Chapter 602: False Immortality

The source of the cry for help was exactly the direction Xia De needed to head. So he quickened his pace forward, and within the white mist, a massive figure gradually came into focus.

It stood at least three meters tall, with a waist wider than three Xia Des plus one little Xiao Xiao Miya put together. Its body was clad in armor pieced together from horrifying human faces, and its face was covered in dense slash marks as if it had been cut.

"Evil spirit!"

The more a soul's appearance deviates from that of a normal person, the more powerful the evil spirit becomes. And the one before them was clearly, in the traditional sense, the most terrifying kind of soul.

This ferocious soul also noticed Xia De. As it turned, Xia De observed that it held a spear over five meters long, and impaled on the spear's tip was a young man wearing the uniform of the Draguerron Royal Army. When Xia De and Captain Lades had visited the veterans' club, they had learned the dress distinctions of different soldiers and officers—this one should be a corporal.

The cry for help had come from him, and both his clothes and skin had color, even the blood spraying from his wounds had color, indicating that he was a living person.

The other party also noticed Xia De's figure emerging from the white mist. His right hand tried to reach out toward him through the air, but because of his severe injuries, the young corporal couldn't even complete the motion.

"An ordinary person who wandered in here?"

Xia De thought to himself, already coming to a halt. And the towering evil spirit stepping out of the white mist also turned toward him, violently flung the living man impaled on its spear tip aside with a swing, then charged straight at Xia De. The momentum of the charge stirred the previously still white mist, yet such a massive body trampling the ground made not the slightest sound.

"The opponent's weapon is longer than mine."

Xia De made a very rational judgment. He crossed his hands before his chest to trace a silver cross of moonlight, then stepped back and kicked out sharply. The crossed light flew forward, and the ferocious evil spirit swept its spear sideways with a violent swing, destroying the spear completely in order to nullify this attack.

"Stronger than the knight from before. Not just a plain evil spirit—could it also be a derivative of that Grade 0 relic?"

Fortunately, Xia De in this state was also stronger than normal.

The instant the spear shattered, his figure soundlessly appeared above the evil spirit's head. He brought his sword down with both hands; the evil spirit turned and raised a hand to block, and then half its body was split apart by Xia De.

Xia De landed, and the evil spirit, with only half a body remaining, swung its sole remaining left fist toward Xia De's head with an agility completely at odds with its form. By now there was no time to raise his sword, so Xia De threw upward his right fist bearing the Mind Crystal ring:

"Mind Quake!"

The evil spirit's massive fist met Xia De's right fist, and Xia De was startled to actually hear a resounding "Boom~." But this wasn't from the collision of fists—it was that the combination of 【Soul Echo】, which allowed Xia De to touch spiritual bodies, layered with 【Mind Quake】, had produced an effect Xia De had never imagined possible, allowing him to land a single punch with such impact in this world on the boundary between life and death.

Starting from the point where Xia De's fist made contact, the massive evil spirit gradually scattered into a pile of white light points, and finally vanished completely:

"I'm just a butcher who likes slaughtering."

Confirming the opponent had truly vanished, Xia De then hurried over to the young corporal who had been flung aside earlier.

He lay fallen at the side of the street, a penetrating wound in his abdomen, crimson blood flowing along the ground, quickly assimilated by this world's gray-white.

"False Immortality!"

Xia De crouched down, immediately pressed his hand to the man's chest, and then suddenly widened his eyes:

"Why isn't the spell working?"

It wasn't that the spell couldn't be used because the other party was already dead—the spell simply had no effect at all on the living person before him.

【All mortals must die; false immortality is merely a laughable comfort.】 (Chapter 52)

"What? False Immortality can't be used in the Narrow Realm?"

【This place is too close to death.】

Having no time to discuss further with "her," Xia De softly comforted the corporal whose eyes were gradually losing their luster, then took a wooden tube from his pocket, shook it a few times to fill it with water, and tapped the side of the tube to imbue the water with the property of 【Satiating Food】.

He splashed that water onto the young corporal's wound, but such a fatal injury simply couldn't be healed by 【Satiating Food】. Even though the miracle had gained an extremely strong healing effect due to the Divine Afterglow state, it was still healing, nothing more.

The corporal strained to keep his eyes open and look at Xia De. His blood-streaked hand lifted with the last of his strength, grabbed Xia De's sleeve, and his already somewhat unfocused pupils stared straight at Xia De:

"Are you... a living person?"

"Yes."

Xia De said. He couldn't save him—this world would accelerate the process of death. Without False Immortality, he couldn't save anyone. False Immortality really was just a comfort.

"Mr., please, please..."

The corporal's other hand fumbled toward his waist, and Xia De saw a handgun.

"Take this, give this to, the First Legion, Wind Rise Path..."

Every time he spoke, his lungs seemed to be drawing out all the air:

"Captain Luo Nade, Third Company, Red Water Camp."

His eyes looked at Xia De, and Xia De nodded:

"I will."

"Thank you."

A faint voice said, the color faded from his eyes, and he died.

"This really is..."

The Outsider was no stranger to seeing others die, but after False Immortality became ineffective, observing a soul's departure while looking someone in the eye was a first for him.

