A shrieking gale of black frost howled through the underground deep pit. It tore jagged flakes of frozen corpse-oil from the dark rock walls.
At the threshold of the five-hundred-foot Netherworld Gates, the headless titan corpse of Nether-Emperor Yanluo recoiled into the dark.
Black, freezing blood geysered from his cut neck stumps, crystallizing into indigo hail before it touched the ground.
Forty feet of stone-hard asura sinew and ancient grafted bone thrashed wildly. It tore free from the shattered frost slabs.
The headless emperor didn’t fall.
Instead, Yanluo’s huge torso threw itself backward. It slammed into the sharp-angled heart of the Nether Core.
The Nether Core hung suspended between the stone-hard dragon-bone pillars of the gates. A ninety-foot sphere of tightly packed, pulsing deep-sea frost.
Its crystal-clear surface churned with ten thousand years of drowned souls, frozen emperors, and packed flat malice.
