Double-Fork Ridge.
At the mountaintop, a layer of scarlet poisonous miasma shrouded everything, never dispersing year-round.
It was no ordinary cloud vapor, but the reeking fumes produced by a blood creek steaming into the air.
Through the poisonous miasma blanketing the sky, the jagged peaks on either side of Double-Fork Ridge could be seen towering upward. Within the ravine splitting the valley between them, viscous blood plasma wound downward like a living creature, soaking the mountains and earth for a hundred li around and staining the soil and stone a dark, rusty red.
The vegetation growing upon these mountains drew nourishment from the bloody water and became demonic, sprouting sharp teeth.
Bramble vines were covered in fine, dense fangs; tree branches twisted grotesquely, shriveled like the arms of sun-dried corpses, while slime dripped from their leaves and infant cries came from their hollows. Even the moss in shadowed corners had long since mutated into dark purple growths, their surfaces riddled with honeycomb-like holes that expelled smoke-like spores whenever the foul wind swept past.
More than a thousand demons populated the ridge, all rotten things whose hearts had been gnawed through by demonic thoughts, without the slightest trace of living vitality.
The wolf demon leader patrolling the mountain had only half his rotting flesh left. Exposed ribs were entwined with intestines, large bowels wrapped around small ones, and each step dripped rank yellow pus.
A slender snake demon had shed all the scales across his body, and the bloody line at his neck had festered away. Looking closely, one could see that while he wore a snake's head, its proportions were bizarre—it was clearly not the original one.
The lowest-ranked minor demons were even more malformed and horrifying. Some were stitched-together monstrosities; some were simply skeleton soldiers with scraps of rotten