"Ahhh—!"
A shrill scream tore through the void, echoing endlessly through the first level of the Soul-Suppressing Tower. It was like thousands upon thousands of iron arrows whistling past, sending chills down anyone's spine.
At the center of the plaza, white bones lay piled high as a mountain.
Ku Chan curled up in the deepest part of the bone heap, like a corpse dried by the wind for a thousand years. His sunken eye sockets suddenly flew open, as if ghostly flames had just ignited within them.
His gaunt, ghoul-like body trembled faintly as he tried to arrange himself amid the bones into the seated-lotus posture of a Bodhisattva who saved the suffering.
But all that came from his throat was a low, "Uhhh, uhhh," like a demon wailing as it crawled up from the deepest hell.
In his battle with Wang Xian, he had lost nearly half his life force.
Had he not used a secret corpse-escape technique to slip back to the first level, his soul would have already been scattered to the winds.
Just then, the destructive shockwave from the ninth level had made his whole body shudder violently. His external incarnation, Monk Buer, left there, had been reduced to ashes.
No, to be precise, his Divine Soul had been utterly annihilated!
"Who are you... What do you want...?"
Ku Chan muttered to himself, his voice as dry as bones crumbling in an instant.
The void was silent. No one answered.
He slowly raised his head. A sharp crack came from his neck, as if it might snap at any moment.
The chains piercing his collarbones swayed with it, clinking with a clear, icy sound.
A pain that reached deep into his bones surged across his ghoul-thin face again, and the veins at his temples writhed like