The rear mountain collapsed with a thunderous roar, thousands upon thousands of tons of earth and rock pouring downward like a burst dam, the billowing dust swallowing the entire sky in an instant.
Lin Cang and Li Mang, locked in fierce battle, were forcibly torn apart by this terrifying, devastating landslide.
Bang!
Li Mang smashed through a great mass of tumbling stones in a somewhat sorry state, his feet plowing two deep furrows through the sliding mudflow before he barely steadied himself.
Yet he was granted no time at all to catch his breath.
BOOM——!
The dust ahead was torn apart by an utterly brutish force. Lin Cang, drenched in blood, eyes red as a maddened lion ready to devour, burst out from the swirling dust with rolling Golden Primeval Essence, an iron fist held back by nothing aimed straight at Li Mang's skull!
Li Mang's pupils shrank sharply. In his haste, he raised the Bone Spine Scepter crosswise with both hands to block before him.
CLANG——!!!
Amid a deafening roar, the two crashed viciously together once more!
Li Mang had already been severely drained, and meeting the blow in such haste, the webbing between his thumbs and forefingers split open from Lin Cang's punch. His whole body was blasted backward like a kite with its string cut, slamming hard into the collapsed cliff face of the mountain behind him!
Shattered stone sprayed everywhere.
Lin Cang himself fared no better. His blood and qi churned within, blood spilling steadily from the corner of his mouth, but he did not even wipe it away. He stamped the rock beneath his foot to pieces and once more became an afterimage, charging in pursuit!
The rear mountain had collapsed, but the battle had not stopped at all!
Those ordinary clansmen nearby who had been lucky enough not to be buried alive in the landslide fled desperately into the distance, wailing. And the few Black Blood Stockade Gu Masters who tried to approach were sent flying back, vomiting blood on the spot, merely from being grazed by the aftershocks of the two men's exchange — there was no way for them to intervene.
The highest combat strength on both sides had, in this moment, gone utterly berserk with slaughter.
And in the midst of this unreserved, frenzied exchange of blows, the thing buried deep beneath the rear mountain finally began, bit by bit, to be exposed.
KA BOOM!
Li Mang was punched into the mountain wall again by Lin Cang. Great masses of thick rock strata crumbled and slid away, and behind that shedding earth and stone, there suddenly appeared a stretch of smooth, cold, blue-black stone wall bearing unmistakable traces of human carving!
Immediately after, Lin Cang's second pursuing punch was dodged in a sorry scramble by Li Mang, and the violent fist force blasted clean through another layer of earth and rock several zhang thick, revealing a deep, gloomy ancient underground passageway!
An ancient underground structure, mixed in among the ruins of the collapsed mountain belly, was exposed to the air just like that.
Anyone who was not blind could see that there was something wrong beneath this rear mountain.
Yet Lin Cang's first reaction at this moment was still to kill Li Mang!
For this Patriarch of Black Blood Stockade, the stockade was bleeding and his clansmen were dying. No matter what earth-shaking secret was buried beneath his feet, pounding this White Bone Stockade mastermind before him into pulp was the only thing that mattered!
But Li Mang was entirely different.
In the very instant that stretch of ancient blue-black stone wall was exposed.
Hmm—— Hmm—— Hmmmm!!!
The Bone Spine Scepter in Li Mang's hand — its radiance already somewhat dimmed from excessive expenditure of power — suddenly began to tremble violently without the slightest warning!
Every segment of ghastly pale bone along the shaft let out a hum of the most intense yearning and excitement!
It was far too close!
That powerful resonance, strong enough that the scepter nearly flew from his grip, made Li Mang's expression change drastically on the spot.
He jerked his head down to look at the Bone Spine Scepter in his hand, then jerked it up again to look at that exposed blue-black stone wall, his heart pounding to its utmost limit in that single instant!
Another incomplete portion of the Black Bone King Inheritance!
The source that he had thought of day and night, searched for bitterly, that he had been willing to launch a decisive war between two clans over — it had been buried right here, beneath Black Blood Stockade's rear mountain!
It was precisely this instant of distraction and wild joy that caused Li Mang to reveal a fatal opening.
"Die!"
A savage light surged in Lin Cang's eyes. Seizing the chance, he closed in with a single step, driving his Iron Bone Gu to the extreme, and landed a heavy fist squarely on Li Mang's left shoulder!
Crack!
The muffled sound of shoulder bones shattering rang out. Li Mang let out a miserable scream, spewing a great mouthful of blood as half his body went numb.
But this time, the gravely wounded Li Mang neither flew into a rage nor retreated in panic.
He used the force of Lin Cang's punch to skid several zhang backward, yet those cloudy eyes sunk deep in their sockets were fixed on that ancient structure just exposed underground, his gaze turning fervent and insane in an instant.
Lin Cang was far too seasoned not to immediately sense that something was off about Li Mang.
