Chapter 33: Evil Is Met by Greater Evil

Wu Chang tied his horse outside and stepped alone into the mist.

Visibility within the mist was very low, and a damp scent rushed toward him, mixed with a faint smell of burning and a slight odor of blood.

The surroundings were deathly silent; he could only hear his own breathing, as if the mist had turned into a dead zone.

He held the Silver Dawn in one hand and the Soul-Cleansing Command Flag in the other, remaining vigilant of the mist around him.

According to common sense, when the temperature drops to a certain point, the water vapor in the air should condense, causing the environmental humidity to decrease.

The temperature near Chen Family Village was bone-chillingly cold, likely below minus twenty degrees Celsius; for thick fog to still condense in the air at this temperature, there must be something strange about it.

As he ventured deeper into the mist, faint sounds began to appear in his ears.

A dull creaking sound, like footsteps sinking into snow, was right beside him, yet when he followed the sound, he found nothing there.

Only a string of sporadic footprints appeared out of thin air, then vanished just as suddenly.

Quite shy, aren't you.

Wu Chang did not tangle with the follower behind him and continued moving into the mist; before long, he saw the silhouette of Chen Family Village.

Chen Family Village was built against the mountain, with an overall architectural layout distributed in gradients; to facilitate trade with merchants, the villagers had built a small town at the foot of the mountain.

During its busiest times, the popularity here was no less than that of a normal town outside the mountains, but as mountain bandits ravaged the area, Chen Family Village had grown quiet, only regaining its former grandeur at the end of spring and autumn each year.

The situation inside the town was tragic, as if it had experienced a war.

The town gate had been broken open by force; the four-meter-tall solid wood door panels were snapped into three sections, and judging by the breaks, they had been shattered by the massive impact of a blunt object.

Nearly half of the houses had been burned to charcoal, and every time a mountain breeze blew, it stirred up a cloud of black soot.

Chen Family Village valued martial arts, and when suddenly attacked, they had resisted quite fiercely.

On the streets and the walls of the houses, spray-like bloodstains and scars caused by swords and blades could be seen everywhere.

But what was abnormal was that, compared to the messy state of the battle in the town, the interior was too clean; not a single corpse could be seen.

Who is so civic-minded that they stayed behind to clean up after a war?

He followed the street forward, checking house by house; when he searched the seventh house, he saw a patch of pale red resentment in the backyard.

Beneath the resentment was a hidden vegetable cellar, the door of which had been completely frozen shut from the outside.

After smashing the ice shell and opening the door, he found a corpse dressed as a merchant lying behind it.

The merchant had not died of hunger or cold, but lay on the ground with a face full of blood, seemingly having killed himself by slamming his own head against the door.

Let me see what happened here.

The scene within the resentment unfolded, showing him a glimpse of what Chen Family Village had encountered.

The battle took place at midnight; that night, the merchant had just lain down on his bed when he heard shouts of battle outside.

He put on his clothes and hurriedly opened the door to find the sky outside filled with fire; from a distance, he saw over a dozen young men from Chen Family Village surrounding a four-meter-tall ghost-faced ape.

The ghost-faced ape looked similar to the mountain demon Liu Shan had mentioned; the mountain demon’s entire body flashed with yellow light and was impervious to blades and spears, slaughtering the surrounding young men of Chen Family Village in a few rounds.

Seeing the monster was so terrifying, he dared not go out and hurriedly hid in the vegetable cellar, praying to escape the disaster.

Not long after, the shouts of battle outside grew faint, and everything seemed to have passed.

But fog suddenly rose in the village, and the mist poured into the vegetable cellar along the cracks.

Amidst the mist, the merchant's mind became exceptionally sensitive; he began to fear his surroundings and only dared to sit in front of the cellar door holding a fire-starter.

He dared not look back, as if the darkness behind him hid the most terrifying thing in the world.

As time passed, his body began to tremble, his expression shifting from tension to unease, unease to panic, and panic finally to collapse and madness.

He would do anything to escape, even if it meant being discovered and killed by the monsters outside.

He wanted to open the door to escape, but found it had been frozen shut; he hammered the door with all his might, but it remained motionless.

When his hands broke, he switched to ramming the door; when he was too tired to ram it anymore, he lay behind the door, constantly smashing it with his head, biting it with his teeth, rubbing his face against it...

