The sky data stream flickered within Su Ling’er’s spiritual sea, each glowing line of decrypted script burning like acid into her mind.
Her delicate, snow-white hands trembled as she scrolled through the tracking data manifests of the Fourth Epoch. Her breath came in short, sharp gasps. Her chest tightened until she felt as though her lungs were wrapped in stone. Her intelligent amber eyes darted from registry to registry, searching through four thousand years of suppressed old family chronicles.
Then, her eyes stopped.
Clan Matron Su Feng of the Nine-Tailed Celestial Fox Lineage, Epoch Four, Year 6,211. Target achieved Ninth-Tail Divine Integration. Tried ascension via the Southern Cloud Portal. Overcharge protocol deployed: Twelve-Fold Void Total ruin Lightning. Target body boiled away. Soul yield: 7,800 High-Tier Origin Units. Melted and blended into Royal Longevity Dew for the banquet of Magistrate Bai’s ancestor.
Below that entry were nine more. Nine matriarchs of the Nine-Tailed Fox clan.
Nine ancient grandmothers whose portraits hung in the hidden, sacred old family shrines of the Lonely Forest. Venerated ancestors whom the clan elders had mourned for hundreds of years. For thousands of years, young fox maidens had been taught that their ancestors had perished. That was because their hearts were not pure enough. That was because they had failed to detach themselves from earthly attachments. That was because Heaven had judged them unworthy.