Though he did not know why Li Mang had suddenly taken on such an expression over these underground ruins, the tacit understanding between archenemies of several decades required no explanation whatsoever.
The more Li Mang craved something, the less he, Lin Cang, would ever let the man touch even a sliver of it!
From this moment, the clash between the two underwent a subtle and deadly shift.
Li Mang no longer roved about stalling as he had before, and began recklessly attempting to approach that underground space; Lin Cang, while attacking furiously, blocked off Li Mang's path forward with everything he had!
"Cough, cough… hahahaha!"
Li Mang coughed blood even as he fended off Lin Cang's successive assaults, laughing hoarsely and wildly:
"Lin Cang, oh Lin Cang! You've guarded Black Blood Stockade all these years, and you don't even know what's buried under your own feet!"
"Once you're a corpse, this old man will take his time looking!"
Lin Cang's face was dark as water; his only answer was an even more violent iron fist!
Both of them understood that the battle had reached its final life-and-death juncture.
Li Mang could clearly feel that the Rank 4 power sealed within the Bone Spine Scepter was rapidly nearing its bottom.
The instant the Bone Spine Scepter's power ran dry, facing a genuine Rank 4 like Lin Cang, he would be certain to die.
So he had no retreat left!
His only chance to turn the situation around today — indeed, his only chance to live — was to break into this underground inheritance!
"I'll risk it all!"
A thoroughly vicious light flashed in Li Mang's eyes.
Facing Lin Cang's next incoming punch, he neither dodged nor evaded, and even deliberately withdrew part of his flank defense, taking half the force of Lin Cang's fist directly to the chest!
Pfah——!
Ribs snapped; blood sprayed wildly!
But borrowing that punch's terrifying impact, Li Mang shot backward in a straight line, forcibly smashing through Lin Cang's blockade and crashing headlong into that exposed gash in the mountain's belly!
"Where do you think you're going!"
How could Lin Cang let him have his way? With a furious roar, he plunged into the mountain belly in pursuit without hesitation!
And so the Black Bone King's underground palace, which had originally required passing through layer upon layer of trials to enter, welcomed two of the most unreasonable intruders imaginable.
They did not walk in — they smashed their way in by brute force!
Boom!
A stone wall carved with ancient patterns blocked the way ahead. Li Mang did not even look at it, simply swinging the Bone Spine Scepter and blasting it apart on the spot.
Immediately after, Lin Cang's violent fist force came in pursuit, utterly collapsing a stone door behind it along with half the passageway!
The first chamber, the second chamber…
And at this time, outside the rear mountain.
The battlefield throughout Black Blood Stockade remained a hell on earth.
"Kill!!!"
Lin Zhen's hair and beard bristled; not a patch of unbroken flesh remained anywhere on his body, yet he still led the surviving Gu Masters in holding the ruins of the main street with everything he had.
Not far off, Lin Yan and Lin Wuxie, soaked head to toe in blood, fought madly among the heaps of corpses like two tireless savage beasts.
Everyone had seen, and heard, the earth-shaking collapse of the rear mountain.
But no one could spare a hand to go look.
The White Bone Alliance's army was still pressing in without end, Black Blood Stockade's line being dyed red with blood inch by inch, men falling with every breath.
The war outside had not stopped, while the struggle deep underground had already drawn near its final end.
At the edge of the thoroughly shattered ruins of the second underground chamber.
An utterly unremarkable figure stood quietly behind the shadow of a cracked stone wall.
It was the female Gu Master who had appeared near the rear mountain — Wu Xiang.
She watched the passage ahead that Lin Cang and Li Mang had violently blasted through all the way in, and the placid expression she had always worn finally vanished from her face.
The entire rear mountain had been torn open by those two madmen; all the concealment and disguise she had maintained until now had, in this moment, lost all meaning.
Wu Xiang did not step out to help Lin Cang, still less to stop Li Mang.
She merely stood in the shadows, her gaze piercing the swirling dust toward the sealed stone door in the deepest reaches, only one thought left in her heart:
Lin Mu… when exactly are you going to wake up?
And at this very moment.
KA BOOM——!
Within the passage ahead, the deeper he went, the more intensely the Bone Spine Scepter's resonance stabbed at him like needles!
When Li Mang stumbled and staggered to the end of the second chamber and saw that sealed third blue-black stone door, the scepter's trembling had reached its peak!
It was here!
The true source was behind this door!
By now, the entire underground palace had long been shaking violently from the rear mountain's collapse and the two men's bombardment all the way in, and dense cracks had already spread across the rock walls surrounding that third stone door.
Sensing the terrifying killing intent of Lin Cang at his very back, Li Mang, having utterly lost his composure, let out a hysterical roar.
He no longer cared for any defense behind him. Gripping the Bone Spine Scepter tightly with both hands, he squeezed out every last remnant of the Rank 4 power within the scepter, along with the Primeval Essence in his own aperture, holding back nothing, and smashed it viciously into the stone door ahead!
