"There should be more than one Formation Eye," San San confirmed after checking. "There must be others elsewhere, also using death qi as their Formation Eyes. That's how they created so much malice in Liao Leaf Forest."
Malice was, unsurprisingly, mostly made up of extreme emotions such as jealousy, resentment, and bloodlust. The sacrifices Lu Ronghuan and his people had used as Formation Eyes were almost all various Demon Beasts and beast souls. Such beings could hardly be called jealous. There was bloodlust in their malice, but it wasn't dominant. On closer examination, it felt more like resentment, and even longing.
San San could investigate, but contacting the beast souls to obtain more clues still had to be left to Ye Chuqi. Only after confirming that the concentration of death qi here wouldn't harm her did San San reluctantly agree to let her approach.
Ye Chuqi squeezed San San's soft, floppy body and laughed. "I'm not that fragile. What are you worrying about?" Even a higher concentration of death qi would only make her feel a little worse. As long as she didn't linger, she would be fine.
Even if the staff didn't know this was death qi, they had to care for the Five-Winged Bird, and they all knew nothing would happen as long as they didn't stay too long.
Yet the instant Ye Chuqi touched the beast soul with her divine sense, the force of its emotions made her whole body shudder, despite her mental preparation. Only her powerful divine sense and resilient mind kept those overwhelmingly negative emotions from throwing her consciousness into chaos.
Among those emotions, she also found something that felt like the malice.
"San San, can it still be saved?"
Whoever had sent the Five-Winged Bird to the Beast-Tamer Guild had counted on the