Transforming into a stunningly beautiful fox spirit, leaving a scar on the heart of a prodigy.

Chen Tianyou was the only one left in the secret room.

The runes on the black iron wall still emitted a faint glow, making his half-white hair appear somewhat dazzling. He leaned against the wall, his left hand unconsciously touching his chest.

The cracks in the Supreme Bone are widening.

Purple light seeped out from the crack, flickering and scorching the skin. Chen Tianyou ignored it. He touched the crack very gently, as if touching an old scar.

He remembered something.

This happened a long time ago.

-

When he was three years old, he was brought into the Chen family ancestral hall.

The ancestral hall was so large that it took a three-year-old child a long time to reach the end. At the end, there was a stone platform, and on the platform lay a boy who wasn't much older than him.

The boy was chained up, his mouth was stuffed with cloth, and his eyes were wide open.

He didn't know the boy.

Later he found out that it was his own brother.

The father stood beside the stone platform, holding a knife in his hand.

The knife is very shiny.

Three-year-old Chen Tianyou was held down by the shoulders by two clansmen and forcibly pressed onto another platform opposite the stone platform. He struggled, cried out, and called for his father.

Nobody paid him any attention.

As the father's knife fell, the boy opposite him let out a muffled groan. It wasn't a scream, but a groan. The cloth in his mouth muffled the sound, leaving only a faint whisper.

Then he saw blood.

A lot of blood gushed from the boy's chest and flowed down the grooves of the stone platform onto the ground.

The father removed a piece of bone from the boy's chest.

The bones were small and emitted a purple glow.

Chen Tianyou still remembers the feeling when that piece of bone was stuffed into his chest.

Burn it from the inside out.

The bone, like a piece of red-hot iron, was forcibly embedded into the gap of his sternum. The moment the flesh enveloped it, he felt as if his body had been torn in two.

He fainted.

When he woke up, his father was standing by the bed and said something to him.

"Tianyou, you are the chosen one."

From that day on, everyone called him that. The chosen one, the hope of the Chen family, the future emperor.

No one asked him if he was in pain.

-

The Supreme Bone took root in his body and grew together with his flesh and blood.

But it never truly acknowledged him.

Every three months, his bones would flare up again. Purple light surged through his meridians, like countless needles piercing outwards simultaneously. His bones would crack and pop in the middle of the night, and blood would seep from his pores, staining the sheets a purplish-black.

The Chen family's sorcerer called this "rejection of foreign substances".

The Supreme Bone possesses a spirit; it remembers its original owner.

Each rejection was the bone trying to return to Chen Xuan's body.

Chen Tianyou started taking Zhengu Dan (a traditional Chinese medicine) when he was five years old. The side effect of the medicine was excruciating pain, the kind of pain that kept him awake for three days and three nights.

He ate it for fifteen years.

The Chen family provided him with the best cultivation techniques, the best elixirs, and the best resources for cultivation. The elders of the clan placed high hopes on him, and his peers treated him with utmost respect.

But he knew that everyone looked at him the same way.

I wasn't looking at him.

They were looking at the bone in his chest.

-

Chen Tianyou lowered his head and looked at the purple light leaking out from the crack.

He suddenly chuckled.

The sound was very soft, and it sounded somewhat strange in the empty, enclosed room.

He leaned against the wall and stood up. The wound on his severed arm had reopened, and blood dripped onto the floor from his empty sleeve. He ignored it and walked step by step toward the exit of the secret room.

After walking a dozen steps, he stopped in front of the threshold.

Chen Xuan and Su Chang'an's figures had already disappeared at the end of the passage.

"Chen Xuan".

He spoke. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried far due to the echoes of the black iron walls.

The footsteps stopped at the end of the passage.

Chen Tianyou stood on the threshold, the purple light in his chest growing brighter and brighter.

"You said this bone isn't mine," he said. "You're right."

He raised his left hand and placed it on his chest.

He clenched his five fingers together and dug them into the flesh.

Blood gushed from between his fingers. It wasn't ordinary blood; it was imperial blood, glowing with a purple light, scalding hot and steaming.

Chen Tianyou's face remained expressionless. His hand continued to dig inward, his fingertips touching his sternum.

Click.

A crisp sound.

He broke his own sternum.

The sound of bones shattering echoed in the sealed room. Chen Tianyou's body trembled violently, but his hands did not stop. His fingertips probed into his chest cavity, touching the piece of bone embedded deep in his flesh.

Supreme Bone.

He grabbed it tightly.

Pull it outwards.

The sound of flesh tearing apart was more horrifying than the clash of any weapon. The intricate veins were severed at their roots, and the muscles that had grown together for fifteen years were violently separated.

Chen Tianyou's pupils dilated suddenly.

He didn't call out.

He bit his lip until it bled, and his teeth chattered together, but he didn't utter a single syllable from beginning to end.

Snapped.

He threw a piece of bloody, purple bone on the ground.

The bone hit the ground, bounced twice, and rolled to a stop at the threshold.

Chen Tianyou's body seemed to have lost all support, he stumbled forward half a step, and knelt on one knee. A section of his chest caved in, and blood gushed from the open wound.

His cultivation level is collapsing.

