Outside the Sword Pool, in the small pavilion.
The two ancestral tablets that once gleamed with golden light had now gone utterly dim, silent as though death itself had claimed them.
The leading Taoist wanted to touch them, but just as the thought arose, the tablets crumbled into dust.
The faces of the gathered Taoists turned ashen, lifeless as corpses.
The bodies of those who had slit their own throats, sacrificing their lives to summon an Immortal into the mortal realm, still lay there. Blood pooled, stinging the eyes. They had died—but died in vain.
"This... shouldn't have happened... it shouldn't have..."
The three blood-soaked red and yellow robes trembled. The oldest Taoist's dilated pupils seemed on the verge of collapse.
"Wu Buxu... has awakened?"
His voice was soft, yet it weighed a thousand jun. The entire pavilion seemed to sink under the weight of his words.
No one dared to respond.
The awakening of Wu Buxu heralded the imminent collapse of the Sword Pool.
