As the hissing in the fissure slowly died down, Ye Fan's fingertips were still tightly clenched around the hilt of his sword. The red marks pressed into his palm by the hilt could not compare to the burning pain radiating from the Smiling Flower within his Inner World—when the black mist had encroached just moments before, he had forcefully mobilized the Power of the Heavenly Dao of his Inner World to resist, and the spiritual plant had inevitably suffered collateral damage.
"Brother Ye," Su Qingxue's bamboo flute hung at her side, the tassels at the end still damp with mist, "the black mist has receded." Her voice was lower than usual, the cinnabar mole at the corner of her eye trembling slightly from holding her breath. "But it hasn't completely cleared out. It's like... like a vicious hound with its tail caught by someone."
Lin Zhaoyue's broken sword sheathed itself with a crisp *clang*. A few drops of dark blood still clung to the newly grown blade marked with gold veins, splattered there when she had severed the tentacles formed by the black mist. She glanced at the churning clouds outside the cave, then quickly looked away—whether it was her imagination or not, she always felt a pair of eyes staring at them from behind the clouds.
Chapter 304