Ren didn't hurry them.
After a week of blood and bone and sleepless nights beneath fungus-glow—after bone-tempering baths brewed from swamp beasts, after stolen spirit stones dissolved into their meridians, after Heretical God Force ran circles through their bodies until their muscles shook and then steadied—he simply let them walk.
The swamp thinned by inches.
Trees spread farther apart. The roots that had once twisted into a choking maze gave way to stretches of black, unmoving water broken by islands of packed, dark mud. Old stone began to appear—half-sunk pillars, fractured statues strangled in vines, broken slabs carved with witch-script so worn the lines were more memory than mark.
The corpse of a Divine Kingdom trying to remember itself.
Na Yi's steps grew quieter the farther they went.
At first, she had walked with the brittle alertness of prey—eyes everywhere, muscles tight, always half-ready to throw herself between danger and her sister. Now her body moved differently. Her gait had weight. Breath threaded through a new pattern, sinking into bone and marrow instead of skimming skin-deep. The key at her throat brushed her collarbone with every step; her hand rose to it again and again, thumb tracing the familiar grooves in the bone talisman.
Na Shui walked close at her side, shoulders square, jaw set. Her steps had the spring of a hunting cat that had finally grown into its own skeleton. The first layer of their modified Chaotic Virtues Combat Meridians had sunk into them completely; it had taught their flesh to remember force, storing the best of every movement as faint imprints in bone and marrow.
The sisters were still thin. They still wore tattered witch-robes and carried scars the swamp hadn't had time to erase.
But their bones finally matched their will.
Ren walked in front, hands tucked into his sleeves, as if they were just taking a stroll through some damp, ugly garden.
Outside, he looked like an easygoing young man traveling through a ruined land.
Inside, his Dao ran like a silent, bottomless river.
The Sorcerer Pagoda.
A man who had built a Divine Kingdom in the Southern Wilderness, watched it decline, and instead of turning his back, carved a road for his ruined descendants to climb again. Seventy-two smelting trial pagodas, each one a furnace. A path of seven hellish worlds stacked one atop another—blood, ghosts, beasts, slaves, mortals, divine envoys, samsara—each one designed to temper blood, soul, body, and Dao.
A fellow Dao seeker.
Ren's lips curved, faint and private.
"Ren," Na Yi said quietly.
He glanced back over his shoulder. "Mm?"
"There," she said.
Ahead, the swamp opened into a wide bowl of land. The last curtain of mist slid away like someone had lifted a veil.
The Sorcerer Holy Land lay revealed.
Broken stone pillars ringed a central plaza of black rock. Totems that had once towered into the sky now lay toppled, their carved faces half-buried in mud; moss and vines swallowed ancient features that generations had once knelt before. Faded witch-script crawled along the stones, fragments of prayers to a spiritual god who had shattered the void and left this land behind.
At the center, the Sorcerer Pagoda rose.
Vines crawled up its sides. Time had scarred its surface, chipped its edges, dulled its glow. But it still stood. Still reached. Layers of stone stacked upward in a steady rhythm, each floor bearing faint traces of the arrays that had once blazed like suns.
Even in ruin, it had presence.
The old paintings said the Sorcerer's Divine Kingdom had twelve suns. Here, only one hung weak and pale behind the swamp's haze—but for a heartbeat, Na Yi saw twelve afterimages overlap it in her mind, burning behind the silhouette of the tower.
Her fingers tightened around the key until bone edges dug into her palm.
"We're… here," Na Shui whispered.
Ren's gaze swept slowly across the plaza.
Dormant arrays still etched faint scars in space. The air here was heavier—not with poison, but with something older. Heaven and earth origin energy, once gathered and guided by a great Divine Kingdom, now pooled in broken channels like rainwater in cracked stone.
"Not bad," he said softly. "Even half-dead, it's still trying."
Na Yi took a breath that seemed to sink all the way into her dantian.
"Ren," she said again. "The outer pagoda has trials. For the Southern Wilderness… for the tribes. In the legends, one must pass the outer tests before they can touch Master's smelting trial."
Her voice was level, but her fingers curled tighter around the key.
"You telling me that," Ren asked, "because you're worried about the rules… or because you want to play with the outer trials first?"
Her lips moved. "…The rules," she admitted.
He smiled, eyes warming.
"Good. Rules matter."
Na Shui blinked, thrown. "They do?" she blurted.
