Asgard.
Human Circle.
Beneath the dim sky, windblown sand whipped wildly across the barren Gobi. In a corner of this small world, a ruined slum lay utterly silent.
The heavy stench of blood permeated the open ground at the center of the slum. Several black crows pecking at indistinct corpses seemed to sense something. Flapping their wings, they swiftly soared into the sky.
Viewed from above, the vast clearing within the slum was densely carpeted with corpses.
The elderly, children, stray dogs, even pregnant women with swollen bellies and eyes still open in death were piled together like garbage. At a rough glance, there were nearly ten thousand bodies. Judging by the degree of decay, they had been dead for less than a day.
At the center of those tens of thousands of corpses, strange black threads formed a mysterious symbol, like an eye, yet also like a serpent's mouth.
All at once, the mysterious symbol lit up rapidly. Strands of black thread frantically seized the flesh and blood from the surrounding corpses. The tens of thousands of bodies in the clearing shriveled at a visible rate, while a man's figure swiftly took shape out of the void.
Whoosh—!
As every corpse dried into ash, Loki abruptly sat up from the ground. Sweat covered his pale face, and lingering terror remained in his eyes.
He calmed himself for a while, then raised a hand to cover his forehead and looked helplessly up at the dim sky.
"So this is the power of a Celestial Venerable... Good thing I came to the Human Circle last night and made preparations. Otherwise, I really would have died."
He slowly rose to his feet and casually glanced at the tens of thousands of coarse garments scattered around him. Reaching into the garment closest to