When Shen Qingxuan, the foremost cultivator of the Immortal Dao, personally drove Soul-Locking Nails into me on the Immortal-Slaying Platform, I thought that was the end.
A hundred years later, I returned from the Demon Abyss, and he came to me with red-rimmed eyes, begging me to turn back.
I brushed a hand over the 999 corpses behind me. "See these? They're all versions of me who died along the way while searching for medicine for you."
"Shen Qingxuan, guess who's next?"
Only when I offered up my demonic essence to save the people of the entire city did he finally see, amid the flames reaching for the sky:
Every scar left by a Soul-Locking Nail concealed a warding spell he'd carved there himself all those years ago.
