A faint crack sounded from within the Third Councilor's chest.
Like porcelain shattering. The dark crimson light went out completely.
Every fragment of the core had shattered.
The core sword slipped from its hilt, fell to the ground, and broke into shards of dark crimson crystal. The moment the crystals touched the ground, they turned into black smoke, which dispersed into the air.
[Third Councilor of the Shadow Council slain. Lifespan plundered: 800 years.]
An empty shell of a body toppled straight backward. The back of its head—the place where a back of the head should have been—was hollow. When the body struck the ground, it crumbled into a heap of grayish-white powder.
Outside the Land God Temple, at the mouth of the alley, Yun Qingyue felt the golden runic bone in her hand suddenly grow scorching hot before rapidly cooling. The pattern of the third-layer seal on the bone flickered once, then went dark.
She looked up. Above the Land God Temple, a golden-red dragon thunderbolt shot into the sky. It was Lu Chen's signal.
She tucked the bone into her robes and gave Tuoba Shan a nod. Tuoba Shan drew all five blades from his back, and the blade formation took shape within three breaths. The two rushed into the alley.
Inside the courtyard, the black liquid was receding. Well water flowed backward into the well, and the dark crimson glow of the blood sacrifice formation went out completely. The eighty-foot-deep vertical shaft in the ground remained, moonlight spilling through a gap in the clouds and shining onto its bottom.
Lu Chen sat slumped against the wall of the pit, covered in blood.
Golden blood still seeped from the wound that had pierced his left shoulder.
Three claw marks crossed his abdomen.
The sword wound through his left