"Sure." Ren stepped onto the first shattered stone of the plaza, the motion light and easy. "You just have to remember something important about them."
Na Shui almost forgot to breathe. "What?"
He stepped lightly over an old, cracked formation line, his cloak of neutral chaos sinking its presence deep until even the tower's faint, sleeping wards only brushed past him as if he were smoke.
"Rules are written by people stronger than you," he said. "And people stronger than you can change them."
The words landed in the sisters' bones harder than the echo of his step.
...
The outer tower still tried.
As they approached, faint light flickered along the pagoda's base. Ghostly runes stirred, dragging themselves awake to weave the echo of an array that had once tested Na tribe youths with illusions and small-scale dangers—walking through fire, crossing chains over an abyss of ghosts, resisting the lure of illusory beasts.
Now, without offerings or maintenance, the outer array was like a half-starved beast.
It fired on half its limbs.
A hazy phantom of a door shimmered into existence ahead, lines of witch-runes crawling lazily across it.
"Those chosen by the Sorcerer…" Na Yi murmured, half to herself, reading words she had once traced on temple walls with childish fingers.
Ren's eyes followed the curling essence once. His Immortal Soul Bone turned complexity into simplicity in an instant; the pattern of the array fell into his mind like a diagram drawn in clean ink.
"Na Yi," he said.
She straightened. "Yes?"
"Show me the key," he said. "Then we'll skip the outer tests."
Na Shui choked. "Skip…?"
Na Yi hesitated only a heartbeat.
Then she drew the bone talisman from beneath her tattered clothes.
It lay in her palm like a piece of their tribe's last heartbeat—smooth from generations of hands, the carved symbols faint but still clear. Its presence steadied her. This was the last proof that the Sorcerer had once looked at the Na Tribe and said, you.
Ren extended his hand, palm up.
"May I?" he asked.
Her fingers hovered over his hand for a breath.
She thought of how he had erased the Double Devils like they were rotted branches. How he had rebuilt their foundations from the ground up, stealing resources from their enemies without a flicker of shame. How he spoke of Divine Kingdoms and Dao as if talking about roads and weather.
Then she placed the key in his hand.
The moment bone touched skin, something stirred.
Not in the swamp.
Not in the pagoda.
In the space between.
A soft, ancient attention turned toward them.
Ren's soul sense brushed it. A contract beast's eye, opening for the first time in too long. The remnant will of a Divine Kingdom's guardian. An existence that had watched hopeful youths walk through these gates and far too few walk back out.
He smiled, the angle of his lips lazy, gaze tipping slightly aside—as if greeting a neighbor leaning on a fence.
"Yan Mo," he said lightly. "You've been asleep a long time."
The air shivered.
The half-formed outer door dissolved like mist under a gust of wind. In its place, space rippled and folded inward. The broken plaza, the toppled pillars, even the damp smell of the swamp fell away.
In their place stretched a gray-white expanse that smelled of nothing.
Na Yi and Na Shui stiffened.
An eye opened in the void.
It was enormous and crimson, a vertical pupil narrowing as it focused. There was no body, no face—only the eye, cold and ancient, ringed by faint runes that drifted like chains in invisible currents.
Martial World
Na Shui's breath hitched. She had seen that eye in childhood nightmares, painted on temple walls: the gaze of the Sorcerer's guardian who tested kings and devoured cowards.
"There is no need to fear," a voice echoed.
It was neither male nor female, neither near nor far—simply present, pressing against their bones.
"My name is Yan Mo. I live within the space between life and dreams. Twenty-nine thousand years ago, I was subdued by Master and became his contract beast, bound to guard these towers and his descendants."
Na Yi's throat bobbed.
She forced her knees not to bend.
"Yan Mo senior," she said hoarsely, bowing as best she could in emptiness. "I am Na Yi, daughter of the Na Tribe's last witch. This is my sister, Na Shui. Our tribe… has fallen. We bring Master's key."
She hesitated, then added, "And… him."
Ren still stood as if this was a casual conversation on a street.
He flipped the key once between his fingers, bone glinting faintly in the gray light.
"Ren Ming," he said easily. "Not of the Southern Wilderness. Not of your Master's bloodline. I've been teaching your descendants how to survive out there."
Yan Mo's pupil contracted slightly.
Origin energy that had slumbered for millennia stirred. Faint ripples brushed Ren's skin, tasting him—measuring bloodline, law, soul. Foreign. No Sorcerer mark. No Na blood.
