"Your foundation is not something granted.It is what you dare to discard... to reshape yourself by your own hand."
Beyond the Spirit-Sealing Platform – Southern Border of the Nam Vực
Ash still lingered in the wake of Lâm Mạc's footsteps following his confrontation with Lâm Uyên.
News of his return had spread across the clan.The abandoned heir once mocked as a crippled root had returned—now a phantom none could restrain.
In the depths of the clan's inner sanctum, an elder with shadowed eyes muttered darkly:
"He has stepped into the second layer... Shattering the Spirit Bone Meridian.If he survives, who will still dare to believe in the Will of Heaven?"
Deep within the Forbidden Forest of Nam Vực – Shadow Ravine
Lâm Mạc sat cross-legged at the mouth of a black chasm.Before him floated a sealed fetal bone—a fragment of his lingering soul from a former life.
"This forged meridian… is a shackle.""Only by destroying it can I truly become myself."
Crack.
He snapped his own seventh vertebra—the very center of his spiritual conduit.
Blood gushed forth.From that blood, an ashen sigil began to spiral.
His soul howled.His body fractured.
But his eyes… did not waver.
From deep within, a familiar woman's voice echoed:
"You have nothing left to lose… so why do you still cling to life?"
"Because…" he whispered,"No one has ever existed by shattering everything—then rebuilding without a mold.I want to try."
In the void above, a streak of ashen light fell—shattering the world around him,and unlocking the second layer of the Thái Sơ Sinh Đạo: Shattering the Spirit Bone Meridian.
Just then, the Violet Scaled Enforcer of the Ancient Divine Temple descended—commanded to erase Lâm Mạc.In his hand gleamed the Soul-Sealing Talisman, a sacred weapon capable of binding even the most elusive soul cultivators.
"Those who defy the Way are not permitted free will."
BOOM!
The ravine quaked as battle erupted.
Spiritual Energy twisted into chaos, unable to touch the Dao of Thái Sơ.
But Lâm Mạc didn't fight with Spiritual Energy.
He fought with ash, with blood, with soul.
His bones broke and mended—not according to any known meridian path,but through a new internal network shaped by ancient ashen runes.
"You're… rewriting your own body?"The enforcer's voice trembled.
At the brink of death, Lâm Mạc called forth the first fragment of his abyssal soul:
"Ashen Soul Form—manifest."
A formless being surged into the sky—a colossal shadow with no face, no voice,yet its silent scream echoed across heaven and earth.
He fused with it.
Shattering the Bone Meridian – Life and Death Against the Heavens – complete.
The enforcer was torn from reality itself—erased without a trace.
After the battle, on Lâm Mạc's forehead…a primordial rune began to take shape—a twin-spiraled seal, resembling reincarnation,but spinning against the flow.
He felt it, clear as day—
"Someone else… is watching me."
Far away, atop a lotus altar of ash,a white-haired woman stood still.
Her eyes, veiled in frost…opened.