Chapter 322: "She" Has Awoken

Everyone who heard them chuckled a little, however breathless they were.

He Lingchuan could feel that the group’s morale, which had been scraped down to as thin as paper, lifted by a fraction. The origin energy around their bodies, once dangerously diluted, thickened just a little.

While it was true that origin energy did not work miracles against these creatures, a rise in morale was still a blessing nonetheless. After all, men with hope fought harder.

He put on an easy tone and called out, “Hang in there. Reinforcements will be here soon.”

A patrol guard whose eyes were injured could not help but ask, “Are reinforcements really coming?”

“Of course,” Doorboard said seriously. “We’re only the first wave. If we don’t come out for too long, the guardian spirit will report to the army and they’ll send more men. It’s already been...”

“Four hours!” He Lingchuan cut in, his tone firm and decisive. “Reinforcements will come. We must not lose heart. We must not give this creature more chances to take advantage of us!”

Facing an enemy that almost could not be beaten, they needed an opening. They also needed—

They needed hope!

* * *

In her sleep, she found herself lost in a beautiful dream.

The sky here was still a clear, unblemished blue, the grass was still a lush, vibrant green, and the cherry tree in the courtyard had only just been planted. As the cherished daughter of a wealthy household, she could wash her face with newly drawn spring water, then moisturize and soften her skin with rose oil mixed with fresh cow’s milk.

Her personal maid would comb and wash her hair. Her greatest worry in life was that a younger cousin had said a few cutting things behind her back.

The year the cherry tree bore clusters of shining red cherries, she fixed her heart on a marriage that matched her family’s status. The cherry tree went with her as part of her dowry. She gained a gentle husband and slipped into a happily married life.

Then later...

Later, the cherry tree returned to being a sapling again, newly planted. She was once more a bright-eyed girl with a clear gaze and white teeth, growing up carefree and untroubled.

Then she married, then lived happily, peacefully, and in harmony with her husband.

And then it repeated. Again, and again, and again.

She never felt that anything was wrong. Everything seemed so natural, so self-evident.

After all, was happiness not always the same, in its own way?

All she had to do was keep sinking into it.

Until one day, while picking cherries, she noticed a smear of blood on one of the leaves, jarringly red against green.

Who had cut their hand?

She walked around the trunk and saw her gentle, considerate husband lying in a pool of blood, eyes bulging wide, frozen in the terror of his final moment.

Her hands flew to her face. Her knees gave out. She collapsed.

From that moment on, her entire world changed.

The city fell to invading enemies. Her home was devoured by war. Her family splintered—some dying, while others fled.

She could not even save that cherry tree. She watched it burn to charcoal in a roaring blaze, all so she could squeeze one last thread of warmth from it in the dead of winter.

The days that followed were long and bitter.

For a scrap of food, she fought stray dogs. For a place to sleep, she lay with a family of three men.

Later, she became a merchant’s concubine. He used her to entertain his guests. One of them got drunk and beat the child in her womb.

She cried herself blind. She searched desperately for something to cling to, anything that could give her spirit a place to rest.

The gods, she thought, must be merciful. They sent her a lovely child.

It was white and chubby, never cried or made a fuss, always grinning up at her with the sunniest smile. It was a perfect child.

From then on, her life found a sliver of comfort again.

Then, one day, red rain began to fall from the sky. Each drop that landed on her face stung as though a needle were pricking her skin.

She spread her hands and saw them awash in fresh red to the wrist.

Beside her, her child burst into tears, tugging at her hand, wanting to drag her away. But out of the darkness stepped a stranger. Ignoring the children that blocked his path toward her, he forced his way through and pushed her into the rain. His voice was cold as ice as he forced her eyes open with brutal fingers. “Wash your eyes. See what you’ve really given birth to!”

The red rain entered her eyes, and the pain pulsing from them was tenfold that of what her arms had felt. Her eye sockets throbbed so fiercely it felt like their very nerves would burst. Yet despite the pain, her vision suddenly sharpened.

In that pelting rain, her child’s face changed.

