RPAGF Chapter 264 Core of Inheritance
Chapter 264 Core of Inheritance
The moment a bone-chilling coldness surged through Ye Shuli's mind, a bluish-gold ripple appeared in her pupils.
The star chart that had been dormant in her dantian suddenly began to spin wildly, and the stardust that had been devoured by the light butterflies condensed into a three-inch-thick glass armor around her.
"Back off!" Her sharp shout was torn apart by the spiritual energy storm, but the white bone fingers strangely stopped half an inch between her eyebrows—Jiang Ye's left eye ignited with a ghostly blue flame, and the jade pendant fragments condensed into a semi-transparent dagger in his palm, which forcefully severed the black mist that was entwining the white bones.
The crystal coffin in the void emitted a teeth-grinding tremor, and the blood-red seal script moved as if it were alive.
Jiang Ye stumbled and crashed into the barrier of stardust, a metallic taste rising in his throat: "This coffin is draining the starlight from the entire passageway!"
Before the words were finished, thousands of light butterflies suddenly exploded.
The shockwave, comparable to the self-destruction of a Spirit Venerable, sent the two flying, and Ye Shuli's back shattered three layers of spiritual energy barriers.
She bit her tongue to force herself awake and saw the Star Sand Tunnel collapsing into a chaotic vortex. Amidst the excruciating pain of her inherited imprint being stripped away, data from her previous life's laboratory suddenly flashed into her mind.
"Seven steps in the Kan position, three rotations in the Zhen palace!" She grabbed Jiang Ye by the collar and darted through the fragments of void, Bagua array patterns rippling wherever her toes touched the ground. "This isn't inheritance, it's a body-snatching array!"
The moment the crystal coffin lid shattered completely, the two of them saw the full appearance of the person inside the coffin.
Their faces, which bore a striking resemblance to Ye Shuli, were covered in dark gold curse marks. A broken stardial was stuck in their chests, and the silver chains that were supposed to protect their heritage were now greedily binding their limbs.
Jiang Ye suddenly groaned as the molten gold from the jade pendant seeped into his meridians.
He gripped Ye Shuli's wrist tightly, a surge of immense stellar power coursing through their skin as they touched: "Do you trust me?"
Before Ye Shuli could respond, Jiang Ye had already pulled her into his arms.
The boy's body temperature was alarmingly high, and the remaining starlight from the jade pendant wove a cocoon of light between their pressed chests.
A crisp sound of shattering porcelain came from the chaos, and the chains that bound them suddenly changed direction, frantically stabbing at the crystal coffin.
"You used the jade pendant as bait?" Ye Shuli's eyes widened amidst the roar of the clashing spiritual energies.
Despite the blood trickling from Jiang Ye's lips, he laughed freely, his fingertips rapidly tracing patterns on her palm: "The broken stardial blade is the key to the formation. I'll count to three, two, one..."
Suddenly, the clear cry of a phoenix echoed from the void.
The person in the crystal coffin suddenly opened their eyes, and dark golden curse marks covered the dome like a spider web.
Ye Shuli suddenly pressed down on Jiang Ye's hand as he drew the array, and stepped out with the Seven Star Steps against the overwhelming pressure: "Wrong, this is a modified Nine Palaces Soul Devouring Array!"
Her blood-stained sleeve swept across the void, and she actually used stardust to condense the blank board deduction formula from her previous life.
When the equation Δλ=a2+βm took shape in the light, the entire space emitted a mournful cry of unbearable burden.
Jiang Ye's pupils contracted sharply as he pierced the jade pendant fragment at the weak point in the formation deduced by Ye Shuli.
The being inside the crystal coffin finally revealed its shock and anger.
As the crimson inscriptions receded like the tide, and the white bone fingers turned to dust, Ye Shuli dragged Jiang Ye into the suddenly appearing star gate.
As the feeling of weightlessness swept over her, she heard a hoarse roar from the end of the void: "Life Thief..."
Finally, what caught the eye was a phoenix totem that suddenly appeared on the surface of the crystal coffin—exactly the same as her birthmark.
The moment the star gate closed, Ye Shuli's back slammed heavily onto the floating jade steps.
