Chapter 499: Responding to Ling Yue

When blood‑colored moonlight pierced the defensive array, the needle of the Mohist mechanism's compass suddenly melted into molten iron. The Dragon Clan envoy Ao Qing's sealing array, which she was drawing, twisted, and the cinnabar sigil formed a serpentine chain that coiled around her wrist—at the chain's end was connected the glowing umbilical cord at the bottom of an Ice Coffin.

"This isn't a defensive array!" Lín Jìn's pocket‑watch fragment suddenly heated up, and altered array diagram patterns appeared on the inner side of the case. He swung his sword to cut the chain on Ao Qing's wrist, but the splashing molten iron solidified in the air into the face of the Pavilion Master: "Good disciple, you have finally discovered the little gift I left in the Array Eye for you."

###**1. Inverse Scale Array Eye**

The soul‑binding stone brought by a disciple of the Lingxiao Pavilion seeped black blood under the moonlight, its dragon pattern's Inverse Scales standing upright. When Ao Li dripped dragon blood into the Array Eye, the entire array suddenly reversed— the defensive barrier became an energy‑sucking vortex, greedily devouring the cultivators' spiritual power. The Dragon Clan envoys' scales on the back of their necks rolled back en masse, revealing glowing insect eggs pulsing beneath their skin.

"Withdraw the array quickly!" Ao Li's Sword Qi slashed toward the array hub, but in the recess that should have housed a Dragon Soul Pearl, a gear from Lín Jìn's pocket watch—lost three days ago—was set. As the gear turned, the tremor frequency of the Ice Coffin Group suddenly synchronized with Ling Yue's heartbeat, and a chorus of ten thousand infant cries echoed through the valley.

###**2. Sugar Coating Artifact**

The Mohist‑delivered plague‑clearing crossbow cannon detonated its chamber mid‑charge, and what flew out was not a bolt but a pocket‑watch component wrapped in syrup. After one component lodged into the defensive barrier, the struck cultivator suddenly went rigid, a wandering swelling bulge forming under the skin—those bulges bore Ice Coffin rune patterns on their surface, a harbinger of the Molting One's regeneration.

Lín Jìn picked up the broken crossbow bolt fragments coated with Sugar Crystals; among the debris a horrifying scene reflected: all Mohist mechanisms, on the night before their arrival, had been soaked in syrup from causal image entities. In the deepest shadows, the phantom of Shen Mo was engraving an inverted five‑star onto the crossbow, while the disciple delivering supplies already bore serpentine scales across the back of his neck.

###**3. Twin Moons Same Sky**

At the third quarter of the Rat hour, the heavens suddenly split open a second blood‑moon. Where the twin moons overlapped, pale arms protruded from fissures in the defensive array—ancient cultivators resurrected by Ice Coffins. Their method of attack was bizarre beyond measure: where the sword tip pointed, there was no flesh, only the cultivators' temporal after‑images.

Ao Li swung her sword to cut off an arm that lunged at Lín Jìn; the severed limb turned into syrup that seeped into the ground. The stained soil suddenly became insubstantial, revealing an inverted mirror world beneath—nine mirror images of Ao Li were there simultaneously drawing a Sacrificial Array Diagram, and at the Array Eye lay Lín Jìn's pocket‑watch core.

"Got you." Lín Jìn suddenly charged at the array hub, the pocket‑watch fragment stabbing into his own chest. The spattered blood beads did not fall, but hovered, forming a destiny‑chart Star Chart; at the end of the Star Rail it pointed unmistakably to an overlooked Ice Coffin—its surface bore no runes, yet was covered with Dragon Clan nursery rhymes.

###**4. Fate Returns to the Nursery Rhyme**

Ao Li's hand brushed over the uneven carvings on the Ice Coffin's surface, the crude lines suddenly writhing. When she uttered the first line of the nursery rhyme in Dragon language, all the Ice Coffins in the valley resonated in unison: "Moon Mother, wearing Sugar Coating, in nine thousand coffins the pupae sleep…"

The Coffin Lid melted away within the rhyme, revealing a curled girl inside—who was a Dragon Clan elder bearing an exact likeness to Ao Li. A half‑blade of an Inverse Scale sword was lodged in the girl's chest; the scarlet vertical pupils at the hilt suddenly rotated, resonating with Ao Li's Dragon‑Roaring Sword.

"So the true fate is…" Lín Jìn's pocket watch suddenly restored to its original state, the glass of its face reflecting the ultimate truth: the so‑called fate is not an object but the ancestral patricide curse passed down through the Dragon Clan. Every Dragon‑blooded who suppresses Ling Yue must ultimately slay a close relative with their own hand to complete the seal.

###**End, Sugar Cocoon Breaks Its Chrysalis**

The twin moons suddenly collided, and the splashed moon‑fire ignited all Ice Coffins. Ling Yue's true form emerged in the blaze, her vine‑like hair coiling around the Pavilion Master's frozen form, the tips piercing Lín Jìn's pocket‑watch gear. "The time has come," she whispered with a light laugh, and all cultivators instantly knelt in unison— their reflections had long detached from their bodies, completing the final Burial Coffin Sacrifice in the mirror world.

Ao Li's Inverse Scale sword suddenly, beyond her control, lunged at the girl in the coffin, while the Dragon‑Roaring Sword burst forth with dazzling golden light. Within the radiance appeared the phantoms of all Dragon Clan elders, each with the same sword lodged in their chest, chanting in unison: "Patricides forever fall into Reincarnation, those who cherish jade ultimately become pupae…"

When the sword tip was only three inches from the girl's throat, Lín Jìn's pocket watch suddenly erupted in an eternal white light. Within the absolute brilliance, nine hundred burning Ice Coffin fragments began to reassemble, gradually forming a colossal cocoon spanning the mortal world and the mirror realm. The heartbeat emanating from deep within the cocoon's shell was perfectly synchronized with the tremor of Ao Li's Dragon‑Roaring Sword.