Niu Ben kicked open the heavy doors with one foot.
BOOM—
The doors crashed down, kicking up a cloud of dust.
In the blink of an eye, a foul stench hit them head-on.
Even Niu Ben, a demon himself, could not help wrinkling his nose. "What kind of hellhole is this? It stinks worse than the cave abode this Old Ox used to live in."
Inside the main hall, beneath the dim firelight, were pairs upon pairs of numb, hollow eyes.
Hearing the commotion, the figures mechanically working beside the pill furnaces merely raised their heads sluggishly before lowering them again, as though every upheaval in the world had nothing to do with these walking corpses.
Zhou Xuan hurriedly shoved aside the obstructive Niu Ben and walked into the depths of the hall.
With every step he took, his heart sank a little deeper.
The once spirited Elixir Cauldron Sect, the sect renowned throughout the Eastern Region for its alchemy, now... had nothing left but a hall full of despair.
"Who... who is it?"
An aged, hoarse voice came from deep within the hall.
A ragged old man, little more than skin and bones, trembled as he emerged from behind a pill furnace.
Squinting his clouded old eyes, he tried to make out the newcomers' faces by the dim firelight.
Zhou Xuan stopped.
Thud.
The man, now a great cultivator of the Tower-Climbing Realm, dropped heavily to his knees upon the hard stone floor.
"This unworthy disciple, Zhou Xuan..."
"Came back too late."
The old man's body jolted violently.
He stared fixedly at Zhou Xuan on the ground. His withered lips trembled fiercely, and tears actually welled up in his murky eyes.
"Zhou... Zhou Xuan?"
"You are... Zhou Xuan?"
With that cry, the deathly still atmosphere in the hall was