Twenty heavy bronze urns tilted downward two hundred meters above the Cloud-Spring barrier.
Vile black-purple sludge dripped from the bronze rims, hissing loudly as it touched the air. The foul stench of Corpse-Withering Powder drifted down toward the blooming terraces like a toxic fog.
“Pour it out!” Sect Master Gu screamed, his eyes bloodshot with malice. “Wither every blade of grass! Rot their cattle down to marrow!”
Gu had spent three hours brewing this poison in his secret underground cellar. He had mixed black scorpion venom, rotting corpse fungus, and cursed swamp bile into a thick sludge. He wanted to turn this blooming paradise into a wasteland of ash.
Beside him, Valley Master Beast-Fang kicked his spiked iron spurs violently into his mount’s ribs.
“Fly lower, you useless bird!” Beast-Fang bellowed. “Dive straight into their rice terraces!”
The lead Blood-Winged Griffin let out a harsh, rasping cry of pain.
Fresh blood welled from the puncture wounds along its feathered flanks. For seven years, Beast-Fang had starved this magnificent creature. He fed it scraps of rotten carrion and beat it with barbed copper chains to keep it savage.
