Chapter 365: Seafood

The survivors burst out of the Tu family mansion, not taking the winding mountain road but relying on their Wu Gong to run straight down the slope, hacking through the vines and venomous snakes that blocked their path.

After crossing two hillsides, the harrowing screams finally faded from hearing.

"Look, there are people at the port!"

The only one who knew no Wu Gong, Wang Biliu, who had been clinging to Su Konghu all this while, landed on the ground and excitedly stretched out a finger toward the distant port.

They saw that along the semicircular pier, the largest of the five-masted sailing ships had somehow already sunk or half-sunk,

leaving only three three-masted ships and a few small sailboats, on which shadowy figures stood as though preparing to set sail in haste.

All the survivors knew that escaping the island by boat was their only chance of survival, and they raced down the mountain with everything they had.

Cao Meng, whose shoulder still bore a ghastly wound and whose clothes were soaked through with blood, ran out of strength and was supported by the last two remaining Fanhe Gang members as they sprinted along the slope, gradually falling to the rear of the group.

From behind, the dense, death-seeking roars and footsteps rose again, drawing closer and closer. Already one could smell on the wind that indescribable reek of sea and blood.

"."

The middle-aged gang member on the left went pale, struggled for a moment, then suddenly shook free of Cao Meng's arm and bolted off on his own.

The other gang member, now left holding Cao Meng, nearly crashed them both into a tree; with three parts bewilderment, three parts fury, and three parts despair, he shouted at the fleeing man.

But the sworn brother who had once shared meat and wine with him didn't even look back, running straight down the mountain.

Leaning against the tree trunk, Cao Meng's pale face wore a rare expression of relief as he said to the young, scar-faced gang member beside him, "Don't bother with me. You go save yourself too."

"Gang leader."

The scar-faced youth hesitated, remembering the life he had lived before meeting Cao Meng—bullied by other fishmongers, beaten by debt collectors, harassed by petty officials—like wallowing in a pit of mud.

Then he thought of his dead father, buried in a fine feng shui plot, his blind old mother comfortably settled, his young son able to attend a private school, and a look of resolve flashed across his face.

Without another word he shoved Cao Meng aside and ran along the mountainside, shouting loudly as he went, drawing the pursuing living corpses away.

There was no time for grief or hesitation. Cao Meng released the tree trunk and staggered into a desperate run down the mountain. Near the foot his foot slipped, pitching him forward; like a gourd rolling on the ground, he tumbled onto the hard bluestone surface.

In his tilted line of sight, Lu Hu and the others who had reached the foot of the mountain first were not running toward the pier but standing where they were.

Cao Meng got back to his feet, and as his vision leveled, he saw the reason—

Every sailor and dock laborer who had stayed on the ships had grotesque coral of various colors growing all over their bodies, their limbs stiff as sculptures, standing in place.

The wooden hulls beneath their feet, even the iron anchors, had been hollowed out by the coral.

The sea's waves rose and fell, reflecting dazzling light under the Sun Zhaoyao—but it was not seawater, it was hundreds of millions of amphibious frogs.

The countless frogs clogged the entire sea surface; even the most advanced treasure ships of the age could not have forced their way out, let alone these few rotting hulks already eaten through by coral.

"Heh, nowhere left to retreat."

With their last route of escape now a dead end, the Huashan swordsman Wu Ge actually laughed.

The others had come to the Tu family birthday banquet with their own purposes—some for money, some to make a good connection,

but Wu Ge had come to settle a bet with a rival in love: one would go to the northernmost tip of the Great Ming, the other to the southernmost, to see who could bring back a rare gift worthy of their junior sister.

Thinking about it now, how reckless,

how childish.

"This sword is called Guan Hai. The blade is three chi and seven cun, net weight seven jin and thirteen liang."

He flicked the blade with a finger, then turned to look up the mountain. The roars were drawing closer.

"Namo Amitabha."

Monk Kuyu drew a deep breath, and could not help recalling the words his martial uncle—once a prodigy of extraordinary talent and deep Buddhist affinity twenty years ago, regarded as the hope of the Chan school, who had gone mad and fallen into dissipation after a certain journey and never left his rooms again—always repeated.

"All people dwell upon a solitary isle in the dark sea of the netherworld; that isle is called 'Ignorance.' This sea is vast and boundless, harboring ten thousand mysteries. Yet we ought not to sail far across it, nor should we probe its hidden depths—for fear of offending the heavens and bringing unforeseen disaster."

Oh, Uncle-master, riddlers are insufferable.

Monk Kuyu bent down, picked up a wooden carrying pole lying unclaimed on the ground, used it in place of a vajra, and weighed it in his hand.

