"Save... save me, Your Highness the Crown Prince!"
A shrill wail suddenly tore through the deathly silence.
An old man with hair and beard white as snow had his upper body wrapped in bloodstained scraps of pale blue cloth.
His only remaining crippled leg dragged a glaring trail of blood across the blue stone slab.
His withered, bony fingers clawed desperately at the ground. Even as his nails split and peeled back, he felt nothing, still crawling frantically toward Lu Xuan.
"You are the heir apparent of the Wenjing Dynasty!"
In midair, an old woman with only half her head remaining drifted over. Her rotting face twisted into an expression of venomous resentment. "The future Son of Heaven... your majesty... the supreme sovereign, how could you stand by and watch us die?"
"We are your subjects..."
"Your Majesty, please do not abandon your subjects. Come and endure the darkness with us..."
"I don't want to die... There are Filthy Things here... Save me!"
Countless wails and resentful cries echoed out, as though they had been cast into an inferno of eternal damnation.
In an instant, the entire Qianfu Town erupted.
Thick black blood seeped from the cracks between the bricks of the buildings on both sides, while countless twisted human faces emerged upon the window lattices.
Some of those faces wept, some laughed, some raged, some seethed with resentment, yet all of them stared fixedly at Lu Xuan in the center of the street.
The lanterns beneath the eaves suddenly ignited on their own, their ghostly green flames making each ghastly face appear all the more savage.
"Heh... hehehe..."
Bone-chilling laughter came from all eight directions. Countless withered hands stretched from the cracks in the Blue Stone Slabs, while horrifying-looking "townsfolk" crawled out from the shadows at the street corners.