Chapter 389: Investigation Begins

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The northern blizzard crystallizes into ice at Ao Li's boots, each step accompanied by tiny wails. The missing Moon River Village is shrouded in a strange aurora, and the core of the Azure Scale's God‑slaying Crossbow suddenly buzzes—its radiation index is surpassing the Gui Xu wartime peak.

"Spacetime curvature anomaly." Gongxu Yue's mechanical box ejects a celestial instrument, its bronze pointer whirling madly in the magnetic storm, "We are standing on the spinal vertebra of a gigantic creature."

Lín Jìn's Star Sand brushed the broken wall of the hut with his right hand, and Nirvana Fire reflected a viscous filament in the wall cracks. The mycelia suddenly surged, forming the palm print of a black‑haired infant on the snow. Zixiao Immortal's sword light slashed down, yet the mycelia turned into quantum dust that reassembled, sketching in the void a holographic projection of the village's past: villagers kneeling before a jade basin illusion, delivering infants into the blossoming embryos within the basin.

####【Dead Silence Ruins】

Ao Li's Dragon Claw pressed against the boundary stele at the village entrance, and the chaotic spirit marrow suddenly pricked. The inscription "Moon River" twisted into the markings of an Abyss Return Ruler, and a fetal‑heartbeat‑like tremor emanated from within the blue stone. When the Realm‑cutting Blade split the stele, what surged out was not rubble but three hundred quantum afterimages of villagers—each preserving the terrified expression of their final moments, repeatedly performing the Burial Coffin Sacrifice across the snowfield.

"Cognitive echo." Lín Jìn's ear accessory emitted a clear Vermilion Bird chirp, the sound wave shattering the afterimages. The shattered light particles coalesced into an umbilical cord that wound around Gongxu Yue's mechanical arm. Within the box, the Creation Furnace emitted a baby's wail, and its seams seeped amniotic fluid mixed with Brain Fluid.

####【Non-Human Seal】

Beside the ancient well at the village center, the accumulated snow formed unnatural hexagonal crystals. The Azure Scale's God‑slaying Crossbow switched to thermal imaging mode, and the spectrum radiated from the well mouth matched Ao Li's newly formed Inverse Scale perfectly. As the group approached, the well rim suddenly sprouted flesh‑blood conduits, their walls densely marked with the tooth imprints of a silver‑haired infant.

"Step back!" Zixiao Immortal hurled a Supreme Unity Talisman, but the talisman paper, upon touching the conduit, transmuted into a page from the Abyssal Scripture. The sutras on the page writhed like living things, assembling a height scale of the Twins—exactly matching the wavelength of the well's radiative wave.

Ao Li's Realm‑cutting Blade pierced the well, the blade feeling a sucking sensation. What was drawn up was not water but a bronze vessel enshrouded in umbilical cords, its surface engraved with Dragon Clan Forbidden Art Runes. When Gongxu Yue's molecular tweezers touched the runes, all the patterns suddenly opened mycelial pupils, firing quantum beams infused with villagers' memories.

####【Record of Passing】

Amid the ruins of the village ancestral hall, the group found the walls covered with dark‑crimson graffiti. These seemingly chaotic lines reassembled under Zixiao Immortal's Taiyi pure light, revealing a chilling truth: the mural depicted villagers arranging pregnant women into a star formation, using unborn fetuses to nourish the embryos in the jade basin. In the final panel, every pregnant woman's abdomen was split open, within which curled infants sprouted with Compound Eyes.

"The cognitive pollution source is here." Lín Jìn's Star Sand right hand pierced the mural, Nirvana Fire scorching out hidden Gui Xu coordinates. When the flame touched a portrait of a pregnant woman, her belly suddenly swelled, and a fetal movement tremor resonated through the wall.

Gongxu Yue's mechanical box suddenly disassembled, its components forming a Dimensional Reduction Compass in midair. The pointer aimed straight at a hidden chamber beneath the ancestral hall's floor tiles, where hundreds of crystallized fetal corpses were piled, each celestial lid bearing the lip imprint of a black‑haired infant.

####【Mystery of the Ancient Scroll】

In the deepest part of the hidden chamber, an altar bore a half‑scroll of the Gui Xu Fetal Treasury Sutra. When Ao Li's finger brushed the scroll, the parchment suddenly transformed into countless moths, the phosphor dust on their wings spelling in the air the neural map of a time‑whale carcass. The Azure Scale's God‑slaying Crossbow automatically locked onto a coordinate, and the radiation index of its arrow cluster spiked beyond limits.

"To the Polaris Tower!" Zixiao Immortal's sword flicked at the moths, each slashed moth exploding into shards of memory—within the visions, ancient Dragon Clan priests were reshaping prisoners of war into humanoid mother nests, overseen by the Twin's phantom wielding an Abyss Return Ruler.

The moment the group stepped out of the ancestral hall, the entire village abruptly collapsed into a jade basin illusion. Three hundred quantum afterimages of villagers crawled out of the basin, their spinal vertebrae segments transmuted into Qingtong Suo, the ends of which were tethered to a silver‑haired infant gnawing on the Star Chart.

"Cognitive sacrificial offering~" the phantom of the black‑haired infant rose from the scroll's ashes, thrusting the final half‑page of the Gui Xu Fetal Treasury Sutra into Lín Jìn's Star Sand wound, "The library…has the answers you seek…"

The blizzard suddenly halted, and across the snowfield leading to the Polaris Tower, a pallid road paved with fetal corpses emerged. In each corpse's eye socket, a miniature cosmic embryo pulsed.