The cult leader's blood saber had yet to fall when the Myriad Demons Cauldron suddenly let out a shuddering tremor.
The sound seemed not to come from the cauldron itself, but to drill straight from the depths of the earth into their bones. Chen Wuya still had Misaligned Force gathered in his right fist, yet his arm suddenly sank, as though something had latched onto that power and sucked it in.
The bloody light surged.
It did not spread—it condensed. The red mist that had been spraying out in all directions abruptly drew together, rushing up along the cracks in the cauldron and gathering at its mouth into a human face.
The face had no features, only an outline. Yet the moment it took shape, the air throughout the cave changed. Breathing grew heavy, as if their lungs had been stuffed with wet cloth.
"Your flesh and blood... belong to me."
The voice did not come from a mouth. It rang directly inside their minds. Chen Wuya's ears buzzed, and his temples throbbed.
Mo Feng stood in the rear, inspecting the mechanical beast's energy slot. The three-legged iron beast was only half repaired, its shell still smoking with scorched fumes. But the instant the blood mist swept over it, its joints began to blacken. Rust rapidly spread across its metal surface, flaking away chunk by chunk.
"No!" Mo Feng reached out to stop it, but the rust spread too quickly. The iron beast's left leg snapped with a crack. It fell to the ground, twitched twice, and lay still.
Chen Wuya stared at that face, while the tremor from the eruption of "Misaligned Pressure" still echoed in his sea of consciousness. He remembered that moment—the system had converted the suppressed force in reverse. If it could reverse pressure, could it