The lead-gray canopy of sky hung low over the earth. Even the faintest breeze was grudgingly withheld, while the air brimmed with an inescapable stench of decay and blood, as though death accumulated over countless centuries had begun to ferment.
This was the White Bone Forest. There was not the slightest trace of grass or vegetation. As far as the eye could see, densely packed white bones lay scattered in crisscrossing heaps.
Shinbones tangled with ribs, skulls rolled amid piles of finger bones, and shoulder blades jutted diagonally from "mountains" formed of spines. The deathly pale bones gleamed with a cold, lifeless light beneath the dim sky, like a wasteland cast from death itself.
The ground was blanketed layer upon layer with bones, several feet thick. Every step produced a creaking grind of joints, like the low sobs of countless wronged souls, enough to send chills down one's spine.
Hua Qiang wore a fitted suit of black clothing, standing tall and straight as a pine at the very front of the group.
His expression was stern, his dark eyes unfathomable as an abyss, as though the bones and decay filling his sight were no more than an ordinary landscape.
Leng Qingshuang wore a moon-white robe, its hem brushing over the heaps of bones without gathering even a speck of dust.
Her delicate brows were faintly furrowed as her cool gaze vigilantly swept the surroundings. A faint chill lingered around her body, forming a subtle confrontation with the deathly silence of the White Bone Forest.
Behind them, nearly a hundred Eastern Divine Palace disciples wore uniform blue-gray battle attire. Their expressions were solemn, and they gripped weapons of every kind. Though it was their first time entering such a bizarre place, none showed fear. Only their fingers, clenched tightly around their