Chapter 23: 23. Forbidden Weapon

23. Forbidden Weapon

Hearing those two extremely frantic roars, even though He Jia'an and Bu Gaojun felt their minds trembling, they could only bite the bullet and continue running in the direction the sound came from, because the bloody vines behind them were still in hot pursuit.

In less than a moment, the two saw a scene of madness they would never forget for the rest of their lives: several human corpses were severed into segments, pierced by root-stems as thin as hair, and combined with vibrant Other Shore Flowers to form a wall of flesh and blood. On this wall, those painfully twisted human faces were dark blue and tattered, with flowers growing out of the rotting skin on their faces; the root-stems were connected to the human blood vessels and meridians. Humans were the nourishment for these flowers. Though bloody and terrifying, it unexpectedly possessed an indescribable artistic beauty.

This horrifying and shocking sight deeply stimulated the brains of He Jia'an and Bu Gaojun; they once again experienced the strangeness and power of that otherworldly deity.

When the two gathered their courage and dashed through the wall of flesh and flowers, those vines immediately stopped their pursuit and slowly retreated like a tide.

This did not mean they were safe! He Jia'an and Bu Gaojun were deeply convinced of this. Not far from them was a room emitting a bright, fresh red light; the door was wide open. That was the room from which the previously heard sound had come, and it was also the room where the female corpse was stored.

They were like people situated in the eye of a hurricane, having only gained temporary safety. If they could not grasp the direction of the wind and move with it, the gale would easily tear them into pieces.

The situation had progressed in a direction contrary to what they had imagined. They wanted to search for survivors, but they hadn't found a single one; they wanted to burn the building, but they no longer had any way out. The only path was the room behind the door in front of them.

"From here on, it's all down to luck," He Jia'an said meaningfully to Bu Gaojun. Bu Gaojun understood instantly, fell into silence, and only nodded after a long while.

He Jia'an gave Bu Gaojun a look, and the two then simultaneously drew their sidearms. With the cold firearms in their hands, Bu Gaojun felt a little more at ease, but only He Jia'an remained uneasy, his brows tightly furrowed. With his more extensive experience, he knew that when the Abnormal they faced could be called a deity, weapons were no longer tools for self-preservation or dealing damage, but rather a placebo—the equivalent of a talisman for psychological comfort.

Gathering their courage to walk to the door, the two poked their heads in to look at the room, and the scene before them caused their remaining sanity to plummet rapidly.

The entire room was covered in flesh and blood; things resembling pus and blisters were constantly being secreted and growing from the walls. Countless buds squirmed everywhere in the room, and pitch-black holes were interspersed at irregular intervals on the flesh walls. The main body of these flesh walls was a giant tumor, an Other Shore Flower woven from flesh and blood. The withered female corpse in the red wedding dress was embedded in the wall of crisscrossing flesh.

This was no room; it was practically the stomach of a living creature. They had actually thought about voluntarily walking into the digestive system of that unknown creature?!

And this was not even the craziest part of the scene, because in front of the Blood-Flesh Other Shore Flower, there was a pair of crouching black shadows that were hard to see clearly. Their shapes looked somewhat human, but they were definitely not normal people, for their limbs were strangely long, their foreheads were swollen, their eyes were bulging, and their mouths were terrifyingly large. Of course, the most terrifying thing about them was that they were flickering in and out of existence, just like the vengeful spirits in horror novels.

"Blessing..." He Jia'an swallowed his saliva. He vaguely discerned clues from the appearance of one female black shadow; that unidentified female crawling creature, dressed as a woman in a tattered white dress, looked in every way like the woman in white, Yao Zhenzhen, whom Yu Lianyun had once described.

"How could Yao Zhenzhen not have dispersed along with the Blessing? And who is that male black shadow?" He Jia'an asked himself repeatedly. His brain scoured his knowledge base but could not come up with an answer. He only felt that the male black shadow's form of existence was similar to Yao Zhenzhen's, which meant that the male black shadow was actually the same kind of existence as Yao Zhenzhen.

The two flickering black shadows were confronting the Blood-Flesh Other Shore Flower. The violent black shadows were like malevolent, ominous spirits, frantically tearing at the flesh on the Blood-Flesh Other Shore Flower. The Blood-Flesh Other Shore Flower possessed an extremely formidable self-healing ability and could recover in a moment. It constantly controlled the surrounding buds to extend into tentacles, wanting to grab the shadows and tear them apart, but the shadows were not physical entities, and the attacks were completely ineffective.

The two monsters were locked in a struggle, unable to disentangle themselves.

He Jia'an withdrew his gaze, which he could barely control, and forced himself to calm down. He was somewhat puzzled as to why the Blessing would appear today, and why it had skipped attacking humans to directly attack the even harder-to-deal-with Blood-Flesh Other Shore Flower.

Could it be because of Yu Lianyun? He Jia'an wondered.

As the only person who had triggered the "Seven-Day Death" Curse and not died, and also the only one who had actively released the Blessing to the entire world, her existence must be quite special to the Blessing.

Think about it: the colleagues who died last night due to the mysterious power behind the female corpse also carried the Blessing, yet they died without receiving any obstruction or help from the Blessing. This was enough to show that Yu Lianyun indeed held an extraordinary status for the Blessing.

Could it be that Yu Lianyun had already become something like a human spokesperson for the Blessing?

Now that Yu Lianyun was under the influence of the female corpse's power and in imminent danger, it didn't seem unreasonable for the Blessing to fight another power for the sake of its spokesperson.

"Look, Team Leader He, the transport pod is still there!" Just as He Jia'an was thinking, Bu Gaojun discovered a pleasantly surprising thing. He pointed vigorously at a corner of the room that, for some reason, had not yet been encroached upon by flesh. There lay a rectangular object that looked like a coffin, which was actually the transport pod originally used to transport the female corpse. "C-can we get out from there?"

He Jia'an's eyes also lit up, and he nodded, but he glanced warily at the two sides locked in fierce combat. "The only problem now is how we can get close without being discovered by them. Don't forget, they are all Abnormals that harbor malice toward humans."

Bu Gaojun gritted his teeth and looked at He Jia'an. "Tell me what to do. I'll be the bait if I have to."

"Don't be stupid. Neither of us is qualified to be bait. Look at their power, speed, and attack range; with our fragile human bodies, we'd die if we got hit once." He Jia'an gave a wry laugh, then patted Bu Gaojun on the shoulder. "But that doesn't mean we don't have other ways."

He Jia'an took a test-tube-like object from his pocket, which contained three-quarters of a green, oily liquid.

"Isn't this Green Oil?!" Bu Gaojun's face showed shock, as if he had seen something terrifying. He swallowed hard and said, "This is one of the Forbidden Weapons recorded in our Xuanmi Group's Forbidden Book. Legend has it that it is a mysterious treasure unearthed from the forbidden vault left behind by the Fangshi State Preceptor, Liu Zhongyuan."

"I don't know what ingredients were mixed into the formula for Green Oil, but it makes the Green Oil extremely terrifying. It is said that once ignited, it can even burn the soul to ashes."

"This is a treasure I went through great pains to wring out of the Group Leader. I never expected there would actually be a time to use it," He Jia'an remarked with emotion.