Patriarch Gui thrust the Nine-Ghost Nether Flag toward the grey sky, chanting an ancient, deep-throated magic chant that curled the edges of the freezing mist like scorched paper.
From the dark weave of the banner, a vortex of pitch-black spiritual vapor erupted, shrieking with the sound agony of ten thousand uncollected souls. The heat in the canyon plummeted twenty degrees in a heartbeat. Hoarfrost formed across the breastplates of the standing corpses. The puddles of yellow slush froze solid with a crystal-clear crackle.
The Nine-Ghost Nether Flag was the old family treasure of the Ashen Bone Ghost Sect.
Forged during the Second Disaster, the flag was designed to harvest the souls of dying warriors on the battlefield. He condensed their leftover emotional trauma into a packed, high-thickness beam of spiritual rot. Against an ordinary fighter—even a Core Formation master with a solid spiritual sea—the Nether Soul Hex would penetrate the lower belly, infect the dantian with rotting corruption, and dissolve the spiritual roots within three breaths.
Patriarch Gui leveled the staff directly at Lin Tao’s chest.
“Wither in the Nether Fire, mortal fool!” Gui shrieked, his face twisted in thrilled cruelty. “Let your dantian curdle into black pus, and let your soul serve as the ninth draft hound of my carriage!”
