"No, young master! I want to go with you!"
By the time Xu Yuan finished speaking, his young master had already leaped out of the pit in a few bounds.
His movements were crisp, his posture graceful, leaving Xu Yuan gazing at him with stars in his eyes.
Once he reached the surface, an entire grove of peach trees covered in pink blossoms came into view.
Every tree was twisted into a grotesque shape, like a ghostly silhouette baring its fangs and claws.
More chilling still were the human corpses hanging from those warped branches.
And hanging from the tree closest to the pit was none other than Wang Dong's corpse.
There was not a single wound on his body. A slender vine growing from a thick branch was cinched tightly around Wang Dong's neck.
A lush, vivid peach blossom had sprouted from his face, which had turned bluish-purple from strangulation.
Its stem grew out of his mouth. The blossom was roughly the size of a palm, completely concealing the lower half of his face.
His eyes, bulging from being strangled to death, looked ready to fall out of their sockets.
Yin Chao turned and took a few steps forward.
Almost every tree here had a corpse hanging from it, and some of the thicker ones held even more.
It was as though these trees were using the corpses as nourishment.
Yin Chao stopped. A woman's corpse hung from the tree before him, her clothing somewhat tattered from exposure to wind, rain, and sun.
Yet her skin remained smooth, with the plump, lustrous glow of a young girl's skin.
Yin Chao lowered his gaze and noticed that the dead woman's fingernails were extremely long.
Her hands were covered in calluses. Someone like that would not have kept such long nails.