Moonlight managed only a sliver of light through the eroding dark clouds as Ye Fan felt a thin sweat bead on his palm gripping the zither. The golden patterns on the Jiuxiao Huanpei pulsed across his chest, and his four-colored armor clung tightly to his skin, radiating heat—the poisoned crimson from Su Qingxue's mechanism bricks, the frosted white from Lin Zhaoyue's scabbard, the surging cyan from Chu Hongzhuang's Gu pouch, and the blood-stained black from Qín Wǎnshuāng's Xuanjia Army armor.
These colors seemed to come alive, creeping along his veins toward his heart, and his heartbeat drowned out the clamor of the battlefield. "Young Master Ye!" A call laced with the stench of blood pierced through the hoarse cries of battle. Ye Fan turned his head to see the hem of a dark Taoist robe just emerging from the black fog, freezing in place, startled by the sudden shout. The newcomer was Su Han, Master of Hanmei Pavilion. His plum-blossom jade pendant had shattered into three pieces, his left sleeve was burned to rags by nether fire, and the exposed skin of his arm was crawling with greenish-purple ghost markings.
"The Nether Palace Great Venerable is personally leading the Nether Cavalry in a crushing advance from the north." Su Han staggered, steadying himself against a broken sword as a metallic, sweet taste rose in his throat. "They breached the defensive array at Green Ox Mountain, and they are less than ten miles away now."
Chapter 403