Chapter Forty-Three: Ashes

Torrential rain battered the cracked, scorched earth, raising a swirling, ashen mist heavy with the stench of charred corpses. At the edge of the Burial Abyss, the land resembled the remains left by a giant beast’s feast, exposing jagged, jet-black rock. Lin Mo stood within the curtain of rain, his tattered servant’s robe clinging to his gaunt frame like a ragged standard at a grave’s head.

His left hand gripped tightly the Chaos Dao Seed, swirling with three shifting colors. Its warmth pulsed against his palm—weak yet stubborn, like the last ember struggling in a frozen abyss. Each pulse tugged at the wild, ashen-white vortex deep within his dantian, where the shattered Void Scripture fragments frenziedly tore and devoured the void origin backflow from the Immortal Refining Furnace and the sinister shards left by the Inverse Seed. Each wrenching surge was like a dull blade scraping his bones from within. Beneath the dormant sword-markings on his right arm, remnants of the Irrevocable Sword’s intent turned to icy needles, clashing with the dantian’s vortex, engraving agony into his very marrow. At his brow, the point of annihilating starlight was a cold wedge, pinning his tottering spirit in place, preventing him from being ripped apart by the chaos within.

Man. Sword. The Void.

Three powers battled within his battered shell, each vying for final dominion.

The rain intensified, washing the congealed blood-ice from his face. He lifted his head, ashen eyes peering through the downpour toward a line of pallid daylight—the only direction leading from this tomb. He stepped forward onto the viscous mix of mud, blood, and ash; each stride left a deep print, quickly swallowed by black-red sludge. Every movement felt as if his body bore the weight of mountains, each breath pulling his failing meridians to the breaking point.

Suddenly—

Three figures, ghostlike, tore through the rain’s veil, appearing silently atop the charred rocks ten paces ahead. Each wore the same dark attire, overlain by dusk-blue scale armor that shed rain without a trace, eerily slick. Their faces were masked in cold metal, exposing only three pairs of eyes as emotionless and deep as winter pools. At each waist hung a long, straight blade, its edge inscribed with faint blue runes. The handles bore a tiny, twisted star-ring sigil.

The Skywatch Inquisitors!

The leader was slender, and at his exposed neck beneath the mask ran a fresh, dark-red scar like a coiled centipede. He stepped forward, the scrape of metal jarringly harsh amid the rain. His gaze swept over the lingering ash on Lin Mo, the charred, cracked skin, and finally the left hand clasping the ominous, tricolored seed—his eyes as void of emotion as a thing of metal, resigned only to duty.

“Designation Guihai-79, Lin Mo,” he intoned through the mask, voice metallic and unwavering. “You bear the forbidden power of the Burial Abyss. Your continued existence is a dire threat. By decree of the Celestial Patrol, you are to be executed on the spot—your soul utterly destroyed.”

As his final word fell, the three shadows sprang—taut bowstrings loosed in an instant!

No warning, no testing. Three blue blade-lights ripped through the rain, forming a trident of soul-chilling murder, sealing every escape. Even before the blades reached him, the Skywatch’s binding force had fallen, freezing the air and rooting Lin Mo’s feet as if in a mire.

Lin Mo’s ashen pupils contracted sharply!

His body reacted before his mind. His long-dormant right arm jerked up, the ragged sleeve shredded by unseen power. The black sword-marks on his arm, dormant no longer, flared like startled serpents.

A faint but cutting sword cry rang from deep in his bones.

The binding force around his feet was severed as if by an invisible blade. At the brink of disaster, Lin Mo flung himself sideways!

Two blue blade-lights grazed his afterimage, plunging into the charred earth and leaving two deep, icy grooves. But the third, from his left, came like a maggot to bone—straight for his undefended side. Its wielder was the scarred-necked leader, whose eyes beneath the mask were glacial.

No way to dodge!

Icy death seized his heart.

But as the blade’s tip closed upon his flesh—

Lin Mo’s left hand, clutching the Chaos Dao Seed, shot up as if pulled by invisible strings, blocking the blow!

The blue blade pierced into his palm with a sickening crunch.

The expected agony of steel through flesh and bone never fully arrived. At the instant of penetration, the seed in his palm exploded with searing, tricolored light—gray, gold, and green spiraling and writhing.

A cold, sinister, yet greedily devouring power surged up the invading blade like a living thing—reversing its flow!

The leader gave a barely audible gasp of shock. It felt as if his blade had stabbed not flesh, but a bottomless, icy vortex! The Skywatch force and spiritual energy he poured into the weapon were being ravenously drained and devoured by the tricolored light. Bone-deep cold shot up the hilt, racing along his arm.

Worse still, within that swirling light appeared a vague, agonized face of a woman—her eyes hollow, staring back at him with an eerie, insatiable hunger!

In the instant his mind was shaken by this ghastly vision—

A roar, ragged with pain and ferocity, tore from Lin Mo’s throat! Rather than release the impaling blade, his pierced left hand clamped down harder, the Dao Seed’s devouring power intensifying.

At the same time, the sword-marks on his right arm blazed anew, and a wave of chilling sword intent burst from the Irrevocable Sword, temporarily suppressing the vortex’s rampage and the agony at his brow. In that fleeting clarity, Lin Mo wrenched himself backward, body bending as if to snap.

The blade embedded in his palm was ripped free—hilt and all—torn from the leader’s grasp!

Blood, mixed with gray-green ichor, sprayed from his ruined palm. Pain blackened Lin Mo’s vision, yet he gripped the Skywatch blade, slick with his blood, unyieldingly in his left hand.

