Chapter 319: Changing Faces

Willow suddenly reached over and tugged lightly at Doorboard’s sleeve, her voice low and taut as she said, “I keep feeling like we’re being watched.”

Her instincts were sharper than anyone else’s. Doorboard’s grip on his giant axe tightened at once as he asked, “From ahead or behind?”

“I can’t tell. Sometimes it’s there, sometimes it’s not.” Willow let out a soft hum, then added, “But right now? Behind us.”

“We’re being stalked,” He Lingchuan said. He had heard it too. “These things move through the rock walls like fish through water. Why don’t you guys guess who they’ll strike first?”

Xu Chun replied without thinking, “Chains always break at the weakest link.”

After he said that, everyone’s eyes immediately shifted toward the most vulnerable member of their current group—the young man who was so thickly wrapped in bandages that he looked like a mummy. The poor young man froze mid-step, dread washing over his face.

And in that exact instant—

A pair of claws burst up from beneath the ground, clamping onto his ankle and wrenching hard!

The solid ground where he stood instantly softened and became like a pit of mud. One violent tug, and the wounded man plunged down into the ground all the way to his calves before he could even scream.

He had just barely managed a strangled cry when He Lingchuan flashed toward him. He Lingchuan’s saber flashed, slicing into the softened ground right beside the young man’s leg.

As He Lingchuan struck the ground with his saber, he could feel that rather than rock or mud, the texture of the ground was something much different. Rather than some inanimate, lifeless object, the ground felt alive.

Whatever lurked underfoot writhed violently beneath the saber, thrashing like a huge fish wanting to escape a fishing net.

Without hesitation, He Lingchuan slashed twice more, delivering two quick cuts to either side of the young man’s seized leg.

When he drew Fleeting Life back, a single droplet of green blood rolled down its tip.

He had managed to hit it!

Doorboard seized the opportunity to lunge over and haul the injured young man upward. The leg that the creature’s claws had not clamped down on came free at once, but the one that had been seized was not quite free just yet, as two of his toes were now stuck in the solidifying ground.

The very same moment that the whatever lurked below had fled, the ground solidified, reverting to what it had been before the attack.

He Lingchuan sighed, then carved out the trapped toes with efficient strokes. Only then did the others get a proper look at what had been hooked around the man’s ankle. It was a severed ghost claw, sheared off at the wrist, currently still dripping green blood.

The victim was still pale with terror, but alive. However, no one even had time to breathe a sigh of relief. Because from the darkness ahead came the thunder of countless approaching figures.

Xu Chun’s jaw tightened as he shouted out in alarm, “Bone puppets! Coming in fast!”

It was only now that He Lingchuan even got to see what these so-called bone puppets were like. They resembled crude figurines assembled from bone fragments and packed mud or clay. Each of them differed in height, thickness, and the number of limbs, creating all sorts of grotesque combinations. They had outer shells that resembled stone, though perhaps more like uneven slates of shale, with certain places split open to expose patches of pale bone beneath.

And they were not all made from human remains or bones. He Lingchuan spotted skulls from wild boars, deer, snakes, and even rodents on the bodies of some of these bone puppets. The puppets seemed as if they were thrown together by some deranged child with absolutely no idea of what anything should even look like. Some puppets had several skulls jammed into one torso, staring outward in different directions.

Clearly, the ferry-crossing ghostspawn that produced and controlled them had had little material to work with, seemingly having scavenged whatever pieces it could find and get its hands on. As for its aesthetic sense, that could only be said to be nonexistent.

However, it could not be denied that their numbers were utterly terrifying.

Xu Chun had not exaggerated. The bone puppets surged like a tide, an avalanche of clattering forms that would crush any normal squad outright.

Worst of all, they were fearless and relentless. They threw themselves forward, seemingly knowing nothing of pain or fear, though perhaps that was just a fact, and they actually did know nothing at all.

But then, everyone was still further surprised by what was at the very front of the surging horde. It was a sprinting human figure yelling, “Help, help me!”