The plump, white baby vanished. In its place was a grotesque creature.

It was a vicious ghost, the kind that only appeared in the deepest layers of a nightmare.

Her children circled her, calling out to her, sucking her blood, and gnawing her flesh. Every bite hurt so much that her bones felt like they might splinter.

Then they clawed their way out of her belly, tearing out through her gut, and rushed out into the world to devour one human after another.

Each person they ate turned back toward her and sobbed in agony, and each and every single one of them cursed her with their last breath.

And she had actually originally thought all of that...

She had thought all of that sweet?

So this... this is the truth?

Horror after unbearable horror washed over her, each one too great to endure. Finally, she could no longer take it, and she threw her head back and screamed in utter agony!

* * *

Deep in the mine, in a hidden stone chamber.

This place was empty, lacking furnishings and decorations. Here, there was only a natural stone platform jutting from the floor. On it lay a woman, eyes closed, face serene. But from her limbs and both temples extended thick, tendon-like cords, stretching outward to join with the four corners of the room.

No, rather than joined, it was more like they had grown together.

Sometimes, when she shuddered in her sleep, the entire mine shivered with her.

This place was eerily silent. The air was dry. Not a hint of sound disturbed it.

Until the next second, when she suddenly snapped her eyes open and screamed!

She had awoken, and in that instant, she fully perceived her situation.

Her terror did not fade. Instead, it doubled.

Was everything I saw and heard in that red rain real?

Where am I? Why am I imprisoned here? Why does every inch of my body hurt, inside and out, down to the core of my heart?

Of course, she sensed the cords in her temples and limbs. She strained against them. The flesh-tendons—who knew from what creature they had been stripped—were slick and horribly sticky.

It felt as though another layer of skin had grown over her entire body.

Fortunately, when she pulled with all her might, they tore.

As she yanked free the last three cords, she thought she heard a roar bellowing from the deepest part of the mine.

It was a roar laden with fury and fear.

More chilling still, she understood it.

That thing was shouting at her, “Mother, don’t!”

The woman shuddered, and her fingers flew faster, ripping at the last of the tendons.

* * *

The red rain had come fast and gone faster. In less than seven minutes, the storm stopped and the clouds scattered.

If not for the death and decay left behind, it would be easy to believe nothing had happened.

By now, the sky was fully dark.

“Don’t touch anything the red rain fell on,” the Red General ordered. “Come with me.”

The red rain’s effect was no weaker than a deadly poison. The Gale Army soldiers had seen its power with their own eyes. Naturally, they kept well away from tainted things.

But the Red General moved like a streak of flame. His cloak flashed once, and he was already at the mine entrance. By the time the others rushed after him, all they saw was the trailing hem of his red cloak vanishing around a bend.

* * *

Crack.

It was the clear, brittle sound of bone snapping.

The ferry-crossing ghostspawn twisted Xu Chun’s neck in one smooth motion.

His attack had gone wide by a hair, and the ghostspawn had seized that opening and struck. His comrades were too slow.

On any other day, He Lingchuan, Willow, and the others might have covered him and forced the creature back. But now, all of them were completely spent. Even swinging a proper strike with a blade felt difficult.

The ferry-crossing ghostspawn’s speed, in contrast, only grew more fearsome, so much so that human eyes struggled to even keep up with it.

He Lingchuan’s saber and Duan Xinyu’s spear were both lodged in its body. The saber had split open the hard bone plates on its body, spilling blood and exposing viscera; the spear skewered it from another angle.

However, Xu Chun could no longer be saved.

He Lingchuan closed his remaining eye for a heartbeat, his heart plunging like a stone into a lake.

Every pill and every scrap of medicine that any of them carried that could be swallowed had already been used up. What they needed most right now was to sit, cross their legs, and regulate their breathing so that they could recover their energy, their vitality.

But that was impossible. The creature could emerge from any wall, any patch of ground. Anyone who tried to meditate would simply be pulled apart where they sat.

They could not even lean back against the rock to snatch a moment’s rest.

