The smell of burning soul-marrow was always sweeter than wood smoke, and far more sickening.
Grand Inquisitor Chu Jue was not a coward. He was a royal judge trained in the brutal finishing schools of the Ministry of Punishments. Seeing his seal shattered, his fingers cut, and his opponent standing unburnt after a direct strike from the Purple Heaven Sunderer, the Judge didn’t surrender.
He shoved his leftover two fingers into his mouth, bit through his own tongue. Then he sprayed a mouthful of foaming, crimson essence-blood into the air.
“Old family Sovereign!” Chu Jue screamed, his eyes rolling back until only the blood-veined whites showed. “Accept this servant’s marrow! Open the Great Dragon Siphon!”
Behind the Judge, the air tore open into nine jagged, black vortexes.
The Nine-Dragon Imperial Siphon.
It was the ultimate forbidden art granted only to high-ranking country censors. An emergency manual that hijacked the regional leylines, forcibly draining the living life-force and spiritual training of every living soul within a three-mile radius to fuel a single, world-ending strike.
In the rubble fifty paces away, Shen Yue cried out as an invisible tendril of black fire latched onto her throat. She pulled her lifeforce into the air like red silk threads.
