The bubbles in the mire suddenly swelled to the size of fists, their "gurgling" rattling everyone's eardrums.
The black threads that had been winding about suddenly expanded severalfold, as thick as water buckets and covered in barbs, cracking sharply as they lashed through the air.
Even more terrifying, fissures split open across the mire's surface as ghastly white bone spikes scrambled upward. The longest were over three meters long, with scraps of undried rotten flesh still hanging from their tips.
Fine fragments of Black Shadow also drifted up from the mire like torn shreds of black mist. The moment they touched a cultivator's spiritual energy barrier, they sizzled and corroded tiny holes into it.
"Watch out for the bone spikes!"
The moment Liu Yuer's cry fell, the Jade Lotus Platform not far away met with disaster.
A bone spike slanted out of the mire and struck the edge of the lotus platform with precision. Its pristine white petals instantly shattered, and its spiritual glow dimmed.
The cultivators atop the platform cried out and squeezed toward the center, but more bone spikes followed one after another. Like ghastly white spears, they punched the platform full of holes.
In just two breaths, the Jade Lotus Platform exploded into pieces. More than twenty cultivators atop it screamed as they fell, only to be tightly bound by black threads the instant they touched the mire, transformed into wisps of vital essence in the blink of an eye.
The other Bronze Boat fared no better.
Black Shadow fragments surged toward it in clusters, corroding the defensive runes on its hull until they flickered uncertainly. A Dao Palace Realm cultivator tried to disperse them with spiritual energy, but the fragments wrapped around his arm. His flesh instantly rotted away, and with a miserable scream, he jumped