The moment the bronze coffin opened, heaven and earth seemed to tremble. The entire valley shook violently as loose stones rolled continuously down the cliffs, producing a rumbling roar. A fishy, sweet stench of decay swept across the valley like a tide—a smell mixing rust, rotting corpses, and a nauseating mucous odor that pierced straight into the nasal cavities.
Shen Mingyue felt her stomach churn, her throat tightening into a spasm as she nearly vomited the meal she had eaten the night before. Enduring the discomfort, she could barely keep her grip on the soft sword in her hand. From deep within the coffin came the booming echo of snapping chains, dull and lingering like a funeral bell from the nine nether hells.
Every reverberation made her eardrums ache and her heartbeat race in disorder. Nine pitch-black columns of Qi surged into the sky, their surfaces entwined with distorted ghostly human faces. Some of these faces wore ferocious expressions with mouths agape in silent roars, their facial muscles twisted and deformed; others had bulging, bloodshot eyes covered in spiderweb-like red veins, as if they were about to burst at any second.
Chapter 142