bioinnovel Chapter 369 Yinghuo Planet
Chapter 369 Yinghuo Planet
The third finger of the skeleton twitched.
Then it stopped.
It's not the kind of stop that's interrupted by something; it's the kind of stop that happens halfway through an action.
The third finger's knuckle had just been raised to an angle, and the finger joint was still in a semi-bent state when it was fixed in place.
Dark red light shone up from below the altar, casting several thin shadows on the ground through the gaps between the white bone knuckles.
Su Fan stood a hundred feet away from the altar, with the Pangu Axe held horizontally in front of him.
"It stopped."
The breeze lowered its voice.
His broken sword was stuck on the ground, its tip embedded in the silt of the ruins.
The wound on his right leg was still bleeding, and the blood flowed down his calf into the mud. When the dark red light of the Ruins shone on it, it was impossible to tell whether it was blood or light.
"It didn't stop. It got stuck. When the third finger was lifted, its knuckle touched an old wound on the altar. That old wound was a crack in the altar itself."
Yang Jian closed his eyes. His Heavenly Eye had been burned away, but his remaining senses were still functioning. He tilted his head and turned his ear toward the altar.
"Is there a crack in the altar?"
Nezha put the Fire-Tipped Spear down from his shoulder.
"Yes. It was left over from 30,000 years ago. The silt at the bottom of the Ruins is full of broken bones, and the fractures of those bones are exactly the same age as this skeleton. This skeleton is not the first one."
Su Fan turned his head and glanced at Yang Jian.
"You mean there were other skeletons before this one?"
"It's not just any skeleton. It's itself. There are at least a dozen identical skeletons buried in the silt beneath the Ruins of Return, each with the same age as the one on the altar, and each in the posture of a curled-up fetus."
"This skeleton has been resurrected at least a dozen times before. Each time it resurrects, it stretches out its fingers, and then the altar shatters, and the skeleton shatters as well. After it shatters, the silt of the Ruins swallows the fragments, and after a thousand years, it condenses into a new skeleton. This one is the tenth generation."
Yang Jian opened his eyes, and the charred vertical marks in his eye sockets appeared particularly deep in the dark red light.
"The old wound on the altar was caused by the previous skeleton in the same spot, with the same movement. It always stops at the same angle on the third finger."
"Because last time it stopped there, and the time before that it stopped there too. For over a dozen generations of skeletons, they practiced the same movement repeatedly in the same spot for 30,000 years, and only managed to master two and a half fingers."
Sun Wukong slammed his golden cudgel down on the ground, the cudgel striking the rocks of Guixu with a dull thud.
"I, Old Sun, was suppressed under the Five Elements Mountain for five hundred years, and at least I could turn over. This thing has been suppressed here for thirty thousand years, turning over more than ten times, each time shattering, then solidifying again, then shattering again. What's the point of practicing this movement for thirty thousand years?"
"Tu opens his eyes."
Su Fan put the Pangu Axe down in front of him, touched the ground with the axe blade, and walked towards the altar.
With each step taken, the dark red light shining up from below the altar grew brighter.
The flashing frequency of Mars gradually synchronized with the rhythm of his steps; with each step, a red light flashed once.
By the time he reached the ninety-ninth step, he was already standing on the edge of the altar.
The third finger of the skeleton on the altar was still stuck in a half-bent position, with the finger joint pressing against a hair-thick crack on the altar stone surface.
The crack was an old wound, its edges worn smooth, and the stone, touched repeatedly by the bones of more than a dozen generations, had developed a dark patina.
Su Fan looked down at the old wound, then reached out his hand, not touching the bone, but simply running his finger along the edge of the crack.
The stone powder stuck to my fingertip; it was very fine, even finer than the silt from the ruins.
"This crack was created by grinding with finger bones. It wasn't just trying to open its eyes; it was tapping the altar with its finger bones, trying to create a fulcrum so it could sit up. Dozens of generations of skeletons have been doing this."
The skeleton did not respond.
Its skull is still buried between its curled-up knees, its eye sockets facing its kneecaps, and its leg bones which it has been hugging for 30,000 years.
The third finger was stuck on the old wound on the altar, the knuckles remaining completely still.
But the dark red core inside its chest cavity began to beat faster, decoupling from the twinkling rhythm of Mars and beating at its own frequency.
Nezha pressed the tip of his spear to the ground, listening intently to the rhythm of that core.
"It's accelerating; after detaching from Mars, its heartbeat quickened considerably. Does it want to wake up, or does it want to continue sleeping?"
Su Fan did not answer. He turned his left hand over, palm up, revealing the crooked "human" scar on his palm.
