The opportunity presented itself five minutes later at the western outer edge watch post.
A lone Ghost Sect Deacon, draped in a moth-eaten robe of black silk, stepped out from the base of the western bone tower. In his left hand, he carried a fire bowl of smoking sulfur. In his right hand, he clutched a bundle of twelve braided black control threads that led to an elite patrol squad of twelve iron-armored corpses.
These were not the ragged frontier conscripts Lin Tao had seen at Outpost Seven.
These twelve corpses were massive, broad-shouldered body-refiners who had fallen in last border wars. Their bodies had been treated with many coats of black potion-made lacquer. Their chests were protected by solid steel cuirasses taken from royal cavalry captains. Each corpse carried a six-foot barbed glaive forged from blackened iron, their eyes milky white, their movements timed together down to the heartbeat.
“Patrol round,” Tie Shan muttered, his knuckles tightening around his cold-drawn pry-bar.
“Twelve units,” Lin Tao observed, his test eye locking onto the deacon’s bundle of threads. “The deacon’s name is stitched upon his collar: Deacon Wu. Core Formation early-stage, specialized in nerve manipulation. Let him advance past the rock outcropping before we engage.”
