The water stopped.
The suction that had been dragging everything back abruptly vanished without a trace. At that moment, the thick, dark-red river water seemed to have turned into some kind of cheap industrial glue, plastering itself tightly into the gaps of the black ship's keel.
A deathly silence fell. This kind of silence made the hair behind Chu Qing's ears stand on end, while the ringing in his ears drilled fiercely through his skull like a fine needle.
Barefoot, Chu Qing stood atop the black ship's highest mast. His big toe clawed tightly around the Gods and Demons Spine still seeping Death Qi, his toenail digging into the bone and producing a teeth-grating scrape.
He held his breath.
The purple heart in his chest pounded heavily. Every time it struck his ribs, the muffled thud was like a stone cast into this glue-like void.
Below, on the deck.
Those hundred so-called geniuses had all cowered in the deepest part of the cabin.
Their shoulders heaved violently, their knuckles turning a sickly white as they clawed at the doorframe with excessive force. Someone was so terrified that a rasping "cluck-cluck" escaped their throat, like a chicken being strangled.
"Unease."
Chu Qing murmured.
His voice was hoarse. When he uttered those two words, a thick taste of rust welled up at the root of his tongue.
He knew this feeling all too well. Back in the slums of Stone Rock County, this was the taste in the air when wild dogs stared at rotten flesh. Only this time, the rotten flesh being watched seemed to be the entire Star River Path.
He narrowed his eyes.
His pupils shrank into black dots the size of needlepoints, locking onto the indissoluble darkness ahead.
That darkness was not a color, but a void that