Welcome to Slaughter City

Three days later.

Myriad-Blade Gorge.

Seven people stood at the edge of the cliff, looking down into the abyss.

It was bottomless.

The gorge was a savage gash cleaved through the earth, its sheer walls covered in dark brown moss and twisted fungi.

Wind surged upward from the depths.

What it carried was not moisture, but a cloyingly sweet, fishy stench that stuck inside their nostrils like a film of blood that could never be washed away.

Jiang Tieyi leaned forward to peer over the edge, then recoiled with a greenish face.

"I've smelled rotting corpses before." His voice was dry. "A mine collapsed, and seven bodies were buried beneath it for half a month before they were dug out."

He swallowed.

"That smelled better than this."

No one answered.

Amid the dead silence, Su Chen crouched by the cliff edge, a letter pinched between his fingers.

It had been found that morning on a tree branch beside their camp, nailed there by a rusty dagger.

The dagger had pierced through the envelope and sunk three inches into the trunk.

There was only a slip of paper inside. The handwriting was wild and hurried, and the ink was a half-dried dark red, carrying the smell of rust.

One line.

"Your summons are strong enough. What about you?"

Beneath the note lay a bronze token the size of a thumbnail.

On one side was a bone blade, three drops of blood hanging from its edge. The carving was crude, but the curve of the blade had been cut deeply, exuding a vicious aura.

On the reverse were two words—Slaughter.

Su Chen turned the token over three times before handing it to Mo Qianye.

Mo Qianye looked at it for only two seconds before passing it to Chu Yao.

Chu Yao did