Chapter 77: Fighting the Beast

The corpses were dragged along the whole way and had long since stopped bleeding; when they were tossed naked into the deep pool, aside from splashing a bit of water, there was no extra "scenery."

It was no different from throwing in a few pieces of rotten wood.

"What a pity!" Liu Mu sighed as the crowd stared in terror at the deep pool. "It's a pity they aren't alive, and we're currently lacking fuel, otherwise, to watch living people covered in flames struggling inside from such close range—that's a scene I can only imagine... tsk tsk, you all have seen plenty, isn't it quite a sight?"

Not a single person dared to answer.

They even turned their heads away, not daring to look at the deep pool again. This malicious mockery exposed the guilt they had been avoiding for years and forced them to face the hypocrisy and cowardice of the group.

Ten minutes passed, the deep pool remained completely still, and the crowd began to whisper.

The first to speak were the people on the "left." In the past, every sacrifice could only be attended by some high-ranking members and the men chosen to carry the "sacrificial offerings."

It was also a coincidence that among these people, not a single one had actually witnessed the sacrificial process with their own eyes, let alone a woman being eaten by the Mountain Ghost.

So, they actually set living people on fire?

At this moment, as time passed, the suspicion that had been suppressed for years began to grow wildly in the silence.

"There is no Mountain Ghost at all! You bastards, give me back my wife's life!"

Amidst the whispering, someone finally shouted out loud.

"These animals, they've lied to me for so many years, and my poor sister was only twelve... I'm going to kill you all!"

Hatred made their eyes turn red; deep in the mine pit, in the pale light, it finally erupted!

Liu Mu silently stepped back a few paces, not wanting to become an obstacle to someone else's revenge.

More and more people rushed onto the rocks, grappling with the few whose faces had already drained of blood.

Over the next few minutes, the smell of blood spread, and one after another, people were pushed into the deep pool.

Liu Mu closed her eyes, listening to the movements outside the commotion.

Just as the crowd was fighting until they were battered and bloody, she suddenly opened her eyes, her voice striking their eardrums like rolling thunder.

"It's here. If you want to live, run quickly. If you want to watch me kill the monster, back off a bit. Leave the dead and wounded where they fall!"

Once these words were out, those in the water and those on the rocks—anyone still breathing—froze for a moment, and then they heard someone in the water scream.

"What is this? Help! The Mountain Ghost is here!"

One shout drew the curiosity of the crowd to look down; a few seconds later, the flight for survival began!

In the light of the High-Intensity Flashlight, one could see a black shadow occupying half the deep pool rising rapidly from below.

A total of six people had fallen into the pool, and all of them had seen the "Mountain Ghost" with their own eyes; at this moment, they were flailing like live ducks in boiling water.

Before seeing the shadow, Liu Mu had already sensed an unusual fluctuation in the air, then heard the movement approaching from the bottom of the water, and finally, the heavy, fishy stench.

There were fewer than thirty people, mostly running around and screaming in the cave, but there were also a few who were fearless and loved to watch the excitement.

Led by Cai Zhenlong's father, Cai Hongfa, a few young and old street thugs gathered in the innermost corner of the rocks, huddled together; their fearful faces could not hide the excitement in their eyes.

"Brother Fa, how powerful do you think this Boss Liu really is, to not even be afraid of the Mountain Ghost?"

"I don't know if she's just reckless or if she really has a handle on it. If she gets eaten, do we run?"

"Shh, shut up!" Cai Hongfa punched the two men beside him. "Don't draw that thing over here. If even Boss Liu can't beat it, wouldn't we be idiots not to run?"

It went quiet, and at the same time, they all watched that side without even blinking.

Half a minute later, the shadow finally surfaced; ignoring the floating corpses, it opened its blood-red maw toward a fleeing man.

It was the fresh blood that excited its malevolence; it bit off half of the man's body in one go.

Inside that nearly transparent mouth, one could even see the corpse being swallowed and spat out, passing between Bone Thorns as sharp as steel wire, and soon only white bones remained.

