A sound so piercing it could stab through the soul spread from the depths of the cosmos, vibrating the entire starfield at a terrifyingly high frequency.
It was like a radio tuned to the wrong channel—grating, unnerving, and unbearably noisy.
Everyone joined together in chanting the Witch Clan’s blessing hymn, trying to fend off the sonic assault, but it was utterly useless.
Lin Xiaohe clutched her head and writhed on the ground in agony. Her skull felt like it was about to split open, wave after wave of searing pain crashing through her—so intense that she wished she could just die and be done with it.
“Don’t be afraid.” The others drew closer, tightening their circle around her, shielding her at the very center.
Grandpa Lin placed his warm, weathered hand gently on her head and stroked her hair. “There, there. Pat the hair, and there’s nothing to fear.”
Lin Xiaohe curled into herself, clenching her jaw so hard her teeth ached. Her mental barrier—flimsy as tissue paper—was torn apart by the sonic waves with humiliating ease.
This was some kind of unknown energy, far more potent than psychic force, or even dark energy. It came from a higher dimension, crashing through the defenses she’d built like a wrecking ball, tearing them down one by one.
As easily as a human might crush an ant.
“This can’t go on. Mu doesn’t have the Inheritance—she can’t withstand the emergence of the Prison.” Without a moment’s hesitation, Ci Wu dug his five fingers into his own chest like claws, ripping out a still-beating, crimson heart.
Sweat plastered Lin Xiaohe’s hair to her forehead. Her mouth hung slightly open as she gasped for air, her breath ragged.
Pain had numbed her. All she could do was watch as Ci Wu slammed that bloody, pulsing heart into her chest.
A wave of coolness spread through her body, flowing along her veins.
She felt the agony ease just a little—at least enough for a sliver of consciousness to return.
She looked up at the starry sky and finally saw the Witch Clan’s sacred vessel.
A ship built with bones for its keel, and flesh and blood for its hull.
The Chosen One was the sacred vessel!
The ship looked like a gargantuan, savage beast from ancient times, every inch of it surging with scorching Witch Clan spiritual energy.
With absolute disregard for its own survival, it rammed into the invisible barrier that stretched between the stars.
Boom!
A resonant hum echoed across countless dimensions—heard not just in the macroscopic world, but in the microscopic one as well!
In that instant, blood poured from Lin Xiaohe’s seven orifices. Her ears went deaf. Her eyes went blind.
In the darkness of her sightlessness, the Starfield Prison flickered in and out of existence.
The sacred vessel kept ramming!
The very rules of the universe shrieked in protest. Within the starfield, order collapsed—oceans flowed backward, the sky and earth swapped places.
One second, you were deep underground; the next, you were adrift in the void.
Only Haige Star stood firm, like a divine pillar holding the seas in place, unmoved amidst the chaotic torrent of lawless forces.
The sacred vessel and the Prison strained against each other, locked in a brutal tug-of-war.
The entire space around them shattered like fractured colored glass, suddenly erupting into towering, dazzling rainbow ripples—only to collapse a heartbeat later into billions of pitch-black fissures that devoured every last ray of light.
The very fabric of space was groaning, fracturing, dying.
The sacred vessel bore the brunt of the devastation. Its armor, pulsing with Witch Clan spiritual energy, flaked away like brittle pottery, vaporizing into nothing and exposing the violently throbbing organic tissue beneath.
Just as the vessel was about to give out, its passengers flew out from within.
The Witch Clan chieftain’s hoarse roar blazed directly into the soul of every warrior through their bloodline resonance network.
“Blood for the beacon! Souls for the torch!”
They were never mere passengers—they were the vessel’s fuel, its armor, its very weapons!
Thousands of Witch Clan warriors burned through their spiritual energy and blood, transforming themselves into a surging, scarlet tidal wave that they forcibly channeled into the sacred vessel. It formed a resilient, blood-red halo that pressed back with desperate strength against the annihilating void-currents unleashed by the collapsing space.
