At the end of the bluestone stairs was a cavern one-tenth the size of the Ghost Market.
But unlike the unified whole of the Ghost Market, this cavern had more than a dozen passages of various sizes extending outward around its perimeter, dividing the entire Fengming Mountain into different sections.
"No wonder they needed people to scout ahead... feels like I've walked into a giant anthill..."
Cao Jinxing descended the stairs and stepped onto the gravel floor. He had just made out the passages branching in every direction by the scattered torchlight when he suddenly caught a foul, bloody stench.
He looked in the direction it came from.
Eight enormous iron cages stood on the cavern's western side, arranged in two rows.
Inside, "blood-soaked people" lay sprawled in twisted heaps, piled carelessly like corpses. Each cage held a dozen or so, totaling seventy or eighty!
All of them had a foundation in internal cultivation, ranging from the third level of Houtian to the peak of Houtian.
At the sight of them, a term Shen Xiang had mentioned flashed through Cao Jinxing's mind: human feast!
These people were not dead. They, too, were snake corpses.
But different snake corpses served different purposes.
Those at the Tongyou realm were considered the main fighting force, those at the Xiantian realm could participate in battle, and those without martial arts were fed to the snakes. As for those in the intermediate Houtian realm... they were the "delicacies" Mingzhu had prepared for the Flame-Feathered Eagle.
The Mongolians had deliberately drenched them in blood diluted from the Golden Flame Snake Mother's blood, to give them the scent of Golden Flame Snakes and lure out the Flame-Feathered Eagle.
Once the remaining people were in position, it would be time for these people to enter the passages as