The meat was stripped away; the Mountain Ghost opened its mouth to spit out the bones, then went to eat the remaining half that was still spurting blood.

The living people in the deep pool were so terrified they could barely move; several actually sank into the water just like that, looking as if they were about to be scared to death.

Liu Mu shook her head slightly; from the perspective of a Boss who believed that while laborers were animals, it was better to keep them for exploitation than to have them eaten by the Mountain Ghost, she probed her two fingers into her mouth.

Whew-whew—

A whistle so sharp it was bracing and mind-clearing rang out in the space; the sound struck the rock walls and the water surface, rebounding to form ear-piercing echoes throughout the space.

This sound directly woke up the few who had been scared silly in the deep pool, and they scrambled to swim toward the shore.

Liu Mu stopped paying attention to them, pulled out her fingers, and shouted at the Mountain Ghost, whose transparent head was floating in the deep pool.

"Little fishy, you've been eating well, haven't you? So plump and sturdy. How about coming back with big sister to be rendered into oil and made into soap?"

A few stones flew out with the sound of wind, accurately striking the Mountain Ghost's transparent, bubble-like head, actually stirring up ripples, and then...

The stones actually passed straight through the transparent membrane and fell into the Mountain Ghost's mouth. They moved back and forth following the bone-stripped corpse, and were finally spat out together.

Liu Mu had only done this to attract its attention, to give those unlucky ghosts a chance to escape.

But this bit of movement didn't anger the Mountain Ghost in the slightest; it didn't even cast a single glance toward Liu Mu's side.

Just as a blue-edged red fin surfaced in the water, Liu Mu thought for a moment and pulled out a Hand Grenade.

She pulled the ring and tossed it toward the transparent bubble.

Whether this Mountain Ghost could sense danger or was quite intelligent, before the Hand Grenade could get close to its transparent membrane, its head, which was over a meter in diameter, actually made a sharp turn and dodged it.

But the Hand Grenade still exploded near it.

With Liu Mu's eyesight, she could clearly see cracks appearing on the transparent bubble like glass. But what concerned her more was that these cracks showed no signs of self-repair.

However, the Mountain Ghost showed no signs of pain, which made Liu Mu certain that this transparent bubble likely had no nerves covering it.

Although the Hand Grenade didn't cause much damage to the Mountain Ghost, the people in the deep pool who had just scrambled onto the shore let out a breath of relief, only to have it snatched away again; they didn't care about choking on water, feeling dizzy, or having sore throats, and struggled to keep climbing up.

Three sides of the deep pool's walls were not steep, and with the heavy rain and rising water levels during this period, it wasn't very high to the top.

It was just that it was damp here year-round, and colorful moss grew on the stone walls, making them slippery when stepped on. Two particularly unlucky ones fell back into the deep pool and became meat in the Mountain Ghost's mouth.

Just as some were rejoicing that it wasn't them who had fallen, they watched with their own eyes as Boss Liu on the rocks stretched her arms and legs, and then with a leap, jumped down.

She landed in the water without a single splash, but the occasion was all wrong. The onlookers' hearts skipped a beat, and at the same time, they held their breath.

Not until a bright, spirited head popped out of the pool did they shake their heads one after another, thinking that this Boss was truly fearless.

And one couldn't help but wonder why this Boss would go down there to seek death for no reason.

Cai Hongfa, who had originally planned to curry favor with Liu Mu to the fullest and strive to elevate his status above others, felt a bit panicked at this moment and hurriedly shouted toward the water,

"Boss, watch out behind you, it's coming!"

Believe it or not, this shout was actually useful. I saw that before the person in the water even turned their head, the knife in their hand had already fiercely stabbed behind them, and a harsh sound of metal striking stone was heard.

Looking again, whether they were onlookers, fleeing for their lives, or wanting to leave but afraid of offending Liu Mu, everyone took a deep breath.

The knife in Liu Mu's hand, which looked no different from those on forging shows, had actually split open the Mountain Ghost's transparent bubble in one strike.

That was something that only showed traces of damage when a Hand Grenade exploded right next to it, and just like that... it was split open!