"You are… not qualified," Yan Mo said slowly. "The Life and Death Smelting Trial exists for Master's descendants. For those who carry his blood and his karma. Outsiders may receive the sorcerer's tempering in the outer pagodas, but the inner world is not—"
Ren lifted his free hand, palm relaxed.
"You're right," he said. "Normally."
Yan Mo fell silent.
"But right now," Ren continued, "your 'descendants' number exactly two. Both had their foundations shattered by a cannibal tribe that plays with your Master's legacies like toys."
The gray space thickened.
Na Yi's fingers dug into her robe.
Ren's eyes didn't ice over, but something behind the easy gaze grew sharp. A sort of sharp—indifferent to status, irritated by rot.
"I've rebuilt their foundations," he said. "I've been feeding them on the blood and bones of the ones who defiled this land. I'm the one who brought them back here. If they walk into a life-and-death furnace, I'm going with them."
Yan Mo's pupil thinned into a line. "Do you believe yourself equal to Master?"
Ren chuckled.
"That'll be interesting," he said. "But today's not the day to go knock on the Realm of Gods' door. That's for later."
Na Shui made a tiny noise. She wasn't sure if it was fear or a hysterical laugh.
Na Yi's mouth twitched despite the pressure in the air.
Ren's smile turned lazy again, almost teasing.
"I'm greedy," he said. "I can't just sit outside while my cute disciples walk into a furnace that can kill them. I at least have to stand in the fire with them. Otherwise, what kind of master would I be?"
Na Shui's ears burned at "cute". She wanted to protest that she was a witch of the Southern Wilderness, not some little girl—but her tongue felt stuck.
Na Yi's lashes trembled once.
Invisible currents shifted.
Soul force drawn from an artifact older than most nations brushed Ren's sea of consciousness. Yan Mo probed without violence—no tearing, no brute-force intrusion. Just a drift of dream-scented mist, seeking the shape of his will, the pattern of his meridians, the depth of his true essence.
Ren didn't block it.
He parted the cloak of neutral chaos wrapped around his soul, just a crack.
Only Yan Mo saw.
For a heartbeat, the guardian was no longer looking at a relaxed youth in travel-worn clothes.
He was staring into a sky.
Twelve palaces hung there like worlds—each one something denser and more terrifying than any Fate Palace that ever formed in this continent's heavens. They were not built from a single life's accumulation, but from stacked destinies, intertwined Daos, memories of different universes. Every "palace" was a compressed universe of force, its walls etched with runes this realm's language could not name. Some slept behind veils of chaos. Some glowed quietly. Each subtle pulse made the laws of this small space shiver.
Yan Mo's dream-body trembled.
This…
This was not something the lower realms were meant to contain. Not something that should fit inside a "Body Transformation" martial artist.
His probe brushed the outermost layer of that sky and brushed against something heavy—an Immortal Physique whose very concept was weight, time dragged thick, suppression woven into every cell. A body that, when complete, would crush worlds simply by existing.
Ren let him feel exactly that much.
Then the crack in his inner heavens closed.
The lazy, smiling young man stood before him again, key flipping idly between his fingers.
Yan Mo was silent for a long time.
Na Yi and Na Shui did not dare breathe too loudly.
"…You are not a junior the Southern Wilderness can measure," Yan Mo whispered at last.
Ren's smile grew faintly deeper. "Simplest way to put it," he said. "But for right now, let the three of us enter your Master's smelting trial. Bind the rules to us together. They'll fight their own fights. I'll keep them alive long enough to turn that key into something your Master wouldn't be ashamed of."
Na Yi's throat tightened.
Na Shui's eyes stung.
Yan Mo's gaze turned fully to the sisters.
He saw their witch bloodline—thin, but stubborn. He saw the faint scars in their bones from years of hunger and rushed cultivation, now overwritten into cleaner patterns. He saw the imprint of a body art woven through their meridians, one that made his ancient instincts twitch: a modified path that borrowed faint harmonies from something very much like the Hell Suppressing Immortal Physique without trying to imitate it directly.
Ren Ming Martial disciples
Above all, he saw the way their eyes did not flinch.
They had walked into the swamp knowing they might die. They had chosen to let this foreign monster tear apart their foundations and rebuild them. Their eyes weren't fearless—only fools had no fear—but they had chosen to walk forward anyway.
They were very much like Master's people.