The dark gold scabs from the three cuts gleamed with a metallic texture in the dark red light of the Ruins of Return.
He placed his left hand on the edge of the altar, aligning the scar on his palm with the old wound below the third finger of the white bone.
Golden blood seeped from the scabs and cracks in his palm, flowing along the rock-like patterns of the old wound from one end of his finger to the other, each drop burning into a small circle of shimmering light in the dim red glow.
Those shards of light seeped into the fine cracks in the white bone knuckles.
The third finger of the skeleton trembled in the shattered light, and the knuckle began to slowly lift upwards.
After the old wounds were filled with golden blood, the finger bones found a new fulcrum.
The third finger is fully extended.
Then came the fourth and the fifth.
He spread his entire left hand, knuckles spread out, once, twice, and finally clenched it into a loose fist.
Sun Wukong held his golden cudgel horizontally from ten feet away. His monkey eyes never left the clenched fist of the white bone. There was no smile or fire on his face, only a deep and oppressive silence.
"It can't punch. Its fist is clenched loosely, lacking strength. I felt the same way when I was sleeping in the rock. I had a lot of strength, but I couldn't use it."
"It's not that it can't use it, it's that it dares not use it. It's afraid that if it throws a punch, the altar will shatter, and it will shatter too."
Su Fan withdrew his hand from the altar and looked down at his left palm.
The third cut had formed a thin scab, with extremely fine dark red stone powder embedded in its surface, brought out from the old rock layer of the bone wound.
"How many generations have you been awake?"
Su Fan wasn't asking anyone else; he was asking about the skeleton itself.
The skeleton did not answer.
The core of my heartbeat in my chest was steady at a frequency slightly faster than Mars, neither too fast nor too slow, like someone who has been sleeping for too long just opening their eyes and getting used to the rhythm of their heartbeat.
Awakening does not require an answer; it remains a fetus, and each awakening does not require language.
Yang Jian walked through the silt of Guixu, and picked up a piece of broken bone with his eyes closed.
He held the broken bones up in front of him and wiped away the mud on the surface of the bones with his fingertips, only to find a row of very shallow teeth marks.
He handed the broken bone fragments to Su Fan.
"This bone fragment is the left forearm bone of the previous skeleton, and its bone age is exactly the same as the one on the altar. The teeth marks are located on the inside of the wrist bone, and the spacing of the bite marks matches the spacing of the teeth in the mandible of this skeleton itself."
"Every time it wakes up, it bites itself before it finally breaks. It bites the inside of its wrist, and the bite mark is just strong enough to shatter the bone."
"The last time it woke up, it tore its own left forearm to pieces; the time before that, it tore its right calf to pieces; and the time before that, it tore three ribs. It has recorded the locations where it tore itself to pieces in all of its dozen or so awakenings. This is not a struggle, it is marking."
Gongsun Bao carried the human warrior to the altar, put him down, and let his back rest against the stone base of the altar.
The human warriors had no legs; their trousers, hanging loosely from the waist down, were stuffed into the cracks in the rocks.
He tapped the base of the altar with the back of his broken sword, the sound dull and solid.
"I bit myself to remember. When the ice dragon bit off both of my legs, my head was in so much pain that I couldn't remember anything, but I'll never forget the scars in those spots after the wounds healed."
"It bites itself because it knows it will break again when it wakes up. It holds on until it breaks, so that when it wakes up again, the teeth marks will still be in the bone. The previous generation bites, the next generation touches, and by touching the teeth marks, they can tell who bit it. This bone is the same thing that died repeatedly 30,000 years ago."
Su Fan took the broken bone from Yang Jian's left forearm and placed it on the edge of the altar, directly opposite the knuckles of the white bone left hand.
Then he placed the Pangu Axe on the ground, sat cross-legged directly opposite the altar, and sat face to face with the curled-up skeleton.
"We've seen your teeth marks. You've bitten for generations, and I've chopped myself three times. You've tasted the blood that seeped into your joints. You two pieces of trash, there's no need to test each other anymore."
"You opened your eyes this time not to shatter, but to sit up. You need a fulcrum, and I'll lend it to you. The path of all living beings still exists. The will of 10,050 remnant soldiers now presses down on the entire Ruins of Return."
Su Fan pointed to the ten thousand soldiers behind him.
"Once you sit up, whether you want to overturn the Ruins or step out of the altar, you have to let the Primordial World know who you really are, whether you are the dregs that the Primordial World rejected or the ancient remnant that is holding its breath and wants to live again."
The skeletal body suddenly twitched, its curled back pushing its chest forward half an inch, and the entire spine emitted the first crisp sound of bones rubbing together in 30,000 years.
