At first, it was only a mournful howl in the gale, like intermittent sobbing and choking cries, carrying an omen of evil.
But when the bottle covered in cracks finally shattered completely, and boundless darkness boiled forth and soared upwards in an instant, it was like a vortex erupting. Tangible Fiendification Pollution rose into the sky and merged with this cruel, confined world.
After that, everything became completely different.
When the last trace of light was utterly obscured, even the Electric Light flickering amid the clouds could not illuminate the darkness before them. Only the shrill wind echoed flamboyantly through the deathly silent mountains.
Even the disaster beasts had hidden deep within their dens, unwilling to show themselves—or perhaps they had sensed the threat...
At some point, the heavy curtain of rain that had once blanketed everything began to thin out. Yet there was no sign of warmth or respite. Amid the pattering rain came increasingly strange cries of grief, the falling rain like tears.
The rain falling upon the earth turned black.
Threads of blood-red emerged within that blackness. When they landed on a person, they brought bone-piercing cold, staining the fingertips with a lingering crimson.
Like living creatures, the raindrops that fell into Ji Jue's palm began to wriggle rapidly, gathering together as their strange chill and presence seeped through his skin, invading the fascia, bones, and organs beneath. Pure malice eroded his soul, drop by drop.
It was as though, in an instant, he had left the present world and fallen beneath the vortex.
Expressionless, Ji Jue closed his fingers. The heat of Melting Furnace Blood flashed and burned away all the chill and corrosion, yet he could still feel the malice and covetousness that permeated the entire world.
The sky, the earth, the mountains—even the wind