That was...
"Hua Yin!!"
Ophiel's expression trembled as she cried out the name of someone who had been dead for over a decade.
How could she possibly mistake her? That familiar face, that familiar voice and presence-in an instant, they seemed to drag her back to the night Hua Yin had died. How could she ever forget this student into whom she had poured so much care?
But as that twisted, deformed body squeezed through the shattered doorway, tendril after tendril clinging to Yuzhi Liu Si, profound despair spread across her face.
Because that presence told her Hua Yin was no longer human.
The tentacles tightened around Yuzhi Liu Si's body little by little. As though her greed could never be sated, she clung to him, utterly unable to control her urge to devour, biting off mouthfuls of his flesh and drinking his blood thirstily.
"I like you... I like you..."
"I'm... hungry..."
They were like yearning whispers beside his ear.
Amid the fiercely burning Holy Flame, Yuzhi Liu Si's body was finally dragged into the doorway, inch by inch. Yet even with those tentacles wrapped around his wrists, even with blood pouring from his neck, he never swung the blade in his hand at the figure behind him.
In a daze.
He released his grip on his sword, his pupils dilating as he let the girl devour his flesh.
When Ophiel desperately tried to rush over, Lin En stopped her. Looking into her trembling eyes, he shook his head firmly.
The fire finally climbed the high walls and engulfed the underground rift.
Lin En's gaze flickered as he said:
"That student of yours stopped being human long ago."
When he and Jiu had gone to the Youzhi Family's underground tomb, they had discovered piles of skeletal remains and corpses