White debris already littered the ground, piled layer upon layer.
Plague Rat squatted on a withered tree root half-buried in the dirt, spitting out a mouthful of thick venom.
The moment the venom hit the ground, it exploded into a gray-green mist. A few beasts that had just struggled to crawl out from the white debris twitched violently upon contact with the mist, shattering into even smaller pieces with loud cracks.
Plague Rat clicked his tongue, flicked the tip of his tail, and looked up at Wu Gou not far away.
“Yo, bald ass, you're here?”
He hopped down from the root, strolled over to Wu Gou, sized him up, and suddenly slapped him on the shoulder.
“Long time no see.”
Wu Gou swayed slightly from the slap, grinned, and raised his hand to slap Plague Rat's shoulder in return.
The two bumped fists like street thugs meeting up.
“This monk figured you guys would be running into trouble over here around now.” Wu Gou planted his monk staff into the ground and looked around.
The clearing at the forest edge had changed. The grayish-brown soil was covered in a thin layer of white.
The bark of the withered trees was mottled with white, looking as though it had been burst open from the inside by something.
A faint, sickly sweet, fishy odor wafted through the air, making one feel nauseous after breathing it in for too long.
Plague Rat followed Wu Gou's gaze, snorted, and spread his hands.
“Actually, we didn't really need you. It's a breeze over here.”
He kicked a pile of white debris near his feet as he spoke.
“With the moonlight protecting us, that dumb dog can't hurt us at all. It's just that no matter how we kill it, it won't die. It's incredibly annoying.”
Jian Huaishuang stepped out from the shadows.
He drove his greatsword into the ground, its blade vibrating slightly.
“I have slain him three times.”
“After being cut down, Lou-Metal Dog reforms a new body in less than a few incense sticks' time,” Jian Huaishuang said.
He walked to Wu Gou's side, tilted his head slightly, and glanced toward the deeper parts of the forest.
“I keep feeling... something is off.”
He knitted his brows.
“If all Seven Mansions attacked together, we might not be able to hold them off with our current combat strength.”
“Yet Lou-Metal Dog only ever comes alone to harass us. It's frequent, but he has never caused any real damage.”
“It is very strange.”
Plague Rat waved his hand dismissively.
“I think you're overthinking it.”
“That dumb dog clearly has no brains. He might not even know how to call his friends.”
“Besides, the other six Mansions might be like Wing-Fire Snake and Jiao Mu Jiao, unable to leave the underground city's sealing formation.”
“Did you forget? In Tianchi Province, Wing-Fire Snake and Jiao Mu Jiao were separated from the underground city by only a wall, yet they couldn't enter or leave. They stayed in that underground prison day after day, year after year, unable to find liberation.”
He hopped backward as he spoke, squatting back onto the withered root with his arms around his knees, his crimson eyes narrowing into slits.
“This Lord Rat estimates that Mao Ri Ji and the others are likely the same, tied down by the Myriad Ghost Array.”
“A powerful immortality attribute must come with corresponding limitations. It's only logical.”
“Perfect. We brothers will just guard this side and buy some time for Milord.”
He turned his head to look at Wu Gou again. “By the way, bald ass, where is Milord?”
“How is Milord doing? Did he deal with the new Mansion Spirit?”
Wu Gou nodded. “It should be settled.”
“He is resting.”
“Resting? Wait, you mean Milord... is resting?”
“Yes. He exerted himself quite a bit, so I had him rest for a while. I came over to check on things on your end.”
Plague Rat curled his lip. “Tsk, then he indeed deserves a break.”
He shook his head and mumbled, “Anyway, there are no issues on our end. We should be able to drag this out for a long ti—”
Before he could finish his sentence...
The sound of snapping dry branches echoed in the distance, rustling as it drew closer.
It sounded like countless tiny claws crawling on the ground. They trod over fallen leaves and withered twigs, the dense rustling gradually merging into a continuous roar.
Plague Rat's ears pricked up. His crimson eyes snapped toward the source of the noise.
Then, he saw a massive wave of white surging from the darkness of the distant ruins. It was overwhelming, like a white tide engulfing withered trees and rubble, rolling toward them.
“So soon?”
Plague Rat sprang up from the root, planting his hands on his hips with an annoyed expression.
“How disgusting. That dumb dog can't be killed at all. He just keeps coming back again and again. Does he have a mental problem or what—”
Halfway through, he froze.
The numbers this time were completely different.
