Before dawn the next day, Qin He stepped out of the City Lord's Mansion.
With the Black Demon Banner concealed in his sleeve, he became a faint shadow and flew alone toward White Bone Ridge west of the city.
The closer he drew to the ridge, the stranger the aura between heaven and earth became.
White Bone Ridge was an ancient battlefield left over from the Ancient Era. Ruined walls lay half buried in the soil, while rusted spears and broken armor plates studded the slopes.
A layer of grayish-white bone dust mixed with ancient skeletal remains covered the ground, rustling beneath his feet.
Mist lingered year-round within the ridge, thick as ink. Wherever it passed, even sunlight was swallowed, leaving only deathly gloom.
Since ancient times, this had been an ill-omened place. Countless remains of those slain in battle lay buried underground, and a faint deathly aura lingered all year. Though killing intent occasionally leaked out and caused small-scale calamities, people could remain safe as long as they stayed a hundred li away from the heart of the ridge.
Then, three months ago, a battle between groups of cultivators had erupted here. Nearly a hundred corpses had been left unburied, their resentful energy intertwining with the deathly aura of the earth vein. Only then had the strangeness here intensified, with incidents of corpse mutation occurring one after another.
"Something's wrong. There's a seed of the baleful yin law hidden in this mist."
Long Qingyun's voice emerged from the Black Demon Banner, his spectral form looking somewhat grave. "This isn't ordinary earth-vein yin balefulness. It looks as though someone nurtured it with his own law."
Qin He nodded and flicked the lotus flame at his fingertip, sending a wisp of crimson-blue fire drifting into the mist.
The moment the flame