A red thread slowly probed out from a crack in the ground, like a long, slender filament glinting dark crimson beneath the faint blue light. Chen Wuya stared at it, golden light still lingering in his palm as the aftereffects of the Misaligned Emotion Domain coursed through his meridians. Then he sensed something strange—the red thread was not inanimate. It was moving, crawling toward the wreckage of the shattered mechanism net.
Mo Feng saw it too. He crouched down, lightly touching the severed net cords on the ground, one brow lifting. "It's alive."
No sooner had he spoken than the threads, originally broken into several pieces, began to writhe like awakened snakes. Dark red fluid seeped from the breaks and spread along the mesh. The entire net slowly tightened, stretched, and reconnected. Fresh threads burrowed out of the cracks in the ground and wound around the Demonic Cult Leader's calves.
The Cult Leader's body jolted, and he snapped his head up. Just as he tried to gather his strength and break free, he found both legs firmly locked in place. More threads surged up from underground, coiling around his waist, arms, and neck in ring after ring until they wrapped him into a cocoon.
"Self-healing threads?" Chen Wuya asked quietly.
Mo Feng grinned. "That's right. I planted them long ago. These things come alive when they taste blood—the more they're damaged, the stronger they get. That strike of 'Wrong Path' you gave him just now shattered his meridians. It fed these threads perfectly."
The Cult Leader's eyes turned scarlet, and a low growl rumbled from his throat. He forcibly drew in breath and thrust out his right palm. A blast of palm wind slammed into the net cords. By all reason, that force should have torn through iron chains, yet