"…Very well," Yan Mo said quietly. "In Master's time, the Sorcerer Pagodas were the gates to a Divine Kingdom. Those who wished to become kings of the Southern Wilderness had to walk this path. If Master were still here, I believe… he would not object to a monster standing beside his descendants in the fire."
The world twisted.
The gray emptiness collapsed inward, converging into a single point of crimson.
Space peeled back.
The Sorcerer Pagoda's base loomed once more—but now, the broken outer formations lay behind them. Before them, a door of pure light rose from the stone, filled with swirling runes and the faint shadows of seven different worlds stacked one atop another.
"Na Yi, Na Shui," Yan Mo said solemnly. "With the key in your hand, you open the gate. With your lives, you walk the road. There is no false death here. If you cannot withstand the trials, you may admit defeat and be expelled. But if you cling to pride past your limit… you will die."
Na Yi stepped forward.
Her hand trembled once, then steadied.
She took the key from Ren's palm, lifted it, and pressed it into the door of light.
The bone talisman dissolved, its substance melting into runes that sank into the gate like rain into thirsty soil.
Light flared.
Ren's voice brushed her ear, gentle and amused.
"Last chance to turn back," he murmured.
She turned, meeting his eyes.
A small, fierce smile curved her lips. In that moment, Ren saw the shadow of the girl who had once knelt before a burning temple and sworn, through smoke and tears, to keep walking until her legs broke.
"We already stepped onto your road," she said softly. "If we turn back now, wouldn't that be more shameful than dying?"
Na Shui swallowed hard and nodded. "I… I'll go wherever Sister goes," she muttered.
Ren's grin flashed, bright and warm.
"Good girls," he said. "Let's go get cooked."
...
The first step dropped them into hell.
Not storybook hell of flames and pitchforks.
A hell of blood.
The ground was black-red sludge that clung to their boots like half-coagulated gore. A crimson sky pressed low overhead, clouds churning sluggishly as if the heavens themselves were congealing. Hills and pillars of thickened blood jutted from the earth, pulsing faintly, every beat sending a sluggish wave through the field.
The stench of iron crawled into their noses and would not leave.
Na Shui gagged once before clamping her mouth shut. Na Yi forced her breath steady, witch's instincts spreading her senses outward.
The moment their feet touched the ground, the world reacted.
The "blood" around them heaved.
Shapes clawed their way up—misshapen humanoid forms sculpted from clotted gore, eyes hollow pits, mouths packed with jagged bone shards. They weren't living creatures. They were condensed blood vitality given crude shape and a single instinct: tear, crush, devour.
"Blood Demons," Na Yi breathed.
Ren nodded, hands still tucked in his sleeves.
"First trial tempers blood and qi," he said calmly. "Let it wash through your flesh and marrow. You two are up."
Na Shui stared at him. "You're not…?"
His smile didn't waver.
"If I take the front," he said, "you'll learn less in an hour than you did wrestling swamp crocodiles. I'm here to make sure Hell doesn't cheat. Everything else is yours."
Na Shui's stomach knotted.
Then she felt it—the hum in her bones, rewritten over the last week. The clean coil of her muscles, re-knit under Chaotic Virtues' revised patterns. The first level of Heretical God Force resting in her spiritual sea like a slow-turning ring, not roaring, but pulsing with a steady rhythm, ready to flood her body with power through carefully shaped "spirals" instead of wild, tearing surges.
Ren Ming Martial disciples
She glanced at Na Yi.
Na Yi nodded once, eyes sharpening.
"Left flank," she said quietly. "Sister?"
Na Shui's fingers tightened around her bone knife until the hilt creaked. "Right," she said.
The Blood Demons lurched forward.
The world narrowed to motion and impact.
Na Yi stepped into the first demon's swing, not away from it. Her foot dug into the bloody ground, weight dropping down the line Ren had hammered into them again and again—spine straight, hips aligned, force traveling clean from heel to fist. Her punch slammed into its chest.
Wet, cracking sound.
Condensed blood vitality buckled. The demon's torso caved inward and exploded into a spray of scarlet.
The scattered blood wasn't just filth—it was energy.
It surged toward her, trying to force itself through her pores, mouth, eyes, ears, every opening.
Heretical God Force stirred.
The ring in her spiritual sea spun faster, grinding that raw force, stripping away madness and rot, sending the refined essence along the new meridian map etched into her body. Pain speared her bones, sharp and hot, as if molten iron had been poured into her marrow.