The lapis lazuli floor reflected the shattered star trails of the dome, and the swallowed starlight turned into a drizzle, falling softly on her trembling eyelashes.
"Cough... Is this the improved version you were talking about?" Jiang Ye sat up, propped up by the broken sword, his dark robes gleaming with blood.
He flicked away the stardust fragments stuck to Ye Shuli's neck with his finger, and the residual star power on his fingertip caused a small ripple to appear behind the girl's ear.
Ye Shuli pressed her throbbing temples with her backhand, and the deduction formula floating in her mind was slowly reorganizing: "At least it's better than becoming a scapegoat for the person in the coffin." She suddenly froze—the falling starlight blossomed into ice-blue irises the moment it touched the ground, each petal engraved with a miniature phoenix totem.
Jiang Ye's jade-shaped bone fan unfolded with a "snap," and the Big Dipper on the fan surface suddenly shifted.
He squinted at the bronze lamp gradually taking shape among the flowers, his Adam's apple bobbing: "I say, this thing looks just like the eternal lamp in your ancestral hall..."
Before the words were finished, all seventy-two bronze lamps simultaneously emitted a bluish light.
The inheritance mark on Ye Shuli's wrist suddenly became hot, and the burning pain from the laboratory explosion in her previous life surged up her spiritual platform through her meridians.
She instinctively formed hand seals, only to find that her spiritual energy was circulating more than three times faster than usual.
"Use the water as a shield!" Jiang Ye pulled her and rolled her toward the shadow of the jade pillar on the right.
As the blue light brushed past her hair, Ye Shuli saw the struggling souls in the lamplight—they were all women who looked like her, each with half a sundial embedded between their brows.
The jade steps began to fold and recombine eerily, and Jiang Ye's cold laughter, mixed with the smell of blood, sprayed into her ear: "What a grand scheme spanning a thousand years." He suddenly bit his fingertip and drew an inverted octagon in Ye Shuli's palm. "Since you're going to steal lives, why not stir the waters even more?"
Ye Shuli's pupils suddenly contracted.
As Jiang Ye's blood seeped into her still-healing Mingmen acupoint, the silent star chart suddenly trembled like a dragon's roar.
She grabbed the boy's wrist with her other hand and traced a mysterious path amidst the azure light: "Three consecutive strokes of Qian, six broken strokes of Kun—open for me!"
Seven bronze lamps shattered in response.
The splashing lamp oil turned into fiery red flames, burning countless star-shaped holes into the two men's robes.
Jiang Ye suddenly groaned and knelt on one knee. The phoenix pattern that appeared on the back of his neck resonated with Ye Shuli's birthmark, causing the entire jade staircase to collapse.
"Grab it!" Ye Shuli flicked her water sleeves and wrapped them around the chains hanging from the dome.
In the instant of her fall, she saw a massive bronze door revealed at the collapse site—the door knockers were two phoenixes carrying sundials, exactly matching the pattern on her birthmark.
Jiang Ye suddenly chuckled softly.
Using the swaying of the chains, he pulled Ye Shuli into his arms, his bloodied fingertips lightly touching the throbbing veins on her neck: "My wife, have you ever heard of 'to be reborn from the ashes'?" Before she could answer, he suddenly snapped the chains and, carrying her, plummeted straight toward the massive bronze gate.
In the instant that a feeling of weightlessness swept over her entire body, Ye Shuli saw an inverted star map reflected in Jiang Ye's pupils.
Those broken star trails are reassembling, perfectly overlapping with the string theory model on the whiteboard in my previous life's laboratory.
Suddenly inspired, she pointed at Jiang Ye's heart like a sword and said, "I'll lend you three drops of my heart's blood!"
The boy groaned as she slid her fingertips into his chest.
As the crimson blood droplets merged into the bronze door knocker, the entire space suddenly fell into absolute silence.
The seventy-two flickering lamps all turned, their blue light converging into a giant net that enveloped the two of them.
"Now!" Ye Shuli dragged Jiang Ye and slammed him against the crack in the door.
The expected excruciating pain did not come; instead, the bronze door rippled like the surface of water.
Jiang Ye's jade pendant suddenly shattered in mid-air, and the starlight surging from the fragments enveloped them, transforming into streams of light and disappearing into the gate before the giant azure net closed in.
