Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: Awakening Talent**

The disintegration of the Ice Prison lasts for a full forty-nine days.

Broken ice shards float in the void, refracting light spots of seventy-two colors. In the hollow of Lin Jin's right eye, ice crystals grow; they are like living mycelium, weaving a new pupil along the nerve pathways—a "Burial Star Pupil" congealed from the runes of the *All Heavens Burial Divine Scripture*.

"Do you see? The breathing of those chains..."

The voice of the woman in the ice coffin comes from deep within the lens, and Lin Jin's left eye reflects a bizarre scene: the nine hundred ice pillars that once suppressed gods and demons now form a translucent meridian network, every energy flow corresponding to the materialization of some cultivation law.

**Crack! **

An Ice Prison fragment grazes his cheek, and Lin Jin instinctively reaches out to grasp it. The fragment collapses into ice sand in his palm, and the faint light jumping between the grains automatically arranges itself into ancient scales—this is the "Burial Calamity Mark" unique to the Ice Prison, recording the level of suffering endured by the sinner.

"The first calamity, 'Heart Gouging,' corresponds to the Nascent Soul stage of human cultivators."

Lin Jin lets the ice sand seep into his skin, the Burial Star Pupil in his right eye revealing scarlet scales. "So cultivation is nothing but forging the flesh into a more exquisite coffin..."

He suddenly pauses.

In a special Ice Prison fragment, a wisp of the Temple Great Elder's remnant soul is frozen. The remnant soul is pierced by ice-crystal chains, demonstrating the operation method of the *All Heavens Burial Divine Scripture* in a distorted posture. Lin Jin's Burial Star Pupil trembles violently; he finally sees through the Temple's conspiracy:

The so-called nine realms are actually nine layers of coffins—

**Star-Shattering Realm** (Foundation Establishment): Flesh becomes a coffin, swallowing the dead energy of stars;

**Moon-Eroding Realm** (Golden Core): Melting the Golden Core into coffin nails, locking away the seven emotions and six desires;

**Sun-Burial Realm** (Nascent Soul): The Nascent Soul is the tomb keeper, guarding the flesh coffin;

**Universe-Swallowing Realm** (Spirit Severing): Consciousness expands, capable of devouring the origin of a small thousand-world;

**Dao-Slaying Realm** (Void Refinement): Severing the self-corpse, forming a reincarnation within the coffin;

**Boundless Realm** (Body Integration): Flesh and blood assimilate with the laws of the heavens, a single drop of blood becoming a coffin;

**Eternal Calamity Realm** (Mahayana): Flesh and calamity ash cast into a coffin, immortal and indestructible;

**Heaven-Burial Realm** (Tribulation Transcendence): The coffin backfires on the Heavenly Dao, tribulation transcendence is the burial of heaven;

**??? ** (???): The dimension where the woman in the ice coffin resides, all descriptions have been erased.

"Master, you really are... tireless in teaching."

Lin Jin crushes the remnant soul, but the Burial Star Pupil carves the truth of the *All Heavens Burial Divine Scripture* into his marrow—every time a realm is broken through, the ice coffin brand in the cultivator's body deepens by one layer, eventually becoming the perfect container to worship the woman in the ice coffin.

The sound of chains snapping comes from deep within the void.

Lin Jin's Burial Star Pupil suddenly widens, taking in the meridian network of nine hundred ice pillars. He sees "Calamity Spirits" curled up at the bottom of every ice pillar; these are the negative emotions stripped away when cultivators of past generations broke through, now gnawing at the Ice Prison remains like maggots.

"Talent, huh..."

He steps toward the nearest Calamity Spirit, and the black mist immediately transforms into a ferocious demonic image. But the Burial Star Pupil just glances at it lightly, and the demonic image freezes into an ice sculpture, with scarlet seal characters appearing at its core—**Greed**.

When Lin Jin's fingertips touch the ice sculpture, a mutation occurs!

The Calamity Spirit actually pours back along the meridian network, his left arm instantly covered in black ice patterns, and the wails of ten thousand cultivators ring in his ears. But the Burial Star Pupil rotates at this moment, compressing the berserk energy into an ice crystal, with a miniature "Greed" Calamity Spirit sealed inside.

"Feeding on calamity, using the coffin as a furnace," Lin Jin grinds the ice crystal, feeling the surging dead energy in his body. "This is the true talent of the Burial Coffin clansmen."

He leaps into the vortex where the Calamity Spirits are densest.

The **Bone-Eroding Calamity** (corresponding to the Golden Core lightning tribulation) transforms into a poisonous dragon to bite him, only to be congealed by the Burial Star Pupil into a "Hatred" ice bead;

The **Heart-Burning Calamity** (Nascent Soul heart-demon tribulation) congeals into a fire phoenix, freezing into an "Ignorance" stele the moment it touches the ice patterns on his chest;

The instant the **Dao-Slaying Calamity** (severing the three corpses tribulation) descends, Lin Jin does something not even the woman in the ice coffin expected—he slices open his own chest, exposing his beating heart to the calamity lightning!

"See clearly," he chuckles toward the void, "there are no three corpses in this heart, only a coffin."

The projection of seventy-two star-remnant ice coffins appears on the surface of his heart, and the Dao-Slaying calamity lightning actually wraps around his fingertips like a pet. The instant Lin Jin swallows the calamity lightning, the Ice Prison remains explode, and countless Calamity Spirits wail as they are swallowed by his right eye, congealing into a miniature Ice Prison within the Burial Star Pupil.

"Universe-Swallowing Realm... done."

Lin Jin floats in the void, phantoms of ice-crystal coffins seeping from every pore of his body. Only now does he truly understand the layout of the woman in the ice coffin: the so-called *All Heavens Burial Divine Scripture* is just teaching people how to refine themselves into walking coffins. And the talent of the Burial Coffin clansmen is precisely to devour the calamities of the heavens to perfect this coffin!

The Burial Star Pupil in his right eye suddenly stings, reflecting the true body of the woman in the ice coffin. She is still sleeping in the star-remnant ice coffin, but the coffin lid is open by a hair-thin gap more than before. Lin Jin notices that the chains wrapped around her body are connected to the ice patterns on his heart.

"After the Heaven-Burial Realm, there is half a realm."

The woman's voice carries a playful tremor, and Lin Jin's Burial Star Pupil suddenly seeps black blood, with new scales appearing in his field of vision—

**Coffin-Feeding Realm** (???): Using the heavens as a coffin, oneself as the sacrifice.

The ice patterns on his heart boil at this moment, and Lin Jin finally glimpses the ultimate truth:

The woman in the ice coffin needs nine "Coffin-Feeders" to break through the Heaven-Burial Realm, using their remains to piece together a complete key. And he is the ninth coffin.

"But a coffin..."

Lin Jin suddenly tears open his abdomen with his bare hands, pulling out the cultivation crystallization of the Universe-Swallowing Realm and crushing it. "Can also bite through chains."

The instant his cultivation plummets back to the Moon-Eroding Realm, all the Ice Prison fragments roll back. They form a counter-clockwise rotating nebula in Lin Jin's right eye, congealing into a calamity mark unprecedented—**Reverse Coffin Seal**.

The sigh of the woman in the ice coffin shakes the heavens: "You chose a dead end after all."

"Wrong," Lin Jin licks the cultivation residue from his fingertips. "It is a path of seeking life within death."

When the Temple crowd follows the fluctuations to arrive, they only see half an ice stele floating in the ruins of the altar.

The stele records the tampered prophecy, and the new handwriting in the final row is still seeping blood:

**"Here lies Lin Jin's awe, born in Universe-Swallowing, died in Moon-Eroding."**