The surroundings were steeped in a gloomy ghostly aura. The void of the Ghost Realm radiated a terrifying gray haze, and the wilderness beyond the ghost city lay utterly silent.
Now and then, a few scattered skeletons crawled across the wilderness. Several dazed antelopes, wreathed in the stench of corpses, wandered toward a river and lowered their heads to drink. Suddenly, a gigantic corpse crocodile burst from the water and seized one of them, dragging it into the river. Moments later, the antelope's body was torn to shreds beneath the surface.
Just as the corpse crocodile devoured the antelope, a chaotic rush of movement came surging from afar. It sounded as if a pack of beasts had encountered something terrifying and was fleeing this way in panic. Human-shaped and beast-headed skeletons, ghost eagles in the sky, green-eyed griffins, three-eyed miasma spiders, camel lions, blood-footed corpse oxen, and all manner of other creatures fled in terror, afraid of falling even half a step behind.
Even ghosts had an instinct to fear death. Looking in the direction they were fleeing, one could hear a buzzing like that of mosquitoes. The sky was packed with black ants, each the size of a fist, swarming toward them like a dark tide.
The moment the slower-moving yin ghosts were caught by the swarm, they were swallowed up in the blink of an eye. The creatures ensnared by the ants were reduced to skeletons, though these bones were clearly different from those of ordinary skeleton ghosts.
Soon, several more skeleton ghosts were caught by the black ants. They showed no obvious change, but anyone with keen cultivation could see wisps of black qi being sucked from their bones. After the swarm had ravaged them, their once sturdy-looking bones began to decay at a visible pace. A