The putrid mist, thick as ink, churned around the altar, so dense it seemed to stifle the very breath from one's lungs. Within the haze, a shrill droning echoed, like the wails of countless wronged souls. Shen Mingyue crouched down, her fingertips brushing against the dark red slime oozing from a crack in the basalt. The substance stirred like a living thing, crawling up her nails. A bone-chilling cold shot through her meridians, striking her very skull as if she were being eroded by ice. She pulled her hand back violently, the sharp ring of her soft sword clearing its sheath cutting through the deathly silence. "Come out!"
Before the sound had even faded, the purple liquid in the Bronze Cauldron began to boil fiercely. Countless twisted, distorted human faces surfaced, their eyes wide and bloodshot, mouths stretched into nearly dislocated gasps as they let out hair-raising, piercing shrieks—screams laden with such agony and resentment they threatened to shatter the eardrums.
A dark shadow emerged slowly from the mist. A black robe adorned with spiderweb patterns flickered with a ghostly blue light, each thread seemingly imbued with a dark force capable of devouring all. The figure held a Bone Staff, the skull atop it housing two flickering, spectral green Ghost Fires in its empty sockets—a beacon from the Netherworld that cast a ghastly glow, illuminating half the figure's face like a demon.
Chapter 123