The Double Crown of Angel and Death

A sharp command pierced the darkness. Chu Xiange felt her spine being pried open while she was still alive. The agony of eighteen Soul-Pinning Nails driven into her limbs made her eyes lose focus. In the blood pooled across the ancestral hall's stone floor, her shattered reflection stared back at her. The once-famous genius of the Chu family, renowned throughout the imperial capital, was now pinned to the family crest like a slab of rotten meat.

“Do try to hold on, dear sister.” Chu Yuwei bent over her with a coy smile. The gold-embroidered hem of her skirt brushed Chu Xiange's bloodied face. “Without your Imperial Spirit Bone, you're not even fit to be my foot-washing servant.”

An icy bone knife plunged into her lower back. Chu Xiange heard her own bones snap. The clan elders' incantations circled in her ears like chanting sutras as she watched her biological father, Chu Minghe, lift the golden-glowing section of her spine in his own hands and place it on the altar at the center of the family shrine.

“With her bones, we can secure a century of good fortune for the Chu family.” Chu Minghe's voice was like a poison-coated blade. “Being a vessel is the good fortune this wretch deserves.”

Amid the agony, Chu Xiange suddenly remembered three months earlier, when she had rescued Chu Yuwei, covered in blood, from a secret realm. The Bone-Eating Insect hidden in Chu Yuwei's sleeve... So her life had been eaten away from that moment on.