Lin Ji'an stood amidst the swirling, dissipating ashes of the ancient Ghost Cultivator, her chest heaving with ragged, desperate gasps.
The Black Iron Spatula in her hand, usually a comfortable extension of her own arm, now felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.
The blazing, golden Yang fire that had wreathed the metal sputtered and died, leaving only the dull, blackened iron cooling rapidly in the damp morning air.
Ji'an desperately wanted to march right over to that crumbling rooftop and beat the living daylights out of the Blood Sovereign, Yan Lie, and then turn around and smack the ever-living pretense out of the Shadow Assassin, Mo Wuchen.
They had watched her fight for her life like it was a dinner theater performance.
But as the adrenaline, that potent, life-saving cocktail of fear and culinary rage, finally began to recede from her bloodstream, reality crashed down on her with the force of a falling mountain.
