Black Water Abyss, atop the cliff.
Xue Qinghe was covered in wounds.
Her pale blue martial attire was soaked through with blood, which had dried into dark brown crusts, leaving the fabric stiff and rough, cold and heavy against her skin.
Her cuffs and trouser legs were torn in several places, exposing mangled flesh beneath.
A claw wound on her left shoulder was deep enough to expose bone, its edges tinged black. Blood no longer seeped from it, because all the blood around it had clotted.
The cloth wrapped around her right arm had long since soaked through with blood. It no longer served as a bandage, hanging loosely in the crook of her elbow.
Her black hair lay disheveled over her shoulders, stray locks plastered to her cheeks with sweat and blood, their ends tangled and coated in stone dust.
Her once-delicate face was now white as paper. Her lips were dry and peeling, and a dried streak of blood marked the corner of her mouth.
Deep exhaustion showed around her eyes and brows. Her eye sockets were slightly sunken, with dark shadows beneath them.
Xue Qinghe stared coldly ahead of the cliff, motionless.
Ahead of her.
Were four monsters she had never seen before!
Monsters she had never even seen in the Demon Suppression Bureau's Compendium of Myriad Monsters!
Beneath the night sky, amid the ghost fog, before the cliff!
Four calf-sized monsters, each with two horns on its head and six red eyes on its face.
They bared their teeth, their faces hideous, their gazes fixed on Xue Qinghe.
Their builds fell somewhere between giant wolves and tigers, their limbs thick and powerful, their claws sunk deep into cracks in the cliff rock.
The two curved horns atop their heads gleamed with a dim black sheen, like