The whole world darkened.
Light itself recoiled. The woods, the rocks, the sky-everything lost its color, leaving only black, white, and gray, like faded afterimages washed clean by water. The wind stopped, the birds fell silent, and even the leaves ceased to stir. It was as though a giant hand had pressed pause on the world.
Accompanied by wolf howls and frog croaks, something appeared behind Zhiyan.
It was a statue, white and enormous. Its surface was rough and mottled, like an ancient relic weathered by a thousand years of wind and rain, covered in fine cracks and flaking patches.
Thread after thread was attached to the statue. They were black, so thin they were almost invisible, but there were countless strands, tangled densely together like a vast net that bound the statue firmly in place. Their other ends stretched in every direction and vanished at the edges of the shadows, leading who knew where.
"Eight-Handled Sword, Other-Ringed Divine General-"
Zhiyan still held his hand sign, his knuckles white with strain and his arms trembling slightly as he endured an immense drain on his cursed energy. That energy was being drawn from his body, surging like a flood through a broken dam toward the statue behind him, toward the black threads, toward the thing being awakened.
The statue behind him began to tremble.
At first, the tremors were slight, almost imperceptible. But they soon grew more violent, more obvious, and white fragments began to rain from its surface.
Zhiyan parted his lips and forced the final name from his throat. Each syllable was like a key opening a door that should never have been opened.
"Ma-ho-raga-"
The instant that name rang out, the white statue shattered completely.
The black threads binding the statue snapped all at once, making sharp twanging