Chapter 85: The Boiling Town

What should we do next? Split up and investigate? Xu Jin asked as he came up beside Gu Changqing.

“No need to make it so troublesome.” Gu Changqing gave a sneer and strode over to a burly man. With lightning speed, he reached out, seized one of the man’s fingers, and bent it back.

A sharp crack rang out.

The burly man froze at once, and so did the others nearby who had been whispering among themselves.

Even the rest of the group with Chongming stood stunned.

The burly man looked down at his hand. His finger had been bent clean over the back of it.

“Ah—!” he suddenly clutched his hand and screamed. The people around them stirred in alarm.

“Is your reaction time that damn slow?” Gu Changqing sneered. With a thought, the little sword of the twin spirit blade flew from his sleeve.

He seized the hilt and drew it in a single slash from the man’s chest to his abdomen. Something spilled out at once, and a foul stench rushed forth, much like the rotten odor they had smelled ever since entering this world, only laced now with the reek of blood.

There was nothing like a normal human’s organs inside that belly—only a mass of rotten flesh, still writhing.

Worms, each as thick as a finger, burrowed out of the putrid mass and shot toward Gu Changqing like streaks of silver.

At the same time, the others around them also began to convulse, blood-red glints flashing in their eyes.

Gu Changqing wrapped the tortoise-snake eight-trigram lamp in his blood prison and sent it hovering above his head. From the outside, it looked like a blood-colored sphere, with a scarlet glow enveloping him.

Then the two blood pythons on his arms began to snake and writhe. One coiled around the finger-thick worms; the worms scarcely struggled before they were dissolved away.

The other blood python split into hundreds of crimson threads and drilled into the mouths and noses of everyone nearby.

Gu Changqing then leaped straight up and landed on the roof of a house beside them.

Ning Ze and the others hurried after him. Looking down, they saw those people going berserk as though possessed, their skin cracking open as they emitted beastlike howls. One after another, they also sprang onto the rooftops.

Their movements were swift and unnervingly agile, utterly beyond what ordinary people could do.

Yet not long after they landed on the roofs, they all toppled back down again, their bodies dissolving into pools of blood.

“Gu... Captain, how did you know?” Shi Qiu asked after a hesitation.

After all, a normal person would first look for what was wrong with the place. Who would act like Gu Changqing and launch into action so abruptly, as though certain the other side was up to something?

Was he not afraid they were really just ordinary people?

“So what if I tried?” Gu Changqing said with contempt. “Should I wait until night and let them transform?”

What was the big deal about breaking one finger? It wasn’t as if it couldn’t grow back. And even if it couldn’t, was that really such a catastrophe? They still had nine more.

With these people around him, he was already showing great mercy.

“Watch out, they’re all coming at us!” Ning Ze drew his blade at once, then surveyed the surroundings. “The city wall would be better.”

The wall was much higher than this place, and the area around it was open.

The little disturbance on the battlements seemed to have enraged the town in an instant. The entire settlement erupted, and beastlike howls rang out without end.

Countless “people” climbed onto rooftops and came charging this way on hands and feet. Their skin was all cracked open, and their eyes were bloodshot; they had completely lost their reason.

At a glance, that mad, ferocious momentum made one’s heart tighten.

One scarlet thread after another flew back into Gu Changqing’s hand, a faint trace of blood energy entering his body.

Very faintly so—roughly only the blood energy of two ordinary people.

Yet wherever Gu Changqing looked, he could see no one knew how many “people” were charging toward him.

Gu Changqing bared his teeth. It really was the smell of prey.

“Get to the city wall!”

“And what about you?” Pei Yuntai asked.

“What I mean is, don’t you damn well stand here getting in the way!” Gu Changqing’s smile grew brighter and brighter.

The next second, everyone saw a blood-red stream pour from Gu Changqing’s hand like a spring, turning into countless crimson threads that roamed the air.

Anyone who drew near was pierced by those threads from within, and before they could even reach Gu Changqing, they turned into pools of blood.

“We go first!” Seeing this, the others immediately raced across the houses toward the city wall, then leaped up onto it.

The people below did not even spare them a glance. Within the town, there were at least several tens of thousands of them, all as if they had become bloodthirsty monsters—twisted with frenzy, surging en masse toward Gu Changqing.

Once the group reached the battlements, they saw Gu Changqing standing on a rooftop with both arms spread wide, countless crimson threads drifting around him.

Endless monsters were charging at him, yet as soon as they came within a dozen meters, they all dissolved into blood.

If Gu Changqing had once seemed merely hot-tempered and fierce, he now stood there like a god or demon, filling people with fear.

“What exactly is his awakened power?” Pei Yuntai whispered.

Even now, they still could not pin down Gu Changqing’s ability. They only knew it had something to do with controlling blood, but clearly it was far more than that.

“Those monsters turn into blood water, and it feels like something is absorbing it away...” Shi Qiu took out a portable camera and recorded as she spoke.

She felt that the footage she had captured today would surely cause a stir when brought back.

“That does look like absorption!” Ning Ze deeply agreed.

These monsters possessed too little blood energy, so after being absorbed the crimson threads only thickened by a fraction, making it almost impossible to tell.

“If that’s true, his power is terrifying.” Pei Yuntai drew in a deep breath. Those threads did not seem to have the overwhelming force of elemental awakening powers like fire or thunder, but they were alive, almost like extensions of Gu Changqing himself, and thus extremely flexible under his control.

Once they drilled into those monsters’ bellies, they melted them into blood water.

And they remembered that Gu Changqing could casually make those threads transform into blood needles with tremendous destructive force and incredible speed, stabbing straight through a person.

If one got too close, they would be exceedingly hard to guard against.

Just imagining oneself surrounded by a sea of blood, only for that sea to transform into countless blood needles, made their scalps tingle. It would be nearly impossible to defend against.

What was more, Gu Changqing’s blood carried a bizarre corrosive property. The wounds of those he had injured before showed signs of corrosion and withering around the edges, clearly meaning he had held back at the time.

Only now did they see the true power of his awakened ability.

If one were even slightly careless and got injured by him, it would become a huge problem.

Let alone the fact that his fist techniques were also terrifying.

Add to that the crimson halo around him, which could still provide defense, and Gu Changqing seemed to them like a hedgehog bristling with spines.

Back at the camp, he had not used his true strength at all.

...

More. Give me more... more...

Feeling the blood energy flowing continuously into his body through the crimson threads, along with the spiritual energy rising within him in constant waves, Gu Changqing’s smile split nearly to his ears.

His entire body was filled with delight.

Though each individual source of blood energy was slight, the sheer quantity was enough; when accumulated, the change became a qualitative one.

Even those ferocious, twisted monsters were starting to look rather comely to him.

And the worms in their bellies, too, looked quite cute.

End of chapter.