Starting as the heir of a marquis's mansion, I gained access to a summoning system.

"good."

The voice gained a touch of warmth. "Back when I entered the corridor from the Myriad Star Domain, I had no one to guard my token. My token guardian died in that ambush thirty years ago."

Without the blood of the guardian, this road below the forked eye will never open. I can't cross it; I can only detour through Tianwu and enter Guixu from the other end. But I know in my heart that sooner or later someone will lead the guardian here.

So I left this sound in my medullary cavity, waiting for someone who will come after me to ask the guardian of the signboard.

Dongfang Weiwo raised his head and looked at Wan Wujiu.

Wan Wujiu was still pressed against the bone wall, his face ashen. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but the light forced him to remain silent.

"Wan Wujiu, you just said there's a 'bone-eating cavity' down there," Dongfang Weiwo said. "Is it this one?"

Wan Wujiu managed to squeeze out, "I... I'm talking nonsense. I had no idea there was a path below Chayan. Demon God Lü deceived me back then."

"Then you don't know where that bone-eating cavity is either."

Wan Wujiu remained silent.

The dark golden light suddenly intensified by another third. The voice turned serious: "Guardian, listen carefully. This path below is the 'Guardian of Bones Path,' a small section that grew out of the coccyx of an ancient god-demon. Only the bloodline of the guardian can open it, and even then, only the guardian can enter. The god-demon skeleton can enter, the guardian can enter, and those whose energy is compatible with the god-demon skeleton can enter. Others cannot. Anyone who forces their way in will have their bones and blood dissolve."

Wan Wujiu's expression changed completely.

"You—" He had only uttered two words when a wisp of dark golden light suddenly split off and lashed out at him like a snake. He dodged to the side, the light grazing his sleeve, which instantly turned to ash, leaving not even a trace.

"Your people are no good," the voice said. "And you are even less so."

Wu Wudi suddenly burst into laughter: "Ha! Wan Wujiu, your blood oath has come to an end! This place doesn't want you!"

Wan Wujiu's expression changed several times, then he suddenly laughed. His smile was chillingly cold, a mad glint in his vertical pupils: "If you go down, I have to go down too. Otherwise, you'll die down there, and I'll wait here until the end of time? The Bone Key is on you."

"That's your business," Dongfang Weiwo said. He stood up and extended his hand to Lin Xiaoman.

Lin Xiaoman placed her left palm on his. The moment the wound on her palm touched the marrow fire on his hand, the flames surged and then subsided, turning into an extremely thin and dense cyan-gold light film that covered their hands, like wearing a glove woven from light threads.

"Let's go," said Dongfang Weiwo.

He grabbed Lin Xiaoman and jumped into the crevice.

Dark golden light surged in from all directions, enveloping them. The weightlessness lasted only a moment before their feet touched solid ground. It was an extremely narrow staircase, formed by two rows of interlocking canine-like bone tips, so narrow that only one foot could fit on it. The staircase spiraled down along the bone wall, like walking between the teeth of a giant beast.

The light overhead gradually faded. Darkness descended, but the steps themselves emitted a faint glow, which flickered for a fleeting moment with each step. The air grew crisp and dry, a stark contrast to the damp, sticky atmosphere of the corridor. There was no marrow fluid, no poisonous fog, not even the pungent, sweet stench of the Myriad Star Domain. Each breath carried a faint scent, akin to aged, fragrant wood.

Lin Xiaoman's hand trembled slightly in Dongfang Weiwo's palm, but she said, "I'm much better. This place is like the old ancestral hall in Huan Gu Zhuang, very clean."

Dongfang Weiye also sensed it. The divine and demonic skeleton was unusually quiet here, as if it had returned home. He could clearly "see" the steps beneath his feet. Using his bone domain perception, he could tell that these bones were extremely old, much older than the rest of the corridor, and incredibly dense. Each step was a complete bone joint, without the slightest damage.

"This is also a coccyx," he whispered, "but not from the same one."

"What?" Lin Xiaoman exclaimed in surprise.

"The one above is the coccyx of a god-demon that Lu Moshen found in the Myriad Star Domain, and it's also the coccyx of the god-demon remains under the Wangchuan Bridge. But here below is another set of bones, older and smaller, belonging to a certain god-demon infant," Dongfang Weiwo said.