"OPEN for this old man——!!!"
BOOM——!!!
A violent explosion more terrifying than any before it erupted in the depths of the earth!
That third stone door, already riddled with cracks from the mountain's collapse and the palace's shaking, along with the entire stretch of rock wall around it, finally could not withstand this all-out blow and burst apart with a thunderous crash!
And in that very same instant the stone door exploded open.
Lin Cang arrived in pursuit, and a plain, unadorned iron fist slammed viciously into Li Mang's utterly undefended back!
Pfah——!
Li Mang's whole body convulsed as though struck by lightning. Blood mixed with fragments of his organs sprayed from his mouth, and his body tumbled in through the shattered gap in the stone door in the most wretched manner.
Lin Cang strode over the rubble and stepped in right behind him.
Great quantities of broken stone came pouring down with a clatter.
The billowing dust slowly dispersed within this sealed underground space.
The clash, fierce to the very extreme, abruptly came to a halt for the briefest instant at this moment.
Because whether it was Li Mang, who had just struggled to lift his head from the ground, or Lin Cang, who had stepped into the chamber wreathed in killing intent.
The gazes of both men locked, in the instant the dust cleared, upon the very center of the chamber.
There.
A figure sat quietly cross-legged on the ground.
His robes were clean and neat, his breathing steady and long, his eyes lightly closed — he did not bear so much as a single wound.
That young Clan Elder who had been missing for several days, whom nearly all of Black Blood Stockade had assumed was already dead somewhere outside—
Lin Mu!
He was sitting right there, in the deepest part of this chamber that so clearly belonged to an ancient inheritance!
In an instant, the sheer volume of information left both experts momentarily stunned.
The first to react was Li Mang.
He glanced at the cross-legged Lin Mu, then glanced at the Bone Spine Scepter in his own hand, which was pointing rigidly at Lin Mu and trembling and keening madly.
Every suspicion, every speculation, every wrongness from before clicked into place perfectly in this moment!
"Cough… haha… hahahaha!"
Clutching his agonizing chest, Li Mang suddenly let out hoarse, deranged laughter brimming with satisfaction:
"Lin Mu…"
"So it really was you! So it really was you, you little bastard, who took the inheritance!!"
On the other side, Lin Cang's expression had sunk to rock bottom, shock, fury, and the icy chill of sudden comprehension surging in his eyes.
But he had not even the time to voice a single word of interrogation.
Li Mang's laughter cut off abruptly!
The inheritance was right there! The inheritor had not yet woken!
Kill him! Seize the thing!
"DIE!!!"
Li Mang forcibly summoned the last of his Primeval Essence, his whole body becoming a pouncing malevolent ghost as he vaulted straight over the rubble, fingers hooked into claws with grim bone spikes, clawing directly for the throat of the cross-legged Lin Mu!
"How dare you!!!"
Lin Cang exploded into motion at virtually the same instant!
It did not matter why Lin Mu was here, nor what trickery was hidden beneath this place — Lin Mu was still wearing Black Blood Stockade's clothes, and there was no way he would stand by and watch Li Mang murder a man and seize a treasure right before his eyes!
BOOM——!
Two torrents of violent power smashed together once more within the chamber, the terrifying force howling past right against Lin Mu's body, plowing several deep furrows into the ground behind him!
And Lin Mu, at the very center of the storm, still sat with his eyes quietly shut, his brow not even creasing, utterly unaware of the hair's-breadth life-and-death struggle in the outside world.
...
Tick. Tock.
The cold sound of instruments echoed faintly through a hospital room so quiet it was almost oppressive.
The smell of disinfectant hung in the air.
In that long illusion realm, Lin Mu had reached the end of his life.
He lay on the pristine white hospital bed, an oxygen tube inserted, his once-upright body now shriveled and gaunt, his white hair thin and sparse, his face covered in deep age spots and wrinkles.
His breathing had grown weaker and weaker, slower and slower, each inhalation as though it were consuming the last of his strength.
The bed was surrounded by people.
His wife, likewise white-haired now, tears welling at the corners of her eyes; his son and daughter, hair graying at the temples, faces stricken with grief; and his grandchildren keeping vigil at the bedside.
It had been an utterly complete, utterly real lifetime.
In the underground palace of reality, Li Mang's bone spikes were mere inches from Lin Mu's throat, and Lin Cang's iron fist was intercepting them with everything he had.
And on the hospital bed in the illusion realm, the ancient and failing Lin Mu merely opened his cloudy eyes, gazing quietly at the ceiling, gazing at this long lifetime he had walked through.
A warm yet slightly trembling hand gently took hold of his withered, skeletal palm.
His son, temples already gray, bent down, eyes rimmed with red, and asked softly in his ear:
"Dad…"
"In this life… do you have any regrets?"
The room fell silent.
Everyone was looking at him.
The old man's lips stirred faintly, but he did not answer at once, sinking instead into a long silence.