Wait for Me to Rise from the Coffin - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

I had never seen anyone like him.

He had only just crawled out of the coffin, half his body drenched in blood, the chains on his feet not even fully broken.

Yet when he stood before me, he was like a wall.

As the swords rained down one after another, he used his body to block them all.

The first strike slashed open his hand.

The second carved into his shoulder.

The third was aimed directly at me.

He forced his body to turn, taking the full force of the blade for me.

Blood splattered across my face.

I was completely stunned.

“Master!”

I looked up at Wen Changsheng. “He…”

“He is a demon.”

Wen Changsheng stood outside the formation, his gaze as cold as snow. “Jianqing, come here.”

I didn’t move.

Because Mo Tingyuan’s hand, pressed against my shoulder, was trembling.

It wasn’t fear.

It was pain.

“Let go of me first,” I whispered. “You’re bleeding so much.”

“I can’t let go.”

He stared at Wen Changsheng, his voice low and raspy. “The moment I let go, they will drag you away.”

“Drag me away for what?”

He tilted his head to look at me, his eyes suddenly darkening.

“Ji Jianqing, do you know what the final night of the seal-guarding is truly for?”

Wen Changsheng interrupted sharply, “Demonic words to bewitch the heart! Shut your mouth!”

Mo Tingyuan acted as if he hadn’t heard him.

“It is not for the completion of the ritual.”

“It is to harvest your bone.”

A buzzing sound filled my ears.

“What?”

“The lineage of the Tomb Keeper uses bones as nails and souls as locks.”

He spoke slowly, enunciating every word. “These three years you spent guarding Abyss Suppression, you weren’t watching a coffin. You were nourishing a bone.”

“Once your bone has been stabilized by the abyssal baleful energy and is most suitable to enter the formation, they will extract your spine to replace the last broken nail in my body.”

“You will die tonight.”

My mind went blank.

Subconsciously, I looked toward Wen Changsheng.

Wen Changsheng did not immediately deny it.

He simply looked at me, his expression somber.

“Jianqing.”

“This is for the greater good.”

My hands and feet went cold instantly.

“The greater good?”

“Abyss Suppression cannot be broken; the world must not fall into chaos.”

“This is the purpose you were born for.”

I stared at him, my voice trembling.

“So when you said I could go home after three years, you were lying to me?”

“The Tai Xuan Sect is your home.”

“Then what about Burning River Village?”

My eyes reddened instantly. “Didn’t you say that was where you saved me?”

Wen Changsheng remained silent.

But Mo Tingyuan spoke softly in my ear.

“I wasn’t the one who burned Burning River Village.”

I whipped my head around to look at him.

There wasn’t a hint of a joke in his eyes.

“It was them.”

The Demon-Slaying Formation pressed down once more.

The entire stone bridge shook with a roar and cracked apart.

Mo Tingyuan didn’t give me another chance to ask questions. He grabbed me by the waist and leaped straight off the stone bridge.

Black mist churned beneath his feet, forming a long staircase as he forced a path through the sword light, carrying me away.

Behind us, the mountain bells rang out in a frantic clamor.

That was the Tai Xuan Sect’s kill order.