Medisa was like a silver cheetah racing through the forest. Her calm expression failed to reflect the anxiety in her heart. "Why hasn't the Lord summoned Hypamira and me yet? What is he waiting for?"
At that moment, a phantom flashed between the crisscrossing, retreating trees. She abruptly slammed on the brakes, her battle boots furrowing two deep trenches through the pine-needle-covered soil. After stopping, Medisa saw someone standing in the forest—or, more precisely, a woman, if the fully plant-like lower body beneath those upright breasts could still be considered "human."
Hypamira stopped as well.
"Who is she?" she asked, looking at Medisa.
"Andessa?" Medisa stared at the woman before her in disbelief.
The woman slowly turned her head. She was none other than Andessa, the Decayed Lord who had been brought back and imprisoned in the Empire after Brando and Veronica defeated her at the Ring of Trade Winds. Her condition looked very different from how Medisa remembered her. Her smooth face was covered in blood vessels that spread upward from beneath her neck like blood-red roots. Her eyes were pitch-black, with pupils like blood-red chalcedony embedded in the centers, giving her an extremely eerie appearance.
Medisa was secretly shocked. This was the aberrant state brought about by God's Blood. Most of the Tree Shepherds' high priests had undergone the baptism of God's Blood once, which was why they had become neither human nor ghost. But she had never heard of anyone being able to receive the divine blood a second time. Could it be that the Tree Shepherds' research into God's Blood had advanced further?
What puzzled her most, however, was that, as far as she knew, Andessa should have been locked in the deepest dungeon of the Imperial Prison, not appearing here.
"How did you get here,