Plans gone awry

*Plop*

A black spherical blob of some sort of dark matter landed a few feet away from Jin Wang and suddenly started expanding, swallowing everything inside. He jumped back while also dodging a sword that was coming straight for his head.

"God damn it, this would have been so much easier if we were allowed to kill them!"

"No sh*t sherlock!" Hao Xuan retorted through gritted teeth. He was bleeding from his forehead and there was a patch of clothes and skin missing from the left side of his abdomen, showing the bloody muscles underneath.

It looked like someone had actually pulled the skin off by sheer force, which was no small matter considering Hao Xuan's physique. Yet the strangest part was not that, but the fact that it wasn't healing at all.