Chapter 171: Backlash

Clutching the velvet cloth slightly dampened by her exhaled breath, Yin Feng crawled over the gap at the edge of the dust zone; looking down, she could see the clearly outlined five fingers, the arm-shaped void, and the radial contours blown open by her spasmodic coughing—undoubtedly the form of a person lying prone there.

She thought this might be a clever servant who had feigned death to escape, or one dragged away by those things, but the outline was too complete, its boundaries too sharp, with no trace of struggle or movement; it looked more like some force had lifted him entirely and made him vanish into the air.

There was no time to think further; she squeezed through the gap between two chairs, curled up under the table, wiped the sticky dust from her skirt hem, pinched her nostrils to stifle a sneeze, and felt her chest and throat ache from the strain.

An irregular long shadow, like barnacle-encrusted reef rock, dragged itself between Lin Li's chair and table legs, trembling with the flickering flames, passing through a patch of bright light near her hand.

She almost felt that if she reached out, she could touch the texture of fungal clusters and corpses interwoven in that shadow; even the uneven stone floor seemed to soften and swell as it passed, the hard rock patterns undulating and shivering.

But that was merely an illusion of light and shadow; once it passed, everything was as intact as before.

It seemed less frightening than ghost stories told to scare children; at least ghosts could catch children hiding under beds, couldn't they? And these things could neither pass through walls nor see through them.

She moved again, crawling under the tabletop until she reached the other end of the long table. A servant's corpse lay across the space between her and another table, its head turned to one side, pupils behind cloudy white cataracts focused on a non-existent point, carrying a faint, lingering gaze toward the living being still in hiding.

On a face more heavily powdered than a courtesan's makeup, terror and attachment to life remained frozen, distorted by powder colors like a clown's paint. The gaping, hollow mouth was clogged with powder, as if straining to spit out some horrifying last words, or perhaps a silent question.

【This is not my fault】

Ignoring that face, Yin Feng climbed over the body and hid under another table. Here, near the epicenter of the dust explosion, the gauze's filtering effect was limited; with every crawl, she felt dust rising from beneath her knees and between her fingers, trying to mix into her breath.

And that string of keys lay just a few steps away on the ground where the dust was thickest, its original color indiscernible. It was hard to imagine what these things would look like floating in the air; it must have been like being immersed in clouds and mist.

Fortunately, the tabletop blocked part of it, allowing her to approach that area with some leisure. This required slowing her movements to the minimum to prevent lifting large swaths of that dust layer, which seemed to have acquired thickness.

A tiny distance that would normally be insignificant was agonizingly stretched here; Yin Feng spent quite a while crawling to the closest point she could reach to the key ring.

One of the wandering, mottled shells turned to the opposite side of the hall, while the other finally reached the blind spot obscured by a pillar.

She reached out from an angle that made it least likely to touch the table or chair legs; this three-long-one-short chair looked rather unstable, but other angles were out of reach for her short arms, and she lacked the strength to move it.

To extend her arm as far as possible, she had to lie flat against the ground, bringing her viewpoint to the same horizontal plane as the body of Steward Wilbert.

The Steward's corpse had become inseparable from that fungus-hosting shell; from this height, she could see how the white filaments grew at the contact surface with the skin.

At the approximate position of that thing's skull, a full, crown-shaped mushroom cap had cracked and bloomed; after releasing all its dust, only a fleshy, withered, yet still vivid dry shell remained, clinging to Wilbert's face.

Dense new, tender fungi sprouted from the thick, tangled web of connections; still appearing as multi-colored dot-like germs, scattered companions spread along the neck and arms, reaching all the way to the fingers hooked around the key ring.

Yin Feng gently tugged the key ring; those dead joints were stiff and sluggish, nearly pulling the entire arm along with them. She could only press herself lower, extend her hand further, and pry open the fingers hooked onto the ring one by one.

She could feel her hair tips dipping into the dust; the itching in her nose and throat was so intense it carried a slight stinging pain, but she did not stop or hesitate. The shifting light and shadow indicated the living fungus-wanderers were moving; she had to lift the key ring evenly and steadily before they turned back.

All her focus concentrated on her thin, calloused hands; as the keys rose with the ring, they were lifted one by one. She was not entirely sure if this created a slight sound, but even if it did, it was drowned out by the throbbing of blood vessels in her ears.

Finally, that small string of metal was completely suspended in the air; under careful control, it bypassed the obstacle of the chair leg and was withdrawn into the shadows.

【A bit scary】

Common sense told her she should feel that way, but in reality, fear always lagged one step behind action; her fingers seemed to have their own thoughts, searching and identifying the key engraved with the target number, then detaching it from the ring's opening.

The next step was still to wait, waiting for the fungus-isolated legs, swollen and cumbersome like lantern-trouser legs, to pass by.

They didn't seem to have the habit of walking with their heads down; stepping over the outstretched palm of a corpse, they were unaware of what was happening beneath their feet, as if truly just strolling; all it would take was a tripwire to make them never stand up again.

This was highly deceptive, but Yin Feng knew how they moved; the posture of climbing cliff walls would make them even more agile than ordinary humans.

Once discovered, there was absolutely no chance of survival; she knew this clearly, yet she was not very afraid, or more precisely, she was desensitized and numb.

She had witnessed the most prolonged, painful, and empathetic deaths, where the end of life made even death itself seem less significant compared to that process. She had also seen swift and gruesome deaths, where blunt or sharp instruments were used with different techniques to create wounds of various shapes.

Her understanding of death was very concrete, yet lacked a more abstract and profound concept.

When the same fate descended upon more people—even potentially upon herself, she was unsurprised to feel little impact, nor did she ponder whether her reaction was normal; she simply thought, then acted. She kicked the man who had nearly killed Kup, waited for his head to be smashed by a hammer, and then took the dagger from his hand.

Now Yin Feng was going to take another dagger.

She waited until they moved away into the blind spot, crawled out from under the table, used the key to unlock the door, drifted into the room like a ghost, closed the door behind her, and held the wooden handle hidden in her skirt folds.

In her imagination, Breemer should be in the room, performing some ritual to summon the walking dead, restricted to the point of being unable to leave. If he could make a move, she would need a way to distract him for a while, relying on her identity to lower his guard.

When she truly pushed the door open and entered, what she saw was not the pitch-black room she had expected.

A figure in a black robe lay supine on the ground, bathed in a hazy, eerie red light. That light's intensity was less than a candle's; it was as if the tear film had been replaced by drying, rotting blood, causing an abnormal dryness and irritation in the eyeballs, making one instinctively want to turn the head away.

Yet the entire field of vision was filled with this pervasive, constant light, leaving no place to hide. It emanated from a crude pendant that had fallen from the black robe's collar; a stiff hand had reached toward it before losing consciousness, an action frozen midway, while ominous fungal spots on the back of the hand thrived and grew under the red light.