As the waning moon was about to sink, the ghostly mist still refused to disperse. Qing Chen crushed a bleached leg bone beneath his foot.
He darted among jagged rocks, a little rotten soil clinging to his robe.
Behind him, the four ghost peaks gradually blurred into silhouettes. In his sea of qi, the Nine Luminaries Glazed Pagoda seemed to be drawing in and releasing spiritual energy from some unknown source.
Meanwhile, the spirit plants he had seized from the medicine garden grew quietly inside the pagoda, showing nothing unusual.
"Get out of my way!"
A silver-armored corpse suddenly lunged from behind a dead tree, half a scrap of Daoist robe still hanging between its fangs.
Rather than retreating, Qing Chen advanced, his right elbow wrapped in killing intent as he smashed it down on the corpse puppet's crown.
A clang of metal striking stone exploded through the air. The silver-armored corpse's head burst like a watermelon, and foul corpse fluid splattered across the ground.
He licked the traces of blood from his palm, only then realizing that fighting his way along with physical strength alone had still scraped his skin a little.
More and more armored corpses lay strewn along his path.
When Qing Chen kicked a gold-armored corpse flying for the second time, an unusual tremor suddenly came from his sea of qi.
He leaped onto a wind-eroded boulder and swept his Divine Sense through the space inside the pagoda—nothing unusual!
Something's wrong!
He sank a small portion of his awareness into the pagoda and discovered that the farther he moved from the Ghost Domain Medicine Garden, the dimmer the qi signature of that single use of the Great Void Heavenly Secrets Authority became!
What does this mean?
Qing Chen stopped abruptly, cold sweat sliding down his spine.