Chapter 182: Ascent
Murong Xiaoya's face was without expression. She raised her hand slightly, and the scarlet molten iron pooled on the cavern floor from the melted chains rose up into a fire serpent, which slammed into the sealed stone door with a roaring wave of scorching heat.
With a thunderous crash, the stone door was reduced to powder in an instant, and the scarlet fire serpent continued surging through the opening beyond.
The blazing light it gave off illuminated the space behind the door completely.
From where she stood in the cavern, Murong Xiaoya could now see a cast iron punishment rack suspended in the air by chains, its frame crawling with dark red rust, and locked upon it was a single person.
That person was none other than Murong Xiaoya's eldest brother.
Her eldest brother had committed a grave transgression in the past, for which Murong Hong had punished him with imprisonment in a dungeon. She had not seen him in years, and never could she have imagined that when they met again it would be here.
Murong Xiaoya's form became a stream of flame and appeared before the rack in an instant, her gaze fixed on the figure before her.
His body was covered in wounds. Beneath his skin, masses of bulging tumors shifted and moved, surging up toward his throat at one moment like fists-sized spiders, then crawling through the flesh beneath his skin the next like centipedes.
Murong Xiaoya could sense clearly that within his body there were simultaneously dozens of powerful and foreign martial True Qi currents, crashing through him endlessly in every direction.