Lin Hao’s palms bled where the spirit embryo’s teeth had pierced them. The metallic tang of his own blood mingled with the tomb’s lingering ozone as Wolf Spider’s infrared vision dissolved into static—his last tether to reality severed.

  15:07 – Descent

  Absolute darkness swallowed him. Not the warm void of closed eyelids, but an oppressive blackness that leeched heat from his bones. His boots crunched unseen gravel, each step releasing the mineral stench of crushed limestone. Somewhere distant, water dripped—a metronome counting stolen seconds.

  15:09 – Revelation

  “Endurance… is light.”

  The voice vibrated through his molars. Lin Hao froze, scales prickling. His draconic instincts detected no thermal signatures, no heartbeat echoes—only the cloying musk of petrified moss.

  15:12 – Metamorphosis

  When the first hallucination struck, it came as scent: jasmine and gunpowder. Fang Xiaoke’s corpse materialized inches away, her ruptured chest cavity exhaling spores that stung his nostrils. Lin Hao staggered back, heel catching on nonexistent rubble.

  “Illusions.” He spat the word, tasting copper. “Show yourself!”

  15:15 – Convergence

  The darkness convulsed. Stone guardians emerged from nothingness—their joints screeching like rusted pendulums. Lin Hao’s knuckles whitened around the spirit embryo. Its pulsing warmth had cooled to glacial numbness, frost patterns creeping up his forearm.

  15:17 – Ascendancy

  He ran.

  Blindness amplified every sensation—the grit of sand beneath soles, the drag of humidity against sweat-slicked skin. Something lashed his ankle. Barbed wire? Tendrils? Lin Hao fell, knees striking stone that felt suspiciously like rib cartilage.

  “Pathetic.” Wu Tian’s spectral form materialized, backlit by the spirit embryo’s sudden crimson glow. “My bloodline reduced to this?”

  Lin Hao bared fangs. “Your bloodline’s dead. I’m the upgrade.”

  15:19 – Apotheosis

  The embryo detonated.

  Light seared retinas never meant to see. Lin Hao’s scream echoed through collapsing reality as fractal patterns branded themselves behind his eyelids—swirling galaxies of fire and shadow.

  15:20 – Emergence

  He awoke choking on tomb dust. Firelion’s concerned whine vibrated through his sternum. Kung Fu Fly hovered inches from his face, sensors projecting a holographic readout of his ocular nerves.

  Genetic rewrite detected, scrolled the crimson text. Soulfire ignition at 97%

  15:21 – Revelation

  Wu Tian’s residual consciousness flickered within the spirit embryo’s core. “Cyclical Sight,” the Saint’s voice trembled with something akin to fear. “You carry the Devourer’s lineage.”

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  Lin Hao pressed palms to throbbing temples. His new vision revealed overlapping dimensions—the tomb’s stonework translucent, its defenders’ skeletons glowing through armor.

  “Explain.” The command emerged as a growl, vocal cords resonating with subsonic harmonics.

  15:23 – Divergence

  Wu Tian’s projection disintegrated, its final warning echoing through the chamber:

  “They’ll come for you now. The Watchers never forget a—”

  The spirit embryo crumbled to ash.

  15:24 – Aftermath

  Lin Hao stood, equilibrium shifting to accommodate tripartite sight: infrared, spectral, and the swirling void between. Kung Fu Fly’s diagnostics confirmed the irreversible—his ocular DNA rewritten around celestial syntax.

  Firelion nudged a fallen guardian’s head, its plasma core dark. “Master… your eyes…”

  Lin Hao touched lids that no longer felt human. “Better.”

  Awakening the Cycle

  Lin Hao’s skull fractured into prismatic shards. Each fragment projected scenes—a life as a blacksmith’s apprentice hammering red-hot steel, another as a star-faring mercenary breathing recycled oxygen that stung his sinuses. The memories metastasized, their weight crushing his neural pathways.

