The Blood Pool boiled, and a rank wind struck his face.
Helian Cheng stood atop a length of withered bone jutting above the water, his voluminous black robe billowing and snapping in the rising heat. His old face, dry as tree bark, was now filled with morbid excitement, his cloudy eyes fixed firmly on Fang Mo at the shore.
"Gurgle-"
At the center of the Blood Pool, a vast whirlpool formed. Accompanied by a shrill, piercing screech like an infant crying in the night, an enormous creature broke through the surface.
The thing had no skin. Dark red muscle fibers lay exposed, foul yellow slime flowing over them.
It had no limbs. In their place were dozens of thick, fleshy tentacles, each tipped with a mouth full of tiny, sharp teeth.
At the very top of its bloated body was embedded a huge, twisted infant face, its eyes tightly shut and its mouth wide open, issuing mournful wails.
The sound waves, mingled with psychic shocks, struck the rock walls. Loose stones tumbled down, splashing up waves of blood.
"This is the Blood Infant Rakshasa, nurtured through ten years of my painstaking effort, watered with the resentful blood of countless prisoners and supplemented with a fragment of Ancient Blood Demon bone." Helian Cheng's face twisted with fanaticism. "Fang Mo, becoming its final mouthful of Blood Food is your honor!"
"Ancient Blood Demon?" Rather than retreating, Fang Mo took a step forward to the edge of the Blood Pool. "This? It deserves to be called a demon?"
He shook his head, his disappointed expression resembling someone looking at a plate of stir-fried food gone sour.
"Let me show you what a real demon is."
Fang Mo's left eye was pitch-black, his right a ghastly white. He undid his collar, and the intricate