The split opening was already quite large, and everyone also saw Liu Mu turn her wrist, forcefully churning out a big hole, with the pool water gushing into the Mountain Ghost's head.

Angsi—

Angsi—

Water flooding its head finally stimulated the Mountain Ghost's pain receptors.

Its head, like a giant glass ball, lifted completely out of the water, and its body swayed along with it.

Liu Mu, who had been prepared, took a deep breath, sank into the water, and was pushed away by the current stirred up by the Mountain Ghost. In the water, other than seeing that the thing had a large head and a small body, she didn't have much of an impression.

But the people on the shore were terrified, and for no other reason than that the waves stirred up by the Mountain Ghost were a full six or seven meters high; between the crashing and rolling, several people were almost knocked into the water.

Liu Mu's swimming technique was very good; when the food in the orphanage was bad in the past, she often snuck to a nearby reservoir to catch fish and roast them in the woods to satisfy her cravings.

Later, when she grew to over one meter seventy, she suspected that she stood out from the crowd because she often went to catch fish to eat.

Now in the deep pool, her movements were not much slower than the Mountain Ghost's, and precisely because of this, she discovered that this monster likely lived mostly on land, rather than being a creature of the water.

As she circled the Mountain Ghost, she really did see its strong, clawed forelimbs and sharp claws.

Amphibious creatures were very common before the disaster, and it was also a survival instinct to hide in deep mountain caves or deep, cold pools when encountering a disaster.

In short, it was normal that this unknown creature known as a Mountain Ghost was still alive.

Normal, my foot!

Even if Liu Mu didn't have much education, if this kind of creature had really been under any species catalog before the disaster, it would have long since become a viral curiosity on short-video platforms.

This was much more real than what AI could draw, wasn't it?

Even primary school students knew about the Loch Ness Monster from that country, which had been making a huge fuss for many years.

Liu Mu surfaced, revealing half her head from the eyes up, and locked eyes with the Mountain Ghost, which had abandoned the living to devour corpses... if the fleshy bumps rising and falling at a uniform speed on both sides of its bubble were eyes.

Whether they were or not didn't matter; what mattered was, she had clearly attacked it like that just now, and it had no living people left to eat, so why didn't it retaliate against her?

Could it be that it knew she was dangerous, or was it that it didn't consider her a dish on its plate?

How could Liu Mu endure this? She immediately dove into the water and went straight for the Mountain Ghost's front.

With two or three meters to go, Liu Mu knew she had fallen into a trap. Although underwater visibility was limited, the fluctuations of the water around her could not deceive her.

A huge wave surged toward her, and in the middle of it was a large tail that had kicked up the wave.

The slender tail was covered in patterns and seemed to encounter no resistance in the water; by the time Liu Mu discovered it, it was already too late to dodge.

Bang—

Her waist and abdomen felt as if they had been fiercely whipped; Liu Mu choked on some water, and she was slapped against the rock wall at the edge of the pool, her back suffering a dull pain from hitting a protruding Shisun.

Yet she didn't pause at all; pressing her hand against the Shisun, she flipped directly out of the water, landing on all fours like a gecko, and sprinted rapidly across the slippery rock wall.

Sure enough, behind her, a series of striking sounds rang out, accompanied by the sound of rocks falling into the water; it was that agile tail relentlessly pursuing her.

It was also during this round of attacks that Liu Mu finally saw the full appearance of the Mountain Ghost.

A hemispherical head connected to a "thin and short" torso, with sharp claws on the forelimbs, and a streamlined, slender tail immediately following the torso.

The tail and the sharp claws should be the Mountain Ghost's main attack weapons.

Liu Mu quickly thought of a countermeasure in her mind; the Mountain Ghost had indeed suffered for a while when its brain was flooded with water, but it had adjusted its body afterward, letting the hole she had poked rise above the water surface.

"It seems I still have to attack that head!"

Having made up her mind, Liu Mu immediately changed her movement path and suddenly jumped up midway.

The tail indeed struck over immediately, knocking her off her original route.

Fell for it!

