Li Xiang would have recognized that appearance, those features, even if they had been burned to ashes.
He looked exactly like Qin Zhong.
No!
This was not a resemblance!
This was Qin Zhong!!!
The man who had lifted stone weights bare-chested every day at the Shocking Heron Martial Hall, sweating like rain.
The man who, after a single scolding from Ye Qingyao, had looked as aggrieved as a two-hundred-pound punching bag.
His senior brother, Qin Zhong.
Senior Brother... how could he be here?!
Storm-tossed waves surged in Li Xiang's eyes, and the thoughts in his mind tangled wildly like snarled hemp.
Hadn't he returned to Riverside after the battle for the Spirit Ruins Blessed Land? How could he appear in the Netherworld?!
And...
Li Xiang stared at the man seated on the White Bone Throne. The familiar guilelessness and blunt honesty had vanished from his eyes, leaving only imperious dominance.
Why were these senior members of the Ten Halls of Yama Lineages, these Fifth Realm Ultimate Yin Generals, treating him with such reverence?!
They looked as though they were bowing before their king!
A king...
The king of the Netherworld...
In a flash of lightning.
Countless clues that Li Xiang had deliberately ignored or failed to explain suddenly linked together in his mind with a thunderous crash, like lightning cleaving the night.
He remembered the utterly bizarre funeral in Linjiang County when Qin Zhong's Great-Grandmother had died.
He remembered the hair-raising scene he had glimpsed through the [Embalmer]'s "Revolving Lantern" trait.
Hundreds of thousands of ancient graves had split open at once, and blood-red banners had blotted out the sky.
Amid the blood cocoons filling the heavens, a baby had been born crying, accompanied by the wailing of ghosts.
And high in the firmament, a passage for receiving souls called