In the Wangsi City Outer City, yin winds howled furiously.
Lead-gray clouds of baleful energy churned across a sky without a horizon, like a heavy iron plate pressing mercilessly down on the colossal city built from countless billions of withered bones and dark netherworld ironstone.
Ghostly wails and wolfish howls rose and fell through the streets and alleys. Squads of armored Ghost Soldiers carrying weapons and leading Netherworld Hounds swarmed like maddened ants, conducting frenzied, exhaustive searches through the dilapidated Bone Houses and alleyways.
Ever since the disturbance at the tavern, security throughout Wangsi City had been forcibly raised to an appalling level.
Li Xiang hunched his back, perfectly disguised as an utterly unremarkable Old Consumptive Ghost. Mingling among several trembling, lowly wandering souls, he slowly made his way down a dark, damp alley.
His steps seemed stiff and sluggish, but each one landed precisely in the patrolling Ghost Soldiers' blind spots and the dead zones of the earth veins' energy.
[Withered Wood Seals the Acupoints] locked away every trace of his living vitality. His disguise, smeared with low-grade corpse ash and bone dust and reinforced by the traits of both [Paper Effigy Maker] and [Embalmer], made the rotten stench emanating from him even stronger and purer than that of the genuine old ghosts beside him.
At that moment, Li Xiang's mind was clearer than it had ever been.
The shock brought by that bowl of Great Sage Wine and the impact of retracing his reincarnation had not crushed his Dao Heart.
Instead, after uncovering the tip of the iceberg of his origins and learning firsthand about Penglai Immortal Island and the Sword Mound's history, Li Xiang's state of mind had undergone a complete cleansing.
The Sword Mound...
Li Xiang silently repeated the name. Confusion had vanished from his dark