At the end of the evening watch, the cold moon hung fully aloft.
A thousand zhang beneath Qingwu Mountain, the deathly silence accumulated over countless ages abruptly burst apart.
There was no earthshaking roar, no surging gale. First, the entire mountain forest fell eerily still.
The swaying vegetation instantly stiffened. The last trace of life lingering on the branches was drawn away by an unseen force, and green leaves yellowed, curled, and crumbled to ash before the naked eye.
The thick layer of rotting leaves covering the ground carbonized completely, spreading black powder across the wilderness. Even the insects roaming underground and the snakes and rats hiding there perished without a sound.
This was not an attack. It was deprivation through the laws.
The Law of Death silently spread over all of Qingwu Mountain, forcibly stripping every living creature within ten li of its right to life.
The next second, a muffled rumble rolled out from deep underground.
A thousand zhang of rock heaved upward. Dense, ashen-white cracks crisscrossed the mountain, spreading along its slopes toward the horizon.
Countless ancient bones tumbled from the fractured rock, reassembled, and piled together. The piercing scrape of bone against bone carried through the forest, making the soul go numb.
A skeletal giant a hundred zhang tall slowly broke free of its underground prison and stood upright.
Its bones gleamed white as jade, yet a heavy, pitch-black deathly aura wreathed its body, and wisps of dark red ghostfire flowed through the gaps between them.
Its empty eye sockets looked down upon the earth. There was no gaze within them, yet the air for a hundred li around froze completely.
Saint-tier pressure crashed down like collapsing mountains and a sea bursting its banks.
The Lower Realm's sparse spiritual energy instantly fell into chaos and disintegrated,