At that moment, the guard's body was still twitching on the altar. He was alive, but his mouth was full of blood, and he couldn't make a sound.
Blood streamed down his face. All his features had been removed.
"Yu" put away her dagger, then slowly stepped down. She turned toward Zhou's Divine Statue and prostrated herself in fervent devotion, knocking her head against the ground.
The beaded curtain hung high, and the statue in the shrine remained silent. Yet the Yin Qi inside the ancestral hall grew ever thicker, chilling to the bone.
Even the paintings on the walls, seemingly the work of immortals, had taken on a dim, murky hue.
The altar, crisscrossed with all manner of slashes, gouges, and chisel marks, gradually seeped with a layer of black blood.
In an instant, the stone surface, once firm and solid, became as if it were a swamp.
The guard began sinking into the altar.
He struggled desperately, his face twisted into a hideous grimace as he cursed the Xiao Family with the deepest venom in his heart.
Black Qi billowed like clouds and mist. At that moment, the guard's curses and hatred seemed to take on substance, pouring ceaselessly from his featureless face.
The curses and hatred roiled above the altar, slowly coalescing into a smooth, featureless mask, polished like a mirror and seemingly forged from wrought iron. It looked chilling and uncanny.
The instant the mask took shape, bubbling sounds rose from the black blood, and the guard sank completely into the altar.
In the blink of an eye, the altar returned to normal. The swamp-like black blood quietly vanished, as if it had only been an illusion.
Before the offering table, the four incense sticks still burned fiercely. As their smoke curled upward, the names of