Thick clouds swept past He Ao's eyes. Then a vast plain appeared before him.
Skeletons rose from the plain like grass planted across it, swaying in the cold wind.
Beneath the plain, dense networks of purple light had already formed. A terrifying, twisted giant covered in red radiance stood at their center, looking up at He Ao.
Was that Slan's angelic form?
Boom!
In an instant, the Jet-Black Coffin and He Ao's smoke-shrouded body slammed into the ground, landing among the red pathways of light.
"I told you," the red giant said, his thunderous laughter filling the sky and earth. "You can't escape my grasp." "This wasn't your doing." He Ao looked down at his hands, then back at the black coffin behind him. Both his body and the coffin seemed half real, half illusion, much like Slan had moments ago.
That meant he had not been pulled completely into the plain. Most of his body was still in the surface world.
He looked around.
On closer inspection, the skeleton-strewn plain still seemed faintly illusory. Through it, he could just make out the magnificent city beyond. Slan had probably constructed some kind of illusion to make He Ao think he had already been drawn inside.
He turned to survey his surroundings again.
Still, the powerful pull was real. Its force did not come from Slan's spell, but from another, unusual mystical connection.
Soon, a figure entered He Ao's view. "Anke?"
Anke stood among the bones in a daze, his entire body rapidly turning white.
At He Ao's call, he snapped back to himself and looked over. "Old Master?"
Then he glanced at the bones around him, startled, and hurried to He Ao's side. "What happened?"
"Someone used you as a link to pull me in here." He Ao examined Anke