While Lin Feng was enjoying the grand feast, surrounded by laughter, music, and endless streams of fine wine, someone else in a forgotten corner of the world was experiencing a fate far crueler than death.
The contrast could not have been greater.
One side celebrated life.
The other embraced corruption.
Hidden beneath the roots of an ancient mountain where no sunlight had shone for countless years, an eerie black mist twisted through the air.
The space itself seemed sick, as though reality instinctively rejected whatever had taken root there.
Every blade of grass had withered, every insect had fled, and even the earth had turned an unnatural shade of gray.
At the center of this desolate land stood a tiny sapling.
Its trunk was pitch-black, its branches crooked like skeletal fingers, and strange crimson veins pulsed beneath its bark as though blood still flowed within it.
It was no ordinary tree.
It was Shen Jue.
Or rather...
...what remained of Shen Jue.
