Chapter 387: The Monster Infant

That strange ball of flesh soon ran off; it had no facial features and not even limbs, yet it could move rapidly by rolling and jumping.

The General ordered his subordinates to pursue the ball of flesh born from his own wife, bluntly calling it a monster that had been residing within her body; his wife begged her husband not to do this, because even if it were a monster in the eyes of others, it was still the child she had carried for several months and brought into the world.

However, the General did not care about such things; he only knew that the thing was not human and transcended human common sense. Although it had not yet done anything excessive, as long as there was a risk of it harming people, he, as the General guarding the region, could not sit idly by, even if it would break his wife's heart.

Thus, the General left his wife behind, told the servants to take good care of her, and then took his men to pursue the ball of flesh that had escaped the house.

They pursued it all the way, running from the town to the outskirts, arriving at a small stream within the Peach Blossom Forest.

The ball of flesh seemed unable to swim, or perhaps it was observing the water, even though it had no eyes.

In any case, the ball of flesh's pause gave the General the opportunity to strike; he ruthlessly swung his sword down, splitting the giant ball of flesh in two.

As it turned out, a bizarre thing happened: the ball of flesh was like a hollow egg, breaking the moment the blade touched it. Inside the ball of flesh, it was not the chaotic, bloody mess one might imagine, but rather a clean, pristine infant hidden within.

The General, the subordinates who had accompanied him to hunt the ball of flesh, and the concerned townspeople were all shocked upon seeing this eerie and bizarre scene.

The General's wife had given birth to a ball of flesh, which they thought was a monster, but after the monster was hacked in two, it turned out to have become a human?

The moment he saw the infant's delicate face, the General became dazed; he found similarities between that young, tender face and both himself and his wife. That blood-is-thicker-than-water connection suddenly made the General unable to strike.

A quick-witted and sharp-minded soldier in the General's troop had a sudden flash of inspiration; seeing the dilemma in the General's heart, he shouted in surprise: "My heavens! The General's child, who was swallowed by the monster just as we attacked, is actually still alive! This is simply incredible, heaven be praised!"

Hearing this, those clever subordinates and the townspeople also began to shout loudly, "Heaven be praised!"

Hearing these excited shouts, the General gradually came to his senses and, with a sense of disbelief, picked up the sleeping infant from the ball of flesh he had split open with his own hands.

Just like that, the infant was brought home, and when the wife saw that her child had been recovered, the indescribable joy surpassed everything else in the world.

However, ever since the child was brought home, strange things began to happen in the house one after another. From the servants in the residence frequently having nightmares and screaming in the middle of the night, to the later sudden deaths of the livestock being raised, the situation seemed to be getting serious. The strange occurrences also gradually spread out from the General's Mansion like a diffusing dark cloud, encompassing the entire town, and the bizarre phenomena occurring to those in the General's Mansion slowly began to appear in the town as well.

The General himself also unfortunately experienced a nightmare firsthand, and he knew just how distressing that kind of eerie and bizarre dream could be.

In that dream, he saw a ruin situated amidst dark clouds with lightning and thunder. Judging from the broken walls and the massive scale of the ruins, there must have once been a glorious past there, but it was unknown what terrifying disaster it had experienced to become what it was now.

The General stood in the middle of the ruins, not knowing where to go; black energy permeated all four directions, and lightning flashed and thunder rolled. Every inch of this place wanted his life.

And the strangest thing was that he saw a sheet of black water rising from the ruins of a palace, crashing down like sea waves. Within the waves came bursts of strange roars, and the terrifying, intense sound threatened to shatter his soul, accompanied by an earth-shaking, violent tremor.

The General saw the tens-of-meters-high black water about to crash down and turned to run, only to find that, for some reason, the town's residents, his wife and servants, and his army subordinates had all appeared before his eyes. They looked in terror at the black tide about to crash down, reaching out their arms to him for help.

The General desperately wanted to save them, but he himself was also within the range where the black tide was falling.

With a heavy sound of crashing waves, everyone struck by the black water was turned into black mud, as if their bodies had been dissolved and assimilated by the black water.

It seemed that because the General was wearing precious armor, it resisted part of the black water's erosion. He was not shattered or corroded by the black water like the others; he could still let out strange, hoarse screams, his whole body emitting eerie black energy, and his figure instantly thinned by half—that was the effect of the black water taking away his flesh and blood.

He did not die immediately, but the deep, soul-piercing pain of the corrosion made him feel that dying directly would be more pleasant. Trembling, he looked back, and with that face corroded by the black water until only a layer of skin remained on the bone, and with eyes that were gradually shriveling and failing, he saw a scene that instantly shocked him awake.

It was a giant ball of flesh, as high as a mountain. It let out the same sound that had just caused him such a headache. As a crack appeared on the surface of the ball of flesh and grew wider and wider, the sound slowly became shrill, and the ancient roar gradually turned into the crying of an infant.

He saw it: that infant who looked somewhat similar to him was crying while making a strange, mocking expression, staring fixedly at him. And the ball of flesh was no longer the hollow structure he had first seen; it was solidly packed with the corpses of the people who had just been swallowed by the black water, squeezed and deformed inside.

Having never seen such an eerie sight, the General woke up instantly. When he saw that everything around him was safe and sound, he let out a long sigh of relief, but that nightmare became like a psychological shadow, following him like a ghost for some time afterward. He felt that at any moment, anywhere, he would hallucinate the scenery he had seen in that dream.

After such distressing nightmares continued repeatedly for a long time, the General gradually came to believe that it was a warning from heaven. As he looked again at the child in his wife's arms, the one he had saved from the ball of flesh, some kind of restless thought suddenly welled up in his heart.

To harbor murderous intent toward his own child—that was truly an incredible and quite absurd thing.

Yet the General found he could not control himself. He often found himself zoning out, and whenever he came to his senses and realized he was about to perform some dangerous action toward the child, he would immediately shrink back in a cold sweat.

Looking at the child's cute, smiling face, and his wife, who was holding the child tightly even in her sleep, looking so happy, the General felt immense shame.

By the time the child grew old enough to run and jump, the town welcomed a rainy season, and it rained very heavily during that time.

At first, people thought this wind and rain would soon pass, until they discovered that their houses could not withstand the chaotic winds, the eaves could not shelter them from the falling raindrops, and upon waking, they found they had nowhere to stand, soaked in water. Moreover, a mysterious black color was staining and submerging the city in floodwaters, and the town's residents were completely panicked.