Before he could finish speaking, a fierce roar suddenly came from above; it was Wan Wujiu's voice.

"I am the only one from the East! If you leave me here, the blood oath will immediately turn against you! Do you think you'll be alright if I die?"

Wu Wudi's voice followed immediately: "Kid, this old snake is going crazy. You decide, I'll listen to you."

Dongfang Weiwo looked up. The dark golden light had shrunk to a small opening, and the shadows of the three paths intersected in the light.

"Wan Wujiu," he said, "I won't touch you. The blood oath remains. But if you can't get in, that's your own problem. You can wait up there. If I die down there, the bone key will remain there forever, and you'll never get it. So you'd better pray we come back alive."

A sharp laugh came from above. The laugh echoed repeatedly in the narrow crack, like a snake moving through dry bamboo.

"Very well! Very well! I'll wait here. I want to see what kind of way out Demon God Lü has left for you!"

声音渐息.

Dongfang Weiwo turned his head and continued walking down.

Wu Wudi and the others followed suit and jumped down. When they landed on the steps, Wu Wudi slipped and almost lost his footing, but Chuan Ying caught him. Yan Fei landed the most steadily, but a piece of grayish-white powder fell from the crack between his eyebrows, flashing and disappearing on the ground.

"This place is reacting to my injury," Yan Fei said calmly. "It's absorbing the aura of the Myriad Star Domain from my Sword Domain."

"Is it a good thing or a bad thing?" Chuan Ying asked.

"I don't know," Yan Fei said, "but the swelling between my eyebrows isn't as bad anymore."

The group continued their descent.

The steps spiraled and twisted, one side a jagged wall of bone, the other a bottomless abyss of darkness. Occasionally a breeze would blow up from below, carrying the scent of aged wood. A faint chanting sound could be heard in the wind, almost imperceptible.

"It's bone humming," Lin Xiaoman said. "These bones are so old that they hum on their own. When the wind blows through the bone holes, it makes a sound similar to a human voice. It's the same in the mines of Huan Gu Zhuang, but not as clear."

Dongfang Weiwo counted the steps. There were 399 steps in total. When he counted to the 130th step, the steps under his feet suddenly widened. Two rows of canines parted to the sides, and a semi-circular platform appeared in front of him, like a niche embedded in the bone wall, barely enough for five people to stand side by side.

The platform faces directly downwards. From here, you can see that the steps no longer rotate, but extend straight down, disappearing into a very thick layer of white mist. The mist swells slowly like a living thing, its surface constantly rising and falling, as if something is breathing beneath it.

"What is that?" Lin Xiaoman asked.

Dongfang Weiwo activated his Bone Domain Perception. The steps became blurred after disappearing into the white mist, revealing only an extremely deep and vast space. That space contained bones, but they were all fragmented bones, as fine as sand, forming an unfathomably thick layer. The mist emanated from these fragmented bones.

"This should be the end of the 'Guardian of Bones' path," Dongfang Weiwo said. "That white mist is evaporated bone dust; you can enter after filtering it. But you have to wait for it to 'exhale'."

"Exhale?" Wu Wudi frowned.

"This entire space is the chest cavity of a nascent god-demon," Dongfang Weiwo said. "It's breathing. But extremely slowly, almost like it's dead. When the white mist rises, it's exhaling; when it falls, it's inhaling. We have to wait until it's at its lowest point before we can descend the last step. Otherwise, if we fall into the mist, our mouths and noses will be blocked by bone dust, and we won't be able to take more than a few steps."

"How long will it take?" Chuan Ying asked.

"It'll be soon," Dongfang Weiwo said, suddenly looking up.

Everyone heard it.

From the far distance on the steps behind me, a soft sound came. It was as if something had stepped on the canine-toothed steps.

Not one of them.

The sound paused for a moment, then rang out again, this time closer.

Lin Xiaoman's face turned pale: "Something followed us down."

Dongfang Weiwo gripped his longsword tightly. The marrow fire illuminated the path he had come from; the steps curved upwards and disappeared into the darkness. The sound ceased, as if waiting for the firelight to move away.

"It doesn't walk," Yan Fei said, her voice icy. "It crawls. Its forelimbs are longer than its hind limbs, and it has nails on its feet. The tips of the nails are slippery, so it slips every three steps."