  15:25 – Fracture

  He tasted copper. Blood dripped from nostrils onto tomb stones, each droplet fluorescing under his newly awakened sight. Kung Fu Fly’s wingbeats thrummed like misfiring engines as it circled his convulsing form.

  “Master’s cortical activity exceeds safe thresholds!” The drone’s warning dissolved into static as Lin Hao’s consciousness imploded.

  15:26 – Revelation

  Darkness became prismatic. Lin Hao floated in a void where gravity smelled of burnt almonds. A helix of light pierced the gloom—strands of DNA rewritten with celestial runes. His retinas ignited, projecting bioluminescent afterimages onto the tomb’s ceiling.

  15:27 – Metamorphosis

  Wolf Spider’s mandibles clicked in alarm. Lin Hao’s eyes now resembled neutron stars—pupils swirling with event horizons, sclera bleeding fractal patterns. The air crackled with ozone as his gaze swept the chamber, revealing spectral imprints of long-dead tomb raiders etched into the stones.

  “Bai.” His voice emerged layered—present tones overlaid with ancestral echoes. “How long?”

  The horned primate hesitated. “Two annual cycles. You… changed.”

  15:28 – Convergence

  Lin Hao flexed fingers before his face. Calluses from phantom lives lingered—a swordsman’s grip, a surgeon’s precision. Firelion’s heat signature bloomed in his peripheral vision, its molten core pulsing like a miniature sun.

  “Vision report.” He pressed palms against cold stone to ground himself. The tomb’s mildew now carried notes of decaying parchment and ionized plasma.

  Kung Fu Fly projected diagnostics. “Ocular restructuring complete. Spectral analysis, thermal mapping, and temporal residue detection active.”

  15:29 – Ascendancy

  He stood, beard scraping collarbones. Two years’ growth of hair cascaded down his back, strands crackling with static. The spirit embryo’s residual heat pulsed in his dantian—a miniature sun orbiting his reforged core.

  “Show me.”

  Wolf Spider obliged. Its optic feed revealed Lin Hao’s reflection: eyes like shattered stained glass, irises bleeding silver veins. The chamber’s energy currents swirled around him—magnetic fields visible as auroral ribbons.

  15:30 – Epiphany

  A test.

  Lin Hao focused on a fallen guardian’s corpse. His left pupil constricted—the death aspect of the Cycle’s Eye activating. The stone construct’s residual soul-fragments shrieked as they unraveled, their essence dissolving into the tomb’s geomantic lattice.

  “Master!” Bai recoiled as the guardian’s petrified flesh crumbled to ash. “What sorcery—”

  “Not sorcery.” Lin Hao touched his throbbing temples. “Taxonomy.”

  15:31 – Divergence

  The tomb’s central sarcophagus vibrated. Lin Hao’s new vision pierced its obsidian shell, revealing a secondary chamber flooded with liquid argon. Suspended within: a crystalline pod containing Wu Tian’s true remains—a desiccated corpse fused with biomechanical implants.

  “Legacy coordinates updated.” Kung Fu Fly’s lasers danced across the hidden panel. “Recommend immediate—”

  Lin Hao raised a hand. His right eye pulsed—the life aspect cycling active. Moss erupted across the chamber walls, its chlorophyll stench overwhelming the tomb’s metallic reek.

  15:32 – Exodus

  They emerged under twin moons. Lin Hao’s retinas automatically adjusted, filtering lunar glare into soothing indigo gradients. The valley below shimmered with heat signatures—a caravan of black-market relic hunters drawn by the tomb’s energy fluctuations.

  Firelion growled, magma dripping from its jaws. “Orders?”

  Lin Hao smiled. His beard crackled with static discharge. “Let them dig.”

  The Cycle’s Eye revealed their fates—three would suffocate in collapsed tunnels, two would go mad from residual soul echoes, one would bear a child marked with Wu Tian’s genetic imprint.