Chapter 1329: Nine Great Evils
Yet the arrivals did not stop at six. On the sea to the left of the crowd, maple trees suddenly sprouted one after another. Within moments, an area a hundred li across was covered in lush maple forest.
The leaves shifted from mid-green to dark green, then from dark green to yellow, from yellow to orange, and from orange to scarlet.
In an instant, the entire sea became a sea of crimson maples.
The moment the leaves turned red, gorgeous yellow flowers began to bloom in the gaps between the trees. Yellow blossoms spread across the whole red maple wood.
Flowers growing on the sea, red leaves filling the forest, scarlet and gold interwoven. It was both beautiful and deeply eerie.
“The Doom Ghostess!” The instant Lin Xiao saw this scene, he knew who had come.
While Lin Xiao and the others stared in shock, a howling wind rose. High in the sky to their side, flocks of swallows streaked past.
At the same time, red maple leaves began to fall and yellow flowers withered.
Amid the dancing leaves and petals on the sea, a woman in white appeared.
Her back was turned to everyone. She was tall and slender, her hair drifting like flying willow in the autumn wind. Red leaves and yellow blossoms settled constantly upon her.
The instant the white-clothed woman appeared, the entire world seemed to grow desolate and mournful.
Rumble!
Thunder rolled. Torrential rain suddenly poured from the night sky. The swallows in the air, the maple trees, the yellow flowers, all were struck down and turned into corpses and skeletons that floated layer upon layer on the water.
The tall woman in white stepped slowly across the mound of white bones. Fresh blood suddenly flowed from the top of her head, dyeing her entire body crimson.
Most people had never seen the Ghostess before and were filled with terror. The sight of her standing atop a pile of bones with blood streaming down was simply horrifying.
Even Lin Xiao, who had encountered her twice, felt a chill in his heart.
This time, however, he noticed a difference: the Ghostess made no sound at all.
Perhaps because she was not attacking them.
Lin Xiao could not help wondering whether the Ghostess he saw today was the same as the one before. Last time it had been Chao Rong’er. This time he did not know if it was still her.
He also wondered whether Chao Rong’er had become another Ghostess, or whether the real Ghostess had seized or fused with her body.
But that was no longer something he could know. Probably only the Ghostess herself understood the truth.
After the Ghostess appeared, movement came again from the horizon to the right of the crowd.
Sizzle! Sizzle! Sizzle!
In their line of sight, a vast white mass rapidly approached across the sea.
Soon they saw clearly: it was an army of skeletons marching swiftly over the water.
At the very front stood a humanoid skeleton taller than the rest, wielding a rusted purple-gold spear.
Behind it were two orderly rows: the first contained ten ordinary skeletons, the second over a hundred.
They stood in precise formation, leading the great army behind them.
The rear ranks held hundreds, perhaps thousands, of skeletons arranged in perfect blocks. The total number of skeletons probably exceeded a hundred thousand.
Clearly this was a hundred-thousand-strong skeleton army.
Shock filled Lin Xiao’s eyes.
He had thought that the ten-thousand-strong skeleton force he obtained in Evil Valley was the greatest power within that place.
He had never imagined there could be a hundred thousand.
For a moment his gaze shone. If he could take control of this hundred-thousand-strong army…
He quickly suppressed the thought.
There was a world of difference between ten thousand and a hundred thousand. The strength of their commander was surely on another level entirely.
The leader of a hundred-thousand-strong army probably possessed Martial Saint-level battle power. Together with the army itself, any attempt by Lin Xiao to seize control would be extremely dangerous.
Moreover, if he provoked one side, the other great evils might all attack together. Even Long Tutian would probably be blasted into dust.
Now there were already eight great evils.
The sight of the hundred-thousand skeleton army deepened the chill in everyone’s hearts.
Some people even felt the urge to flee.
With so many anomalies appearing, could they really continue watching safely?
Ji Lian’s face twitched with anger. Lin Xiao had used a ten-thousand-strong skeleton army to destroy a branch of the Ji family. Only a few people here knew that.
Sizzle! Sizzle!
Just when everyone thought eight great evils was the limit and things would stop, another force appeared on the side horizon.
This time it was a mass of pitch-black shadows advancing slowly across the sea.
Their pace was unhurried, yet their speed was astonishing. Soon they marched into full view.
They were human-shaped shadows, complete in form but without substance, mere silhouettes. There were over ten thousand of them.
In the centre of the shadow host stood a long wooden pole over a hundred zhang in length. Every zhang along its length a shadow carried it on its shoulder. More than a hundred shadows bore it forward.
And that was not all. Beneath the vertical pole, between every pair of carriers, horizontal poles a hundred zhang long were also carried. There were over a hundred such ranks, each borne by more shadows.
The entire host of over ten thousand shadows did nothing but carry these poles.
Everyone stared in horror at the very centre of the vertical pole. There, bound by special black cords, hung a single object.
It was a heart.
A black heart, fully one zhang across.
Yet to a host of over ten thousand shadows, a heart only one zhang in size seemed insignificant.
That ten thousand shadows were needed simply to bear one heart was proof enough of how extraordinary that heart was.
No one knew how heavy that black heart truly was.
The sight caused every hair on the onlookers’ bodies to stand on end. Dread reached its peak.
In this place they had now witnessed every kind of horror imaginable.
A giant tree imprisoning an incomplete demon, a thousand-zhang man-eating flower, a sea beast that brought an entire ocean with it, a bizarre city filled with identical faces, a hundred-thousand-strong skeleton army, a thousand-zhang flying Buddha statue, a ghost-like woman, and now shadows carrying a heart.
The only thing that could be considered relatively normal was the countless spirit beasts of the beast tide.
Nine great evils had now appeared. The spectacle was utterly majestic.
Everyone knew that something monumental was about to happen here.
Yet no matter how they racked their brains, none could imagine what event could draw all these anomalies to gather in one place.
At this moment the three great factions secretly regretted not bringing their sect masters, clan heads, and supreme leaders.
With such a terrifying line-up, three first-level Martial Saints were probably far from enough to cope.
