The True Open Scheme

Soul-Severing Cliff.

Deep within the Ten Thousand Beasts Mountain Range lay a treacherous place shrouded in blood-red mist year-round. Its sheer cliffs looked as though they had been cleaved apart by a giant axe, rising straight into the clouds. At the summit was a broad stretch of flat ground, now filled with a sea of kneeling figures.

There were tens of thousands of them.

They were all captives seized by the Beast Emperors from human settlements everywhere. Men and women, young and old, dressed in rags, their faces filled with terror.

Their hands were bound behind their backs with chains that glimmered with dark red runes. The True Essence within their bodies had been sealed, and they knelt upon the icy ground like lambs awaiting slaughter.

All around them, hundreds of Mutated Beast guards of varying forms watched them like tigers eyeing prey, radiating bloodthirsty auras.

At the very front of the crowd, near the Blood Sacrifice Altar, stood a thick obsidian pillar. A woman was bound to it with similarly rune-covered chains.

Unlike the other captives, she was not kneeling on the ground. Instead, she had been tied to the pillar in an almost humiliating posture, both arms raised over her head.

Her hair was somewhat disheveled, and her clothes were stained with dust, but there were no obvious injuries on her body. Clearly, those who had captured her had not wanted her to suffer too much harm.

Yet her eyes were dim and lifeless, as though all light had vanished from them.

Who else could it have been but Su Yunwan?

She had been brought here for two days already. From the conversations among the Mutated Beasts guarding her, she had learned why she had been kidnapped. She was bait, bait meant to lure a human powerhouse named