Chapter 489: Shadow-Eating Rumor

The candle flames in the frontier inn suddenly turned a ghostly green. The storyteller was just saying, "The ancient demon's pupils were like blood moons," when the copper bells on the eaves rang without wind, casting serpent-shaped shadows on the ground. Ripples spread across Ao Li's teacup, and the water's surface reflected the waiter behind the counter—that man had no shadow.

**1. The Living Rumor**

When the first refugee rushed through the city gate shouting, "The ground is seeping black blood," the guards noticed his footprints were glowing. Lín Jìn used his sword tip to lift the soil; fluorescent mycelium was growing wildly along the refugee's path, forming a bizarre Zhengtong that perfectly matched the rumor. Even more terrifying, all who had heard this rumor found their shadows growing scales.

"This isn't ordinary rumor-spreading." Ao Li severed the fluorescent vines coiled around the tavern banner; black mist sprayed from the cut and condensed into small characters: For every thousand people's fear, the gate to Shenyuan grows one foot. The jade pendant at her waist suddenly grew hot, fine sand seeping from its cracks, and between the grains of sand flashed the moment when the Lingxiao Pavilion messenger was replaced by his own reflection.

**2. The Twin Messengers**

The golden-winged bird sent to Dragon Island departed at dawn but returned at noon carrying night dew. When it spat out the Transmission Jade Slip, frost covered the slip's surface—that was the black ice unique to Dragon Island's waters. Lín Jìn crushed the frost, and within the ice shards was reflected an "Ao Li" writing a reply, with nine Crystal Coffins floating behind her.

"Our outgoing messages are being tampered with." Ao Li swung her sword at the transmission array; the array's runes suddenly flipped into a Burial Coffin Sacrifice Zhengtong. From the Array Eye emerged half of Shen Mo's mirror image; he smiled and dissolved into thousands of fluorescent centipedes, each insect's back engraved with a different rumor.

**3. Reflection Indoctrination**

Beneath the podium for calming the masses, an old woman's reflection was gnawing on its own fingers. When Ao Li displayed the purified soil, all the listeners' reflections simultaneously raised their hands to cover their ears, and the real people on the ground truly began to bleed from their seven orifices. "Don't look at your feet!" Lín Jìn flung out his pocket watch; in the frozen time, countless fluorescent mycelium could be seen connecting people to their own shadows.

They eventually burned down the podium, but the ashes pieced together a border map, with the marked locations exactly where the new Soul-Calming Towers were built. That night, the reflections of those towers rose from underground, their bodies carved with rumor texts, every character seeping black blood.

**4. Mirror Abyss Broadcast**

When Lingxiao Pavilion used the Sky-Gazing Mirror to project rumor-dispelling images, a serpent-shaped Zhengtong quietly appeared on the back of the bronze mirror. The watching disciples suddenly recited in unison the prayers from the Dark Altar three days prior; fluorescent vines writhed under the skin on the backs of their necks. Elder Xuanjing's golden thread cut through the vines, but what fell was not blood—it was solidified black mirror fragments.

Ao Li's sword suddenly unsheathed itself and carved a rumor-dispelling proclamation on the city wall. But in the shadow of every character lurked an inverted curse; when the sunlight shifted, the entire wall turned into a living imprint of the rumor. Most lethal of all, everyone who touched the wall began to have their nightmares materialize into fluorescent monsters.

**End. The Taste of Fear**

When the seventh village vanished entirely, leaving only its reflections, Lín Jìn saw the truth in his pocket watch: those villagers were being dragged into the Mirror Abyss by fluorescent vines, becoming living candles for the rumor altar. Ao Li's jade pendant shattered completely, revealing the Dragon Soul Pearl at its core—on the Inverse Scale of the black dragon sealed within the pearl, a countdown of nine stars in a line was emerging.

They finally received a genuine urgent report from Lingxiao Pavilion: all their rumor-dispelling actions had instead increased the rate of Shenyuan's gate materialization tenfold. At the end of the letter, Pavilion Master Xuanfeng's handwriting suddenly twisted into serpent-shaped runes, writing the most terrifying truth: "Fear is the key, and you yourselves have forged the keyhole." At that moment, the bell tolled for the third quarter of the hour, and all the shadows in the entire frontier simultaneously stood up, beginning to recite the original rumor in people's voices.