A vast sea of white beasts surged forward on all fours, their backs arched high and white saliva dripping from their mouths.
There were easily over ten thousand of them. Crowding and jostling against one another, they poured out from the depths of the ruins, completely filling the clearing.
Jian Huaishuang's brows furrowed deeply.
His Paper Snow Sword Domain instantly expanded. The snow-white sword intent spread far and wide, covering nearly half the clearing. But the moment his domain made contact, Jian Huaishuang's expression changed.
“There are at least a hundred times more than before.”
Plague Rat cursed loudly, “Motherfucker, where did so many of them come from?! What the hell did that dumb dog infect this time?!”
Despite his cursing, his hands didn't stop. He slammed his palms onto the ground, and a vast expanse of gray-green toxic mist erupted from beneath, spreading toward the oncoming horde of white beasts.
Wherever the toxic mist passed, the weaker white beasts began to corrode and dissolve, melting into white water with a sizzling hiss.
But the stronger ones were completely unfazed, and with more beasts still pouring out from behind, the toxic mist could not plug such a massive breach.
Jian Huaishuang's domain also pressed outward. The paper-like sword intent shredded the encroaching white beasts, but as soon as one batch was torn to pieces, another surged forward.
Wu Gou watched for a few moments, then suddenly drove his monk staff into the ground.
“You guys take a break too. Let me see what's going on here.”
He clasped his hands together, his lips moving slightly as he muttered an incantation.
Before his voice could fade, the soil beneath his feet grew damp. A turbid flow of water seeped up from underground, washing over his shoes, covering his ankles, and rapidly rising.
The water churned and expanded outward at extreme speed. In the blink of an eye, it flooded a vast area, swallowing the white beasts leading the charge.
Shen Liang's gaunt ghost shadow emerged from the turbid water from the waist up. His wet, long hair clung to his scalp, and a sinister grin stretched across his high-cheekboned face.
“Listen to Master. None of you move. Let this subordinate handle it.”
His voice drifted as if rising from the depths of the water. Before his words fully registered, the turbid flow surged violently, sweeping straight toward the horde of white beasts.
Churning waves carrying the stench of rotting silt swept over a thousand of the foremost beasts directly into the water.
Pairs of slender, bloated ghost hands reached up from beneath the surface, grabbing the beasts' limbs and dragging the struggling creatures down into the depths.
Glug, glug.
Dense bubbling sounds echoed from beneath the water.
Shen Liang crossed and pulled his hands above the water. As if receiving an order, the ghost hands beneath exerted force in unison. Loud snapping sounds echoed from underwater, followed by a layer of white debris floating to the surface.
Within a few breaths, a large section of the beast horde was cleared out.
Shen Liang shook his head smugly, waves rippling in a circle around him.
“A piece of cake.”
Before his smugness could last, Taotie suddenly spoke up. “Skinny.”
“Huh?”
Shen Liang followed Taotie's gaze and looked into the distance.
At some point, the edge of the flood had begun to change color.
The turbid, yellowish-brown hue was rapidly receding, replaced by a ghastly pale white. It spread from the outer edges toward the center at an alarming speed, as if a bucket of white paint had been dumped into the water.
The white zone grew larger and drew closer. Countless tiny bubbles began to rise to the surface, looking as though the water was boiling.
Taotie scratched his round head. “Skinny, is your water... also being polluted?”
Shen Liang's face fell.
“Impossible!”
His voice rose sharply, clearly annoyed by Taotie's skepticism.
“Three thousand leagues of dead water, impassable to any but the dead.”
“Since entering the Great Emperor's Palace to cultivate, my dead water has been blessed by the Emperor, drawing a portion of the Wanchuan River. How could this kind of trash pollute it?!”
He spoke with absolute conviction, but his eyes were fixed on the white water rapidly creeping toward the center.
Taotie gave an "oh" and asked again, “Then could it be because your cultivation is being suppressed, so your dead water has also weakened?”
“Bullshit!” Shen Liang shrieked in exasperation.
“When we were supporting the Young Palace Master back at the bronze gate, my dead water didn't have any issues even when my ghost body turned white!”
“Small fry of this level can't possibly pollute my dead water—!”
Before he could finish, the words caught in his throat.
Deep within the white waters in the distance, a dense mass of shapes was floating to the surface.
They were the beasts that Shen Liang had just drowned.
These beasts floated back up from the white water, their bodies coated in a layer of viscous white slime. Their broken limbs, once crushed by the ghost hands, had haphazardly fused back together, making them look even more grotesque.
