Within the great hall atop the platform, Xin Yao saw Ying Zhuan staring behind her and knew something was amiss. When her gaze dropped, she saw that at some unknown moment, an extra shadow had appeared on the ground beneath her feet, merging into her own.
After a brief ponder, bamboo sword in hand, she suddenly shifted half a step sideways and half-turned. She swept her gaze over the spot, yet there was nothing there.
But when she turned back again, a black-robed Daoist with a grim, chilly face was right before her. The two stood practically face-to-face.
Her heart jolted, and just as she was about to swing her bamboo sword, black fire suddenly surged up from the ground. The black-robed Daoist was torn apart by the flames and vanished in an instant. The people and objects around them also became vivid once more.
That cluster of black fire drifted through the air, then returned to Ying Zhuan.
Xin Yao adjusted her glasses, put away her bamboo sword, and calmly asked, "Senior Brother Ying, what was that? A ghost?"
Ying Zhuan nodded.
Xin Yao thought it over. Ghosts had existed in Ancient Xia as well, but most had been ordinary people who possessed a little cultivation and transformed after death. None could endure for long.
Yet some had been deliberately refined through sacrifice by heretical cultivators. There was also another kind: cultivators whose cultivation had not yet succeeded, but who had cast away their physical bodies. Among them were certain exceptionally peculiar existences that could not be judged by ordinary reason.
She guessed that what she had just seen was likely the last kind. But how had such a thing appeared here?
Her first thought was whether there was something strange about this great platform that the An Clan