The heat dropping from the sky smelled of boiling marrow and scorched copper.
It didn’t feel like fire. It felt like being shoved under an open blast fire ladle while someone clamped your throat with an iron tong.
The rain of leaden droplets had ceased, instantly flash-boiled away by a wall of searing crimson spiritual pressure that turned the storm clouds above Mount Canglan into a swirling vortex of blood-red thunderheads.
Above the shattered roof of Floor Eight, hovering forty feet in the open air, stood Elder Kuang.
The Golden Core terror of the Crimson Vulture Clan didn’t touch the stone. He stood suspended on two swirling vortexes of scarlet fire, his long, unbraided hair burning like raw copper wire in the gale.
His eyes were two glowing pits of molten melted rock waste, devoid of pupils, streaming an aura of choking, ancient malice that blanketed the mountain for three square miles.
Every breath Kuang took made the stone low roof walls of Floor Eight crack and crumble.
His passive Spiritual Domain was so overwhelming that the surrounding dark rock floor was turning to glassy black glass under the sheer heat wave leaking from his pores.
