The boiling lake churned with violent, underground fury.
Three feet of scalding water covered the dark rock arena. It bubbled at one hundred and twenty degrees under the high-pressure shroud of white steam.
Across the expanse, sixty paces away, Nether-Emperor Yanluo planted his massive bronze talons into the flooded bedrock.
The eight blood-vessel channels trailing from his lower-back spine thrummed wildly.
THUMP—THUMP—THUMP.
Black corpse-pitch surged through the thick cables, pumping fresh pulses of negative-one-hundred-and-fifty-degree cold from the Nether Core into his chest cavity.
The sovereign’s nine heads screamed in clashing polyphony, spitting black bile into the boiling water.
“Ice of the Nine Nethers!” the crowned emperor head bellowed, its emerald eye sockets blazing with wild green flame. “Freeze the lake! Turn this water into our tomb-spikes!”
