Steel and spirit threads flashed through rain and bone.
The Bone Wolves came in snarls and lunges — rib-thin shadows that reeked of wet rot and old, broken curses. Their claws scraped the spirit beast's ribs, sparks hissing as they slammed against Yue Lan's silver snares.
Li Shen moved through them like a blade drawn through dusk. The Codex's runes pulsed along his arms and throat, each swing of his battered moonsteel cleaving through fur and ghost-flesh alike. Every kill fed the chain he held tight inside — Ku Mo's laughter rumbling behind his heartbeat.
More. Give me more. Let me drink it all.
But Li Shen did not open the leash — not tonight. He drank only enough to keep his vision clear, his bones mending where claws found flesh. The rest he forced back into the dark tide coiled around his spine.
Yue Lan fought at his shoulder — spirit threads a shifting lattice of silver, snapping jaws shut, binding paws mid-lunge, cutting snarls short with a flick of her hand. Rain dripped from her lashes as she whispered binding mantras between shallow breaths.
One wolf broke through — larger than the rest, its ribs wound with broken talismans. It lunged low, jaws wide for Li Shen's throat. He twisted, caught its skull under his palm, and drove it down so hard the beast's spine split like wet bamboo.
The clearing fell silent — the rain heavy again, washing blood into the moss beneath the ancient ribs.
Yue Lan lowered her hands, shoulders trembling with the spent weight of her Qi. She looked at him — not the Codex's red glow, not the runes coiling his veins, but him.
"You're bleeding," she said, breathless.
Li Shen laughed — a low rasp. "So are you."
She glanced at her arm — a shallow gash where a claw had slipped past her threads. It dripped into the ghost-light moss, each drop vanishing with a hiss.
She opened her mouth to speak — but the earth shivered beneath their feet.
It was not thunder. Not the Codex.
Something older.
The bones around them groaned — massive ribs shivering as if they still remembered the beast's last breath. Rain hissed off them in fine steam. The ghost-lights flickered, winked out, then flared back in a sickly green hue.
Yue Lan's spirit threads recoiled.
"Li Shen—"
He felt it before he heard it — a pulse of Qi, heavy and old, welling up through the earth beneath the spirit beast's ribcage. Like a heart that had waited centuries to remember how to beat.
A voice — not quite words, not quite wind — coiled out of the ground, brushing their skin like cold fingers.
Blood. Hunger. Keeper of Chains…
Li Shen staggered back as the ground cracked. Between ancient ribs, a pool of dark water formed, swirling with drifting lotus petals black as midnight.
Yue Lan's breath caught. "A shrine-spirit," she whispered. "Rootbound… still alive."
A flicker of memory crawled up Li Shen's spine — old stories from Ashvale's winter nights. Wild gods sleeping beneath the world's skin. Some sealed willingly. Some… not.
Ku Mo's voice coiled tight behind Li Shen's eyes. Hungry. Delighted.
Old power. Forgotten. Weak — but rich. Feed me this, boy. Tear it free, drink it deep — you will stand above every sect elder by dawn.
Li Shen stared at the pool — the petals circling like black eyes.
"Don't," Yue Lan said — soft, but the warning in her tone carved through the rain. "If you devour it, you'll lose the leash. You'll lose you."
He didn't look at her. His veins pulsed with the Codex's heat, every heartbeat urging him to break the final boundary. One breath. One bite. And the thing beneath the roots would drown in his hunger.
I can give you wings, Ku Mo hissed. Or a throne. Or both. Take it, Li Shen. Take it all.
But then he felt Yue Lan's fingers — cold and rain-slick — brush the back of his hand. A single spark of warmth that reminded him of who he was before Ku Mo, before blood and runes and endless chase.
Her eyes met his — no Saintess, no sect, just a girl who chose ruin beside him.
"Don't," she said again. "Please."
Li Shen's blade trembled in his grip — the Codex's runes burning so bright they lit the clearing in hellish red. The shrine's voice crawled up his throat — old, whispering promises of power unbound.
He exhaled — slow. Like letting go of a knife pointed inward.
And he closed his hand.
The Codex screamed inside him — Ku Mo's roar scraping his mind like iron on bone. But Li Shen forced the seal tighter, pushing the hunger down until the runes on his arms faded to dull ember.
The shrine's dark pool shuddered — lotus petals drifting apart, the black water sinking back into the earth with a long sigh.
The bones fell silent again.
Only rain and breath remained.
Yue Lan let out a shuddering exhale. Her hand stayed in his.
"You're still in there," she whispered.
Li Shen's eyes — red, yes, but clear — found hers in the hush between thunder.
"For now," he rasped.
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⚡ End of Chapter Sixteen
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