Radeon was immune to the soul mist. He stood in the ghastly cloud and watched bodies sway and fall like cut grass.

He knew some were still in danger, not from him, but from what came after the mountain's fog.

He moved among them with fast hard steps and read their faces the way he read qi.

Those who had not offended him. Those who carried no malice toward him. Those were the ones he pulled.

He grabbed wrists and collars and dragged them out one by one, hauling them beyond the fog line until their eyes cleared and their lungs remembered how to breathe.

The living clung to him in panic. Relatives screamed names. Sect members shouted orders. Masters and elders frowned from the outside, helpless at the edge of what they could not enter.

Radeon read the threads with Myridion Seersight. Lines of intent. Lines of fear. Lines of bond.

He caught those threads and threw them toward their rightful directions, steering people by their ties.

A son to his mother. A disciple to his sect. A wounded elder to the hands that would not drop him.

He showed only half his visage within the smoke. Just enough for rumor. Just enough for witnesses.

He took advantage of the situation while he made a name for himself. Soon the deed was visible. Not whispered. Seen.

By the time the sky had turned fully black it was almost midnight. More than a couple thousand had been pulled out.

The mountain had cleared of most living strangers. What remained near Radeon were Fay, his three nominal disciples, Good Chip, Gauge Point, and Spice Cure, along with the miners who had gambled everything on him.

Radeon panted hard. He had done the labor himself. Arms heavy. Breath tight.

Then a gong tolled. The sound rolled across the Goldkeep Crownmarkets. Almost every denizen's body trembled. For a heartbeat their souls felt tugged, drawn toward something vast, then released.

Radeon looked up. Five massive lights shot into the sky from the core empires within Goldkeep Crownmarkets.

Their spiritual senses swept hundreds of miles. Then, after probing, the lights vanished.

Radeon read the tolling at once. No killing intent. It was a solemn ritual being held.

Still, he understood what it meant. Highhanded methods drew interest and ire.

He put the thought away for later. The ground cracked below. Tiyanak and Preta burst up from the earth like rotten seeds sprouting.

They surged toward the dead and began to devour. Small mouths. Long tongues.

Radeon watched them approach the miners. None of his people were harmed. Not the miners. Not his wolves.

The ghosts ate only those who had not truly joined the ritual from start to end.

Two of them stood unmarked, health at its peak. Radeon had deliberately left them out. He wanted to see what ghost instinct would do.

Two Preta surged forward and gulped the two men down with gusto.

Teeth clicked over flesh, then worried bone free and sucked the marrow with a loud slurp.

Radeon watched without blinking.

When the last smear of red was gone, Radeon let his ghost form slip free from his body.

Not wearing a skin. Not stealing a mind. Something different. Eldritch Legion Supremacy Arts.

A method he had created after watching trinity upon trinity. Daoist Trinity.

Then another supreme trinity that used god, son, and faith spirit to multiply itself.

Radeon's method was colder. It could spread without end. Infinity in theory.

In practice, his soul was strong, yet damaged from prolonged travel through the Null Zone.

For now, he was limited to two. That was why he had chosen a ghost body to incarnate. It felt in line with his devouring arts.

As he shifted, the ghosts prostrated. They bowed like worshipers. It was not love. It was physiology.

This was a Bridled Voracity Physique, a mutation among wraiths. A body that did not hunger the way theirs did.

It was only wielded by those not burdened by sin. People called such beings pitiful, an error of heaven.

Radeon thought differently. Maybe they were born wrong and paid less in one place because heaven had compensated them in another.

Endless eating. Endless taking. Like the crystal brain that sometimes appeared in meridian crippled individuals, a cruel gift made useful.

"Stand," Radeon boomed.

His words were in the language of ghosts. The sound settled over the Tiyanak and Preta like a chain. They rose.

Radeon beckoned the one at the forefront, the highest rank, the first Preta they had met.

"What is your name?" Radeon asked.

The ghost opened its mouth to speak and its face soured, as if something inside it fought the act of naming.

Eldritch craft residue. Existence erasure. A hook in its mind to forget oneself. It roared, then forced the syllables out anyway.

"Ca. Ca. Ca. Li. Li. Lyx," the wraith said with great difficulty. Yet it grinned at him after, pleased with itself.

Radeon felt its aura weaken with the effort. He raised a hand. The Preta stilled and stood down.

Radeon drew his sword and a bundle of needles. The other Preta drifted closer, curious, tongues tasting the air.

At his gesture the ghosts pressed in around him. Not in lines like humans, not with space and manners.

They squished themselves together until it became one tight heaving mass.

From a distance it would have looked like a mound of flesh rising from the slope.

Radeon did not mind. Order was a luxury for the living.

"Come close, everyone," he said in ghost tongue, and the mound tightened.

He pointed the sword tip at Ca Li Lyx's brow and held a needle up between two fingers so they could all see it.

"I will be extracting something from his brain. Once it comes out, you all will need to seal it."

He let that settle. The ghosts leaned in, hungry for whatever might spill.

"Who knows sealing arts" Radeon asked.

Wails answered him. Chest pats. Teeth clicking. The noises of a crowd trying to be chosen. Radeon's eyes swept over them.

"Those who know sealing arts, share your techniques to all."

The mound stirred in surprise. They had not expected him to know to ask that. Ghosts hoarded tricks.

Yet his command sat on them like a weight. They did not delay.

Those who knew the art broke off pieces of themselves and handed them out.

Eyes were offered. Arms. Bone shards. Veins pulled loose like cords.

The arts came easy if the other party allowed it.

They swapped parts with those whose bodies could accept them, fitting technique into ghastly flesh.

If a mortal man ever saw such a spectacle, his mind might go blank and his heart will surely give from fright.

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