Chapter 495: Mystery of the Image Entity

Morning mist wrapped in a scent of blood drifted into the library when Ao Li was tracing the broken sigils on an ancient scroll with dragon blood. Blood beads slithered like a snake across the yellowed page, then bit her fingertip. "Found it!" she winced, pulling her hand back; the blood snake clutched a half‑torn fragment that slipped out from the middle of the Record of the Shenyuan, its charred‑brown pattern matching Lín Jìn's palm lines perfectly.

At that moment Lín Jìn's pocket watch emitted a grinding screech of stuck gears. The glass reflected the face of the Karmic Image Entity—its visage nine‑tenths like his, with seven orifices oozing syrup‑like mucus. The mucus solidified in the void into umbilical‑cord‑like threads, the other end bound to the snake‑scale hairpin on Pavilion Master Xuanfeng's nape.

"This isn't a prophecy," Ao Li said, pinning the writhing blood snake with Sword Qi, "it's a reflection that's happening now."

A dark candle burst cold flame inside a bronze lantern, illuminating the scroll's eerie illustrations. Three lines of verse emerged where the blood snake coiled:

"Fate returns neither mirror nor shadow; only after nine cocoons devour all does truth appear."

"The wheel of time reverses three thousand turns; only by breaking the cocoon does one know the cocoon‑keeper."

Lín Jìn's Fetal Hair suddenly shot out from his brocade pouch, the strands crawling like living snakes toward the scroll. When the tips brushed the words "cocoon‑keeper," the whole parchment instantly transformed into infant skin, its subdermal vessels sketching a diagram of a dark altar—at its center a sundial, unmistakably a hundred‑fold enlargement of his pocket watch.

"So we are the offerings," Ao Li's blade tip pierced the skin, and from the pus‑stained blood rose countless miniature scenes: in every timeline Lín Jìn repeatedly received the pocket watch, met the Karmic Image Entity, and finally fell into the Shenyuan's Reincarnation. The deepest vision chilled her to the bone—Pavilion Master Xuanfeng, holding a snake‑patterned jade hairpin, was swapping infant Lín Jìn's Fetal Hair for a glowing umbilical cord.

At the third quarter of the Rat hour, the Karmic Image Entity appeared without warning in the centre of the Scripture Hall. This time it wore ink‑black human skin, and sugar threads hanging between its fingers were linked to nine Crystal Coffins. "Shall we play a game?" it crooned, its throat echoing Pavilion Master Xuanfeng's laugh as it raised a hand and ripped open its chest—inside were not organs but a rotating destiny chart.

The destiny chart was engraved with Lín Jìn's names, each soaked in syrup of a different colour. When Ao Li's Sword Qi pierced "Heavenly Stem Year Lín Jìn," a collapse roar echoed from the Soul‑binding Tower in the northwest corner. The corpses of the tower's disciples were dragged by glowing vines into a fissure, and the final image transmitted back was a sugar jar buried at the tower's base, hatching human pupae.

"Destroy a name, and a human hell is forged." The Entity licked the syrup on its fingertips; the mucus that fell to the ground instantly turned into tiny Lín Jìn. These three‑inch figures grew wildly to full size, snake scales sprouting on their necks and backs, murmuring dark prayers from various timelines.

The most terrifying change occurred at daybreak. When Lín Jìn froze three mirror entities with his pocket watch, the steel teeth on the inner side of the dial suddenly jabbed into his wrist. Blood ran along the gear patterns into the destiny chart, and the floor of the Spirit‑Sky Pavilion began to become insubstantial. Through the translucent bricks one could see an inverted dark altar standing underground—ninety thousand human pupae were channeling energy through glowing umbilical cords into the altar, drawn from the defensive formation.

Ao Li's jade pendant shattered completely at that moment, and the core of the Dragon Soul Pearl revealed a dark covenant: three centuries ago the Dragon Clan sealed the Abyssal Gate with half of their essence blood, and the collateral of the covenant turned out to be the fate of future dragon descendants. When she touched the blood fingerprint on the covenant, a searing pain shot through her fingertips—the fingerprint matched the handwriting of the master's last letter inside Lín Jìn's pocket watch, clearly from the same person.

So the Reincarnation had already begun. The Karmic Image Entity suddenly exploded into a Sugar Crystal storm, and at the eye of the storm the ultimate truth surfaced: in every timeline Ao Li repeatedly experiences sealing, betrayal, and ultimately becoming a sacrificial offering. And the "reality" they now occupy is merely the one among countless pupal shells closest to breaking the cocoon.

When the morning light pierced the window paper, the verses on the ancient scroll began to bleed. When a blood bead rolled down to the ninth, an earth‑shaking roar erupted from outside the hall—the newly built cluster of Soul‑binding Towers was collapsing en masse, and crawling from the tower bases were not snake‑people but tens of thousands of "Lín Jìn" with scales on their necks. They bore in their hands dark sundials sharing the same origin as the real pocket watch, the Silent Sundial Needle pointing at the spot of Ao Li's Dragon Soul Pearl in her chest.

From the wind came Shen Mo's chant, its tone mingled with Pavilion Master Xuanfeng's cold sneer: "On the day the cocoon breaks, we finally know that you and I are both pupae within the cocoon."