Zhao Wuji dragged his broken body across the cold granite cliff of Jade-Void Peak.
His crushed ribs burned with agony. Every ragged gasp sent sharp knives of pain through his lungs.
Behind him, Deacon Qian lay whimpering in his burned rags, coughing black soot into the snow.
“Brother Zhao...” Deacon Qian wept, clutching his blistered face with trembling, blackened hands. “Save me! Take me back through the gate! I have forty concubines in Azure-Mist City! I have eight storage rings buried under my mansion! I don’t want to die in this savage lower realm!”
Down in the rocks sixty yards away, Elder Blood-Bone twitched like a crushed beetle, his skull necklace completely pulverized into gray dust.
Zhao Wuji gritted his teeth, his eyes flaring with desperate, spiteful madness.
He knew the laws of the Eastern Azure-Mist Prefecture better than anyone.
If they returned empty-handed without the tribute, City Lord Cao would have them flayed alive.
