He was a white-haired old man, thin as kindling, wrapped in a coarse robe that had faded pale with age. The hem had worn to a frayed edge.
His hair was entirely white, as white as winter snow, and lay scattered across the pillow. His face was terribly aged, his skin like wind-dried bark, thick with wrinkles. His cheekbones jutted high, his eyes had sunk deep, and the corners of his mouth drooped. He looked as though he had been dead for a long time.
But Fang Chen could clearly sense a faint breath of life lingering in that emaciated body. Like a candle guttering in the wind, it might go out at any moment, yet stubbornly refused to die.
The Realm Spirit Clone stood beside the bed, looking down at that face, so aged it had nearly lost all human likeness. He was silent for a long time.
"It's him!"
The Realm Spirit Clone spoke so softly he seemed to be talking to himself. "The Ghost Immortal Emperor. One of the Human Race's instigators of the Second Heaven-Extermination War, and the creator of the Ghost Realm. He's been here ever since that war. Here all this time, without waking once!"
Fang Chen walked slowly to the bedside, bent down, and studied the Ghost Immortal Emperor's face.
Up close, he could see a hair-thin gray-white mark between the old man's brows, like a tiny crack beneath the skin. Now and then, an exceedingly dim gray-white glimmer passed through it, like a wisp of heat escaping from a sleeping volcano.
"That gray-white mark!"
Fang Chen's gaze settled on the crack. "Was it left by the Spear of Order's lingering power?"
The Realm Spirit Clone nodded. "It's the Order Force he sealed inside himself. That power clings like a maggot to the