The sky above the frontier plains churned like a wounded beast. Clouds, swollen with dust rather than rain, drifted low enough to scrape the tops of jagged hills. Beneath that oppressive canopy, Li Wei soared on Pei Wong's magical carpet, its woven sigils shimmering azure with every pulse of qi he fed into it.
He had been flying since dawn.
Below him, scorched villages littered the landscape like tombstones as roofs randomly collapsed, fields lay trampled, homes gutted burned. The Blood Lotus cultists had left nothing alive except a message itself.
Li Wei's brows knitted as he surveyed another skeleton of a settlement. 'All this ruin… simply because no one came to their aid.' He tightened his grip on the carpet's tassels. 'When the tiger sleeps, the wolves dance on his eyelids. The officials let these villages fend for themselves, it is no wonder devils now walk freely.'
