A hundred miles away from the Earth Fire Cave, deep within a hidden mountain ravine, the air was filled with a thick, strange odor of blood mixed with medicinal herbs.
The man in black who had fled in a sorry state outside the Earth Fire Cave was slumped on a damp rock, his mask tossed aside, revealing the pale, sinister, and pain-twisted face of a middle-aged man. The wound on his left shoulder had been crudely treated and slathered with a thick, pungent-smelling black ointment, but the grayish-white necrotic area around the wound was still slowly spreading, as if countless tiny insects were gnawing inside. Every heartbeat brought a wave of excruciating, twisting pain and weakness.
