Dean stared at the bottle of viscous liquid glowing with an eerie green fluorescence in his hand, his Adam's apple bobbing. Beside him, Sam's eyes were wide, his expression caught somewhere between concern and curiosity.
But they both knew Wu Heng would not harm them.
"Damn it, I'm doing it."
Dean growled, as if psyching himself up. Then he yanked out the stopper, tipped back his head, and poured the green goo—faintly writhing as though it had a life of its own—into his mouth.
"Urgh—blegh—!"
The instant the liquid entered his mouth, Dean's eyes bulged, and his entire face twisted into a mask of agony.
Its flavor was simply impossible to describe accurately. It was like forcefully swallowing a huge glob of thick snot that had fermented in a dark corner for half a month, mixed with rotten seaweed, spoiled eggs, and some indescribable chemical agent.
It was sticky and slick, as though alive, trying to crawl back up his throat. It even seemed to want to glue itself to his tongue and drag it down into his stomach along with it.
At the same time, it carried a rotten, fishy stench that shot straight to the top of his skull and seeped deep into his soul.
Dean doubled over uncontrollably, retching violently again and again. With a loud splat, he vomited a mouthful of inky-black water reeking of sulfur and charred rot onto the ghost ship's cold deck.
Sizzle—!
The moment the black water touched the deck, it hissed sharply as it corroded the surface like strong acid, rapidly giving off a cloud of nauseating black smoke.
This was the dark energy that had entered his body when the demon injured him earlier. Normally, it would have taken days of salt baths and rest to slowly purge, yet this