Behind them, the white flood churned. The dead water that had originally belonged to Shen Liang was now being trodden, pushed, and swept forward by the white beasts, surging toward them.
Two figures slowly rose from the white tide.
One was slender, with white canine ears poking through messy hair.
The other was short and stout, covered in long white fur with short, thick limbs. It looked like a cross between a human and an ape, with arms extending past its knees and nails sharp as iron hooks. It held a stream of white water in its hand.
Half of its face was unrecognizable, leaving only a single ghastly white eye exposed, staring fixedly at the people on the shore.
Shen Liang's pupils contracted violently.
“Not good—”
The instant those words left his mouth, the white torrent crashed before them.
The turbid, yellowish-brown dead water had turned completely white, slipping entirely from his control. It rushed toward the shore at a speed far exceeding before.
The polluted beasts ran across the surface of the water, moving as fast as a white gale.
Taotie took a swift step forward to the front.
His body expanded violently, folds of fat stretching out layer by layer, completely shielding everyone behind him.
He opened his mouth, exhaled a breath, and then sucked in forcefully toward the white torrent.
Whoosh—
A colossal suction force erupted from his mouth, causing the air to rush backward at high speed.
The white flood was forcefully sucked upward like a white dragon grabbed by the neck, pouring into Taotie's mouth.
Taotie swallowed in massive gulps. The water poured down his throat and into his stomach, causing his belly to bloat larger and rounder, like a balloon on the verge of bursting.
The white water churned inside him, and crackling, snapping sounds began to echo from his abdomen.
The sound of twisting, snapping intestines and tearing flesh echoed; the organs in his abdominal cavity were being eroded, gnawed, and shredded by the white pollution.
Veins bulged on Taotie's forehead, his face turning from black to red and then to white. Yet he did not stop, shouting even as he swallowed.
“Master—I can't hold on much longer!!”
The moment he spoke, water spilled from the corners of his mouth, laced with dark red blood.
“Stop laughing at this subordinate's expense—!!”
His voice was urgent and trembling, carrying a distinct tone of pleading for help.
Wu Gou smiled and sat down cross-legged.
A lotus platform of human hands bloomed beneath him out of thin air, countless palms layering together to support his body.
He then reached out and slipped the snow-white monk robe off his shoulders.
The robe slid down, revealing his upper body.
Plague Rat's eyes widened in shock.
There was barely a single intact spot on Wu Gou's upper body.
His chest, abdomen, ribs, and back were nothing but stark white bones with a few shreds of lingering flesh, the bone surfaces covered in cracks of varying depths.
Only his spine stood completely intact, aligned segment by segment from his neck to his waist, gleaming with a jade-like luster.
Seated cross-legged on the lotus platform of human hands, he closed his eyes, clasped his hands together, and began to chant, his lips moving slightly.
It was time to test the ghost-control techniques that old fellow Xuandu had taught him.
He would see for himself just what this white pollution—which had given even the Big Demon so much trouble—actually was.
Along the spine on Wu Gou's back, a patch of residual muscle tissue began to wriggle, churning and expanding until the flesh split open.
A lotus flower bloomed from his spine.
The fleshy petals unfurled one by one, thin and soft, a reddish-pink carrying a faint scent of sandalwood.
Amid the unfurling petals, two umbilical-cord-like tentacles extended from the center of the flower. They were as thick as human arms, their surfaces covered in fine blood vessels where dark red blood flowed slowly.
The tentacles reached out from the flesh lotus, flailing wildly in midair before thrusting violently in two different directions.
One pierced into Taotie's head.
The other pierced into Shen Liang's head.
Both shuddered simultaneously.
Taotie's body expanded violently once more. His belly, which had already been stretched to its limit, grew a full size larger, the blood vessels beneath his skin bulging like thick, purplish-blue ropes.
His layers of fat knotted together, and his bones creaked and cracked loudly. He looked like a growing mountain of flesh.
He shut his mouth, forcing the swallowed dead water to remain blocked in his throat. Then, he lunged forward, crashing directly into the white torrent.
Boom—!
His massive, rotund body crashed into the water, kicking up a sky of white spray.
The white beasts were sent flying in all directions by the impact, their debris scattering everywhere.
Shen Liang's figure merged completely into the depths. Shuttling through the water, he rapidly approached the white-furred monster and swam circles around him. Ghost hands reached out from all directions beneath the water, grabbing at the white-furred monster's limbs and torso.
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