Peak of the Cave Profound Realm, Mid-stage of the Cave Profound Realm, Early Stage of the Cave Profound Realm —

His breath plummeted, as if he had been pushed off a mountain peak.

But he looked up.

His eyes were brighter than ever.

"Chen Xuan".

At the end of the passage, Chen Xuan turned around.

He saw the severed bones on the ground.

They also saw the bloody, mangled hole in Chen Tianyou's chest.

"I don't want this anymore," Chen Tianyou said. His voice was trembling, but he enunciated each word clearly, "Not because of you. It's because I've had enough."

He stood up.

Without the Supreme Bone, Chen Tianyou's aura dropped to the early stage of the Cave Profound Realm.

But he stood very straight.

"Let's fight again." Chen Tianyou looked at Chen Xuan. "Not the imperial prince and the abandoned pawn. Not destiny and trash."

He paused for a moment.

"Just you and me."

The sealed room remained silent for three breaths.

Su Chang'an leaned against the wall, saying nothing. She looked at the hole in Chen Tianyou's chest, then at the piece of bone on the ground.

She did not urge Chen Xuan to pick it up.

Because she saw Chen Xuan's expression.

Chen Xuan released Su Chang'an's hand and took two steps forward. He walked to the side of the severed bone and glanced down at it.

Then he stepped over the bones and continued walking forward.

He didn't pick it up.

Chen Tianyou's pupils twitched.

"You don't want it?"

"No," Chen Xuan said.

He stood five steps away from Chen Tianyou and raised his heavy sword.

Then he did something no one expected.

He aimed the tip of his greatsword at his left shoulder.

Rotate your wrist.

The blade pierced in.

Su Chang'an's expression changed.

"Chen Xuan!"

Chen Xuan didn't stop. The sword tip pierced through his left shoulder, drawing out a cloud of blood. Without changing his expression, he withdrew the sword and delivered a final blow to his side.

Two wounds.

His breath began to drop.

Peak of the Cave Profound Realm, Mid-stage of the Cave Profound Realm, Early Stage of the Cave Profound Realm —

He was suppressing his cultivation level.

Blood flowed from the wound, dripping onto the jade bricks and mixing with Chen Tianyou's blood.

"Are you crazy?" Su Chang'an's voice came from behind.

Chen Xuan did not turn around.

He looked at Chen Tianyou.

"I'll give you the fairness you want."

Chen Tianyou stared at him. He stared for a long time.

Then he laughed.

It wasn't that twisted smile from before.

It was a very clean laugh.

It felt like she had finally gotten rid of something that had been weighing on her for fifteen years.

The two people moved at the same time.

Neither possessed the supreme bone nor the blessing of imperial blood. One wielded a sword, the other a fist.

The two forces collided in the very center of the sealed room.

boom.

The first crack appeared on the black iron wall.

Then came the second and third rounds.

Cracks spread along the runes to the ceiling, and the entire chamber began to tremble violently. Gravel fell from above.

The aftershocks spread outwards from the sealed room.

The stone walls on both sides of the passage began to collapse.

Further away, Chen Mu and other members of the collateral branches felt the ground beneath their feet shaking.

Then came the entire imperial palace.

Spiderweb-like cracks appeared on the palace's dome, and dust poured down like a waterfall. The array patterns that had slumbered for millennia exploded one after another, and flames leaped wildly through the corridors.

Further out.

The sky above the ruins of the fallen god cracked.

The four major sects of the Northern Region were stationed in their camps on the edge of the ruins, and everyone looked up at the same time.

They saw the black mist above the ruins being torn apart by a towering column of air, revealing a crack running east to west across the gray-white sky.

The elder suddenly stood up.

"What... happened at the palace?"

No one could answer him.

Inside the secret chamber, Chen Xuan and Chen Tianyou had already exchanged thirty-seven blows.

Both of them were covered in blood.

Chen Tianyou's fist slammed into Chen Xuan's sword, splitting his hand. Chen Xuan's sword cleaved Chen Tianyou's shoulder, but he himself was also struck by a knee strike.

There are no fancy supernatural powers, no divine appearance or strong backbone.

It's the most primitive form of hand-to-hand combat.

Two people ruined by the same family had the most exhilarating fight of their lives in this crumbling secret room.

Chen Tianyou punched Chen Xuan in the face.

Chen Xuan sliced ​​through Chen Tianyou's ribs with his sword.

The two people stumbled backward at the same time and crashed into two opposite walls.

The ceiling of the secret room finally gave way, and a huge rock crashed down.

Su Chang'an raised her hand, and a barrier of divine sense deflected the boulder. She stood in the corner, her face grim.

It's not because I'm afraid.

It's because she understood it.

These two people weren't fighting each other.

It's that Chen family.

Chen Tianyou leaned against the wall, blood still gushing from the hole in his chest. His breathing was heavy, each breath frothing with blood.

But he was smiling.

"So this is what it feels like to fight without having to carry that bone..." he gasped for breath.

Chen Xuan leaned against the opposite wall.

He didn't laugh.

But his eyes changed.

The hatred in his eyes as he looked at Chen Tianyou had lessened somewhat.

Instead, something very complex has taken its place.

Another huge rock crashed down from above.

The foundation of the entire palace began to tilt.