After I stopped trying, a rich woman trained me into a demon emperor.

The heart gave its final beat.

Xu Changsheng tilted his head to one side.

The frost-like patterns on the Tang suit spread to the collar.

His cloudy eyes were still open.

A faint smile lingered on his lips.

Su Xiaoxiao stood up, looked at the corpse for two seconds, and showed no expression.

He reached his hand into Xu Changsheng's right pocket.

The ice shattered, and the jade slip was pulled out.

The warm, smooth jade surface has a faint golden halo remaining on it.

Zhou Ran's aura.

Su Xiaoxiao held the jade slip up to her face, and the dense array patterns on it were reflected in her eyes.

"That's right, it's him!"

She licked her bluish lips, her murderous intent undisguised.

But she wasn't in a hurry; she was no longer the impatient and opportunistic Su Xiaoxiao she once was.

Her two years of scavenging taught her that some things can't be rushed.

"good."

She tucked the jade slip into the inner pocket of her white robe, turned around, stepped through the sewage, and walked deeper into the bridge arch.

In the darkness, an even thicker cloud of black mist awaited her.

The voice of the Black Impermanence came from the mist, muffled and deep, as if separated by a layer of water.

"Killed?"

"Kill him."

Su Xiaoxiao patted the ice crystals off her robe.

"I also picked up a good item."

She took out the jade slip and waved it in front of the black mist.

"Zhou Ran's defensive magic artifact."

He must have left a sense of shared origin in the things he gave to his subordinates.

I hid this on my person, waiting for Seventh Brother's true form to fully descend to the mortal realm, so he could sense my presence and come after me.

Su Xiaoxiao's mouth stretched all the way to her ears.

"Perfect for catching them all at once."

The black mist churned.

Black Impermanence neither said it was good nor bad.

After a moment of silence, a sentence came from the fog.

"You've only taken two-tenths of Seventh Brother's power."

The remaining 80% will take three days to fully integrate.

"Three days."

Su Xiaoxiao looked down at her pale hands.

Xu Changsheng's blood was still stuck in his fingernails.

That's enough.

She kicked Xu Changsheng's body into the sewage ditch, then turned and walked out of the underpass.

The darkest hour before dawn.

The suburban highway was deserted.

A woman in a white robe, barefoot, stepped onto the icy ground and disappeared into the night, leaving no trace of her footsteps.

Inside the bridge arch.

Xu Changsheng's body was submerged in black water.

The pockets of the Tang suit were empty.

The pocket watch broke.

The paper cranes were destroyed.

Nothing was left behind.

......

The manor's underground secret chamber.

Zhou Ran opened her eyes.

He used his divine sense, activating the Golden Core of the Mind, to scan the inside and outside of the manor, but found nothing unusual.

But his left arm, the bone of the Taihuang Qilin, was inexplicably burning hot.

He was familiar with this method of hot ironing.

The last time I had this feeling was the day Wu De died.

"Qin San".

Qin San responded from outside the secret room:

"Boss?"

"Do you still have any way to contact Xu Changsheng?"

"No.

The old man didn't bring his cell phone with him when he went out, only the jade slip you gave him.

Zhou Ran didn't reply.

He looked down at his left palm.

The black and gold Qilin totem pulsated slightly under the skin, and with each pulsation, the temperature of the palm rose a little higher.

This is not a warning.

It is an echo.

The jade slip he gave to Xu Changsheng contained a barrier of idealism.

The barrier's foundation comes from his golden elixir origin, which shares the same origin as his divine consciousness.

If the jade slip were still with Xu Changsheng, he wouldn't feel anything.

But what if the primordial aura attached to the jade slip is being touched by a third party...?

Zhou Ran clenched his fist.

The finger bones made a cracking sound.

"Qin San".

"exist."

"Replace the power supply core of the manor's defensive formation with my Golden Core True Essence directly."

From this moment forward, the outer array will no longer use spirit stones, but my blood.

Qin San paused for a moment outside the door.

"Boss, what's with your cultivation...?"

Do as instructed.

Qin San said no more, and his footsteps hurried away.

Zhou Ran closed her eyes again.

The Golden Core in his dantian spun faster, and golden true essence flowed through his meridians into the soles of his feet, seeping into the foundation of the manor's formation.

