Fierce Ghost Gorge lay in the southeast of Jizhou.
The cliff walls on both sides towered a thousand zhang high, steep, beautiful, and perilous. It was named for the howling winds that rushed through the gorge, sounding like the wails of Fierce Ghosts.
Yet today, though wild winds still swept through the gorge, they no longer carried their usual eerie dread. Instead, they seemed to whimper and sob, like the crying of a child.
A closer look revealed that a hundred zhang had somehow been sheared off both cliffs. The walls were riddled with holes and covered in spiderweb-like cracks. Loose stones occasionally rattled down into the valley below, stirring long, muffled echoes.
The originally narrow and level path along the valley floor had been forcibly widened by several dozen zhang. Enormous boulders the size of houses lay strewn everywhere in chaotic heaps, nearly filling half the gorge.
Clearly, an earth-shaking battle had utterly destroyed the terrain of Fierce Ghost Gorge, leaving it unrecognizable.
The entrance to the gorge was even more horrific. Severed limbs littered the ground, and several powerful corpses lay sprawled across it.
There was a Demon Emperor with a tiger's head and human body, a fist-sized bloody hole bored through his brow as dark purplish-red demon blood streamed forth;
There was a bird demon with sharp fangs and claws, his iron feathers burned away completely, his flesh charred black, leaving only a dry skeleton half-buried in the dust;
There was even a human Blood-Exchange Martial Saint, his entire body smashed a zhang deep into the cliff wall, bones shattered, flesh mangled, all life extinguished.
These martial artists and demons were all among the foremost experts in Jizhou. Any one of them could have stirred the winds and clouds of an entire province with a single move.