Chapter 369

"The corpses are all gone."

Lu Hu ran his hand over the muddy ground outside the blue stone slab; the rain had washed away most of the bloodstains, but the footprints formed by footsteps in the mud pits remained.

By tracing the direction of the footprints and the bloodstains untouched by rain, one could deduce what had happened in the Tu family—the mutated creatures had picked up every fragment of human remains and walked one by one into the ancestral hall, vanishing without a trace.

Lu Hu looked up to see Li Cheng stepping toward the giant white salamander, tearing off a piece of fish flesh, his expression strangely nuanced.

Su Konghu asked instinctively, "What's wrong? Is there something wrong with this fish meat?"

"It's not the fish meat."

Li Cheng stood up, used his toe to lift a burning piece of wood, and kicked it into the ancestral hall, its door wide open.

The firelight pierced the darkness, revealing a massive black shadow standing directly before the altar where the ancestral tablets of generations of the Tu family were enshrined.

The shadow's surface was covered in countless partially melted remains of snakes, rats, birds, and human limbs, resembling a mountain of wax formed by long-term melting.

Beneath the "wax mountain" pooled a thick layer of mixed blood and fat.

Continual streams of snakes, insects, rats, and ants crawled into the ancestral hall, waded through the mixed liquid, clung to the surface of the "wax mountain," and willingly allowed themselves to be melted and absorbed.

"Brother Sikong?"

Su Konghu's voice trembled; on the side of the wax mountain, Song Zhong, covered in wounds, hung diagonally.

His legs had already merged into the wax mountain; in his hand he still clutched his soft sword. Perhaps awakened by Su Konghu's voice, he slowly opened his eyes and rasped, hoarse and murky: "Run!"

Su Konghu charged forward without hesitation, wanting to pull Song Zhong out; his parents had died early, and Song Zhong had been both teacher and father to him.

Yet, just before stepping into the ancestral hall, Su Konghu was violently yanked back by Wang Biliu, who had noticed something and seized his wrist to stop him.

Song Zhong suddenly lifted his head; beneath the tangled hair, his left eye had a horizontally positioned frog-like pupil. "Run!"

With Song Zhong's piercing scream, the brick floor of the ancestral hall exploded with a "Boom—" as a thick, subway-train-sized "pillar" burst from the ground, overturning the entire ancestral hall.

The pillar itself was constructed from countless black, rotting marine creatures' flesh, interwoven with livestock corpses and human limbs; at its very top sat the wax mountain.

Song Zhong, impaled diagonally on the wax mountain, showed no reaction to Su Konghu's desperate cries—only groaned in agony as scales rapidly grew across his body.

"So long."

Li Cheng looked up at the pillar piercing the clouds and murmured in wonder: "Feces black with blood—likely gastric ulcer, gastric cancer."

"Not the time for jokes, man?!"

Brother Sikong, hair standing on end, scoffed bitterly; the firearm he'd just grabbed, which had felt so powerful, now felt like a firestick. "Do we run?"

"Only if it lets us."

Li Cheng silently pulled out the 【Primate Degeneration Gun】. The next second, the black pillar's surface writhed violently, as if laying eggs, "squeezing" out six living corpses.

The first four were the Primordial Realm living corpses from Guangxian Temple, Xunmei Fortress, Wuya Cave, and Night Heron Wharf.

The last two? Were they from the Tu family themselves?!

Tu Qiaohua, the second branch of the Tu family, who had gone half-mad and warned everyone not to eat fish.

And Tu Dongcong, the playboy scion of the Tu family's third branch.

The six living corpses landed slowly; compared to previous mutated creatures, they were taller and had fewer extra organs—only shark teeth and narwhal tusks grew on limbs and extremities as lethal weapons.

Notably, Tu Dongcong's skull was shattered, with a bullet hole in his forehead—as if he'd once been shot at point-blank range.

Li Cheng suddenly realized something and scanned the side buildings where the Tu family had lived.

Every single member of the Tu family's five branches—core members and spouses alike—had vanished, leaving no trace of transformation into living corpses or destruction of objects.

As for their residences: in the main branch's house, there were no mirrors—no dressing mirrors, wardrobe mirrors—likely due to rumors of a hereditary disfiguring illness.

In the second branch's quarters, all furniture—chairs, tables, pots, pans—had been replaced with iron.

The third branch had the most concubine rooms; the fourth branch's cabinets held a full set of painting tools; the fifth branch's quarters were unchanged.

'No wonder two letters were sent separately to Longhu Mountain and the Embroidered Uniform Guard. No wonder the murals in Shi Shi differed from the prophetic paintings. No wonder Tu Qiaohua and Tu Dongcong were singled out. No wonder the fish meat tasted strange.'

All clues snapped together in his mind. Li Cheng took a deep breath. So that's how it was.

"."

Behind Cao Meng, the last member of the Fanhe Gang, sensing the tide had turned, silently retreated to the courtyard gate and turned to flee.

Shh!

Tu Dongcong—or what had been Tu Dongcong—suddenly raised his arm and shot out his narwhal tusk, flying across the entire courtyard, piercing the gang member's chest and pinning him to the wall.

Combat erupted instantly. The six living corpses bypassed Li Cheng and lunged at the remaining survivors.

This wasn't because Li Cheng was too handsome to scare off the mutated creatures—it was simply soldiers against soldiers, generals against generals.

The towering pillar, flexible as a human arm, whipped violently. With Song Zhong's soft sword as its tip, it swept sideways toward Li Cheng.

The strike was swift, fierce, and heavy.

Li Cheng fired his bat hook claws to create distance, then, with his left hand holding the 【Primate Degeneration Gun】, pulled the trigger twice in rapid succession.

Bang! Bang!

No precise aiming needed—the bullets struck the pillar directly beneath Song Zhong's feet.

But the pillar showed no sign of slowing; only the rotting material at the impact site shrank by two layers.

As expected—the pillar wasn't a single entity but an onion-like structure layered with multiple layers of organic decay. To make the 【Primate Degeneration Gun】 effective, one had to shoot at its core.

Li Cheng twisted his waist midair and slapped the ground with a palm, activating the skill 【Ride the Tide, Rush the Wind, Flip the Clouds】.

A howling gale erupted, its recoil propelling him upward.

The flesh pillar missed; its lower half, still carrying momentum, flattened half the western buildings of the Tu estate.

The upper half lifted nimbly, like a parasite clinging to bone, continuing its pursuit of Li Cheng.

"You're not done yet?"

Li Cheng activated the skill 【A Knight Never Dies Unarmed】, raising his weapon proficiency, parried Song Zhong's soft sword with his flag spear, then triggered the spear's counterattack effect to knock Song Zhong back.

The two clashed high in the air; the battle on the ground continued.

Fast. Too fast.

The twice-strengthened zomby of the abbot of Guangxian Temple had unmistakably crossed the threshold of a peak Innate martial artist, reaching the Grandmaster realm.

Its speed was so great that it left only a blurred afterimage in the survivors' pupils.

A Embroidered Uniform Guard raised a rotary machine gun and sprayed wildly, but the zomby transformed from the castle lord of Xunmei Fortress darted across walls and rooftops amid the collapsed ruins, dodging every belt of bullets with ghostly, phantom-like lightness skill at extreme speed.

Then it closed the distance, struck out with a palm, and directly blasted that Embroidered Uniform Guard's head clean off.

Lu Hu's eyes nearly split with rage. The various forbidden drugs Li Cheng had given him for free boiled in his blood vessels, power gushing forth, allowing him to lift a burning round wooden roof beam with both hands and impale the zomby's chest.

(End of this chapter)