"Senior Brother Zhang!! Zh—"
The Luo Mie Sect disciple's face was etched with panic as he flipped Zhang's body over. His eyes locked onto twin pools of crimson fire blazing back at him. Shock barely registered before a searing pain exploded in his neck. Darkness swallowed him.
"Senior Brother Zhang!!"
"Senior Brother Wang!!"
The three remaining Luo Mie Sect disciples froze. Terror petrified their limbs. Disbelief warped their features.
Schlick.
The dagger wrenched free from Wang's neck. No blood flowed. Wang's body hit the stone floor—a desiccated husk, skin taut over bone, all vitality drained in an instant.
A living man had become a millennium-old mummy faster than a blink. No one saw the change happen. All eyes snapped to Zhang as he lurched upright. Drenched in gore, head slumped, hair matted with blood and filth, he stood like a vengeful wraith. A guttural, rattling h-h-h-h-h hissed from his throat.
Silence.
A suffocating, absolute silence crashed over the cavern. Even Mu Qingfeng and his opponents halted mid-strike, their faces masks of stunned horror as they stared.
One heartbeat stretched thin. Then—Zhang's head snapped up. His face was a ruined mask of raw flesh and drying blood, features obliterated. Only the eyes remained clear—twin orbs of pure, crimson malice burning with soulless hunger. A collective shiver ripped through the onlookers.
Zhang vanished.
A blur. A wet thwick.
The Luo Mie disciple on the left—young, short-haired, thick-browed—jerked. A faint sting, like an insect's bite, pricked his neck. He turned his head slowly... and saw a mangled arm resting beside his throat. Clutched in its grasp: the hilt of a dagger. Buried in his neck.
Understanding ignited—and died. Life fled his eyes. His flesh withered, collapsing inward like a punctured wineskin. He crumpled bonelessly to the floor, another drained husk.
This time, the horrifying transformation unfolded before everyone. Icy dread speared their spines. Every hair stood upright.
"Senior Brother Zhang!! What are you doing— Aaaiiieee!!!"
The disciple on the right, a woman in yellow robes, shrieked, stumbling backward. Her cry ended in a choked gurgle. She froze mid-step—Zhang was already before her, the dagger buried to the hilt in her throat.
"AAAH!!!" The last Luo Mie disciple screamed, pure terror shredding his voice. He whirled to flee. One frantic step. Then he pitched forward, face-first onto the unforgiving stone. A ragged hole gaped at the base of his skull. His body was bone-dry before it settled.
Five seconds. That was all it took. Four Luo Mie cultivators—rushing to help their brother—lay dead at his hand. Even Mu Qingfeng, the strongest present, remained frozen, his mind struggling to process the unnatural slaughter.
"Zhang Daoyou!! Have you lost your mind?!"
The Golden Feather Sect cultivator beside Zhou Lihu roared, his voice thick with disbelief and primal fear. His shout was a beacon of doom.
Zhang's head swiveled with unnatural speed. Those blood-light eyes fixed on the source of the sound.
Zhang's arm blurred. The dark crimson dagger became a streak of death, hurtling through the air!
Regret flooded the Golden Feather cultivator the instant the words left his lips. Seeing the lethal projectile, his face drained of color. With a panicked shriek, his flying sword shot from his brow, a silver flash intercepting the dagger's path.
Klang-CHUNK!!
The sound was sharp, brutal, final. The impossible unfolded—his treasured flying sword shattered like rotten wood against the dark red blade!
"Wh—" The syllable died unformed. The dagger slammed deep into his chest with a sickening crunch.
"Junior Brother Sun!!" Zhou Lihu's agonized bellow echoed only after the body, already shriveling, thudded to the ground. It happened faster than thought. Faster than breath. Intervention was impossible.
Another life extinguished. A Golden Core expert. Mu Qingfeng's face turned ashen. Instinct screamed: Retreat! He shuffled backward, step by wary step, dread coiling in his gut like a serpent.
Shink!
The dagger tore free from the desiccated corpse in a spray of crimson vapor, arcing back like a homing bird into Zhang's waiting, mangled hand. Every survivor braced for the next target…
Zhang turned his back. As if the living, breathing cultivators no longer existed, he walked—stiffly, mechanically—toward the ancient stone coffin dominating the chamber's center.
No breath stirred his chest. No flicker of awareness remained. His movements were those of an automaton. Step by heavy, deliberate step, bloody footprints bloomed on the dusty stone floor. He reached the coffin's massive side.
Ch-thunk.
With chilling purpose, he drove the crimson dagger, hilt-deep, into the center of the coffin's lid!
Then, the final horror unfolded. Before their disbelieving eyes, Zhang's own body began to deflate. Skin sank against bone, muscles withered, vitality visibly draining away. Within heartbeats, he stood rigid—a desiccated monument, hand still clenched on the dagger's pommel, frozen in the act of embedding the blade. Frozen like a grotesque offering.
This time, the process was horrifyingly clear: every trace of blood, every drop remaining in Zhang's ravaged body, flowed like a dark tide down his arm, along the dagger's blade, and into the stone of the coffin itself!
Silence.
Deeper, heavier, more profound than before. Utter bewilderment and primal, soul-chilling fear held the survivors rigid. What unspeakable evil had they witnessed? What cursed power had been unleashed?
Understanding danced maddeningly out of reach, but the primal urge to flee surged through them. Mu Qingfeng and Zhou Lihu edged backward simultaneously, their rivalry forgotten. Lin Feng's fingers tightened like a vice around Chang Gong Xiaojing's hand. A shared, wide-eyed glance full of terror, and they too began to retreat, silent as shadows.
Huuummm…
Two seconds. That's all the respite they were granted.
The dagger embedded in the coffin erupted. A blinding, actinic scarlet radiance exploded from it, painting the cavern walls in pulsing, hellish light! From the point where blade met stone, intricate crimson traceries spread like voracious spiderwebs, branching and forking across the entire coffin lid. In a single, terrifying blink, the whole massive surface glowed with searing blood-light, as if lit from within by a furnace of gore.
Simultaneously, a new sound slithered into their ears—soft, rapid, chillingly relentless:
Crack… crack-crack… crack-crack-crack…
The unmistakable sound of ancient stone beginning to fracture.