He closed his eyes again: "Only one left. But it's very strong, stronger than the three heads in the main spinal cord combined."

Dongfang Weiwo understood instantly.

"The eroded entities were devouring each other. The remaining one, smelling the blood at the side branch entrance, found another way down."

He looked down at the white fog. The fog was slowly receding, but had not yet reached its lowest point.

The sound from the direction they came from rang out again. This time it was much closer.

That thing is accelerating.

"Can't we go down?" Wu Wudi stepped forward with his sword, stood at the edge of the steps, and spat towards the way they came. "This place is narrow, but it's big. One man can hold it off for a while."

"No need," Lin Xiaoman suddenly said. She squatted down and pressed her left palm onto the platform floor. Golden-blue blood flowed from her palm, quickly seeping into the bone. The ground seemed to heat up, making a hissing sound.

The entire platform suddenly tilted.

Everyone lost their footing and slid towards the white mist.

"Crouch down!" Dongfang Weiwo grabbed Lin Xiaoman and plunged his longsword into the ground. A trail of dark golden sparks flew as the blade scraped against the bone, but it was unstoppable. The platform, like a slide, sent them straight into the white mist.

Behind them, the crawling sound suddenly drew closer. A gigantic, gray-black creature emerged from the steps above. It had no face; only human faces bulged out from beneath its gray-black membrane, like countless drowning people struggling in deep water. Its mouth gaped open, and it lunged towards the group.

The white mist was receding, revealing sections of white jade-colored steps below.

Dongfang Weiwo grabbed Lin Xiaoman, used the sloping platform for leverage, and leaped towards the steps where the white mist had just retreated.

"Jump!"

Five figures took off into the air at the same time.

The massive, grayish-black creature missed its target, crashing its entire body onto the platform. The platform couldn't withstand the force and split open with a deafening roar. The creature plummeted down with the debris, disappearing into the white mist.

The white mist instantly engulfed it. A non-human roar came from within the mist, like a throat filled with ash, and then silence fell.

Dongfang Weiwo and the others landed precariously on the steps, with the mist churning less than three inches below them, like a mouth about to close.

"Don't make a sound." Lin Xiaoman lowered her voice, her lips almost touching Dongfang Weiwo's ear. "This fog eats living things. That thing fell in. Let's hurry before the fog rises back up."

Everyone held their breath and hurried down the white jade steps.

The white mist slowly rose, following behind. With each step, the steps made a very faint "click," as if some kind of mechanism had been triggered. The mist behind them drew ever closer.

The steps beneath my feet have come to an end.

Suddenly, everything became clear.

It was an enormous chamber, tens of feet high, with smooth walls, like a hollowed-out egg. In the very center of the chamber, a small skeleton sat cross-legged.

Unlike an adult's skeleton, it was only the size of a three- or four-year-old child, its entire body as white as jade. It sat cross-legged on a thin, dark golden light cushion, its hands forming a mudra, its head bowed, and there was an extremely fine crack on the top of its head, as if it had been split open from the head by something.

Behind it, there is a door.

The door was two closed bone flaps, dark in color, like dried meat. There was a keyhole on the door. The shape of the keyhole was exactly the same as the bone key they held.

The gate to Guixu.

But no one dared to approach. Because there were words behind that small skeleton.

Each word was suspended in the air, formed from dark golden light, arranged neatly like an inscription on a tombstone.

Lin Xiaoman read through the rows of papers, her face growing paler and paler.

"What did you write?" Wu Wudi asked.

Lin Xiaoman remained silent for a long time before saying, "The infant child of the ancient god and demon died in the womb. His mother buried him here with a fossilized tailbone. The Gate of Return to the Ruins is the crack on the crown of this infant child's head."

She looked up at the door, her voice barely audible: "The door to the Ruins of Return is a cracked fontanelle. The Bone Key is the tip of its tailbone. Behind the door lies the crevice between the Myriad Star Domain and the Heavenly Martial Continent. It is also..." She paused, "and also the true burial place of the ancient gods and demons. If we go in, it's like walking into the brain of that infant."

The chamber was deathly silent.

Only the white mist behind them continued to rise slowly, like a giant hand, silently pushing them forward.