The curled-up spine pushed upwards segment by segment, and with each segment, its skull protruded half an inch over the kneecap, gradually unfolding from the fetus's curled-up position, brushing against the kneecap that had not left for 30,000 years, brushing very slowly.
Nezha squatted down and placed the Fire-Tipped Spear horizontally on his lap, pressing down on the vibrating opening.
"Its spine is moving. Not its fingers anymore. It's its entire spine; it's trying to sit up."
Su Fan didn't turn around, staring at the spine of the skeleton. The three knife scars on his left palm stung at the same time, and golden blood seeped out from the scabs.
When the skeleton enters the awakening sequence, its laws automatically initiate a stress response, and a certain life law that is similar to but not exactly the same as the golden pattern of the path of all living beings is twitching again deep in the void.
"You can't open your eyes yet. The pressure of the laws of the Void has already been pushed upwards by 60%. If you sit up three more vertebrae, the red light of Mars will flood your eyes."
"If your first glance is at the deadly orbit of Mars, your obsession will be locked onto evil. Your fetal instinct will change from opening your eyes to struggling. At that time, you will use the foundation of the Ruins of Return as a fulcrum to kick down the Southern Heavenly Gate. There are only a few sections left in your awakening sequence. You must open your eyes in the right place."
He turned the palm side towards the skeleton, aligning the V-shaped scar with the skull that hadn't yet lifted.
"Don't look at Yinghuo first. Look at the blood in my palm first. These three cuts were made on behalf of the will of all living beings in the primordial world; they contain the protection of all living beings."
The white bone spine continued to push upwards for the last two vertebrae, and the entire upper body straightened completely from its curled-up position.
Its skull slid out from behind its knees and stood straight up.
The direction the orbital bone was pointing was not at the red dome of Mars, but at Su Fan's left palm.
There were no eyeballs inside the eye sockets, only two dark cavities, with dark red fragments of law light floating deep within them.
The shards of light froze the moment they touched the chevron scar.
Then the third rib of the skeleton cracked.
The crack was only an inch wide, opening outwards from the inside of the rib, with a tiny grain of chaotic sand embedded in the exposed bone.
That grain of sand was a fragment of the primordial chaos stone that Pangu shattered when he created the world.
Thirty thousand years ago, when the Heavenly Dao first operated, as it expelled the sediment, this grain of chaotic sand was wrapped into the white bone's body and remained embedded inside its ribs.
Each time it awakens, this grain of sand etches a mark on the ribcage.
This time, the sand grains, having broken free of the ribs and exposed to the air of the Void, did not come into contact with the fragmented light of the laws of the white bones, but rather with the layer of golden blood mist that seeped into Su Fan's eye sockets from his palm.
The sand resonated with Su Fan's golden blood, projecting all the marks left on the bones by each of the more than ten generations of skeletons when they awoke onto the sky above the altar.
The consciousness of the skeleton was still on the verge of not opening its eyes. According to the pre-battle plan, Su Fan poured the blood from his palm through the human-shaped scar into the skeleton's eyes. The death marks of past generations projected from the chaotic sand and the will of the fragments of weapons of ten thousand soldiers were simultaneously injected into the skeleton's chest cavity.
Amidst the exploding golden light, 10,050 primordial soldiers inserted the first sentence into the depths of the nascent consciousness of the white bones.
That sentence was spoken very softly.
The faint, dark red pulse that had been emanating from Mars for 30,000 years suddenly weakened.
The silt in the entire ruins stopped churning.
The entire chest cavity of the skeleton was filled with this sentence, and the dark red pulse was completely transformed into the lingering sound of the pale gold breathing law, passing through the cracks of the Ruins of Return and pouring into the broken walls and ruins of the South Heavenly Gate.
The moment the remaining bricks came into contact with the breath of the skeleton, extremely thin, pale golden lines simultaneously appeared, connecting with the death marks from 30,000 years ago inside the skeleton's chest cavity.
Yuanshi Tianzun sat cross-legged on the ridge of the South Heavenly Gate. His whisk had turned gray, but his Dao heart was still alive. He heard the first complete heartbeat when the skeleton deep in the Ruins of Return awoke, and the collective announcement from ten thousand soldiers.
He took the whisk off his lap, placed it on the glazed tile on the ridge, and whispered.
"Excellent. The will of all beings has been received by this skeleton."
After being extinguished for a long time, Mars' red light turned gold for the first time.
Ten thousand golden marks on the South Heavenly Gate flickered in sync with the rhythm of the pale gold breath of the white bones.
It's not fetal movement, it's awakening.
It is not the awakening of scum, but the awakening of the thorn that is deeper within the primordial world than the outer realms, which has been pulled out of the teeth marks by the Dao of All Beings.