The Scapegoat

Beneath the night sky, the air in Lian City was thick enough to congeal.

Crying, cursing, roaring, groaning—

Countless fragments of sound merged into a torrent of despair.

Mixed with the stench of corpses and blood, it burrowed straight into Zhang Sanxian's nostrils, ears, and eyes, weighing heavily on his chest.

Ever since leaving that "shelter" of World-Saving Hall, he had swept through streets and alleys, large and small, each more chaotic than the last, racing toward the eastern part of the city.

That was where the main hall of the Eight Desolations Sect stood.

Piecing together the information he had gathered, Zhang Sanxian had begun to suspect that the plague sweeping through Lian City was perhaps deeply connected to the Eight Desolations Sect that had sealed off the city.

And as he sped all the way into the eastern district, drawing ever closer to the Eight Desolations Sect's main hall, the terrified shrieks of the living grew fewer and fewer.

In their place came a stranger sound, denser and heavier.

It sounded like slaughter carried out in organized ranks and on a massive scale.

Whoosh—like a ghostly shadow melting into the night, Zhang Sanxian leaped and flipped several times before climbing onto a ruined rooftop near the Eight Desolations Sect's main hall. Then his Mind's Eye opened, and a scene from hell slowly unfolded within his "vision."

At that moment, the inside and outside of the Eight Desolations Sect's main hall had become a grinding mill of flesh and blood.

The heavy vermilion-lacquered gates stood wide open inward, their panels collapsed and shattered, plastered with dark-red bloodstains.

Inside, flames soared toward the heavens, illuminating countless figures savagely biting and battling one another.

Of these figures, one side consisted of living people, dressed in the Eight Desolations Sect's standard martial