-black ice, moved as if pulled by invisible strings, lashing upward.

A jet-black sword light, sharp as ink, split the air in silence.

No deafening crash followed.

That enormous stone, enough to crush both to pulp, met the dark sword light and, as if cast into an invisible grinder, disintegrated noiselessly into a fine gray powder, raining down like snow.

Lin Mo slammed back onto the twisted earth, spitting blood onto the cold blade. The No Return Sword shrieked ever more urgently, as if warning, as if urging.

The roar from the abyss below drew closer, the swirling black miasma sucked into a vast, inverted vortex. At its center, thick dark-red light pulsed again—this time not just with venom and destruction, but with something older, vaster, purer: hunger.

The core will of the Immortal Refining Furnace had awakened, fixing on the sword that had just been drawn—one which had severed part of its power, the blood cocoon. It also locked onto the two nearby creatures, radiating the scent of “food.”

Su Li struggled, rolling across the fractured ground, desperate to escape the vortex’s pull. Her left hand clawed in vain at the stone; the ice crystal on her severed wrist cracked under the strain, pain nearly driving her unconscious. The chill of death gripped her throat tighter than ever before. She looked at the sword, its oppressive aura undiminished, and her eyes were filled with nothing but pure, despairing longing for survival. To approach meant death; to remain was certain annihilation.

At that moment—

A faint, yet unnervingly distinct sound came from the chamber’s corner.

Lin Mo jerked his head.

In the corner, propped against the wall, lay a bleached skeleton with broken ribs, long since drained of all remnants—yet it moved.

No, it was not the bones that stirred.

It was the thick layer of dark-red, gelatinous substance under the skeleton, like congealed blood. Previously subdued by the sword’s intent and pressure, it had lain dormant. But now, under the awakening of the furnace’s core, the spatial distortion, and the influx of deathly energy, it began to wriggle—alive.

The dark-red gel, viscous as slime, crawled silently up the pale leg bones. Wherever it passed, the bones were stained with a sinister crimson, as if injected with an evil vitality.

A weak but chillingly venomous spiritual wave radiated from the skull, wrapped in the gel—the same source as the venomous will of the former blood cocoon.

“Give... it... back...” A voice, rasping like sandpaper, saturated with endless malice, echoed directly in Lin Mo and Su Li’s minds.

In the hollow eye sockets, two points of dark-red ghostly light flared, locking onto the sword in Lin Mo’s grip.

No—the gaze was fixed on the hilt, where the sword keeper once held it. This sword was the obsession it had guarded for endless ages, its sole remaining, twisted purpose after being corrupted by the furnace.

“My... sword...”

The skeleton, wrapped in blood gel, let out an inhuman howl. Its pale arm bones suddenly lifted; the bone claws, entwined with the viscous gel, formed a grotesque, blood-soaked talon. With a power steeped in decay and malice, and ignoring the spatial distortion and falling stone, it lunged for Lin Mo and the No Return Sword.

Ahead, the awakened furnace core threatened to devour all.

Behind, the corrupted sword keeper’s skeleton reached with its venomous ghost claw.

A dead end.

Lin Mo roared like a trapped beast. The fragments of the Void Sutra in his chest shrieked under the furnace core’s pressure, then were subdued by the sword’s wild intent. The reverse seed shrank, lifeless. Shards of memory stabbed his mind like countless heated needles, nearly shattering his consciousness. He felt his body and soul torn apart by these overwhelming forces.

The sword’s shriek reached its crescendo, the blade flashing, its extinction intent like a volcano about to erupt. It sensed ultimate peril ahead and sacrilege behind.

Just as the blood-soaked claw was about to seize Lin Mo’s back, and the vortex’s pull intensified, threatening to swallow the chamber whole—

The No Return Sword in his hand, trembling at its limit, erupted with a brilliance at the guard, its mysterious dark patterns shining fiercely.

A will, purer, colder than before, intent on severing all bonds and attachments, surged into Lin Mo’s shattered mind, overwhelming chaos and pain. An icily indifferent thought, like the final judgment, branded his consciousness:

“Sever... Mortal... Bonds...”

Sever mortal bonds?

Lin Mo’s pupils contracted. In the red depths of his gaze, two icy sword-spirit glimmers flashed and vanished.

No thought, no hesitation—his body moved by instinct, utterly controlled by the cold sword intent.

His right hand, gripping the sword hilt, covered in ice, lashed backward like an unleashed beast.

Not a concentrated sword light, but a sword arc—black as eternal night, so pure it seemed capable of severing fate and reincarnation.

The instant the sword arc appeared, time and space seemed to freeze.

The roaring, blood-soaked venomous claw, upon contact with the arc, was cast into utter oblivion. No explosion, no clash of energies—the malice accumulated through millennia, along with the claw itself, was erased from existence by an invisible hand.

Silent, complete annihilation.

Only the skeleton, shrouded in blood gel and missing both arms, remained, its ghost fire flickering in hollow sockets, unleashing a silent, venomous scream.

A single stroke.

Severing mortal bonds. Severing the past. Severing all entanglements.

“Go!”

The cold will exploded in Lin Mo’s mind.

The sword tip spun, no longer pointing at the abyss, but stabbed fiercely into the fractured, web-cracked ground beneath their feet.

The blade plunged into the rock as effortlessly as a hot knife through butter.

A ferocious extinction intent flooded the earth through the sword tip.

The entire chamber floor collapsed as if detonated by countless bombs. Huge rocks were pulverized by the wild sword force.

A bottomless, mirror-smooth vertical tunnel opened beneath Lin Mo and Su Li. Below, there was no swirling black miasma, but a deeper, purer darkness that seemed to devour all light.

The furnace core’s terrifying suction immediately found a new outlet, surging like a flood through the tunnel carved by the No Return Sword.

Lin Mo and Su Li were swept up like leaves in a hurricane, powerless, falling into the endless void below.

The wind—or rather, the shriek of torn space—roared in their ears.

Lin Mo clung to the sword hilt, the icy intent still ravaging his body and mind, rending him with agony. He forced his blood- and ice-caked eyes open and looked down.

Endless darkness expanded in his view, like a giant maw waiting to devour. At its deepest point, thick dark-red light pulsed like a monstrous heart. An ancient, vast, indescribable hunger emanated from its core, spreading like a tangible tide.

The heart of the Immortal Refining Furnace—waiting below.

Along the tunnel wall, Su Li’s form tumbled and crashed like a cut kite, battered by the violent suction. Her left hand flailed in vain, the ice at her severed wrist shattering and scattering. Her blood-stained, death-marked face twisted between terror and defiance, finally settling into a hopeless gray despair.

The No Return Sword in Lin Mo’s grip hummed softly, its ghostly light flickering in the wild descent, a candle in the wind.

Falling—toward the ultimate trap that had refined immortals and demons for ages.

Toward the awakening furnace heart.