The others, knowing there was no retreat, pushed carts together as Lu Hu and the Embroidered Uniform Guard had done, piling them up as a barricade;

Xi Cai, as if performing a magic trick, produced a great many hidden weapons and flintlock pistols;

Cao Meng paid no heed to his former "brothers," whose faces had gone rigid and mouths opened as if to say something; he simply scooped up some plant ash, pressed it over the wounds on his shoulder and leg, and bound them tight with cloth strips.

Su Konghu fished out a gourd from his person and poured out a stream of multicolored pills, distributing them to the crowd.

"These are Longevity-Extending Pills, these are Origin-Restoring Paste, these are Calamity-Avoiding Pills, these are Strength-Doubling Pills, these are Bone-Hardening Medicine…"

Wanzhang Valley specialized in pill-making, and what was in this gourd was an internal supply, with effects doubled and redoubled.

Taking large amounts in a short time harms the body and the kidneys, may shorten one's lifespan, and might even make the head grow pointy.

But just as Wu Ge had said, there was nowhere to retreat—they could only gamble everything on one throw.

The survivors present each picked up a pill and swallowed it; out of curiosity, Hui Yu also picked up two.

The group formed a circle leaning against the carts, waiting quietly in the foul sea wind.

Crack, crack.

The sound of tree branches snapping was unceasing, pebbles pattered down, and the black curtain formed by countless grotesquely shaped living corpses came pouring down like a mountain torrent.

There was no stirring background music, no preliminary probing—the two sides crashed heavily together.

The cart barricade lasted only a few seconds before being flipped and flattened; crab pincers snapped Xiuchun sabers; flintlock shots blew out Qianqiu's eyes; fists channeling decades of cultivation punched clean through tortoiseshell carapaces.

The scene was utter chaos. One of Cao Meng's eyes was slashed by an unknown fish fin, and his remaining right eye, bloodshot, guided his long saber as it lopped off one living corpse head after another.

He had come from humble origins, and his rise to gang leader of the Fanhe Gang, managing several thousand men across multiple piers, owed much to his ability to read faces and situations.

Judging by the clothes, this one with a jellyfish for eyes was an investigating secretary of the Judicial Commission's coastal patrol—a fifth-rank official of the Great Ming.

He had seen him once five years ago at a banquet hosted by the Judicial Commissioner—Cao Meng had had no business being at the table, and had waited outside in line to deliver his gift.

He closed in, the blade entering the corpse's right flank and exiting through the left side of the neck.

This one in green, with an octopus for a head, was a sea merchant from Laizhou. An old acquaintance—he still owed him a thousand taels from their last gambling bout.

He reversed his grip, drove the blade in along the eye socket, and kicked the convulsing corpse into the sea.

This one in grey, then, was

Cao Meng stared at the familiar young, scarred face beneath the overgrown shell, the muscles of his face twitching. The pill churned in his belly like fire, driving his exhausted body as he swung his blade at his former brother.

Only, the effect the medicine provided could never overcome the limits of physics.

The wound on his shoulder burst open, his arm went limp, and the cleaver lopsidedly lodged itself in the shell, unable to advance another inch. Meanwhile, the giant shrimp pincers on the opposite side came straight for his head, one from the left and one from the right.

At the critical moment, a stone lock skimmed past Cao Meng's cheek, sending the living corpse flying and tumbling into the bushes.

The Bitter Elm Monk, every muscle in his body taut, stood like a rock in midstream, holding back the swarm of living corpses. When the shoulder pole shattered, he switched to a raw log; when the log broke, he used a roadside stone lock.

"Fight your way out, head east — the east is a cliff highland, there aren't many liv—"

The Bitter Elm Monk shouted loudly, his peripheral vision catching the eastern coastline, and the final word "corpses" never managed to leave his lips.

Those coralized sailors and dock workers had, at some unknown point, already begun to move their stiffened legs, closing in on the group from both sides.

Like a lone leaf of a boat, about to capsize in the terrifying waves.

Boom!

A deafening thunderclap erupted right at the edge of the coastline, and several mutants clustered together were instantly crushed into powder by a 155mm artillery shell falling from the sky.

Before the remaining survivors could react, Grey Rain had already stopped fighting and, leaning on his Skull-Crusher Hammer, let out a long sigh of relief.

Boom!

Another blast of artillery tore open the dense forest, blasting apart the living corpses.

From the burning smoke and dust, Li Cheng stepped out slowly, glanced at the charred crab pincers, shrimp meat, and mussels all over the ground, looked up, and said indignantly: "You're having a seafood barbecue without calling me? How selfish are you guys."

(End of chapter)