The crater in the center of the white granite courtyard smoked with dark, sulfurous heat.
Su Rou crouched inside the pit like a rabid beast, her left hand dug into the stone while her massive, six foot right arm, covered in thick black scales and crimson talons, flexed its corded muscles with a sickening, wet crunch.
The four foot barbed black bone blade extending from her wrist crackled with waves of necrotic red fire, casting long, grotesque shadows across the ruined library steps.
"Did you truly believe you could strip my dignity away and leave me in the mud, Ye Chen?" Su Rou shrieked, her voice layered with an unholy, double tonal demonic pitch that echoed through the stone arches. "Look at what I have become! Look at the divine body the Blood Abyss granted me!"
Ye Chen stood five
