The earthen arrow came incredibly fast. Almost the exact instant the crack appeared, it pierced through the void and shot straight toward the back of Chen Zhou's heart.
It tore a straight trajectory through the air, the piercing whistle only exploding a fraction of a second later.
Taotie, who had been guarding Chen Zhou's back, swung his massive body over, blocking the arrow's path.
He didn't even have time to raise his hammer before the earthen arrow slammed deep into his abdomen.
Pfft!
A dull thud echoed.
The arrow pierced through Taotie's thick armor and his equally fat belly, its tip protruding halfway out his back.
A white light exploded at the edges of the wound. Turbid blood and minced flesh spilled onto the ground, dyeing the waters of the River of the Underworld beneath his feet red.
Taotie looked down at the hole in his stomach. His expression remained unchanged as he reached out, grabbed the exposed arrow shaft, and snapped it off with a grunt.
With the broken arrowhead still lodged inside his body, he was in no hurry to pull it out. Instead, he scooped up his spilling intestines, casually stuffed them back into his stomach, and turned his head to look at Chen Zhou.
“Are you alright, Young Palace Master?”
Chen Zhou shook his head, squinting up at the crack in the sky.
A blob of white slime squeezed out of the crack. Within a few breaths, it expanded into a humanoid silhouette, shifting from illusory to solid, and materialized as a woman holding a longbow.
A second arrow was already notched on her bowstring, its hazy white tip pointed directly at Chen Zhou.
Shen Shui Yuan stared at the pale, white-clad Wei Tu Zhi, momentarily dazed before erupting into ecstatic laughter.
“Hahaha! You've been transformed by the Heavenly Weeping as well?!”
“Good! Excellent! The Fate Officer truly watches over us!”
“Hurry over and give me a hand! Let's clean up these nuisances!”
“We absolutely cannot let them destroy the array and ruin the Fate Officer's plans!”
Wei Tu Zhi nodded slightly and drew her bowstring once more.
Standing at the bow of the boat, Chen Zhou felt the surface of the River of the Underworld beneath him tremble slightly.
He could sense that this fragmented space had become even more unstable after that last wave of attacks.
Chen Zhou placed his hand on the bow's railing, and the waters of the River of the Underworld suddenly surged.
As the black waves rose sharply, Shen Shui Yuan's pupils contracted. White slime erupted from his pores, quickly condensing into a wall of water before him.
However, the water of the River of the Underworld was highly corrosive. The moment the white slime wall made contact with the black water, it began to sizzle and smoke, dissolving rapidly.
Shen Shui Yuan desperately channeled the slime within his body to repair the wall, but his speed of regeneration was far outpaced by the rate of corrosion.
The waters of the River of the Underworld pressed forward like a blunt blade, grinding through his defenses inch by inch and forcing him to retreat repeatedly.
On the other side, Taotie gripped his Severed Thought warhammer once more. With a savage, fierce expression on his face, he charged furiously toward the distant Wei Tu Zhi.
Plague Rat was a step faster than him.
His grayish-black figure left an afterimage across the surface of the River of the Underworld, while a vast expanse of death qi swirled behind him like a dark green dragon.
He shouted as he dashed, “That woman's ranged attacks are deadly! Don't let her draw her bow!”
Taotie didn't need to be told.
His goal right now was to close the distance and lock down Wei Tu Zhi. For her to pierce through his thick layer of fat with a single arrow was a bit too absurd.
He absolutely could not give her another opportunity to shoot those highly penetrating earthen arrows.
Seeing the two behemoths rushing toward her, Wei Tu Zhi did not choose to take them head-on.
She slightly loosened her grip on the bowstring, releasing a white arrow aimed directly at Taotie's path.
The arrow struck the water's surface at his feet, and a white light instantly exploded. The black current of the River of the Underworld was briefly solidified by the white pollution, forming a patch of hardened white mire.
Stepping onto it, Taotie's ankle sank right in.
The mire crawled up his leg, attempting to pin him in place.
Taotie cursed, swinging his massive hammer down with a loud boom that shattered half of the mire. However, his forward momentum was forcefully halted by the impact.
In those few short breaths, two more blobs of white slime fell from the sky's rift. One landed beside Plague Rat, while the other dropped behind Taotie.
The first blob dissolved as soon as it hit the ground, quickly taking shape.
A hunched, humanoid figure struggled up from the liquid. On all fours, its body was covered in thick white fur, and its claws gleamed with a cold, ghostly blue light.
The moment Kui Mu Lang landed, he lunged straight at Plague Rat without making a sound.
His speed was terrifying. Plague Rat barely managed to dodge, but Kui Mu Lang's claws still grazed his shoulder, leaving three deep, bone-deep gashes.
A deathly pale color quickly spread along the edges of the wound.
Plague Rat retreated two steps, looking down at the injury on his shoulder with a grim expression.
“Damn it, why are they so much stronger now?”
Kui Mu Lang gave him no room to breathe. A second pounce followed immediately, his claws tearing through the air and leaving a trail of white starlight.
Plague Rat swayed, narrowly avoiding the strike.
His Great Plague Heaven expanded around him, sending a dark green toxic mist swirling toward Kui Mu Lang.
However, Kui Mu Lang's white fur gleamed with a slimy sheen. When the toxic mist touched it, it only produced a faint sizzling sound, failing to cause rapid festering like it had during their initial encounter at the boundary.
“This is trouble...”
Plague Rat's brow furrowed tightly.
Just as Taotie pulled his foot out of the white mire, the blob of slime behind him settled.
The pale slime burst upon impact like a blooming, rotting flower, then quickly contracted.
A stark white, tall and slender humanoid struggled out of the liquid, its entire body covered in white feathers.
Bi Yue Wu slowly spread his wings and gave a slight shudder. From the shadow behind him, eight clones of Bi Yue Wu emerged simultaneously.
Taotie held his hammer horizontally before him. He had barely managed to raise this guard when the clones moved, desperately trying to block him from getting any closer to Wei Tu Zhi.
The enemies had the advantage in numbers. Taotie quickly scanned the battlefield. Wei Tu Zhi had already used the opening created by her two front-line allies to put some distance between them, and was now notch-loading her second earthen arrow.
The tip of this arrow gleamed with a white light far more dazzling than before, clearly charging with even greater power.
Shen Shui Yuan struggled to stabilize his stance in the River of the Underworld.
The water's suppression of him was far too obvious.
The dark, black currents wrapped around his limbs like countless hands, dragging him downward.
As he struggled to push the water aside, several deathly pale arms would even reach up from the depths, grabbing his waist and torso to drag him down.
Shen Shui Yuan finally managed to step onto a shallow sandbar. Catching his breath, he saw two more of his colleagues emerge from the crack.
Reinforcements! It was reinforcements!
His colleagues had come to help him!
Joy surged in Shen Shui Yuan's heart, and a smile even began to tug at the corners of his mouth.
He was just about to shout a welcome, but the words died in his throat as his smile froze.
Something was wrong.
The transformation of Kui Mu Lang and Bi Yue Wu was far too complete.
It didn't look like something that had happened overnight at all.
Could the speed of transformation really be this fast?
Was there something amiss here?
Rate on N.U.
