The setting sun sank, its afterglow swallowed whole by the endless night. The night in the Divine Capital was no tranquil painting from the pens of poets and literati. It was a rag soaked through with pus, blood, and ink, weighing heavily on everyone's head.
Fang Mo walked alone along Long Street.
His left eye ached and throbbed; his right eye burned.
The Netherworld Ghost Eye he had just swallowed hadn't settled down yet. It jumped around in its socket like a live fish, making his optic nerve twitch violently.
Fang Mo didn't use his energy to suppress it. Instead, he let that cold Ghost Qi rampage through his meridians, using the pain to keep his mind sharper.
The streets, once brightly lit, looked different to him now.
They hadn't turned black and white. Rather, the world's skin had been peeled away, revealing a far more grotesque texture beneath.
Over the old man selling wontons hung a mass of withered gray mist: Death Qi, the sign of a life nearing its end;
Around the waist of the drunk harassing a respectable woman by the roadside coiled a nauseating Pink Foulness, a sign of both rotten romance and filthy disease;
As for the estates of the great families farther away, the skies above them were a sight of myriad wonders: some were bathed in red light, while others were crowned with Black Qi.
This was Through Nether.
Seeing people, ghosts, fortune, and fate.
"So this is the truth of the world."
Fang Mo blinked his dry eyelids. Deep in his pupils, a ring of ghostly blue light turned slowly.
Suddenly, his gaze stopped at the street corner.
A black cat was crouched there.
To an ordinary person, it was just a stray cat licking its paws. But to Fang Mo, there