In the Black Spirit Continent's Great Wilderness Marsh, within a precious forest of Luminous Black Ebony.
Luminous Black Ebony was a precious timber, black as coal in color yet giving off a faint radiance at night. Its rich fragrance could clear the mind and sharpen the senses. On the Western Continent and Eastern Continent, it was a rare material worth a fortune. Yet on the Black Spirit Continent, forests formed from thousand-year and ten-thousand-year Luminous Black Ebony could be found everywhere.
It was simply that the native tribes of the Black Spirit Continent believed that all things beneath heaven and earth possessed spirits and were divine. Their reverence for the natural environment had reached an almost obsessive degree. At the same time, they stubbornly refused to allow any outsiders to roam freely across the Black Spirit Continent. Thus, neither timber merchants from the west nor great merchants from the Eastern Continent could obtain Luminous Black Ebony in large quantities.
As a result, the timber became even more expensive, and even rarer.
Yet at this moment, Luminous Black Ebony, priceless on the Western Continent, was being chopped into logs and used as ordinary firewood to fuel a campfire.
The pale and haggard Cloud Emperor lay sprawled beside the fire, surrounded by Yun Canglong and several other descendants. Farther away, several elderly eunuchs, hereditary servants of the Yun Family clad in black robes, vigilantly watched the surrounding movements. The Luminous Black Ebony burned fiercely, its strange fragrance spreading through the air. It was this scent that allowed the Cloud Emperor to retain the last shred of clarity in his mind.
After coughing softly a few times, the Cloud Emperor raised a trembling hand and felt at his chest.
The entire set of ribs on the right side of his chest had vanished