The Black Pine Forest stood dense and thick, every tree requiring several people to encircle it. Lush pine boughs tangled together, preventing even a single snowflake from reaching the ground. Only now and then would a sharp crack ring out as snow-laden branches broke, sending great heaps of heavy snow crashing down.
A bone-chilling gale howled through the Black Pine Forest, leaving a thin layer of black ice over every trunk it passed. The Dragon Witch King's muttering drifted continuously from within the wind. "Damn it. It was inevitable that those undead gods would learn of my whereabouts. Someone in the Undead Abyss must be colluding with outsiders. But where did those three come from?"
"Death Skeleton Kurkulun—I remember that fellow. A weak, ill-natured undead divine servant. But he was still a god, and those two dealt with him so effortlessly. Have I been away from the surface world for too long? Are powerful beings really so common here now that you can grab a whole handful at random?"
"Damn it, I should have used divination to calculate the best route before I came out."
The Dragon Witch King grumbled in complaint, and the gale he had transformed into flew faster and faster. In no more than a quarter of an hour, he had crossed this Black Pine Forest stretching thousands of miles, leaving the Dragon Mountain Empire's territory and entering the lands of the Great Flame Dynasty.
Then the icy wind abruptly stopped, and the Dragon Witch King, clad in a black cloak, dropped heavily into the thick snow.
A thick cigar clenched between his teeth, Lin Qi stood with his arms folded across his chest, eyeing the Dragon Witch King with ill intent. After inheriting Crimson Fury Anuta's divine office, Lin Qi had grasped the laws of aurora.