Chen Wuya's fingers were still resting on the corpse's wrist. That twitch had not escaped his senses. It was neither a spasm nor a final flash of life, but a rhythm—faint beyond measure, yet undeniably there.
Before he could speak, the ground began to tremble.
The remaining captives abruptly sat upright, their movements so synchronized it was as though a single string had yanked them all up. Their eyes opened, pupils pitch-black and ringed with blood-red, like sparks seeping from burnt-out coals.
Bai Zhi shifted sideways in a step, positioning herself behind and to Chen Wuya's left, one hand already on her sword hilt. Mo Feng swiftly retreated half a step and drew a mechanism mirror from his robes, angling its surface downward, ready to record at any moment.
One captive rose to his feet, his neck turning stiffly toward Chen Wuya. His mouth split into a grin, and his voice seemed squeezed from an iron pipe. "In the cult leader's name, kill!"
The others lifted their feet at once and charged toward the people on the steps.
Zhao Tianying shouted and swept his Fang Tian Ji horizontally, driving straight for the foremost man's chest. The man neither dodged nor evaded, allowing the blade to slam into his chest with a dull clang, like iron striking stone. Both hands curled into claws as he lunged straight for Zhao Tianying's face.
Han Tianba roared, planted the Overlord Spear against the ground, and vaulted into the air. One sweeping strike caught three men across the waist and abdomen. Yet the instant they hit the ground, they flipped back up again. Their movements remained unchanged, their gazes still hollow, as if pain itself had been torn from them.
"Something's wrong!" Mo Feng shouted. "Their tendons and bones have changed—they look like something forced