No one asked questions.
The Nightwatchers gripped the brain cores and vaulted onto the various resident carriages, one for each, and squeezed inside.
The residents were huddled together in terror. They watched as a Nightwatcher suddenly pushed his way in, clutching something unknown, their faces filled with confusion and fear.
Lu Yuan gripped the last one himself and jumped onto the lead carriage.
He glanced back.
The Ocular-Spine Centipede had already pushed aside the final row of trees, and its entire silhouette was revealed from behind the tree line. The width of its sprawling form was longer than the entire convoy, and the heads dangling beneath its carapace swayed in the sunlight, their luminescence flickering.
The vibration of the ground had already traveled from the soles of his feet into the carriage.
Lu Yuan grabbed the communication inscription array and roared into it.
“Crush them! Use them now!”
He tightened his grip on the brain core in his palm and snapped his fingers shut with force.
Crack.
The brain core shattered in his palm, and dark fragments crumbled down through the gaps in his fingers.
A pungent, rotting scent seeped out from the fragments—subtle, cold, and eerie. It was the unique smell of ghouls. The scent began to spread in all directions from his palm, shrouding the entire carriage.
Inside every carriage, the Nightwatchers crushed the brain cores in their hands almost simultaneously.
Streams of the same scent seeped out from every vehicle, merging and spreading until they covered the entire convoy from head to tail. The human scent of over two hundred people and the transcendent fluctuations of the Nightwatchers were all suppressed by this layer of ghoul scent.
From the outside, the convoy now smelled like a pack of low-level ghouls wandering by the roadside, not worth any high-level entity stopping for.
The Ocular-Spine Centipede pushed through the last of the trees and closed in.
Everyone held their breath.
Inside the carriages, the residents huddled together. Some covered their mouths tightly, others pressed their children into their chests, their hands trembling. The Nightwatchers leaned against the carriage walls, motionless, sweat dripping from their chins.
The massive figure ground past the convoy.
As it moved, it kicked up a gust of wind that made the tarpaulins on the carriage roofs flap loudly and flattened the grass and trees by the roadside. The ground vibrated continuously, and the carriages shook. A water flask in one of the vehicles rolled onto the floor, but no one dared to pick it up.
It seemed to hesitate for a moment.
The giant body prowled around the perimeter of the convoy for a short while. The luminescence in the eye sockets of the heads dangling beneath its carapace flickered as it scrutinized the convoy inch by inch.
But no matter how much it sniffed, its nose was filled only with the pungent, rotting scent of ghouls. Not a trace of living human breath remained.
It turned around and pushed off in the direction the convoy had come from.
That was the west.
That was the direction of Bronze City.
The massive silhouette vanished section by section into the dense forest. The vibrations beneath their feet gradually faded until the last tremor disappeared into the soil.
Inside the carriages, the breath that had been held for so long finally escaped in a rush.
Some slumped onto the floorboards, their arms shaking as they propped themselves up. Others covered their faces and wept silently, while many simply sat with their mouths open, gasping for air after being suppressed for so long.
Lu Yuan leaned against the carriage wall and slowly opened his hand, letting the fragments of the shattered core fall.
He was drenched in a cold sweat.
This cold sweat had little to do with how large the Ocular-Spine Centipede was. What truly chilled him was something else—such a thing should never have appeared in this place.
The bronze of Bronze City possessed a natural suppression against the eerie, and that power was effective even from a great distance. Within the radius of Bronze City’s influence, an eerie entity of this level should not be able to function normally, let alone brazenly grind past the imperial road.
Yet not only had it appeared, but it was also heading toward Bronze City.
The same was true for the other things they had encountered along the way—the Lost Ones, the Sinking Ones, and the Split-carcass Beast. They had all spread out from the direction of the city, yet each one had turned back toward it.
Something had happened in the city.
And it wasn’t something minor.
Lu Yuan pushed this thought to the back of his mind, showing nothing on his face.
Dunn leaned against the side of the carriage, his legs feeling weak. His gaze remained fixed on the direction where the Ocular-Spine Centipede had vanished, and it took him a long time to find his voice.
“I... I’ve never seen an Ocular-Spine Centipede that large.”
By the time the convoy began moving again, the sun had already climbed halfway into the sky.
Dunn had a bandage wrapped around his right arm. He rested his elbow on his knee and refused to make a sound, even though the earlier incident had torn a patch of flesh from his forearm. The bleeding had stopped, but the wound beneath the bandage was still throbbing with heat.
Bo Er gripped the reins, no longer making lighthearted jokes. Over a dozen resident carriages followed the lead vehicle, one after another, packed more tightly than when they had set out.
Clearly, after the series of events that had just transpired, no one dared to fall behind.
The interior of the carriages was unnervingly quiet. The muttering and complaining that had occurred when they left the city had vanished. Occasionally, a child would whimper, only to be immediately hushed by an adult, who even kept their movements gentle for fear of making a noise that might attract something.
Lu Yuan sat beside the driver’s seat, his gaze following the imperial road ahead.
The woods on both sides of the road were thinner than before, and sunlight filtered through the canopy, dapping the road in patches. Logically, this should have been reassuring, but the tension in his mind wouldn't relax.