The Prison, forged from some unknown material, transformed into billions of silver-white chains. Carrying frigid, orderly force, they shot out from the void, latching onto the sacred vessel, burrowing into its flesh, and grinding out blinding sparks that seared the eyes.
As the warriors burned themselves to nothing, they dissolved into particle dust amidst the annihilation, each one blooming like a brief, cruel firework in the vacuum of space.
Lin Xiaohe could see nothing. She could hear nothing. But the shuddering and agony wracking her soul told her that the formation-breaking operation had reached its most critical moment!
She gripped a pair of large hands tightly, her voice trembling with anxiety and desperate hope. “Did we succeed?”
Ni Shan, whose hands she held, a flicker of resolve passing through her eyes.
Even though she knew Lin Xiaohe couldn’t hear her, she made a solemn vow. “We will succeed!”
Ni Shan pulled her hands free and stood up. “Fire Division, step forward!”
Over twenty Saint Tablet guardians stepped out in unison, their faces grave.
Ni Shan: “Move out!”
Just before leaving, Ni Shan paused. Acting on some inexplicable impulse, she turned her head and looked back at Lin Xiaohe—this chubby little girl, the last one born into the Witch Clan, the one who had inherited almost nothing at all.
Ni Shan traced a gesture over her chest, her expression softening, and then sent a crimson halo hurtling toward Lin Xiaohe. “In my name, I grant you my blessing.”
Even though she knew their fate was to return to the cosmos, she still clung to an unrealistic hope—that this chubby girl might survive. And even if she had to fade away, let her be the very last to do so.
The other Fire Division members followed suit.
“In my name, I grant you my blessing.”
Lin Xiaohe didn’t know what was happening, but she could feel it—she was receiving precious gifts, one after another.
Ni Shan and the other twenty or so Fire Division clansmen hurled themselves into the sacred vessel like moths darting into a flame.
Against forces of cataclysmic magnitude, their sacrifice barely caused a ripple.
Ci Wu: “Water Division, step forward!”
Ma Yan: “Earth Division, step forward!”
Grandpa Lin caressed Lin Xiaohe’s cheek, formed a seal with his fingers, and pressed it gently against her forehead. “In my name, I will always be with you.”
Grandma Lin said nothing. She simply squeezed out a single drop of her lifeblood and fused it into Lin Xiaohe’s body.
The Witch Clan revered their own power, and every drop of lifeblood contained endless spiritual energy—it was immeasurably precious.
All Grandma Lin wanted was for that one drop to help Mu endure just a little longer.
Maybe, just maybe, she could survive this world-ending calamity.
Grandpa Lin let go of Lin Xiaohe and smiled. “Mu, the position of Saint Tablet guardian is yours now.”
And without looking back, they flew toward the sacred vessel.
This journey, this battle—it wasn’t just for the Witch Clan. It was for the sake of their entire race, so that they would never again be imprisoned, never again be forced to endure the torment of reincarnation!
With dozens of blessing halos stacked upon her, Lin Xiaohe finally regained her sight.
Everywhere she looked, she saw apocalypse.
The colossal sacred vessel was being stripped down layer by layer. Flesh and blood energy flew everywhere; shards of broken laws scattered like debris.
The vessel was losing. In the end, all that remained was a single, pulsing, seven-colored glass heart.
Countless chains locked around that heart, tightening, ready to grind it into nothingness!
It was like a computer being wiped clean, preparing for a reboot—planets, life, civilizations, all being erased in sweeping swaths by some immense energy.
Lin Xiaohe was frozen in sheer terror. That energy was closing in on Haige Star!
…
Outside Haige Star, Chu Huaizhi sat inside his personal shuttle, eyes closed, patiently waiting for the prehistoric civilization to awaken.
Lying in the shuttle’s lower deck were five hundred people.
They were the vessels Chu Huaizhi had specially prepared for the awakening—ones he’d gone through tremendous effort to find.
“Hurry and wake up. I’ve waited far, far too long.”
