The instant the three stepped through the crack in the barrier, a musty stench mixed with rot hit them in the face.
It was not the dusty smell of ordinary ruins, but the reek of decay steeped for a century in damp gloom, wrapped in a fine buzzing that burrowed into their collars, nostrils, and pores.
Broken glass crunched underfoot, its gaps packed with shriveled insect corpses that made faint, sticky squelches when crushed.
All the glass along the street had shattered into jagged edges. Black swarms crawled over the walls, every insect carrying a trace of Cursed Energy.
Like flowing black sludge, they trickled down cracks in the walls, window frames, and drainpipes, leaving oily black streaks wherever they passed.
Qingxiao paused for half a second.
His perception spread ahead of his gaze. The Cursed Energy throughout the street was like a pot of scorched porridge, fragmented, sticky, and densely packed. Even the wind crawled with the vibrations of beating insect wings.
"These aren't ordinary insects," he said quietly, his brow creasing slightly.
He had barely finished speaking before Hana Kurusu went pale.
She could not stand the sight of such densely packed living things. Golden light instinctively rose from her fingertips, and she pushed up onto her toes, ready to fly higher.
But barely two meters off the ground, the insects on the walls surged into a buzzing black cloud like sharks scenting blood.
They were palm-sized flying cockroaches, their wingbeats as dense as rain hammering a shed roof. Even the barbs on their legs were clearly visible.
"Aaah! Angel!"
Hana Kurusu shot higher in panic. The thin shafts of light she flung out in her fluster only scattered a few in the front row.
The insects behind them immediately filled the gaps, forming a dense black ball