Chu Qing stood atop the shattered ruins of the Daytime Epoch, barefoot, his toes sunk into cold stone dust. The five Blood Holes in his chest had already closed, yet whenever the wind blew past, he could still feel a piercing sense of emptiness.
That was the mark left behind by "Heaven," and the brand of this harvesting ground.
Suddenly.
The fog ahead split apart.
It had not been scattered by the wind, but forcibly sliced through by something incomparably sharp and cold, cutting the Gray Fog apart.
Several gray shadows slid out.
They wore broad Gray Robes that trailed across the ground, their hoods pulled so low that their faces could not be seen. Each of them gripped a feather quill two feet long, its tip Dark Gold, leaving trails of dried ink through the void.
No breathing.
No heartbeat.
Even the ripples of karmic fluctuations were as steady as a mirror of dead water.
Chu Qing's pupils instantly shrank to needlepoints.
He had felt this Aura from those rusty system panels. It was absolute calm, a cold, disdainful gaze without the slightest trace of warmth, like a farmer looking at an overgrown pig in a sty.
"The Scribe's dogs."
Chu Qing forced out those words from his throat. The muscles in his jaw bulged, and his knuckles creaked against the spear shaft.
One of the gray-robed envoys raised his head, the nothingness beneath his hood fixed upon Chu Qing. The feather quill in his hand swept flatly through the air, sending a wave of digitized light rippling outward.
"Designation: Chu."
The voice overlapped with itself, mechanical and utterly without inflection.
"Mutation detected. Logical redundancy. Assessment: uncontrollable. Recommendation: retrieval."
Retrieval?
The Purple True Blood in Chu Qing's chest slammed violently against his ribs.
No one had cared when he