When Li Ling flew into the clear daylight sky and surveyed his surroundings with the art of day wandering, he immediately discovered a long trail of blood stretching in from the northern district. It looked as though someone had laid a blood-red carpet several yards wide along the street, leading straight toward the King's Palace at the city's center.
Civilian corpses lay along that bloody trail. They had failed to get out of the way when the Foundation Establishment cultivator charged in and had been poisoned to death on the spot.
The attack had happened during the day, when many Mortal People were still in the Royal City. The dead and injured numbered in the hundreds.
Li Ling's heart grew heavy at the sight. Then he spotted flickering figures, apparently experts from the city's guards fighting something.
"Are those blood spirits?"
Once he drew closer, Li Ling finally saw them clearly: figure after figure radiating bloody light, each shaped like a human.
They had only rough, shadowlike outlines, their faces and bodies indistinct.
Unlike black shadows, however, their entire bodies seemed to consist of dense blood-colored mist. Each blood spirit contained as much blood as an adult's entire body, with the spiritual energy of heaven and earth and a cultivator's dharma power condensed within it, granting it considerable strength.
Li Ling watched the blood spirits effortlessly knock charging soldiers away. He estimated their strength at several hundred to a thousand pounds. It often took several men working together, or hurled Thunderbolt Bombs, merely to wound them.
But the blood spirits' bodies were insubstantial. As long as their condensed dharma power did not disperse, they quickly recovered.
The soldiers' slashing blades and thrusting spears could do nothing to them. Yet once a blood spirit lunged forward and embraced someone, that person's