It was the height of summer, heat blazing, yet the sunlight that reached this place turned strangely sinister.0

The black market ghost domain had become a vast, blurred silhouette, like some deep-sea shape glimpsed at the bottom of an ocean trench.0

Never mind ordinary folk, even powerful martial artists, at first sight of it, would feel as if a pale, icy hand had closed around their hearts, squeezing the breath from their lungs.0

Now that she had fused with the boar, Yan Yu’s beauty carried a darker, graver poise.0

The white of her face was no longer a ghastly pallor but a refined whiteness, as if brushed with a thick, expensive foundation. Her lips burned red like flames. Her hairpin was blacker than ever, its surface etched with obscure patterns.2

Most striking of all was her clothing. The once blue robe had become a floor-dragging black gown, upon which strange ghostly images drifted—icebergs, bronze mirrors, pools of blood, cages, and famished wretches crawling on their bellies, among other horrors. From afar it looked austere; up close, once the details resolved, it was terrifying.0

Li...0