The office gallery smelled of melting limestone, skin-burning acid, and rotting flesh as Envoy Master Wu’s poison cloud billowed outward like a boiling emerald tidal wave.
“Die in the Nether Mire, mortal scum!” Wu shrieked, his voice rising into a jagged, homicidal wail.
A massive phantom two-headed python hissed behind his back, its scaly coils writhing across the ceiling beams as its fangs dripped with black, acid-burning venom. The Grade-4 Nether-Poison Dagger—carved from the blackened thigh bone of an ancient deep-sea bone demon and steeped in vipers’ bile for eighty years—slashed through the air, aimed directly at Frank’s throat. Where the green droplets splashed against the marble floor, the stone dissolved into frothing, boiling sludge, releasing thick clouds of skull-shaped emerald mist that set the guard post guards coughing and clawing at their burning throats.
“Fall back! Clear the hall!” General Zhao bellowed, lunging forward with his broadsword to block the strike. Zhao knew all too well the terrifying reputation of the Nether-Poison Dagger. A mere pinprick was enough to liquefy the internal organs of an early Golden Core commander in under ten seconds.
Frank, however, didn’t move back an inch. He didn’t spill a single drop of his warm barley tea. He didn’t even drop his yellow pine clipboard. He simply glanced at the oncoming wall of flesh-melting green acid and shook his head with skilled disgust.