The corporal's soul slowly drifted out from his body—an ordinary soul, no longer able to make any response. He drifted here in the Narrow Realm, just like all the souls here, having completely forgotten everything.

It would be an exaggeration to say a stranger's death could truly move Xia De deeply. But seeing with his own eyes a poor soul who had stumbled into the space between life and death die right before him did stir something in Xia De's heart.

He would deliver that gun to Captain "Luo Nade," but right now the most critical thing was to find Father Augustus.

He turned the corpse into a toy and carried it on his person, then continued forward through this gray-white city that resembled Midhillburg but seemed to have some subtle differences, following the guidance of the holy emblem pendant on his chest.

Since he had encountered a living person just now, Xia De could be certain that there were other living people active here. But he hadn't expected that, only ten minutes after walking, he would hear an unusual sound again:

But this time it wasn't a cry for help, but the sound of battle. Xia De looked up ahead, and within the white mist there was actually red mist spreading. After getting closer, Xia De heard the sound of bats.

"Mm..."

He stood in place without moving, and instead put on his mask, wanting to see how things stood before deciding. Unexpectedly, the two sides in the fight unconsciously moved closer toward his direction.

One side was an evil spirit—a woman with a transparent, blackened body, floating in the air, wearing a tattered white dress and a crown, her face already rotted away, holding a hatchet of astonishing length in her hand. And the other side of the fight, if Xia De wasn't mistaken, was a bloodsucker—what is traditionally meant by "vampire."

This was not an evenly matched fight. The vampire, transformed into a swarm of bats, had to protect a terrified little boy while also fighting this powerful evil spirit at the same time. After Xia De was touched by that blood mist, he could basically confirm that the bloodsucker was probably Ring 5 or Ring 6, because heterodox ring sorcerers were generally stronger than human ring sorcerers, so the opponent could be considered equivalent to a human Ring 6 or even Ring 7.

And the vampire race, considered half-undead, would have their power neither suppressed nor enhanced in this bizarre world, so the strength the opponent displayed should be only at this level. And that evil spirit was clearly stronger than the bloodsucker.

As Xia De was thinking, the vampire transformed into a swarm of bats also noticed Xia De, and a cry for help came from within the blood mist:

"Help me!"

It wasn't Draguerron language, but Carsonrick language—fortunately Xia De could understand it.

Xia De stepped back, keeping himself at the edge of the blood mist. He couldn't get too close; once he got too close and let that evil spirit notice him, it would surely switch its target to him.

"Do you know the Blood Spirit Sect?"

Xia De asked in a low voice. Every bloodsucker he had met in this world belonged to the Blood Spirit Sect, so he had to confirm.

"Blood Spirit Sect? Yeah, aren't they in the New World?"

The evil spirit swung its firewood axe through the air, broad sweeps of blade-light cutting down the bats. The blood mist was being eroded by the white mist, and the situation was tipping further.

"Are you one of the Blood Spirit Sect too?"

"Oh, I get it—you've got a grudge against those idiots from the Blood Spirit Sect? I'm not one of them! I swear, I swear on my soul, I am absolutely not one of the Blood Spirit Sect! The clan that threw in with them is a different one! I'm only here to rescue my nephew, I mean no harm."

Xia De said nothing, but took another step back. Yet before the bat-swarmed bloodsucker could cry for help again, his figure vanished into the white mist.

While the tall, white-skirted evil spirit's attention was drawn by the bats, Xia De appeared behind it. But this time he didn't attack with his sword—he simply threw a punch.

But the punch didn't work. From either side of the evil spirit's body, two more arms suddenly sprouted, the hands gripping another firewood axe that hacked straight down at Xia De's fist. Xia De might dare to trade blows with the evil spirit, but he wasn't about to let his fist meet a firewood axe.

His fist opened in midair, then carved a streak of moonlight that hacked forward.

Clang!

The hastily-sent moonlight actually snapped the firewood axe clean in two. Realising the opponent was splitting its attention and couldn't bring its full force to bear, Xia De charged forward through the scattered debris of moonlight before him:

"Moonlight Greatsword!"

The greatsword shimmering with moonlight sliced through the arm of the spirit swinging at him. He was about to run it through the body in one thrust, but the evil spirit actually wrenched its own neck around a hundred and eighty degrees, that terrifying skull-like face staring straight at Xia De.

Its mouth opened wider, wider, wider, then snapped shut toward Xia De's head as if trying to swallow him whole in one bite.

But Xia De had already run into this trick on Darknis, so instead of dodging, he thrust his hand straight into the creature's mouth:

"Silver Moon!"

As brilliant moonlight shot out from the five features of the spirit, Xia De immediately pulled his arm back and retreated. In a place where he didn't know how many evil spirits lurked, he didn't dare use Light to illuminate the whole city, which was why he'd been avoiding this move. But since the thing had opened its mouth on its own, he had no reservations.

The spirit seemed to freeze in midair. The head struck directly by moonlight turned into specks of light first, then the whole body took on the colour of lime, and crumbled like a sand sculpture into a layer of ash on the ground:

"I shall become, the eternal Princess."