That sharp crack pierced their eardrums even more painfully than a thunderclap out of a clear sky in the underground cavern, silent as a grave.
Everyone's gaze was riveted to the terracotta figure in the corner, the one shaped like the Su Family's old master.
The sound had come from its neck.
Then, beneath everyone's utterly horrified gazes, the figure's clay eyelids slowly opened, inch by inch.
What kind of eyes were those?
They had no pupils, no whites-just two grayish-white beads that looked as though they had been ground from the poorest stone.
There was not a trace of the light a living person's eyes should hold, no anger, no killing intent, not even any emotion.
There was only complete, absolute deathly stillness.
They were like two bottomless ancient wells, holding no water, only the inseparable, baleful deathly chill that had settled over centuries and millennia.
As those eyes swept over them, everyone felt a chill shoot from the soles of their feet straight to the crowns of their heads, almost freezing their souls solid.
"No-this isn't a Soul-Suppressing Terracotta Figure-"
All color drained from Daoist Chi Song's face in an instant. Unable to maintain his air of transcendent serenity, he shrieked hoarsely, his voice distorted, "It's a corpse-nurturing fetus! An evil thing made by sealing a living person's essence, qi, and spirit, along with their three ethereal souls and seven corporeal souls, inside a clay body through secret arts, then feeding it baleful yin energy from the earth! Retreat! Retreat now!"
He employed the Daoist Lion's Roar in that shout, making the entire cavern hum.
But it was too late.
The moment he shouted the first word, the terracotta figure of Old Master Su moved.
It neither ran nor jumped; they could not even make out its movements.