Hughie Wing’s report to the Holy Sect was a lie?
The revelation struck like a curse—a whisper of betrayal slithering into their minds. The... news about this task was fake?
A suffocating silence fell over the group.
Jorge Blue’s team stood frozen, the weight of their losses in the Hanz Clan Estate pressing down like a tombstone. They had already buried too many of their sect brothers and sisters in these cursed mountains. And now, the truth slithered forth: if the Hanz Clan Treasury House was nothing but a phantom, a carefully spun myth from the very beginning... then this entire estate was no Outer Sect task playground.
It was a slaughterhouse.
A deathtrap, meticulously crafted, waiting to swallow them whole.
No wonder Senior Brother Jorge Blue had been so desperate to urge the squad to flee.
Ann’s breath hitched. "You’re right, Captain... but... it doesn’t make sense. Hughie Wing couldn’t have lied—not in his state, not at death’s door!" Her voice trembled, fingers tightening around her weapon.
Jorge’s eyes glinted like frost under moonlight. "Hughie Wing might not have lied," he murmured, low and venomous. "But what if he, too, was deceived?"
Ann opened her mouth to argue—
Then the wind shifted.
A metallic stench flooded the air, thick and cloying, the reek of rotting meat and spilled life. Her stomach lurched. She looked up—
The once-clear waters had turned into a churning mire of crimson, viscous and dark, as if the very earth had begun to bleed. And the lilies—oh holy abyss, the lilies—
Their delicate petals had split apart, unfurling into severed heads. Men. Women. The elderly. Even children. Their lifeless eyes stared, unblinking, mouths slack in eternal silence. A grotesque garden of the dead, watching at the crowd.
The dense foliage at the water’s edge trembled, then parted like a curtain of flesh.
A figure emerged from the gloom, its approach unhurried yet inexorable. Tall, imposing—a male cultivator, but his movements were wrong. Each step carried an unnatural cadence, as if his limbs were guided by something other than life.
The Thirst Bull Squad went rigid, the air between them thickening with dread. A name tore from their throats, half-choked, half-disbelieving. Correct content is on NovelHub)
But the man before them was a grotesque mockery of the handsome male cultivator they had known. His once-honed features, once alive with cunning and vigor, were now hollowed, ruined. Only his smile remained—a twisted rictus stretched across an ashen, lifeless face.
His left arm was gone, the stump ragged and blackened. His face was unnaturally placid, his gaze hollow—fixed straight ahead, unseeing. Behind him, figures moved in eerie unison: cultivators in the robes of the Abyss Pit Sect. Shirley Quinn’s Suicide Squad, former squad mates.
Their faces were waxen, their steps too smooth, too fluid, as if their bones had dissolved. They glided across the water’s surface with various footwork arts, closing in with silent, relentless menace.
The lifeless eyes on the severed heads in the lilies began to bleed.
Just beyond Twin Peak Hill, where the cherry forest marsh met the open sky, an eerie silence smothered the world. No insects chirped. No leaves stirred. The vibrant pulse of nature had been snuffed out, replaced by a stillness that pressed against the ears like a warning.
Rotting flesh littered the ground—chunks of what was once a radiant beauty, now a grotesque mosaic of decay. The stench clawed at the air, thick and putrid, as maggots and writhing gworms, their segmented bodies glinting in the dim light, burrowed into the remains. The decay spread like a plague, each piece pulsing with unnatural life.
Shirley Quinn stood at the center of this nightmare, her form a twisted paradox. Half of her was ethereal grace, her silk robes clinging to a figure that could steal breath from the living. The other half was a monstrosity—skin blistered, rotten and fell down, eye socket sunken, a ghastly sneer twisting her half beauty half skeleton face. A crimson aura pulsed from her, thick with malice, as she unleashed a palm strike infused with the Blood Burning technique toward Cade Barret.
Cade, still reeling from her earlier ambush, stood battered, his robes stained with blood. His strength was spent, drained by his own use of the Blood Burning technique in their prior battle against a ninth-layer realm wraith. He barely raised his massive bronze shield in time, its surface scarred from countless clashes.
The moment Shirley’s delicate palm made contact, the sheer force of the impact sent Cade flying, blood spraying from his mouth.
Horror gripped him. Her control, power, and martial skill far surpassed the ninth-layer realm wraith they had fought earlier. Worse, Cade had recently used the Blood Burning technique himself, leaving him weakened and vulnerable.
"Too slow, Cade," Shirley purred, her voice a chilling blend of honey and venom. "Did you think your little shield could save you?"
A serpentine force slithered through the bronze, bypassing the metal’s defense. It coiled into Cade’s arm, cold and venomous, burrowing toward his heart and lungs. His body trembled, muscles seizing as the invasive energy tightened its grip. He gasped, clutching his chest, his face pale with dread.
Shirley didn’t slow down her attack. Her palms rained down like falling cherry petals, each strike hammering the bronze shield with terrifying precision. The air cracked with each impact, the ground trembling beneath her relentless assault. Her eyes, one gleaming with cruel intent, the other was skeleton socket and lifeless, locked onto Cade.
To her, among the three sect comrades before her, Lordi Payne was the greatest threat. NovelHub
Which meant Cade Barret and Ruru Rosa must die first in this death hunt.