The patrolmen blinked in confusion, then recognition struck.

Is that Wang Xu? He’s Duan Xinyu’s deputy, right?

Wang Xu was covered in blood, gasping and stumbling as he reached them.

He Lingchuan immediately asked him, “Where’s Duan Xinyu?”

“Dead. They’re all dead!” Wang Xu howled. “The rest of my squad’s been completely wiped out! Two of those aberrant creatures attacked us!”

Two?

He Lingchuan and Xu Chun exchanged a sharp look.

So that ferry-crossing ghostspawn that ambushed Xu Chun’s squad earlier... It withdrew to join its sibling against Duan Xinyu’s squad?

Willow suddenly said, “That means we’re up against two now as well.”

One had the power to liquefy the ground and emerge anywhere, while the other molded bone puppets and wore armor formed from those same constructs.

With the two together, the final battle would be nothing short of disastrous.

Everyone tightened their grip on their weapons.

Soon after that, the army of bone puppets crashed into them!

Xu Chun, ever the veteran, hurled several small wooden plaques onto the ground. They landed upright with a soft tap, then erupted into shimmering ripples that spread across the ground like concentric rings on a pond.

Any bone puppet that stepped into the shimmering glow slowed to a crawl, their speed becoming comparable to an ox dragging a broken cart.

It was an area-of-effect slowness spell.

Doorboard grabbed his shield and slammed it hard into the ground.

A shockwave rippled outward, shattering the closest dozen bone puppets into countless fragments.

Hm, looks like they aren’t actually all that hard to deal with.

But the fragments began to twitch almost right after they just fell to the ground, the fragments of bone and mud rearranging and fusing themselves back together into new puppets, ones that were even more misshapen than before.

Xu Chun shouted, “Breaking them apart is useless! It’s better to restrain them!”

He Lingchuan glanced down at his saber. No one else noticed, but the puppets he shattered did not reform.

I wonder why.

Could it be because of the Void-Breaker ability?

Fleeting Life’s Void-Breaker ability allowed it to harm what had no shape or form, and it seemed that these bone puppets—or perhaps whatever was allowing them to operate—qualified.

Willow growled, “You could’ve said that earlier!”

She retreated a few steps, drew an arrow, and fired. However, she shot her arrow not at any of the puppets, but at the ground beneath them.

Cold radiated outward, frosting over the floor, creeping up their feet, clutching them in place. One by one, the puppets froze mid-charge, their grotesque shapes turning into a forest of ice statues.

In about ten-odd breaths, over a hundred bone puppets were frozen solid.

“See? Frozen solid.” Willow’s tone was flat, but she felt as if her very heart were bleeding. That single arrowhead had cost her ten taels of silver at Spirit-Nurturing Isle! That was money that she could have used to buy beautiful jugs of wine instead. However, it was undeniable that the arrowhead was effective.

Xu Chun turned around and bolted. “Run! They won’t be frozen for long!”

“What? It should last an hour!” Willow shot back. The merchant on Spirit-Nurturing Isle had sworn to it, claiming that the runes would last even in peak summer heat.

Xu Chun pointed a finger at the rock walls. “Nothing stays frozen in this cursed place!”

The power of the frost arrowhead really was supposed to be quite high, and it had evidently even caused a layer of frost to form on the rock walls. However, as they looked at the area where the frost had formed just moments ago, they now saw it visibly dissipating and melting, the frost turning into droplets of water that flowed or dripped down to the ground.

Eh? It’s already melting?

And over at the far end of the frost arrowhead’s area of effect, bone puppets had already started moving again.

Seeing that, everyone turned and ran.

He Lingchuan realized that this strange place supplied energy to the bone puppets and the ferry-crossing ghostspawn alike. It healed them, fueled them, and dissolved any constraints placed upon them.

He could only say that their enemies had a home-field advantage to an absurd degree.

Unless they got out, there was almost no reliable way to deal with the bone puppets.

And worse, two ghostspawn still lurked in the dark.

Just then, one the members of Xu Chun’s squad suddenly cried out, “Wait, isn’t someone missing?”

