Chapter 74

###**I. Questioning Heart Before the Steps · Tempering Emotion in Red Dust**

The moment Lin Jin's fingertips touched the sugar steps, the sugar maples in the valley suddenly withered. The crystalline sugar steps rippled with blood, and the first step, "Red Dust Realm", revealed three thousand phantoms—the back of Ling Yue's hand burned by alchemy fire on his third birthday, the candied haws delivered by Ao Zhan in the snow on a winter night when he was seven, the osmanthus sugar crumbs on Ao Li's hair tips when he first met her at fifteen...

"Jin'er, would you like to stay on this step?" Ling Yue's remnant soul walked out from the sugar mist, her palm holding the Azure Dragon Ring unstained by blood, "Your father's Golden Pill has returned to its place, our family..."

Before the words could finish, Lin Jin's sugar sword had already pierced the phantom. Where the sugar crystal shattered, Burial Coffin blood patterns appeared, and the step surface seeped ink-colored juice—it was actually concentrated chaotic spiritual Qi!

###**II. Causal Entanglement · Severing Karma and Burning Illusion**

When stepping onto the fifth step, eighty-one bronze chains descended from the void. Ao Li was suddenly wrapped around the ankle by the end of the chain, and the Nirvana Fire reflected a horrifying truth: she was actually the reincarnation of the First Generation Burial Coffin Saintess, with the secret key to opening the Heaven's Veil sealed in her heart!

"Fellow Daoist Lin... cut the chain!" The Nirvana pattern behind Ao Li's ear crawled all over the chains, each pattern engraved with fragments of Lin Jin's cause and effect. The moment the sugar sword slashed down, the chaotic green lotus suddenly bloomed, and half a sugar stele fragment fell from the lotus heart:

**"Cause and effect is not a debt, but bait for the Breeder. He who cuts the chain must bear its karma..."**

The fragment embedded into the step surface, and the fifth step collapsed with a crash, revealing an inverted bronze city beneath—the people in the city all had Burial Coffin totems tattooed on their necks, and they were kneeling and worshipping Lin Jin's statue!

###**III. Non-Delusion Step Danger · Sugar Heart Weeps Blood**

The clouds and mist on the ninth step dissipated, and before his eyes was actually a sugar figurine magnified ten thousand times! Sealed within the transparent abdomen of the sugar figurine were the complete souls of Ling Yue and Ao Zhan. Ao Li suddenly vomited sugar heart blood, and the blood beads burned small characters on the surface of the sugar figurine:

**"To break the Heaven's Veil, first slay your closest kin."**

Lin Jin's sugar sword trembled violently, and the pine nut candy wrapper on the sword tassel burned without wind. Ling Yue's true soul condensed from the ashes: "Don't believe it! This sugar figurine is a substitute Gu molded by the Burial Coffin using my flesh and blood..."

Before the words could finish, the sugar figurine's abdomen exploded, flying out three thousand sugar needles. Ao Li spun around to block for Lin Jin, and the place where she was pierced by the needles began to crystallize!

###**IV. Primordial Appears · Sugar Tomb Hides Sharpness**

When the crystallization spread to her heart, Sugar Heart Valley suddenly cracked. Ten thousand sugar tombs rose, with Ling Yue's sword from back then, "Sugar Heart", rising from each grave, the sword body wrapped in the ice silkworm silk Ao Zhan used to refine alchemy. The other end of the silk was tied to a Primordial Chaos Crystal, which sealed the ultimate scene:

When the Chaos Realm first opened, the Ling Clan ancestor held a green lotus sugar sword and nailed the Burial Coffin progenitor into the crack of the Heaven's Veil. The black blood overflowing from the crack polluted the spiritual Qi, which was how the realm trap came to be!

"So the sugar sword was originally meant to slash the sky..." The moment Lin Jin grasped the sword hilt, the crystallized Ao Li suddenly opened her eyes, and the Nirvana Fire branded Dao patterns onto the sugar sword:

**"Non-delusion is not emotionless, the sugar heart is the original heart."**

###**V. Sugar Sword Shocks Heaven's Veil · Ascension Surprise**

When the sugar sword pierced the Heaven's Veil, a giant bronze hand reached out from the crack. Between its fingertips was a miniature Chaos Realm, where cultivators were "ascending" according to traditional realms, transforming into streams of light and merging into the palm prints of the giant hand!

"Jin'er, look at the sword tassel!" Ling Yue's true soul suddenly merged into the sugar sword. The pine nut candy wrapper on the sword tassel unfolded into a star map, pointing to a light spot on the giant hand's elbow—the true source of the Primordial Chaos was beating there, but it had been refined into a heart by the Lord of Burial Coffin!

Ao Li suddenly broke free from the crystallization, and the Nirvana Fire transformed into a sugar coat to wrap around the giant finger: "I will hold Him, you slash..."

The words stopped abruptly, and her body transformed into a glazed statue within the sugar coat, her fingertips pointing forever at the light spot.

###**Final Act · Sugar-Sculpted Reincarnation**

When Lin Jin's sugar sword pierced the light spot, ten thousand sugar tombs suddenly melted. The syrup condensed in the air into a newborn Chaos Realm model: no realm divisions, children playing under sugar maples, cultivators discussing the Dao with emotion as a sword...

And the true Chaos Realm began to collapse, the Lord of Burial Coffin's roar shattering the stars: "You think you can escape reincarnation?"

Syrup seeped from the broken finger of the giant hand, slowly condensing into a new sugar staircase—at the top of the stairs stood an old man selling sugar paintings, with a wooden sign with carved characters in front of his stall:

**"The Seventy-Fourth Realm: Sugar Heart Asks the Dao."**