Chapter 496: The Mystery of the Ice Coffin

Cold mist roamed the valley like a living thing, swallowing the last trace of spring. Ao Li's eyelashes were coated with ice crystals, and the white breath she exhaled froze into tiny runes before it could disperse, eerily resonating with the engravings on the Ice Coffin's surface. She reached out to touch the nearest coffin, and her Dragon Clan bloodline suddenly boiled—inside the coffin lay, unmistakably, her uncle Ao Lin, who had died in battle three hundred years ago.

"This is not a storage place," Lín Jìn's pocket watch chain wound around the seam of the Coffin Lid, "it is a resurrection altar."

The first Ice Coffin sent by Pavilion Master Xuan Feng already gave off an odd aura. When a Mo Sect disciple lowered the coffin, the four dragon horses pulling the cart suddenly went berserk, glowing vines sprouting from their eye sockets. The instant Ao Li sliced the vines, the Frost Flower on the Ice Coffin's surface reassembled, forming the fallen‑god Zhengtong she had seen when she mistakenly entered the Dragon Clan's forbidden land as a child.

"The ancient texts record that nine hundred and one are required," Pavilion Master Xuan Feng's voice emanated from the Transmission Jade Slip, accompanied by a rustling like a snake shedding its skin. Lín Jìn noticed sugar crystals clinging to the edge of the jade slip—identical to the residue left when a Causality Entity explodes.

As Ice Coffins kept arriving, the valley's terrain began to mutate. At dawn on the seventh day, the night‑watch disciple discovered that the growth rings of all ancient trees were reversing, and the roots exuded ice shards bearing the pocket watch gear pattern. Ao Li's jade pendant suddenly projected an illusion on the full‑moon night: the bottom of each Ice Coffin was attached to a glowing umbilical cord, all converging on the main coffin in the valley's center, which had not yet been activated.

When the thirty‑second Ice Coffin arrived, an accident occurred. As the coffin hit the ground, the runes on its surface came alive, snake‑shaped engravings gnawing at the ice layer. Lín Jìn froze the anomaly with his pocket watch at that instant, and a fingernail‑scratching sound emanated from inside the coffin—its Pinqü matched exactly the Distress Signal his master had carved onto the stone wall before dying.

"Open the coffin!" Ao Li's sword tip pressed against the seam of the Coffin Lid. The moment the cold air surged, both pupils contracted sharply: inside the coffin was a figure curled up in the likeness of a Young Master, Shen Mo, with a fragment of a dark altar embedded in his brow. Even more terrifying, the corpse clutched in its hand was precisely the pocket watch component Lín Jìn had lost three days earlier.

At the third quarter of the Zi hour, when the nine‑hundredth Ice Coffin entered the valley, heaven and earth fell suddenly silent. Pavilion Master Xuan Feng arrived in person, his snow‑marten great cloak shimmering with snake‑scale luster under the moonlight. When his jade hairpin touched the final empty coffin, all Ice Coffins simultaneously burst with blue light, weaving nine layers of chains in the air—each chain encircling a mirror image of Ao Li from a different age.

"One more to go," the Pavilion Master said with a smile, patting the main coffin; inside the coffin a baby's cry suddenly sounded. Lín Jìn's Fetal Hair pouch trembled violently, the pocket watch gear tearing the silk—those hair strands transformed into a glowing umbilical cord, linking the main coffin to his heart.

Ao Li's Dragon‑Roar Sword drew itself at that moment, and as its Sword Qi sliced open the main coffin, all nine hundred Ice Coffins exploded in unison. From the shattered ice rose countless fate tablets, each bearing a miniature Lín Jìn at its center; the umbilical cords around their necks extended, unmistakably connecting to the Sundial of the dark altar.

When the icy fog cleared, the ultimate truth rose to the surface: the so‑called nine hundred and one Ice Coffins were in fact nine hundred and one fragments of Lín Jìn's destiny, cut apart. And in the final main coffin, the infant version of him was being pierced at the Fontanelle by Pavilion Master Xuan Feng's snake‑patterned jade hairpin, the replacement Fetal Hair already sprouting glowing scales.

A reverberating laugh from the Causality Entity drifted on the wind: "The cocoon‑keeper finally becomes a cocoon; now, it's time to break the shell." The entire valley began to collapse, the shattered ice coalescing into a massive phantom of a pocket watch, its hour hand pointing precisely at the location of Ao Li's heart‑centered Dragon Soul Pearl.