Chapter 53: A Gentleman Loves Wealth

Xiaoyao was faster than I was. With a few leaps of her feet, she was already at Fatty Dong's side, bringing a large rock in her hands down hard onto the corpse-hag.

If it were any ordinary young woman, she probably would have pissed her pants in terror at such a sight.

As expected of a girl from the acrobatic guilds, simply fierce!

That smash truly saved Fatty Dong's life. Had it been even a second or two later, his neck surely would have been snapped by the creature.

"Gaa—!"

A miserable scream rang out.

Stung by the pain, the corpse-hag released Fatty Dong, took control of Old Ou, and whirled around to savagely pounce on Xiaoyao.

Xiaoyao turned pale with shock, her lithe body twisting fiercely as she dodged to the side.

I had witnessed her lightness-skill before; she was exceptionally agile.

Had her opponent been a normal human, she undoubtedly would have evaded the attack.

However, Old Ou was no longer a normal human. Now fused completely with the corpse-hag, his speed was terrifying beyond belief!

Even though a chunk of the vaulted ceiling happened to crash down at that exact moment, striking Old Ou squarely on the forehead and sending blood streaming down, he didn't react in the slightest. His body still slammed toward Xiaoyao like a cannonball, pinning her hard to the ground. Opening his fangs, he lunged to bite her carotid artery.

I was frantic to the point of utter panic. Unable to think of much else, I drove my dagger fiercely into Old Ou's face.

"Crack!"

The dagger snapped!

Old Ou suddenly whipped his head around and actually opened his mouth to bite the blade in half!

What kind of ungodly strength was this?!

Yet, although Old Ou and the corpse-hag on his back had merged into a single entity of man and corpse, he was still made of flesh and bone. The force of his teeth biting down on the dagger was immense, and coupled with the extreme sharpness of the blade, not only did it shatter his teeth, but a mouthful of blood also spewed from his lips.

Stung by the pain and driven into a frenzied rage, Old Ou abandoned Xiaoyao and charged head-on right at me.

Almost on instinct, I threw a punch straight at his head.

"Thud!"

It felt almost as if I had struck a solid rock!

The creature didn't react at all. The only utility of the blow was that it offset a fraction of his momentum, preventing my chest from being crushed in.

Even so, the impact felt as though I had been hit by a car. I was sent flipping backward, my spine slamming heavily into the wall. My breath hitched, a salty-sweet taste rushed up my throat, and I spat out a mouthful of blood.

Old Ou let out a roar and launched another frenzied assault toward me.

Gathering every ounce of remaining strength, I rolled to the side.

"Crack!"

Old Ou slammed directly into the wall!

The already precarious alcove chamber instantly began to rain down bricks and stones from above.

Heaven must have been watching over me, for since I had already rolled a certain distance away, the majority of the falling masonry crashed down beside me. Only a few smaller rocks struck my arms and thighs; while the pain was excruciating, it wasn't fatal.

Dust billowed all around us!

Old Ou was buried beneath the rubble!

Yet the monster seemed entirely insensible to pain. The bricks and stones piled upon its body began to violently heave as it climbed back up with ferocious viciousness.

This was practically an invincible existence!

"Brother, run!"

Xiaoyao had already helped Fatty Dong to his feet and screamed at me.

Struggling to my feet, I lunged toward them while roaring at the top of my lungs.

"Dead Fatty! Get the corpse-repelling powder out!"

There was no running away.

The passageway leading out of the alcove chamber had been blocked by the collapsed bricks like a half-man-high wall. To leave, one had to climb over it, and whoever ran last would inevitably be dragged back by Old Ou.

"Crash!"

Spattered all over with blood and still under the control of the corpse-hag, Old Ou burst out from the pile of rubble. Uttering a deafening, unnatural screech, he lunged at Fatty Dong once more.

I had a feeling Fatty Dong acted like a giant magnet to the corpse-hag.

Earlier, Xiaoyao's and my attacks had only temporarily lured it away, but the moment the interruption ceased, it flew back to cling to Fatty Dong like a moth to a flame.

Knocked down by Old Ou's charge, Fatty Dong and Xiaoyao tumbled heavily to the ground.

At a moment like this, I couldn't care about anything else. Channeling force into my fingers, I stepped forward and stabbed hard into Old Ou's back.

My original intention was to hit Old Ou's pressure points, completely forgetting that the corpse-hag was plastered directly to his back.

The instant my finger poked the corpse-hag, a very strange tactile sensation traveled up my fingertip, as if I were jabbing a fluffy cat or dog.

