The killing intent that had erupted from Mark did not subside; it condensed, turning from a fiery explosion into a glacier-cold core of pure, undiluted wrath. The Immortal Saint's revelation had not just shocked him—it had fundamentally altered his understanding of the man sitting serenely in meditation before him. The pieces of a six-year-long puzzle were finally snapping into a horrifying, brutal picture.
"The poets wrote, 'Hell is empty, and all the Devils are here,'" the Immortal Saint began, his voice low and gravelly, each word dripping with a venomous disdain that Mark had never heard from his master. "They were wrong. They had not seen the place we call the Slump's core. That is where the devils reside."
The air in the side hall grew thick and heavy, saturated with the Master's ancient, simmering fury. Mark felt the pressure not as a physical force, but as a psychic weight, a miasma of bitterness and rage that had festered for years.
