Lu Chen stepped over the threshold.
The roof of the main hall had indeed been smashed through.
A massive hole ran from the roof all the way to the ground. The tiles around its edges had been melted by extreme heat into a glassy substance—not by fire, but by a shockwave of death energy.
Every table and chair in the main hall had been shattered into wood chips, scattered across the floor.
A man stood in the center of the main hall, his back to the door.
Dressed in black, he was a little shorter than the Third Councilor, with narrower shoulders.
He held a saber in his right hand. It was neither a bone saber nor a death-energy sword, but an ordinary standard-issue military saber—the personal weapon of Shattered Star Pass's garrison commander.
He had driven the saber into the garrison commander's grand chair, and black blood was still dripping from its blade.
"You killed the Third." The Sixth Councilor did not turn around. "Shen Yuan was stronger than me. How did he die?"
"His core shattered." Gripping Root Severer, Lu Chen walked into the main hall. Wood chips crackled softly beneath his feet. "He crushed his own core and turned it into a core sword, holding out for the time it took to burn an incense stick."
"A Reincarnation Realm expert for the time it took to burn an incense stick. You defeated someone in the Reincarnation Realm." The Sixth Councilor finally turned around.
His face was thinner than when Lu Chen had last seen him at Northern Garrison Pass.
His cheekbones jutted out, his eye sockets were sunken deep, and his eyes were entirely black as well. But there were far fewer runes on the surface of his eyeballs than on the Third Councilor's—his degree of death-energy