The cocoon had split.
A heartbeat echoed through the temple—not one, but many. It was as if the blood-soaked stones themselves remembered the name that had once ruled this sect with cruelty and divine grace.
And at the center of it all, Lu Xuan stood motionless.
The fingers of the Crimson Demoness curled around the edge of her cocoon. Her nails glistened like polished obsidian, the delicate color of her skin contrasting violently with the gore-soaked chamber.
Su Xue stared in stunned silence, her breath shallow.
"She's not whole," Yao Lin muttered, still leaning against the wall. Her voice was strained. "That's only a soul fragment…"
"Even fragments can rewrite fate," Su Xue whispered.
Lu Xuan's eyes shimmered with that unnatural crimson hue again, and for a moment, it wasn't him who was looking at the world.
The voice from the cocoon purred softly, low and hypnotic. "You are not whole, but you are enough. My return begins with you, my king."
"I am not your king," Lu Xuan growled. But even his voice betrayed him—it trembled with the weight of remembered bloodlines.
Su Xue stepped closer. "Lu Xuan. This thing—this woman—she's manipulating your bloodline. The Immortal Demon God Body… it resonates because she was created to serve it."
The cocoon cracked further. A figure emerged—tall, graceful, draped in tattered crimson silk that floated as if underwater. Her eyes were deep pools of blood, impossibly ancient.
"My king," she said softly, "you've wandered long enough. Come home."
Lu Xuan clenched his fists.
His memories flickered—of war, of fire, of a throne of bone and lotus flowers. He saw himself ruling not from compassion or justice—but from necessity, cruelty, vengeance.
Was it a past life? Or just delusions born from his cultivation?
He didn't know anymore.
Tearing at the Veil
Su Xue's grip on her blade tightened. She could feel her sealed cultivation reacting to the Demoness' presence. Her core burned, like an ocean under ice beginning to crack.
"I won't let you take him," she said coldly.
The Demoness turned her gaze toward her, and smiled.
"You think this body, this heart, is yours to protect?" she asked. "Child, he was mine long before your sect was born. I nursed his rage when the heavens cursed him. I buried gods beside him."
Lu Xuan flinched as a flash of memory returned—his hand grasping a sword slick with divine ichor, the Demoness kneeling at his side in devotion.
Su Xue stepped between them.
"You're not the only one with history," she said. "But the present belongs to me."
The Demoness blinked slowly. "And when his power consumes you?"
There was no answer.
Just silence.
Rise of the Forgotten
The walls began to tremble. The Bloodspawn's corpse hissed and evaporated, its blood sucked into the circle beneath the Demoness' feet.
Runes blazed crimson. Ancient chains retracted into the walls, unlocking hidden mechanisms with a sound like breaking bones.
"She's anchoring her soul," Yao Lin gasped. "She's reforming her body in the mortal world."
Lu Xuan's body began to convulse as demonic qi swelled around him, seeping into his veins like fire and ice intertwined. His breath grew ragged.
But then—something cracked.
Not in Lu Xuan's body—but in his will.
"I make my own fate," he whispered, his voice barely audible over the roar of qi.
The air around him exploded.
A brilliant dark-gold aura surged from his dantian as he pushed past Mid Stage Core Formation straight into the Late Core Formation Realm, his cultivation climbing at a terrifying rate.
It shouldn't have been possible.
But Lu Xuan wasn't like other cultivators.
His Immortal Demon God Body didn't merely endure destruction—it thrived in it. The agony of resisting the Demoness's control became his fuel. His muscles shredded and reformed, his meridians widened like rivers carving through stone. His soul blazed like a collapsing star.
The Devouring Skill roared wildly—swallowing the demon aura, the ancient formation's qi, and even the fragment of the Demoness herself.
"No one commands me," he growled, stepping forward with eyes like crimson lightning.
The Demoness' smile faltered.
Su Xue's eyes widened in disbelief. "He's suppressing her... with sheer brute will and a body built to defy fate itself."
Lu Xuan raised his hand—and the Devouring Skill struck the sigil at her feet.
The ground shuddered.
The blood formations cracked.
The Demoness staggered, flickering like a dying flame.
"You… would consume even me?" she hissed.
"I would devour everything that seeks to own me."
And with that, Lu Xuan's palm shattered the soul entirely.
Her body exploded into mist, her soul fragment scattering into the darkness once more.
The chamber dimmed. The blood receded.
And the silence returned.
Fractures
The aftermath was quiet—too quiet.
Yao Lin collapsed to her knees, exhausted.
Su Xue turned to Lu Xuan.
But the look he gave her was no longer warm. Not even cautious.
It was ice.
"You knew," he said. "You knew there was something like that in the temple."
"I suspected," she admitted. "But I didn't expect… her."
He looked away.
"That wasn't the first time I've heard her voice. She's been in my dreams."
Su Xue stepped forward. "Then fight her. Don't let her own you."
"But maybe," Lu Xuan said, voice low, "maybe I don't want to fight her anymore."
That struck like a slap.
Su Xue's jaw tightened. "So this is what you've become?"
"I'm becoming what I was meant to be," he answered.
She shook her head, the pain raw in her chest. "You're becoming something that can't be saved."
He didn't deny it.
He just turned and walked away.
In the Shadows
Far beyond the temple, in a mountain beyond the mortal veil, a figure opened her eyes.
The real Crimson Demoness.
The one whose body had long since ascended beyond the mortal realm.
She smiled.
"He awakens faster this time."
A Bloodspawn Beast hissed beside her, coiling its serpentine body around a blood-forged altar.
"Prepare the Blood Tide," she whispered. "He will return to us… or burn this world in refusal."
Chapter 28 End