It hurt.
But it was clean hurt.
Na Shui's knife carved through another demon's neck in a vicious arc.
The blade hissed as blood vitality surged up it like a hungry snake, biting at her hand. The body art Ren had wired into her skeleton drank that power instead, sending it into her forearms, shoulders, chest. Her heart hammered, each beat heavy, each pulse shoving refined strength into limbs that had never known this kind of fullness.
They moved like they had in the swamp—only now, every strike landed with twice the weight. Every dodge felt smoother, as if the world's resistance itself had thickened into something they could grip.
Na Yi ducked under a wild swing, letting it skim past her shoulder. Her fist shot up, twisted, and hammered into a Blood Demon's elbow joint. It folded, arm separating in a spray. She pivoted, let strength roll through her waist, and used her bare foot to shatter its knee.
Blood exploded again.
Her skin flushed as more vitality sank in, Heretical God Force greedily refining it. The modified art looped waste heat back into the cycle, turning even imperfect motion into incremental gain.
Na Shui's style was messier, wilder, but the new foundation beneath it was just as solid.
She darted between two demons, knife flashing, carving their tendons and joint-lines the way Ren had taught her—attacking structure, not flesh. One overextended; she twisted, shoulder grinding under the weight, and slammed her knee into its spine. The demon's body arched, snapped, and fell apart into thick slurry.
Its blood tried to climb her.
The Modified Chaotic Virtues pattern in her bones answered. Every tendon vibrated with a faint resonance borrowed from Ren's own Heaven; that vibration repelled impurities, her body method devouring whatever was useful and pushing the rest away.
They fought.
Blood Demons rose from the ground in an unending tide. Every time they thinned, more bubbled up from the red sludge, shrieking soundlessly with hollow mouths.
The sky seemed to drop lower, pressing on them like a great, bloody palm.
At the edge of the battlefield, Ren stood with his hands in his sleeves.
He did not move much.
A faint Ashura Intent leaked from him, a subtle field of killing will tempered across two worlds. It sank into the ground around him and warped the rules. Blood Demons that wandered too close to his "back line" simply… failed to form. Their bodies sagged, collapsing back into formless blood as the killing instinct that animated them was snipped away at the root, dissected into harmless fragments.
The sisters never saw the demons that died like that.
They only saw the ones screaming toward them.
Time blurred.
How long had they been fighting? An incense stick? An hour? More?
Their breathing grew rough, shoulders burning, knuckles split and bleeding. Na Yi's hands were a ruin of cracked skin and smeared blood—not all of it hers. Na Shui's arms shook every time she lifted her knife; muscles twitched from overuse and fierce tempering.
But their blood…
Their blood felt like it had changed.
It roared, thick and hot, drumming through veins with a vigor they had never known. Every heartbeat was a hammer on an anvil. Their skin flushed a faint healthy red; old chill from years of malnutrition melted out of their bones, replaced by a steady, furnace-like warmth.
A larger Blood Demon surged from the sludge ahead—twice as tall as the others, body denser, eyes burning with a brighter, almost conscious hunger. It barreled toward Na Shui, arms widening, intending to wrap her in a suffocating embrace and crush her bones into paste.
Na Shui's legs wobbled.
She gritted her teeth.
Ren didn't move.
For a split second, fear flashed in her eyes.
Then a witch-child's stubbornness rose.
She stepped in.
Her foot slammed into the ground; the freshly tempered bones in her legs rang, transmitting force up her spine. Heretical God Force flared, the governor in Ren's modified version catching the surge before it tore anything, curling it into spirals that wrapped around her muscles like tightening bands.
She twisted her hips and drove her shoulder into the Blood Demon's chest, knife punching forward like a spear.
Impact.
Her entire body screamed.
The demon's torso dented inward, then burst like a rotten wineskin. Blood exploded in a tidal wave, crashing over her head, filling her mouth, eyes, nose with metallic reek. For a heartbeat she felt like she was drowning in molten iron.
Then the trial's law moved.
The hellish blood turned to force as it tried to invade her. Her cultivated patterns latched onto it, devouring, refining, forcing it down channels that had been groomed under fungus-glow nights and Ren's patient, merciless corrections.
Her scream turned into a low, ragged exhale.
"…again," she muttered.
Na Yi's laughter was a breathless huff between punches.
They kept going until their bodies flirted with collapse.
Only then did the Hell world finally shudder.