The array's sensing range suddenly tripled.

He could detect even the slightest movement of an ant within a ten-mile radius.

He waited.

Last time they used a diversionary tactic, the manor was almost destroyed.

There were four women lying in the basement who hadn't fully recovered, and he couldn't leave.

He wasn't sure what had happened to Xu Changsheng.

However, the fact that the jade slip was tainted with the aura of a third party already explains everything.

If that old man were still alive, he would never let the jade slip leave his pocket.

There was not a sound in the secret room.

Only the low-frequency vibrations of the golden elixir rotating deep within the dantian remained.

Three days later, in Jiangcheng, at the abandoned railway bridge in the south of the city.

The archway had been rearranged by Su Xiaoxiao.

A thick layer of yellow paper was laid on the ground, covered with cinnabar runes.

In the very center was a black lacquered coffin, the lid half open. Inside, there was no corpse, only a bronze mirror and thirty-six sharpened bone nails.

The bone nail was made by grinding Xu Changsheng's bones.

Su Xiaoxiao sat cross-legged beside the coffin. The bloodstains on her white robe had dried and turned into a dark red hard shell.

Her complexion was much better than it had been three days ago; her skin had changed from pale to ashen, and her pupils had changed from grayish-white to light gray.

The power of the White Impermanence took deeper and deeper root within her.

She is carving words onto a bone nail.

It is engraved with the birth date and time.

Chen Ya.

"Year of Dingmao, Month of Jiazi, Day of Dingsi, Hour of Renyin."

Su Xiaoxiao read aloud as she carved, her tone like she was reciting a text.

"An extremely Yin destiny, with water and fire clashing, naturally attracts Yin energy."

She blew away the bone fragments and inserted the carved bone nails into the frame of the bronze mirror inside the coffin.

"elder sister."

She smiled at the air.

"My sister hasn't checked on you in a long time."

Black mist seeped out from the bottom of the coffin.

The voice of the Black Impermanence was clearer than it had been three days ago, indicating that he had also accumulated a lot of Yin energy in the mortal realm.

"Can it be used?"

"Of course it can be used."

Su Xiaoxiao picked up the bone nail and examined it closely, nodding in satisfaction.

"Next, there will be thirty-five more mortals with extremely Yin destinies."

"No rush, Jiangcheng has a population of 30 million, we can always gather enough people."

Black Impermanence's voice was full of impatience.

"Old Eight doesn't have time to listen to you trying to get people to join in."

How do you feed that thing? Get to the point.

Su Xiaoxiao stood up, stepped barefoot onto the yellow paper, and walked to the coffin.

"Ghost marriage with bones."

That was the voice of Bai Wuchang (White Impermanence).

She squatted down and drew a circle on the surface of the bronze mirror with her fingertip.

"The wreckage underground needs energy to revive."

"We were stopped by his forceful attack last time, so let's try a different approach."

Her fingernails made a screeching sound as they scratched the bronze mirror.

"Sew together thirty-six living people with extremely Yin fates with red thread and underground remains."

The living don't die, but their life force is gradually drained away, turning them into nourishment for their remains.

Su Xiaoxiao straightened up, and her dull, gray eyes suddenly shone brightly, unusually bright.

"Thirty-six sacrifices, no need for large-scale blood sacrifices, no need to disturb the earth's vein array, quietly and without anyone noticing."

"Wait until we've absorbed enough of the wreckage."

She slammed the coffin lid shut.

"Jiangcheng is a living coffin."

"Chen Ya is the first one."

Su Xiaoxiao did not hesitate.

She pulled a straw doll from the garbage pile next to the coffin.

A piece of yellow paper was pasted on the top of the doll's head, on which Chen Ya's birth date and time were written in cinnabar.

Su Xiaoxiao picked up the carved bone nail and aimed the tip at the top of the straw man's head.

"I want him to see it with his own eyes."

"Looking at the woman he cherishes most."

"Withering away day by day."

"Then."

She hammered it in.

The bone nail was driven into the top of the straw man's head.

A dark red thread extended from the tip of the nail, passed through the bottom of the coffin, through the yellow paper runes, and burrowed into the ground.