The Well

The well. The well at the morgue. Water was surging out from its mouth.

It was no ordinary water. Black, viscous liquid glimmering with dark-red runes poured from the well, spilling over the stone railing and flooding across the blue-brick ground. Wherever it flowed, the blue bricks corroded into black sludge. Once the blood-sacrifice formation in the cracks between the bricks was soaked by the liquid, its dark-red glow abruptly intensified tenfold.

[Blood Sacrifice Formation enhanced. Lifespan extraction rate increased: three years per breath.]

Three years per breath. In the span of a single breath, three years of lifespan were ripped from his body. It did not feel like pain. It felt like cold—cold seeping out from the depths of his marrow.

[Lifespan extraction in progress. Current loss: three years. Six years. Nine years.]

Lu Chen plunged Root Severer into the ground. Dragon Thunder True Essence poured from the blade into the earth, golden-red light spreading across the ground and colliding with the black liquid. The two powers wrestled upon the surface, making the earth churn like boiling water. Dragon Thunder True Essence forced back some of the black liquid, but fresh liquid continued pouring endlessly from the well. It could not drive it back as fast as it emerged.

The liquid washed over the soles of his boots. The instant the skin below his ankles touched the black fluid, it began to go numb. Deathly Qi burrowed into the pores beneath his feet and crawled upward along his meridians.

[Lifespan extraction accelerating. Current loss: fifteen years. Twenty years. Twenty-five years.]

Three years per breath. Thirty years in ten breaths. Three hundred years in a hundred breaths. One incense stick was seven hundred and fifty breaths—two thousand two hundred and fifty years.

Lu Chen