The coagulated hills sagged, melting in slow-motion. The bloody pillars sloughed apart. The crimson sky dimmed, then folded inward. Ahead, a door of scarlet light opened, its radiance painting their sweat and blood-smeared faces in eerie glow.
Na Shui blinked dazedly. "We… we passed?"
Ren flicked a spot of blood from his sleeve with a small, idle motion.
"First layer," he said. "Good work. You didn't flinch, and you didn't waste what you killed."
Na Shui blinked again.
Then her face went red as the implication sank in.
"D-Don't say it like I'm some kind of… slaughter pig," she muttered.
Ren laughed, low and warm.
"You're a witch of the Sorcerer's line," he said. "Even in hell, you eat what comes to you. That's something to be proud of."
Na Shui's ears turned even redder.
Na Yi exhaled slowly, senses turning inward for a moment. Her blood felt like molten metal slowly cooling into a stronger lattice. The faint tremors in her arms were not only exhaustion, but the ache of bones and marrow stepping into a new level of strength.
"…Forward," she said.
Ren's eyes softened.
"That's my girl," he murmured.
They stepped through the gate.
...
The second world was cold.
Not in temperature—the air here was a stagnant, lukewarm gray—but in feeling.
They stood on a barren plain under a colorless sky. No wind touched their faces. No sound reached their ears. The ground was a dull, lifeless gray, cracked in long, ragged lines like dry, ancient bone.
For a heartbeat, there was only silence.
Then the wails began.
They rose without warning, from every direction at once—thin, hungry shrieks that seemed to claw directly at the soul instead of the ear. The ground split, fissures yawning open like black mouths.
Pale figures floated up.
They had human shapes, but their bodies were translucent, edges tattered like old paper. Their eyes were empty pits. When they opened their mouths, no breath came out—only suction, a terrible pull that reached for Na Yi and Na Shui's spiritual seas, trying to drag their souls free of their flesh.
"Hungry Ghosts," Na Yi whispered, face paling.
Physical blows would pass through them. Only soul force could hurt them.
Na Shui's throat went dry.
In the old days, her soul had been nothing worth mentioning. She had barely dared to use witch spells that taxed it; after a single heavy ritual she would shake for days, eyes aching, head pounding.
But now…
Now it felt different.
Ren's "veil" over their souls during training, that Calm–Steady–Still pattern he'd draped into their spiritual seas to stop panic from spreading, had long since been withdrawn. But the habit remained. Their souls had learned not to ripple wildly at the first touch of fear. Their week of body training had also carried with it a subtle tempering of will, each moment of pain endured etching thicker lines into their Dao Hearts.
Ren watched the rising ghosts, then glanced at the sisters.
"Second trial is for your souls," he said. "They'll try to bite into your spiritual seas and gorge on your fear. If you let them, they'll hollow you out. So don't."
Na Shui stared at him. "That's your big, profound guidance?" she croaked.
Na Yi's lips twitched despite the tension.
Ren's smile flashed.
"I'll anchor your souls so you don't get dragged out of your bodies," he said, voice turning gentler. "But the actual killing… that's on you two. The more you fight using soul force, the thicker your souls get. Think of it as…"
He tilted his head, searching for a modern phrase, then shrugged.
"…weight training for your spirits."
He looked around the gray plain, eyes narrowing just a fraction.
"And this," he added under his breath, "is a good place to do some reading."
In the Magic Cube's depths, Mo Eversnow's presence stirred, cool and curious.
Again? she thought silently.
Ren walked a short distance away, boots whispering over dead earth, until the first wave of Hungry Ghosts began to swarm toward him.
Then his Ashura Intent flickered.
Invisible killing will seeped into the surrounding space, drawing a circle around him. Within that circle, the trial's laws warped just enough that the ghosts found no purchase—like oil repelling water. The phantoms howled and steered away, their empty eyes sliding past him as if he were a blind spot in reality. They rushed instead toward the sisters, drawn like starving dogs to the weaker souls.
"Ren!" Na Shui squeaked as the first wave barreled down on her.
He didn't look back.
"Trust me," he said. "I won't let them eat you. Na Yi, lead. Shui, follow. Use sorcery as spears, not crutches."
Then, right there in the center of Hungry Ghost hell, surrounded by wailing phantoms desperate to chew on anything warm and living, Ren Ming folded his legs and sat down.
He closed his eyes.
His breathing slowed.