The smell of boiling blood and ozone hung thick over the Second Terrace.
Chi Lian didn’t stay to fight.
A Peak Foundation demonic commander survived on hungry instinct, not suicidal stubbornness. Staring at the smoking, glass-fused hole through his left shoulder, Chi Lian knew that whatever invisible beam had just bypassed his defenses could just as easily punch through his skull.
With a hoarse, gurgling snarl, the commander tore a black leather gourd from his sash with his leftover hand and smashed it against the courtyard stones.
CRACK.
The gourd didn’t spill wine or poison. It released an explosion of dark, writhing vermin.
Thousands of leech-like blood leeches—each as thick as an iron bolt, their lamprey mouths bristling with semi-clear quartz dust teeth—erupted across the courtyard in a squirming, high-speed wave.
Attracted by the open wounds and scorched flesh of the wounded defenders, the leeches surged toward the inner keep’s steps, their rubbery bodies whistling through the air in uneven, spring-loaded leaps.
