The Rot-Bone Miasma rolled across the flooded white jade floor like a choking wave of purple ink.
The moment the vapor touched the water, the clean sapphire dew began to boil and hiss. That turned into a foul, yellow foam that released clouds of acidic gas. The stone deck drains around the outer edge started to flake and dissolve, the white jade crumbling into gritty white sand wherever the acid-burning mist gathered.
The two surviving swordsmen on the raised stone road shrieked in terror as the edge of the purple fog brushed their calves.
The leather of their boots melted in seconds. The acid-burning vapor ate through their trousers. It dissolved their flesh down to the white bone in a matter of three painful heartbeats. The men collapsed into the bubbling water, their screams cutting short as the mist filled their lungs and liquified their internal organs.
“Monster...” Tie Shan muttered, his jaw tightening. He watched the two hired blades dissolve in their own master’s poison.
The purple foul fog was so dense that it clung to the surface of the water like burning fire-oil, sputtering and hissing as it dissolved the stone crusts along the drainage deck drains. The air tasted of rotted marrow and copper burning acid. That toxic soup would have melted the lungs of an ordinary mortal in less than two breaths. Yet inside Lin Tao’s chest, there was only total, icy stillness.