Yet ordinary small animals possessed skeletons beneath their skin and fat, whereas the corpse-hag had none at all; it felt precisely like a large leather bag filled to the brim with liquid.

Unexpectedly, this move produced miraculous results!

"Pfft!"

A thick, dark green liquid exuding an earth-shattering, nauseating stench spewed out from the corpse-hag's body.

There was no telling which exact orifice it had vomited from, as the alcove chamber was pitch black. Our flashlights had long since been dropped in a corner and buried beneath the bricks fallen from the fractured wall. Fortunately, the bulb hadn't broken, and a sliver of faint light still filtered through the gaps.

The corpse-hag possessed a weakness for light and fire, but when it first went berserk, I had tried to shine my flashlight on it immediately. Whether the light was too weak or Fatty Dong's attraction to it was simply too overwhelming, it had been utterly impossible to drive it away.

Following the discharge of that disgusting fluid, Old Ou abruptly released Fatty Dong. His body arched violently backward, arms and legs sprawling upward toward the sky in an extremely bizarre posture.

To be precise, it was because the corpse-hag on his back had planted its eight wide, flat feet firmly onto the ground and was violently retching, literally lifting Old Ou's back off the floor and making him look as though he were lying flat on his back facing upward.

Had I poked right into this thing's stomach?!

Now was not the time to ponder the reasons. I rushed forward urgently, searching for the corpse-repelling powder.

Fatty Dong had already scrambled up. His gong-like eyes bulging wide, he let out a furious curse.

"Damn your ancestors!"

He dumped an entire canister of earthy-yellow powder straight down.

Almost all of it landed squarely on the upward-facing Old Ou, with only a small portion splashing onto the strange, claw-like feet of the corpse-hag as it retched on the ground!

"Sizzle, sizzle, sizzle..."

The limbs of the corpse-hag that came into contact with the powder dissolved and melted away rapidly, just as if they had been doused in sulfuric acid!

The mixed stench of chemical nitrates and rotting corpses flooded the air, strong enough to cause instant fainting.

It had gone mad!

Before the movement could even be clearly registered, a few shrill, agonized shrieks echoed. Controlling Old Ou, the corpse-hag leaped straight up from the ground, smashed directly through a large portion of the bricks blocking the alcove's entrance, and bolted outward with lightning speed, vanishing into the shadows in an instant.

Still shaken with terror, Fatty Dong and Xiaoyao sat paralyzed on the floor.

I hurriedly shoveled away the stones, picked up the flashlight whose handle had been bent out of shape, and yelled at them.

"Let's move, now!"

We could not afford to stay here a moment longer!

Because I spotted that the bottle of corpse-luring liquid dropped at the very beginning had completely ruptured, spilling and puddling outward, and the corpse-stench was growing intensely potent.

The corpse-hag hadn't sustained fatal injuries just now, and there was no guarantee it wouldn't return, lured right back by the liquid.

Stifling the pain wracking our bodies, we helped each other up and bolted outward like madmen.

Fortunately, despite the fierce battle, the alcove chamber hadn't completely collapsed, and though a massive amount of masonry had fallen, the three of us had only sustained numerous cuts and bruises without breaking any bones or tendons.

After sprinting forward for a distance, the heavy stench of the corpse followed like a shadow, refusing to dissipate.

What was going on?

I immediately halted in my tracks and swept the flashlight backward.

Fatty Dong panted heavily.

"Keep running! Are you waiting for the corpse-hag to come back and play mahjong with the three of us?"

I retorted, "Run my ass! The corpse-stench hasn't faded at all. Either it's already trailing us, or someone has corpse-luring liquid on them and will draw it right back to us sooner or later!"

Fatty Dong sniffed the air, pulled something out of his pocket, and gave it a sniff himself, nearly vomiting on the spot.

"Damn it! When did the plastic wrap on my package fall off? No wonder it stinks so badly!"

I whipped my head around to look.

The human-dragon intertwined jade pendant!

My scalp tinged with endless pinpricks of numbness.

"When did you swipe that?!"

Fatty Dong quickly shoved the jade pendant back into his pocket.

"Well... you know... I pretended to go take a dump and snuck back to grab it."

"Little Meng, don't get mad. A gentleman loves wealth and acquires it by thievery—since it's lying there, it'd be a waste not to pick it up!"

I was on the verge of blowing my top.

"Let me ask you, what is the principle by which the corpse-luring liquid attracts the corpse-hag to attack?"

"It's the corpse-stench. It likes to carry corpses on its back."

"Then why did it keep attacking you just now?!"

Upon hearing this, Fatty Dong froze in place.