Dusk fell like spilled ink, seeping into the village along the skyline. As Ye Fan bolted out of the courtyard, the wind he kicked up swallowed the second half of the old hunter's sentence—in the gray fog at the east end of the village, a chain of greenish lights flickered together, bearing a striking resemblance to the Nether Soldiers on the march he had witnessed in his past life.
"Fall back behind me." He pressed a backhand against the Jiuxiao Huanpei at his waist. The jade pendant grew hot against his palm, and the Power of the Heavenly Dao within his Inner World began to circulate automatically, filtering the old hunter's trembling tail-end words, the villagers' hurried gasps, and even the distant roars from the throats of the Nether Soldiers straight into his Sea of Consciousness. As his fingertips brushed the carved patterns on the pendant, he suddenly remembered that before his fall in his past life, there had been the exact same fog and the exact same green light—except back then, he had stood inside the fog rather than outside it.
"Young Master Ye!" The youngest villager grabbed his sleeve, his fingernails almost biting into the fabric. "They... they didn't come from the Mass Grave; they came from the west of the village! Just now when I went to fetch water, I saw dark shadows shifting near the edge of the woods, like... like someone scattering powder into the well!"
Chapter 386