Chen Zhou stood in the center of the crowd, rapidly circulating the death qi from the Myriad Herbs Life-Death Realm.
He had consumed too much energy just now; that surge from the River of the Underworld had nearly drained all of his reserves.
He had miscalculated. Chen Zhou truly had not expected that the destruction of a single formation eye would affect the whole system, causing such a massive upheaval in the entire grand array.
He looked up.
Deep within the gray ghostly silhouettes in the distance, he could faintly see several white lights flickering. It was the light of the pollution as it spread.
Chen Zhou's brow furrowed slightly.
Then, he sensed another presence.
Coming from the direction of the Graveyard of Ten Thousand Beasts, across layers of fragmented space, came a gaze that was all too familiar to him.
The tracking of Lou-Metal Dog.
Chen Zhou was slightly taken aback.
No, that's not right. Lou-Metal Dog should have been locked up in the Hate Prison, outside the Graveyard of Ten Thousand Beasts.
Wu Gou had remained behind there to maintain the infusion of death qi for the prison.
Could something have happened in the Graveyard of Ten Thousand Beasts?
Chen Zhou's heart sank. He quickly withdrew his gaze and looked at the dead souls that were continuously surging in from all directions.
At the same time, he quickly sensed the auspicious cloud formed by Jiu'er's destiny slowly rotating and shifting.
The auspicious cloud, which had previously been so disrupted that it could not find its bearings, suddenly stabilized. It stopped spinning aimlessly and pointed straight in one direction.
Chen Zhou looked in that direction.
Where the dead souls were most densely packed, a canine figure loomed indistinctly.
He caught up this quickly?
Lou-Metal Dog did not approach Chen Zhou. He stood extremely far away, in a space that looked like a shattered street, quietly watching Chen Zhou across the endless wave of dead souls.
Chen Zhou did not know what he intended to do, so he quietly accelerated his absorption of the death qi from the Life-Death Realm.
He would not make a move unless his enemy did.
The tide of ghosts continued to flood in relentlessly.
Moonbeams poured from Dou Mu Xie's single horn, spreading like liquid silver and covering a range of three hundred zhang around the group.
Under the illumination of the moonbeams, the frenzied dead souls noticeably slowed down, their charging speed dropping sharply. Their senses were disrupted, causing them to spin in place and wander aimlessly.
“Hold on,” Chen Zhou said, continuing to absorb the death qi from the Life-Death Realm.
Plague Rat maintained the toxic mist of Great Plague Heaven while cursing through gritted teeth, “Are these dead bastards crazy? How are they even fiercer than before?”
Though he cursed harshly, the force in his hands unconsciously weakened slightly.
The faces of those dead souls were clearly visible under the moonbeams—young and old, male and female, all dying in horrific ways, their faces haggard and withered.
For some reason, Plague Rat recalled the scene he had witnessed in the granary earlier.
The little boy standing outside the door, clutching half a bag of rice.
Those large, dark eyes.
Perhaps these people had also died in a similar manner, becoming sacrifices for some purpose of the false god.
Plague Rat rubbed his nose and pulled back the dark green toxic mist in his hands. Instead of throwing it directly in the faces of the dead souls, he only forced them back a few steps before stopping.
He mumbled softly, “Once we tear down this crappy formation, we'll have to get that bald ass to cross over these poor bastards.”
He turned his head to glance at Shen Liang.
Shen Liang was standing on the flank of the group, his hands pressed against the ground as the floodwaters slowly surged around his feet.
But he did not push the flood outward as he usually did. Instead, he merely controlled the water to churn within a three-zhang radius around him, blocking any dead souls that drew near.
His eyes were somewhat dazed, his gaze drifting over the faces of the dead souls as if searching for a familiar face.
Taotie noticed his abnormality. Tense, he gripped his warhammer tightly, keeping a wary eye on Shen Liang's profile, terrified that he might lose control again.
The surrounding space vibrated more and more violently.
Another violent tremor surged up from deep underground, far more intense than any before.
The gray ground beneath their feet began to crack, thick white mist pouring out from the fissures. The dead souls seemed to be stimulated by something, suddenly becoming even more frenzied.
The whites of their eyes began to change color. Their skin, robes, and even hair were rapidly covered in that pale, deathly white color.
“Transformation?”
Plague Rat was startled. His toxic mist forced back many dead souls, but even more were turning white at a visible rate, their charging speed more than doubling.
Even though Dou Mu Xie's moonbeams disrupted their senses, their effectiveness was beginning to wane.
The whitened dead souls rampaged blindly through the moonbeams. Although their sense of direction was in chaos, causing them to push and trample each other, their numbers were simply too vast.
The moonbeams could only prevent them from identifying their targets, but could not stop the progress of their transformation.
“Are they getting stronger again?” Taotie muttered hesitantly.
Chen Zhou felt it too.
A very faint aura permeated the air, causing him to feel an inexplicable wave of grief.
This grief-stricken emotion was silently spreading through the veins of the formation. Large swathes of dead souls were rapidly polluted, turning white and becoming even more violent.
“Something's wrong...”
Chen Zhou murmured softly, his gaze sweeping over the whitening dead souls.
Beneath the distorted, angry expressions on their faces, there seemed to be a hidden sorrow.
Chen Zhou knit his brows subconsciously.
But he quickly realized that he was an evil spirit; empathizing with emotions was entirely meaningless to him.
But those dead souls were different.
They were manipulated by that grief, charging forward frantically and at all costs.
“Shen Liang! Get back!” Taotie suddenly roared.
At that very instant, a layer of deathly white luster resurfaced in Shen Liang's eyes.
He looked down at his hands. His fingertips were swelling and deforming uncontrollably, and yellowish-brown water seeped from the cracks beneath his feet, bubbling and churning.
He smelled that scent again—the smell of burnt paper money ashes.
His eyes stung.
He wanted to cry.
Shen Liang's body swayed slightly, and the floodwaters around his feet suddenly surged higher.
Taotie's expression changed dramatically. He slammed his Severed Thought warhammer into the ground, threw his massive body forward, and wrapped his arms tightly around Shen Liang.
“Skinny, don't move! Don't move!”
“I beg of you, let's not cause trouble for the Young Palace Master, okay?!”
He held Shen Liang in a death grip, pinning him in his embrace. His two thick, muscular arms squeezed like iron bands, preventing Shen Liang's hands from touching the ground.
Shen Liang struggled violently in his grasp, letting out muffled growls from his throat.
Taotie ignored everything else and just held onto him, repeating the same line over and over: “Don't move, don't move! If Lord Xuandu finds out, he's going to skin me alive when we get back!”
“Seriously, I'm begging you!”
Something in Taotie's words struck a chord in Shen Liang, making him even more frenzied as he struggled with greater intensity.
But just as Taotie was about to lose his grip, a red figure descended from the sky.
As she landed, her feet lightly touched the ground, her large red skirt unfurling like a blooming flower.
A circular fan half-concealed her face. With a subtle play of her eyes, a rich, crimson fragrance suddenly erupted from her body.
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