Everything they had encountered—the Lost Ones, the Sinking Ones, the so-called Split-carcass Beast, and that Ocular-Spine Centipede—had all spread from the east to the west, only to turn back toward Bronze City.
It was obvious that something inside Bronze City was attracting these things. Given the massive amount of bronze there, under normal circumstances, no eerie entity should be interested in it.
However, Lu Yuan couldn't contact Kraus at the moment. Communication crystals simply wouldn't work in areas thick with the eerie. Furthermore, he didn't even have a communication crystal; he only had short-range communication devices between the carriages.
It could be said that from the moment they left the city, he had been cut off from everything inside.
In the corner of his vision, the grey-white text continued to surface.
【Environmental perception, low-level pollution source detected...】
One after another, scattered and thin. Lu Yuan scanned them; they were all low-level, far off in the depths of the forest, with none showing any inclination to approach the convoy.
They were all heading west.
Just as before, the eerie entities were being pulled by something toward the city, all of them rushing west in silence.
Instead, their convoy, traveling away from the city, had become the most inconspicuous presence on this imperial road.
The further east they went, the emptier it became. As long as they didn't actively provoke them, these low-level entities rushing west were highly unlikely to deviate from their path to cause trouble.
He only had the confidence to maintain a steady pace because of this fact.
“Lu Yuan,” Bo Er spoke, his voice much lower than before. “There’s a coaching inn a bit further ahead, a fixed supply point on the imperial road.”
He glanced at Lu Yuan.
“Both the people and the horses have been traveling all night. While the sun is still high, let’s go there to rest for a bit and get some water. We’ll move out again in the afternoon.”
Lu Yuan didn't respond immediately. He glanced back at the convoy. The horses pulling the resident carriages had white foam at the corners of their mouths, their steps growing more sluggish by the minute.
The Nightwatchers’ troop transports weren't in much better shape. Even the one that had been bitten by the sinkhole and patched up was creaking at the axle.
The people were the same. They had been rushed onto the carriages before dawn and had encountered so much along the way; they were currently running on sheer adrenaline.
Once that adrenaline faded, it would be difficult to muster it again.
Furthermore, the sun was bright, and the activity of the eerie was at its weakest during the day. Reaching the inn to rest, feed and water the horses, and let the residents eat would be much better than pushing on until dark before trying to find a place to stay.
“Let’s go,” Lu Yuan nodded.
Bo Er acknowledged him and flicked the reins, slightly increasing the speed of the lead carriage.
Dunn remained silent beside them, his right arm resting on his knee. The wound beneath the bandage throbbed with pain with every jolt of the carriage.
He glanced back toward the west, but nothing could be seen. The city had long since vanished behind the forest.
He pulled his gaze back and stared at the road ahead.
At the same time, Lu Yuan issued the order for a rest stop through the communication device on the carriage.
The coaching inn appeared in a clearing on the right side of the imperial road. It was a two- or three-story main building made of brick and stone, its dusty walls bleached white by the sun.
The main entrance was a high archway, tall enough for a fully loaded stagecoach to be driven straight in.
But at the moment, the archway was empty, and the two thick wooden doors stood wide open. A long scratch mark was dragged across one of the door panels, carved by fingernails from the handle all the way to the bottom of the frame.
Bo Er tightened the reins, and the carriage slowed down.
Lu Yuan said nothing, first peering into the archway.
The cobblestone inner courtyard was a shambles.
The gated fence of the stables was crooked and empty; not a single spare horse remained.
The watering trough lay overturned on the ground, its rim stained with a dark, brownish residue. It was clearly blood, but it had mostly dried, leaving behind streaks where it had once flowed down.
A few wooden buckets and a broken hitching post were scattered in the middle of the yard, and there were pools of even darker substances in the gaps between the cobblestones.
Not a single human voice could be heard.
The wind blew through the archway, causing the wooden boards of the hayloft above the stables to creak. Other than that, the entire inn was as silent as if it had been hollowed out from within.
Lu Yuan scanned the area, simultaneously watching for the grey-white text in the corner of his vision.
Nothing popped up.
Clearly, something had happened in this courtyard, but whatever had done it was no longer there.
“Bo Er, watch the convoy from the outside. No residents are allowed to leave the carriages.” He jumped off the lead carriage and signaled to the troop transport behind. “Old Muller, take two men and follow me in.”
Three Nightwatchers stepped forward, their hand crossbows held ready and cocked.
Lu Yuan passed through the archway, his boots crunching over the gravel and dried blood with a faint sound. He bypassed the overturned watering trough and walked to the main door of the main building.
The door was slightly ajar, and as he pushed it open, the hinges let out a low groan.
Inside was the common room.
Long tables, benches, and a large fireplace in the corner—it looked much like any other coaching inn on the road.
However, unfinished meals were still sitting on the long tables. A plate held a half-cut loaf of black bread, and several wine glasses were tilted, with one overturned on the edge of the table, the liquid long since dried into a brown ring.
The ashes in the fireplace were stone cold, and even the smell of smoke had completely dissipated.
Judging by the scene, something must have happened while they were eating. It had come suddenly—so suddenly that these people hadn't even had time to clear the tables.
Could it be that there wasn't a single survivor?
Rate on N.U.
