The morning breeze was gentle. It swept through the endless willow groves by the lakeshore, rolling up white catkins that drifted everywhere in a soft, fluttering haze.
Several black-canopied fishing boats floated upon the tranquil lake. An elderly-looking fisherman sat at the bow of one, smoking a pipe as he watched two young fishermen on the other boats retrieve the silk traps they had set yesterday. The drifting white catkins landed on his nose and face, warm and ticklish.
All at once, he and the two young fishermen could not help turning their heads toward one side of the lake.
At some unknown moment, a mass of gray cloud had risen above the still lake. It looked like a dark cloud, yet it hovered only several zhang above the water. Though it was a full hundred zhang away from them, an icy, sinister aura rushed straight at their faces, making the fishermen shudder involuntarily.
They all instinctively felt that something terrifying seemed to be contained within that gray cloud.
The gray cloud skimmed across the lake, passed through the reeds and poplar woods along the shore, then swept into the sprawling Great East Mountain beside the lake.
Only after entering the thickly forested Great East Mountain did the gray cloud slowly disperse, revealing Luo Bei, Qu Daozi, the Corpse God, and Little Wu Qiu.
A living man, a pale golden strange python, and two corpse-refined beings that radiated bone-chilling deathly aura—moreover, in order to block the demonic aura of that Blood Sarira, Luo Bei had brought the Corpse God along, but its hair still wrapped its entire body into a cocoon. The mud covering the Corpse God's body had also completely dried, forming a gray mud pill that gave off wisps of hazy freezing vapor, making it appear even