Blood Firmament

Upon the desolate mountain, Qi Baiyu knelt half-crouched on the ground. Blood still seeped from the hollow in her chest where the blood crow had pierced through her, while wisps of gray-white dream mist drifted from the wound's edges like the trailing smoke of a dying candle, swaying in the night wind as though about to vanish.

She slowly rose, lifted a hand to brush the gray-white powder from her shoulder, and fixed her gaze upon that immense, indistinct figure. A strained smile tugged at her lips.

"Fellow Daoist, there must still be some misunderstanding."

Her voice was steady, deliberately softened, like a girl next door making idle conversation beside a spring pond. She weighed every word. "The Zhang Yue lineage and Net Moon have never borne any great enmity. Since ancient times, the Four Lunar Virtue Mansions have each performed their own duties. Zhang Yue weaves dreams, Net Moon gathers the net; they are paths that form two sides of the same whole. You and I both belong to the Lunar lineage, with deep roots between us. Why must we..."

She did not finish.

The enormous blood crow stood atop a jagged outcrop not far away, its head tilted as it watched her. There was no ripple of emotion in its scarlet eyes, which resembled two glass beads soaked through with blood.

It seemed too lazy to keep listening—or perhaps it had never intended to listen from the start. In its eyes, the explanations and pleas of the cultivator below were nothing but delusional noise, not worth a glance.

The next instant, bloody light flared fiercely in the crow's eyes!

The blood-colored moonlight blanketing the ground suddenly stirred into frenzy.

The dark-red sheen that had lain quietly over the sand and gravel seemed to be churned by something invisible.