Above the shattered brick storefront of the Hundred-Refinements Weapon Bazaar, the one-hundred-foot crimson blood-skull opened its jagged jaws and let out a screech that rattled every roof tile on the avenue.
Thick, metallic blood-mist rolled down from the sky-dome. The cobblestones cracked under the crushing weight of the Azure-Mist Blood-Tax Suppression Array. Three thousand mortal shopkeepers and herb-peddlers along the street dropped to their knees, clutching their chests as the formation began siphoning vitality straight out of their meridians.
Up on his flying palanquin, City Lord Cao Kun (Goodness: -42) stood with both hands raised, his gold-python robes whipping in the crimson gale as he cackled triumphantly.
“Hahaha! Struggle all you want, lower-realm ants!” Cao Kun roared, his waxed mustache quivering with malice. “This Blood-Tax Suppression Array is powered by three hundred years of accumulated border slaughter! Inside my formation, even a Peak Golden Core cultivator is pressed into meat paste! Meng Tie, I’ll start by crushing your regrown arm into bone meal, and then I’ll strip every Supreme Spirit Stone off your new boss’s corpse!”
Behind Cao Kun’s palanquin, a hunched old man in grey array-robes—Chief Array-Master Feng (Goodness: -38, Rank 5 Peak)—held up a spinning bronze formation disk and poured a vial of dark beast-blood onto the compass needle.