The group skidded to a halt and counted heads.

Indeed, there were now only ten of them.

They were one short.

He Lingchuan’s eyes scanned around, his heart dropping. “It’s someone from my squad.”

The injured young man was still present, but the patrolman who had been supporting him was now nowhere to be seen.

“Did that creature already regrow its arms?”

At that moment, someone burst out of the darkness ahead, shouting, “Don’t believe him! He’s a ferry-crossing ghostspawn!”

Everyone recoiled in shock when they saw who it was.

Is that Duan Xinyu?

He staggered toward them, drenched in blood, his left arm hanging limp. Just as he arrived in front of them, he pointed a trembling finger at He Lingchuan.

“Me?” He Lingchuan pointed at his own nose, completely baffled.

“Get away! Stop pretending!” Duan Xinyu’s eyes burned with fury. “It ate Wang Xu and took his place!”

The Wang Xu standing behind He Lingchuan on his left shouted back, “No, it’s him! I saw it eat the captain!”

The group exchanged helpless looks. They had strong enemies behind them, and at some point, they had lost a comrade. And now, they even had this ridiculous guess-who’s-the-monster game to deal with.

Willow tossed thief’s mustard seeds onto both men. She watched the seeds for a few breaths, then announced grimly, “No change.”

Hearing that, everyone could not help but take two or three steps back from one another.

The two thief’s mustard seeds just now had failed to detect who among the two was fake, which meant that the seeds were unable to detect whether someone was a ferry-crossing ghostspawn or not.

This then also meant that the previous test on Xu Chun’s group was invalid. In other words, one of them, or maybe even two, has been a ferry-crossing ghostspawn all along.

And that explained the silent disappearance of the missing patrolman.

He Lingchuan looked around. Hearing the bone puppets closing in from behind them, he knew that they were running out of time.

“You both saw the ferry-crossing ghostspawn eat the other?”

Wang Xu’s face twisted. “The captain died a horrible death!”

Duan Xinyu spat, “You liar! I watched that thing chew your arms off—left first, then right!” He choked mid-sentence, gagging at the memory.

He Lingchuan nodded. “We’ll avenge your fallen comrades.” Just as his words fell, his saber flashed!

Wang Xu leaped backward over two meters, shocked and angered as he shouted, “Why do you trust him?!”

As he was saying that, He Lingchuan had already shot a sleeve arrow into his chest, its tip then blooming inside the other party like a steel flower. At the same time, he yanked the cord hard, drawing the other party close, as he then followed up with a slash of the saber that was in his other hand.

And it looked like He Lingchuan had chosen right. When the arrowhead burst through the supposed Wang Xu, it had drawn green blood.

Seeing that, the other patrolmen attacked without hesitation.

As long as they destroyed this imposter, that would spell the downfall of the army of bone puppets, rendering them as nothing but clay and rubble.

But just before they closed in, the fake Wang Xu sneered. His jaw cracked open unnaturally wide, and he then spat a glob of green acid straight at He Lingchuan.

The glob was quick and massive, and with the short distance between them, it was impossible for He Lingchuan to dodge.

Seeing that he could not avoid it, he reluctantly raised his arm to block it from hitting his face. Suddenly, a sharp wave of pain assaulted him, his face contorting from the pain. He could not help but scream as if someone had just splashed strong acid on him.

Ah, wait, that’s exactly what just happened.

It looked like the talent of that ferry-crossing ghostspawn they had killed back in the “stomach” had awakened in this younger sibling.

But while pain flared across him, his saber did not falter.

However, the fake Wang Xu actually managed to seize his wrist and slam him downward.

At the same moment, two claws burst from beneath He Lingchuan and clamped his ankles, dragging him into the ground.

The two ferry-crossing ghostspawn were working together against him. They operated in perfect sync, not bothering with the weakest link. Instead, they were aiming straight for him—the backbone of the group!

If they killed He Lingchuan, fear would engulf the rest; once morale was shattered, the rest would naturally fall.