“Kill!” The other two Inquisitors’ shouts shattered the momentary stillness. Instead of recoiling at their comrade’s setback, their killing intent only sharpened. Two even fiercer blue arcs flashed like crossing lightning—one for his throat, one for his waist—unyielding, fatal, impossibly swift.

But the sword light on Lin Mo’s right arm faded quickly after the burst, and pain crashed back like the tide. His vision swam, body wavering on the edge. Against these two final, deadly blows, it seemed he had nothing left.

Yet at that instant, deep within his nearly unfocused, ashen eyes, a faint, green fire flickered.

The Inverse Seed’s remnant! The cold “satisfaction” of the Dao Seed, having devoured the Skywatch force.

That satisfaction was like a final stimulant for a dying beast.

With a rasping breath, Lin Mo’s bloody gaze fixed not on the incoming blades, but on the churned, death-tainted mud at his feet.

His dormant dantian vortex, roused by the Inverse Seed’s wickedness, suddenly reversed!

A surge of cold, turbid energy, saturated with the Abyss’s deathly essence, gushed from his feet into the earth!

The ground quaked violently. Around Lin Mo’s feet, the blackened mud boiled as if alive. The filth, mixed with lingering resentment, surged up in twisted, monstrous claws.

The blue blades slashed into the mud-claws like hot knives through half-hardened grease; the Skywatch’s force clashed with the deathly resentment, hissing and corroded. The mud claws splattered apart, but the blade-light was fouled and dimmed, its fury abated.

The backlash made the two Inquisitors falter—just for an instant.

That instant was enough.

Lin Mo moved, a beast breaking from a quagmire, body smeared with boiling filth and dragging the blade still stuck through his left hand, charging straight for the scarred-necked leader.

He was slow, even stumbling, but his suicidal, ferocious momentum and the swirling aura of deathly filth around him created a suffocating pressure.

The leader, suppressing the cold in his arm, saw the mud-caked, blade-impaled figure charging like a vengeful ghost. His eyes flashed—he formed his fingers into a blade, gathering a searing blue glow, and thrust for Lin Mo’s heart. The strike was fast, precise, merciless—Skywatch force enough to pierce stone.

Lin Mo did not evade. His bloodshot, ashen eyes locked onto his foe.

Just as the blue finger-blade closed on his chest—

Lin Mo’s pierced left hand shot up—not to block, but to thrust the Skywatch blade, hand and all, into the incoming strike.

The sound of metal rending flesh and bone was sharp enough to set teeth on edge.

The leader’s blue finger-blade stabbed directly into his own Skywatch sword’s blade, Lin Mo’s left palm utterly pierced—the tip protruded an inch from the back of his hand, just shy of Lin Mo’s heart.

Pain drowned Lin Mo’s vision in blood, but his lips twisted in a savage grin.

“Detonate,” he rasped, voice cold and hoarse.

The reversed vortex in his dantian halted, then channeled the newly-devoured Skywatch force, mixed with the Dao Seed’s icy malevolence, back up the blade—straight into the leader’s finger-blade.

The fine Skywatch sword could not withstand such an assault; in an instant, it exploded into a thousand shards.

A scream of agony tore through the rain. The leader’s right hand and half his forearm were blasted to powder by the detonation, and the force of blade fragments and energy slammed into his chest, caving his scale armor. He was thrown like a sack of rags, smashing into the rocks, blood spraying, mask shattered to reveal a youthful, scarred, pain-contorted face.

The other two Inquisitors’ eyes went wide with rage and horror. Their comrade’s ruin sent them into a frenzy. With a roar, they scattered the remnants of the mud-claws, blue blades arcing again with murderous intent, locking onto the reeling Lin Mo.

Lin Mo stood, a gaping, bloody hole through his left palm, blood and gray-green ichor dripping onto the mud. The sword-marks on his right arm were now utterly dark, and the starlight at his brow all but faded. The fragile balance of three forces within him was on the verge of collapse, pain crashing over his remaining consciousness like a tidal wave.

He watched the twin death-lights come for him, and in his ashen eyes there was no fear—only a dead, utter exhaustion.

Is it over?

Like this… is it the end?

He lowered his head a little, gazing at his mangled left hand, which, by habit, still clutched tight. Deep within the bloodied wound, the tricolored Chaos Dao Seed had sunk into flesh, leaving only a faint, persistent pulse against his bone.

At that moment—

A faint, nearly drowned-out whistle split the rain from behind, from the direction of that pale line of daylight—blindingly swift.

A point of utterly condensed black light.

The black light, impossibly fast, pierced the heart of both incoming blue blade-lights at their core nodes.

Two soft pops, like bursting bubbles.

The two furious blue arcs, as if pricked, instantly unraveled—dissolving into scattered blue motes, snuffed out by the rain.

The two Inquisitors staggered, spiritual backlash making them grunt as they turned, aghast, to the source of the black light.

Lin Mo slowly raised his head.

Beyond the rain, where daylight met scorched earth, a figure strode through the mud.

He too wore a rain-soaked, dark uniform, but over it carelessly draped a faded, threadbare robe—the old outer sect garb of the Greenwood Sect. He wore no mask; rain ran down a pale, stubbled face. In his left hand he carried a strange, dull bone scythe, its blade smeared with drying, dark purple blood. His right hand was still poised in the gesture of a flick.

His eyes looked weary, as if he hadn’t slept in a long time. His gaze swept over his gravely wounded comrades, the ruined blade, and Lin Mo, standing like a bloody revenant. There was no anger, no grief—only a fathomless fatigue.

At last, his eyes met Lin Mo’s. His lips moved, his voice quiet but clear above the roar of rain, trembling almost imperceptibly:

“Brother… it’s time to go.”