The heavy scent of scorched blood hung over the broken cages as the freed mortal miners scrambled through the sulfur brush, guided toward the limestone cave by Officer Shen and the surviving patrolmen.
Senior Brother Bai did not follow them.
He stood at the edge of the excavation trench, his boots planted into the gray clay, his broad law sword resting point-down against the mud as he watched Ye Chen wipe his bloodstained hands on a rag.
"You cannot walk away from this trench as a free man, Ye Chen," Bai said, his voice trembling with a mixture of horror and grim determination. "I saw what woke up behind your eyes when you tore those iron bars apart. That was not the martial technique of an outer peak disciple. That was the unbridled s*******r of an abyssal fiend."
Ye Chen threw the so