In the darkness, cool fingertips touched Ye Shuli's eyelids.
She heard the whispers of countless spirits exploding in her eardrums, and fragments of memories from past and present lives flashing by like a revolving lantern.
When Jiang Ye covered her ears with his calloused palms, the noise suddenly turned into a clear phoenix cry.
"Don't look." The boy's voice was terribly hoarse, yet his body, exhausted of spiritual energy, protected her completely. "It's a Soul-Capturing Spell."
Golden glimmers appeared from the void.
Ye Shuli's eyes suddenly widened—the floating stardust was automatically arranging itself into a DNA double helix structure, something that should never exist in a fantasy world!
She touched the light chain with trembling hands, and the unfinished research data from her previous life suddenly unsealed in her sea of consciousness.
“So that’s how it is…” She suddenly turned around and grabbed Jiang Ye’s shoulder, a terrifying light flashing in her eyes, “The so-called core of inheritance is actually…”
The deafening roar swallowed up the second half of the sentence.
As the darkness receded like the tide, an altar constructed of star dials came into view.
Nine bronze pillars, wrapped in chains, surround the area, and the phoenix totems carved on the pillars are all missing their right eyes.
Jiang Ye suddenly coughed violently, and the blood that spilled from the corner of his lips fell to the ground and immediately formed golden lotuses.
He wiped his face, pointed to the center of the altar and sneered, "This arrangement seems to be waiting for someone to complete the formation."
Before the words were finished, the sundial floating on the altar suddenly projected a screen of light.
The moment Ye Shuli's birthmark came into contact with the light screen, the entire space resounded with the clicking sound of gears turning.
She saw countless "selves" appear in the light screen, some refining pills, some setting up formations, and each phantom was eventually pierced through the heart by the stardial.
"Reincarnation Gu." Jiang Ye's folding fan suddenly ignited with a ghostly blue flame, casting flickering light on his profile. "These afterimages span at least three thousand years. What a grand scheme."
Ye Shuli suddenly took a step forward, and the Bagua array that bloomed under her feet perfectly matched the patterns on the altar.
She snapped the red string around her neck, and the blood-stained jade pendant fragments floated in the air, forming the Big Dipper constellation: "Since you want my destiny..." Her blood-stained fingertip touched the core of the altar, "why not take it yourself?"
The entire altar began to collapse.
As the last bronze brick fell into the void, all the afterimages in the light screen suddenly turned their heads in unison.
Three thousand voices overlapped into a deafening roar:
"Welcome back to your rightful place, Master!"
Jiang Ye's pupils instantly shrank to pinpoints.
He reached out to grab Ye Shuli, only to see the phoenix totem from the crystal coffin appear around her.
As the sundial's projection pierced the girl's heart, the entire space suddenly resounded with the crisp sound of shattering glass.
"Shuli!"
Amid the boy's heart-wrenching cries, Ye Shuli heard the clear sound of jade striking against jade echoing from her own bones.
She tried to turn her head, but found that even her eyelashes couldn't tremble.
The rubble from the collapsing altar transformed into a sky full of stars before her eyes, each star sealing within a scene of a phoenix weeping blood.
As her last shred of consciousness faded, warm drops of blood fell onto the back of her neck.
Jiang Ye's broken voice came from along his spine: "Don't be afraid..." The boy's chest vibrated, and what came out was not just words, but also the resonance of some ancient incantation, "I am here."
The sundial projection suddenly distorted.
Ye Shuli struggled to turn her head amidst the torrent of spiritual energy and saw that the blood and tears streaming from Jiang Ye's left eye condensed in the air into a reversed swastika.
The stars that sealed the phoenix began to reverse, and a half-broken bronze mirror slowly rose from the ruins of the altar.
"This is..." Ye Shuli's question was interrupted by a sigh coming from the mirror.
The voice sounded like both a frail old woman and a young girl, carrying a sense of vicissitude and compassion that transcended time:
"Those who defy fate..."
Jiang Ye's astonished face was suddenly reflected in the bronze mirror.
He suddenly tightened his grip on Ye Shuli's arm, his fingertips digging deep into the girl's blood-stained sleeve.
But what appeared in the mirror was not the current scene, but...