The ceiling was weeping black oil.
High above the thirty-foot crystal-clear racks, the hundred-foot phantom face of Ghost Sovereign Gu rippled like a glow in a disturbed cesspool. His hollow, emerald-fire eyes burned with the piled up malice of three hundred years of unliving gluttony. The air around him crackled with cold, green spark arcs that grounded out against the metal roof beams.
Every breath the phantom drew pulled the surrounding heat down another five degrees, until icicles of black frost hung six feet long from the ancient meteorite stonework.
“A parasite in the bus,” Lin Ke said.
He wiped the fresh blood from his mouth with the back of his forearm, his boots planted firmly upon the silver routing traces.
Beside him, Meng Shan stood with his shield raised. But the big warrior’s knuckles were white, his teeth grinding audibly against the overwhelming psychic gravity. Even twenty paces back, Shen Yue was trembling, her hands clamped over her ears as the phantom’s low, deep ring shook the very enamel of their teeth.
“You speak of buses and pipes, little mortal insect,” Gu’s voice boomed down from the vaulted ceiling.
It was a voice compounded of ten thousand dying whispers. It echoed through every copper bolt and silver trace in the floor.