Liu Mu let out a soft cry, and the Dog-leg Knife in her hand inexplicably disappeared, replaced by a Submachine Gun. Approaching the large hole she had cut earlier in mid-air, she emptied a magazine of bullets in a few seconds.

With no support point in the air, the recoil sent her straight into the water.

The Mountain Ghost let out a miserable shriek that sounded like a baby crying. The moment Liu Mu fell into the water, she switched the Submachine Gun back to the machete, and before her figure was steady, she raised the knife to block the Mountain Ghost's tail, which was attacking at high speed.

This time, the Mountain Ghost was clearly provoked; it slapped Liu Mu into the deep water with one tail, and within ten seconds, it attacked three times in a row.

Not until Liu Mu left the range of the attack, and the Mountain Ghost, fearing its head would take in more water, did not dare to dive, did it pause its pursuit of her and turn its head toward the humans on the shore.

At this, everyone, whether they were watching the excitement or hadn't managed to escape in time, was scared out of their wits.

Cai Hongfa still had two parts of reason left and roared at the crowd, "Run! Find a place to hide, this thing can crawl on the ground!"

Liu Mu had gone seven or eight meters underwater, and not until the underwater pressure offset the Mountain Ghost's force did she stabilize her figure in the water.

Even with good swimming skills, she still choked on a mouthful.

The water was too deep to hear the movement outside, but she could guess that the Mountain Ghost's next target for venting its anger would be those townspeople. As soon as she stabilized, she immediately swam upward.

Just as she surfaced, she saw the Mountain Ghost's figure moving on the rock walls and rocks as if on flat ground, catching fleeing people everywhere.

It didn't eat them even after catching them; it would sweep them into the water with a tail and continue chasing others.

This thing didn't seem to have very high intelligence, Liu Mu pondered whether she should aim and fire another burst, although her bullets were one less for every one she fired.

Just in the short time she hesitated, a person fell in front of her, creating an explosive splash.

Liu Mu kindly reached out to pull the person, and seeing that this person was actually the old street-loafer Cai Hongfa, she greeted him, "Hi, what a coincidence, you fell into the water too?"

Her words stunned Cai Hongfa so much that he forgot to cough after choking on water, and he stared blankly, "Bo, Boss, long time no see."

In the awkwardness, it was still the old man Cai Hongfa who understood social nuances, "Boss, why don't you run? The Mountain Ghost is too fast, we'll stay behind to hold it off."

Although he said this with his mouth, his eyes were full of pleading for her not to leave, as if afraid she wouldn't understand, and he actually shed two lines of tears.

Liu Mu felt nothing for the old street-loafer's tears, only looking up at the mountain ghost slithering on the rock wall. Counting only its transparent head and torso, it was three meters long, and the tail alone was at least over five meters!

It was no wonder this thing used its tail as an offensive weapon.

Liu Mu feigned reaching into her pocket, took out a magazine, and spat a mouthful of blood from her gums onto the bullets.

That's right, her cheek had been slapped just a moment ago; even though her body was tough and showed no swelling, her teeth had loosened a bit, and she had bled a little.

With the bullets pressed into the magazine, Liu Mu raised her gun, aimed past Cai Hongfa and the few others floating on the water, and opened fire!

Just as those few were worried that the mountain ghost was moving too fast for her to hit it, and that she might easily injure the other people fleeing, the sound of gunfire rang out, and they silently shut their mouths.

Cai Hongfa gave himself a hard slap across the face, "Boss's marksmanship is superb; I actually dared to doubt it, I truly deserve to die!"

Liu Mu ignored his flattery; this time she used precision point-shooting, and almost every bullet passed through the previous large hole, striking directly at the mountain ghost's fragile brain, which was no larger than two walnuts.

Amidst shrill cries, the mountain ghost did not let itself fall back into the water, but instead bolted toward the exit.

Liu Mu immediately slung the gun onto her back and swam toward the shore with all her might.

As soon as she touched the rock, her five fingers hooked onto a point, and using the leverage to jump up, she leaped out of the water just like a nimble carp, darting seven or eight meters in one go.

Then she chased out toward the exit.