Consciousness drifted back to Yue Lianhua like fragnts of a shattered dream, pulled together by a distant voice echoing through the cavern darkness.
"..System," the voice called out clearly, cutting through the haze of her awareness.
"Sy...stem..." she murmured weakly, the word slipping from her lips before she could stop it.
That single word triggered a cascade of mories, each one piercing through her like shards of glass.
She could see Lin Feng so clearly - her husband, the Son of Heaven - sitting by their small cooking fire during one of their final nights together.
His hands had been preparing their al of wild roots and herbs—as usual, but his mind was elsewhere, lost in the frustrations of their seemingly endless war.
"If not for that system," he had said, stirring the simple broth with movents that betrayed his inner turmoil, "that demon, that Heavenly Demon possessed, I would have won this battle instead of being trapped in this endless cycle."
She rembered how confused she had been by his words.
Lin Feng often spoke of things that seed impossible to understand - reincarnation, multiple lives, powers that transcended the normal boundaries of cultivation.
The steam from their humble al had risen between them as he continued, his voice growing distant with the weight of cosmic knowledge.
"I am a reincarnator, Lianhua," he had explained, his eyes staring into the flickering flas. "The Son of Heaven—my present body—is blessed by the heavens themselves, chosen to stand against the darkness. But sotis I wonder... if I had access to a system like that demon does, would I be able to end this once and for all?"
Those conversations had always left her feeling helpless and small.
She was just a cultivator, perhaps the most talented of her ti—at least what Lin Feng used to refer to them as heroines or sothing—but she was not as legendary as he was—she knew this much.
The strange words he spoke of were beyond her comprehension, yet she, alongside others, had loved him enough to follow him into every battle, every desperate struggle against the encroaching darkness.
But she rembered his promise most clearly - spoken during their final embrace before the last battle, his voice heavy with determination and sothing that might have been prophecy: "It’s fine. In the next cycle, when I still cannot defeat that man, I will make sure to get my hands on a system and put an end to that demon using his own weapon. I just need to let that demon get close to first."
Now, hearing Cang Wuhen speak to a system of his own, those mories crashed over her with devastating clarity.
She tried to lift her body, to move even a single finger, but her eyes widened in stark terror as she felt the spiritual corrosion overwhelming her completely.
The place he had brought her to was suffused with death and contamination so potent that it was actively destroying what little remained of her shattered spiritual foundation.
Every breath felt like inhaling liquid poison.
Her dantian, already shattered from the final battle, couldn’t provide even the most basic protection against whatever malevolent force perated this cursed ground.
The spiritual remnants she had clung to - the last vestiges of her cultivation - were being systematically destroyed by the toxic atmosphere.
Her whole body beca completely useless, reduced to nothing more than a witness trapped within her own flesh.
She could hear and see, but movent was beyond her now - she was paralyzed by the very air itself.
Through her blurred vision, she watched Cang Wuhen place her gently on the cold stone ground.
She noticed him cleaning the surface beneath her, the dark stains and gri vanishing under his touch. Confusion swirled in her thoughts. What was he planning? Why bring her to this place of all locations?
’It’s good,’ she thought with bitter satisfaction. ’He will die here too. After everything he’s done to - stripping naked, humiliating , defiling - he’ll suffer the sa fate.’
She thought about how this man was going to die here due to poisoning, as she could see that this place was sothing far more terrible than either of them could have imagined.
This was the Death Cliff - the legendary source of corruption that stretched for kiloters in every direction, a place that surrounded the continent’s heart with death.
Even Void Returning realm cultivators, masters who could split mountains and redirect rivers, feared to enter the outer edges of this zone.
Anyone who entered this circle, cultivator or mortal, died within minutes.
The closer one ca to the source, the more certain and swift death beca.
Stronger cultivators actually died faster than mortals here because their spiritual energy made them more susceptible to the corruption.
And they were right now within the source itself - the absolute epicenter of this spiritual disaster.
If her spiritual energy hadn’t already been drained, if she still possessed her cultivation base, she would have died the instant they entered this place.
Her current state - spiritually crippled but not completely empty - was the only reason she was still drawing breath.
But breathing was all she could do now.
This place was designed to be both their burial ground.
A mortal body could not withstand such intense poisoning for long, and a cultivator would burn out like a candle in a hurricane.
But she again heard him speaking to his system, his voice carrying clearly in the poisoned air:
"System, can you open the gift that you gave after the completion of the surgery?"
’Surgery?’ The word confused her.
What surgery was he talking about?
And why did she seem to have heard this particular word before... strange it was but she had heard it from Lin Feng’s mouth.
She couldn’t understand what he was seeing, but she heard his responses to whatever the system was showing him.
His tone was flat, disinterested, as if he were reading the most mundane information imaginable.
"Okay," he said, sounding like he was reviewing grocery lists.
"Hmm. Nice," he continued, with all the enthusiasm of soone examining week-old leftovers.
Then his voice changed, becoming sharper with sudden realization, though she couldn’t hear exactly what he was realizing.
But then ca the sound that shocked her to her very core - his laughter.
It started as a small chuckle, barely audible, then grew into sothing wild and unhinged.
"AHAHAHAHAHAHA!" he roared, the sound echoing off the cavern walls like the cries of soone who had completely lost their sanity. "Are you fucking kidding ?! WHERE IS FOOD! I AM HUNGRY DAMN IT!"
’So he’s finally cracked,’ she thought with vicious satisfaction. ’Yes, die like that, you monster.’
After what he had done to her - stripping her naked, humiliating her, violating her in ways that destroyed her very sense of self - watching him lose his mind felt like cosmic justice finally manifesting.
"DAMN ALL THIS!" he shouted, his voice growing more frantic and unhinged.
She could hear him moving around frantically, his footsteps echoing through the cavern as he seed to run from place to place in his madness.
"Pull! Pull! Pull!" he yelled, his voice sotis distant and then closer again, as if he were racing around the cavern in his insanity.
’He’s completely lost his mind,’ she realized with cold satisfaction. ’The poison is driving him insane. Perfect.’
She waited for the inevitable end, resigned to her own fate but taking comfort in knowing her torntor would suffer complete madness before death claid them both.
Her fate was already sealed - she was going to die here, her shattered dantian unable to protect her mortal body from the poison indefinitely.
The remnants of spiritual energy she had used to try to kill this man were gone, leaving her defenseless against the corruption.
She lay there naked, staring up at the cavern ceiling, her body completely paralyzed by the poisoning, waiting for death to take them both.
Then sothing soft landed directly on her face.
The scent hit her imdiately - pure, clean, and unmistakably dicinal. But this wasn’t just any dicine.
Her eyes widened in absolute shock as she recognized the aroma.
This was a Heaven Grade elixir - one of the rarest and most powerful poison healing substances in existence.
Such treasures were spoken of in legends, hoarded by ancient sects, fought over by entire kingdoms.
Her voice trembled as she whispered, "What...?"
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