Seven days after the Flesh-and-Blood Immortal became one of the Unknowables, the night sky of the Deep World gradually turned blood-red. Every fine thread of rules was tinged with faint red, and all the ghosts could dimly hear roars from the depths of the Blood Sea.
"Xinhu's master is coming back." Chen Ge and several Calamity Gods had never left Xinhu. This was the moment they had been waiting for.
On the eighth day, a light rain of blood began to fall through the eternally unchanging night, as though the heavens were shedding tears a thousand years too late.
On the ninth day, a brilliant flash of blade light slashed into a distant Blood City. Among the fine threads of rules drifting through the Deep World, one-fifth of those belonging to illusion were severed.
Amid all manner of curses, Gao Ming's sense of being watched vanished completely. At last, no one dared covet Xinhu Blood City again.
Waves from the Blood Sea battered the land heaped with despair. As the ninth day neared its end, a figure emerged from the deepest darkness. Starlight was drawn toward him as he walked through the dawn of the Deep World.
There was only one man, his entire body drenched by the Blood Sea, a bladeless knife strapped to his back.
Within Gao Ming's perception, the place where that man stood was enveloped in a searing light. The naked eye could see him, but the fine threads of rules could not touch him.
Standing outside Xinhu Blood City, which had been all but razed, the man held his knife with a terrifying calm.
No towering killing intent rose from his body, yet the threads of rules belonging to the other Blood Cities in the Deep World instinctively avoided him.
Misshapen corpses scattered like quicksand,