The merchant only stopped when he had exhausted his last ounce of strength, dying in terror, whether from exhaustion or fright. The screen went black, and Wu Chang withdrew from the scene of the resentment.

The mist shrouding Chen Family Village was indeed abnormal; the merchant had only been exposed to it for a long time before his mind collapsed and he died.

It was only because of his willpower, which was over ten times that of an ordinary person, and the Soul-Cleansing Command Flag in his hand, that he had not realized the strangeness of the mist.

In the subsequent house-to-house investigation, he found seven or eight more corpses; their methods of death were similar to the merchant's, all having committed self-harm due to the influence of the mist.

Unfortunately, these people had not produced resentment, so he could not obtain more information.

Estimating that it would be dark soon, he gave up the carpet-style search and released his perception, entering a state of near-meditation, trying to use intuition stronger than willpower to find clues.

In a trance, he felt the Soul-Cleansing Command Flag flutter slightly, as if attracted by something.

Following the guidance of the Soul-Cleansing Command Flag, he arrived at the side of the town near the mountain.

This was originally the warehouse and trading ground for Chen Family Village, where various villages in the mountains would transport their stockpiled mountain goods together to sell to merchants entering the mountains.

But at this moment, the trading ground had turned into a slaughterhouse.

The place originally used to store mountain goods was piled high with dead villagers from Chen Family Village; thousands of young men were neatly laid out, and bone-chilling ice mist filled the surroundings, turning this place into a giant cold storage.

Oh, the monsters came to stock up on goods too.

While marveling at the monsters' grand scale, Wu Chang quickly discovered a problem.

When watching the merchant's resentment earlier, he hadn't noticed anything wrong with Chen Family Village, but now that thousands of villagers were lined up together, why did they look less and less like good people? The ones who died in the village were all young men, which could be explained by saying Chen Family Village had already sent the women and children away.

The young men were all brawny and strong, which could be explained by frequent travel on mountain roads and sufficient exercise.

Seventy percent of them had knife scars or other wounds on their bodies, which could be explained by the ferocity of wild beasts in the mountains.

But how to explain this pile of swords, spears, and halberds covering the ground?

Even in a dungeon plane, privately stockpiling thousands of weapons is treason.

Furthermore, combined with the physical fitness of the Chen Family Village villagers, this level of force far exceeded what could be explained by self-defense; it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call them private soldiers raised by some faction.

Combining the above points, a bold idea appeared in Wu Chang's mind.

Could the so-called Chen Family Village be the Black Mountain bandits who fled into the Hundred-Mile Huai Mountain?

If Chen Family Village really were the Black Mountain bandits on the wanted list, then being slaughtered by monsters as mountain bandits would fit the saying: "Evil is met by greater evil."

The villagers of Chen Family Village were all strong and vigorous with abundant blood and Qi, making the probability of producing resentment after death extremely high.

Through the villagers' resentment, Wu Chang completely understood the upheaval Chen Family Village had suffered.

Five days ago, it was the day to return the palace lanterns to Huai Valley Village.

The villagers and merchants in the town were drinking and eating meat, discussing how the government had recently relaxed its grip on the Hundred-Mile Huai Mountain, and whether they should increase the twice-yearly trade fair to four times.

Just as everyone was drinking heartily, the formation in the village used to repel monsters suddenly shattered, and the lights in the surrounding towers went out simultaneously.

Amidst the chaos, the mountain demon, which had snuck near the village at some unknown time, broke in and, together with five or six other monsters, bloodied the entire Chen Family Village.

Wu Chang had even seen two of the monsters; they were the Mountain-Blocking Ghost couple he had encountered at the black shop when he first entered the dungeon.

No wonder this place looked like a cold storage for meat; it seems the two Mountain-Blocking Ghosts' occupational habits had kicked in.

Recalling the five or six monsters that appeared in the resentment, Wu Chang felt a headache.

From taking down one evil spirit to having to take down an entire squad of monsters, is this also a difficulty fluctuation caused by the dungeon being polluted?

However, he hadn't been attacked since he stepped into Chen Family Village, which meant these monsters should have already left.

While they hadn't returned yet, he needed to act as quickly as possible.

Having collected enough information through the resentment, he left the trading ground; as soon as he stepped outside, he saw the mist shrouding the village turn into a vortex, condensing into a body in the open space in the center of the town.

A biting cold and killing intent rushed toward him.

Wu Chang shrugged; it seems the monsters left one behind to watch the house.

(End of chapter)