With Xu Chun’s death, the slowness spell dissipated immediately. Bone puppets that had staggered on stiff limbs now moved like sprinters, tearing free from the vines that bound them and racing toward the defenders with wild howls.

In the next instant, the ghostspawn fixed on Duan Xinyu and charged straight for him.

It had marked him long ago. With each exchange, it had gathered more experience, analyzed the field, and realized who had cast the vine trap. Kill him, and today’s work would be almost done.

Duan Xinyu’s face was ashen. He gritted his teeth and held his ground. His saber technique was dense and tight-knit, like a web without gaps, a defense into which even water should not be able to seep, but he was at the absolute end of his strength.

Seven or eight wounds leaked blood down his body. The blade in his hand grew heavier with every breath. A single, quiet thought began to echo in his mind.

Give up. Just accept death.

Keep resisting, and the only outcome is death. With that being the case, why keep struggling?

The moment that thought took root, his hand slowed.

The ghostspawn pounced on the opening. Its claw swept across his neck, aiming to send him after Xu Chun.

Willow struck from behind, stabbing the ghostspawn square in the back. It did not dodge, nor did it flinch. Its focus remained entirely on Duan Xinyu.

Doorboard launched himself from the side, man and shield moving together. He slammed into the creature’s ribs with all his momentum, body-checking it aside.

The ferry-crossing ghostspawn rolled with the impact and slipped straight into the rock wall.

Duan Xinyu gasped for air. “You...”

A single word, and nothing to follow with. He did not even know what to say.

He Lingchuan drew a steadying breath and forced himself to remember the feeling of that stroke he had made with the saber back in the Han River. Back then, he had faced the raging currents as an opponent, fighting a war of attrition from every direction.

Preserving strength and will—that was the first priority.

He said sternly, “Watch your feet.”

This ghostspawn loved to attack from below, stabbing up through soles and heels, and it was a tactic that was brutally effective.

The words had barely left his mouth when it burst up from the ground, targeting Duan Xinyu’s back once more, this time brandishing a bone spear over a meter long.

Its sense of smell—or whatever it used to read intent—was apparently razor sharp. It could sniff out, with uncanny clarity, who had lost the will to fight.

Another wave of bone puppets arrived, sprinting now that the slowness spell was gone, almost at the point of linking up with their master.

He Lingchuan had already shifted to stand behind Duan Xinyu. His saber came down in a clean arc. The ghostspawn practically delivered the opportunity itself, driving the spearpoint into his saber’s path.

The tip sheared off completely, along with half of the front claw holding it.

Agony ripped a scream from the creature’s throat.

The Army-Breaker ability had triggered again, allowing him to ignore the bone armor’s defense, cleaving clean through with one blow.

Still, something felt wrong.

He Lingchuan hesitated for the briefest moment.

On the other side, Duan Xinyu seized his chance. He twisted away from the ghostspawn’s next two strikes and countered with desperate jabs, pushing it back by a step.

Everyone still fought with the same grim coordination as before, but their spirits refused to lift.

Human endurance had a limit.

They had held on for so long, and still no glimmer of hope appeared.

How long could this grim battle go on?

He Lingchuan suddenly shouted, “Willow, hit it with the frost arrow!”

Willow blinked. “There’s only one left.”

It was not that she begrudged a few taels of silver. She simply could not see the point. What difference would it make now?

“Use it!”

The captain had spoken. She did not hesitate any further. She nocked the arrow, drew, and loosed.

It was thanks to years of training that, even in this condition, her aim held true. The arrow slammed into the ghostspawn’s left arm.

Frost erupted from the wound, racing across its body in a heartbeat.

The creature had been shot by the same technique before. It had learned from that. It did nothing else. It just threw itself against the rock wall at once.

With its mother protecting it, it would soon heal.

The squad knew this, too. Even if they cut this ghostspawn into several pieces right now, it would eventually reform, though it had yet to show the leech-like ability to split into multiple bodies.

The other ferry-crossing ghostspawn that they had fought died once their heads were removed, but this one was different.

After all, this was the Ghost Mother’s favorite and youngest child. It was bound to be extraordinary.