The footsteps behind them instantly grew dense, changing from "one step at a time" to "a tidal wave," surging toward them from every direction.
Zhang Bihuang clamped his hands over his mouth with all his might, keeping himself from crying out.
The monk began chanting sutras.
His voice trembled, and his chanting came in fits and starts.
A gap was forced open in Yin Yubing's clothes.
The tip of a black spider leg emerged from her shoulder blade and hung in the air, as though sensing something.
Then the leg withdrew.
"They've stopped chasing us," Yin Yubing said.
Her voice was unbelievably calm.
Xiao Yuxia kept her foot on the accelerator and drove for nearly another ten minutes. Only when the outlines of the Bone Houses appeared in the fog ahead did she wrench the wheel around, bringing the vehicle to a sideways stop in front of the cluster of Bone Houses.
Everyone was panting.
Zhang Bihuang slumped in his seat, the back of his clothes already soaked through.
Zhang Bihuang gripped the armrest so tightly that his knuckles turned white.
Yang Yong pushed open the door and got out.
The fog struck his face, cold enough to cut to the bone.
He walked around to the back of the vehicle and crouched to inspect the undercarriage.
There was nothing on it.
Only a mark...
A wet handprint, its five fingers all bone, without any flesh.
The handprint was directly beneath Zhang Bihuang's seat.
Yang Yong stood up without a word.
He looked at the wet handprint, then into the depths of the fog.
Nothing was visible in the fog.
But everyone knew those things were right there in it.
They had not left. They were merely waiting.
Waiting for the lights around the Bone Houses to go out.
Waiting