Chapter 197 - 116: This Zombie is Really Hot
Zombies. Once they reach Tier Seven, they gain sentience.
At Tier Nine, they can be called a King.
Jiang Mu really felt like cursing right now.
’What kind of godforsaken death trap is this White Deer Peak? How can it be hiding so many Great Demons? First, there was the Tier Eight blood mist Demon, and now a Tier Ten Zombie Queen shows up?’
’How is anyone supposed to survive this?’
Fortunately, the terrifying shriek sounded only once before abruptly ceasing.
Tang Guixin, being worldly and experienced, calmed her ragged breathing slightly and whispered her theory:
"The blood mist Demon must have invaded the Zombie Queen’s territory and disturbed her. Zombies are extremely territorial; that shriek was a warning. As long as we don’t provoke her and hurry down the mountain, we should be safe."
Hearing this, the color returned to everyone’s faces.
Holding aloft corpse-oil torches that reeked of burnt flesh, the group cautiously made their way down the mountain, retracing their steps.
The torchlight tore a path through the dense blood mist.
They were like a lone skiff, tossed on a sea of blood.
Whenever a torch began to gutter, the person next to it would replace it with a new one in a practiced, unspoken exchange, not daring to allow any interruption in the light.
Jiang Mu led the horse he had taken back from Yang Tianci, walking shoulder-to-shoulder with Tang Guixin at the head of the column.
The horse carried two heavily wounded, unconscious people from Yan City. The last, less severely injured person was carried on Zhu Chang’s back.
「About an hour later.」
The group had finally made their way near the foot of the mountain.
The journey down had been surprisingly smooth, with no Demons to bar their way. This allowed their frayed nerves to relax just a little.
However, just as everyone thought they were about to escape and were rejoicing internally...
The surrounding blood mist suddenly grew denser.
The light from the corpse-oil torches, which had previously illuminated several feet of the path, was now compressed, flickering precariously as if it might be extinguished at any moment.
"Stop!"
Tang Guixin’s expression changed drastically as she barked the command.
The group immediately halted, forming a back-to-back circle and staring nervously at the churning red mist around them.
Tang Guixin took out a white, dandelion-like flower from her robes.
She blew on it gently.
Innumerable tiny seeds drifted on the air, quickly surrounding the group and forming a faint shield of light that completely masked their auras.
After doing this, she tilted her head to listen for a moment, her brow tightly furrowed.
"Xiaojiang, you watch over them. I’m going to scout ahead."
"Aunt Tang, I should be the one to go."
But Jiang Mu stopped her, handing over the reins. "I have a special Pupil Skill. I can see more clearly than you in these conditions."
Before she could respond, Jiang Mu grabbed a torch and walked alone into the dense mist.
Tang Guixin bit her lip, then turned back to Ming Cuicui and the others, instructing in a low voice, "All of you, stay put and don’t move! Conceal your auras!"
Ultimately, she was too worried to stay put and quietly followed him.
Jiang Mu pushed aside the bushes blocking his path. Empowered by his Earth Inspection Star Divine Abilities, his eyes began to gleam with a faint starlight.
In his vision, the dense blood mist gradually thinned until it was nearly transparent.
After advancing another hundred paces, he suddenly stopped.
He saw that the blood mist ahead was no longer spreading aimlessly. Instead, it was flowing like a living current, slowly converging on a single point.
Just as he was about to move closer to investigate, a hand suddenly grabbed his arm from behind.
"Don’t go any closer!"
Tang Guixin had caught up.
She untied a fine-looking sword from her waist and tossed it into the flowing blood mist ahead.
"PFFT—!"
There was a soft hiss.
The moment the longsword touched the flowing blood mist, it was like it had been dropped into a vat of powerful acid. It was instantly corroded, dissolving into a puff of dust that scattered on the air.
A chill ran down Jiang Mu’s spine.
Tang Guixin put a hand on his shoulder, signaling for him to crouch down. She then pulled a dark yellow Talisman from her robes and carefully stuck it to the center of his back, completely masking both of their auras.
She lowered her voice, her tone laced with apprehension:
"The Demon’s true body must be just ahead. Do not move!"
"We should go around?"
Jiang Mu asked in a low voice.
’A Tier Eight Demon... even with my advantages, I’m no match for it.’
’Fighting it head-on would just be suicide.’
"Wait,"
said Tang Guixin, staring at the flowing blood mist with a deep frown.
"Something’s not right... This Demon doesn’t seem to be after us.
The Zombie Queen issued a warning just now, which means this blood mist is encroaching on her territory. And yet, this Demon is still releasing more of it. That’s a clear provocation!
It wants to turn all of White Deer Peak into its domain of death!"
Jiang Mu frowned. "Are you saying it wants to kill every living thing here?"
"It’s very likely."
Tang Guixin nodded. "It didn’t expect a Zombie King to be hidden here. They must be in a standoff. Otherwise, with a Tier Eight Demon’s perception, we would have been exposed long ago."
As they spoke, the flowing blood mist ahead suddenly began to churn more violently.
Slowly, the mist parted.
A blurry human figure slowly emerged from the depths of the blood mist.
The figure was wreathed in the flowing, blood-colored mist, its face obscured. They could only vaguely discern the form of a powerfully built man.
His gait was extremely bizarre.
His legs were stiff, his knees unbending. Each step was like the shuffling of a puppet, suffused with an air of rigid, numb death.
"A Demon!?"
The same thought surfaced in both Jiang Mu’s and Tang Guixin’s minds simultaneously.
Jiang Mu, for his part, was horrified.
He had seen his share of Demons—from Butcher Zhang, whom he’d met right after transmigrating, to Yuan Ahqing’s father, Elder Wu, and even the maids at the Han Mansion...
But none had ever felt as terrifying or oppressive as the one before him now.
’A Tier Eight Demon!’
According to the records of the Demon-slaying Bureau, Demons were typically divided into two categories:
The first was low-level walking corpses who had lost their minds to demonic corruption. The other was evil cultivators who had actively studied Demon Techniques and fallen to depravity.