Xu Wenshan tackled Chen Yu, the Bronze Razor whizzing past his ear and severing three umbilical cords connected to the Silk Cocoon. Black Blood splattered onto the Yin Yang Book, scorching a charred "break" into its surface. He reversed the Razor and drove it into the offering table; the blade absorbed the moonlight, swelling like a Azure Dragon Moonblade, reflecting Zhou Mingde combing his hair in the Republican Ancestral Hall—each stroke adding a gray name to the Chen Clan Genealogy.
Suddenly, Chen Yu surged forward, crashing into the Big Dipper Formation in the courtyard, the Rebirth Knot on his chest emitting a blinding blood light. The Forty-Nine Cocooned Infants cried out simultaneously, their wails shattering the ornate windows of the ancestral hall. Xu Wenshan leaped onto the main beam, using the Bronze Razor to cut through all the lantern cords; burning human skin fell like meteors, igniting the corpse oil within the Coffin Formation.
"The Three-Quarter Hour of the Dog has arrived!" Zhou Mingde's voice echoed from every coffin. Chen Yu's sidearm automatically chambered a round, the magazine filled with Huang Mu Bullets engraved with Rebirth Knots. As the first bullet pierced Xu Wenshan's left shoulder, the burning coffin lid suddenly flew up, assembling in mid-air into a portrait of Chen Guohua; in the photo, an elderly man sealed a Lipstick Coffin with a Police Badge.
Xu Wenshan gritted his teeth and hurled the Bronze Razor; its light split into forty-nine beams, precisely piercing each Silk Cocoon's Heavenly Spirit Cover. In a desperate move, Chen Yu turned his gun on his own right arm, shattering it. The splattered Yang Blood drenched the Razor, revealing missing chapters from the Qinghe Town Chronicles—the truth about how in 1912, Zhou and Chen families formed a dark pact using forty-nine Xu Time infants.
Suddenly, the ground beneath the ancestral hall collapsed, exposing a deeply buried Nirvana Formation Eye: Seven Red Lacquer Coffins encircled a Thunderstruck Sophora tree, its trunk nailed with forty-nine bloodied Police Badges. Chen Yu tore off his Rebirth Knot with his remaining arm; as his Hair brushed against a Police Badge, a century-old Yin wood exploded violently. From within a Time-Space Rift came Zhou Mingde's final scream: "Yin Marriage is eternal; rebirth...!"
A dark red blood spring gushed from the pit formed by the collapse, soaking Chen Yu's severed arm in its depths. From his rotting flesh emerged Gray-White Strands. Xu Wenshan pulled him back to what remained of the West Side Hall; the Bronze Razor vibrated ominously as it rested on the threshold, its blade reflecting forty-nine Hair-Combing Specters grooming their long hair in the blood spring.
"Look at the bottom of the pit!" Chen Yu pointed with his remaining arm towards the swirling blood spring. Seven Azure Bronze Coffins slowly surfaced, their surfaces etched with Rebirth Knot patterns that absorbed the blood water. As moonlight swept across the third coffin, Xu Wenshan noticed half of a Police Badge wedged in its lid—a badge belonging to Old Barber who had perished in flames three hours prior.
Suddenly, a decayed hand reached out from within the blood spring, clutching a standard issue Republic of China police handcuff. Chen Yu bit down on the iron chain of the handcuff and pulled out a corpse dressed in 2016 police uniform; glaring back at him was his own name on its badge. The corpse's right hand suddenly fired its sidearm by accident; bullets pierced through Xu Wenshan's left knee, and Gray-White Strands exploded from within the bullet head, instantly entangling with the Bronze Razor.
Xu Wenshan gritted his teeth and severed his Hair; blood flowed from his wound, staining the Razor red. The blade suddenly swelled like an unfamiliar knife; at that moment of cleaving through the blood spring vortex, shadows from the Republican Ancestral Hall overlapped with a modern laboratory. He saw Zhou Mingde from 1912 standing before a Spectrometer, injecting Hair samples into Chen Guohua's Bone Marrow puncture needle.
"They are tampering with the timeline!" Xu Wenshan swung his blade to sever the Virtual Shadow, but Razor was caught in the cracks of time and space.
Chen Yu suddenly lunged toward the blood spring, using his severed arm to block the center of the vortex.
The moment Yang Blood touched Yin Shui, forty-nine bolts of lightning struck the Coffin Formation, mingling the charred scent of Thunderstruck Sophora with the foul stench of burnt flesh.
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