Seeing this, the foremost Nightwatcher didn't hesitate. He kicked one of the charging corpses squarely in the chest.
The kick was delivered with immense force, sending the unstable corpse tumbling backward into the stall.
The Bronze City residents who were streaming out into the courtyard glanced over in curiosity. Terrified by the sight, they lowered their heads and quickened their pace, not daring to look back again.
This saved the Nightwatchers the trouble of maintaining order.
Seeing that the corpses could be easily kicked back, Lu Yuan felt somewhat reassured. These things were likely still in the early stage of mutation, and their strength was not particularly high.
However, they did not seem to fear the silver arrows. The bolts had only opened wounds in their flesh rather than penetrating them completely.
We should try copper-cased incendiary rounds and copper weapons.
For once, the grey-white text did not display any prompts regarding their weaknesses.
With no other choice, he could only figure it out as they went.
The corpses still crawling outward suddenly paused. In the next instant, one that was crawling on all fours like a spider sprang off the ground, pouncing toward the nearest Nightwatcher.
“Scram!”
The nearest Nightwatcher reacted with lightning speed, drawing the copper sword from his waist and skewering the creature.
“Copper works against these things!” he roared, raising his copper sword and hacking the twisted corpse in half.
Yet, the creature showed no signs of dying. Though its human form was split from groin to neck, spilling its organs across the ground, more tentacle-like growths immediately erupted from its severed flesh.
A foul, sickening stench washed over the area.
The other Nightwatchers quickly drew their copper weapons. For a moment, the seemingly formidable eerie entities squeezing through the door were hacked down one after another. Though their tentacles sprouted anew as soon as they were severed, they could not keep up with the swift strikes of the copper blades.
Finally, the last of the Bronze City residents in the courtyard boarded the carriages.
“Light them up,” Lu Yuan commanded, throwing the molotov cocktail in his hand straight into the room.
The glass bottle shattered against the stone floor of the empty stall, splashing fuel that instantly erupted into a roaring blaze.
A second bottle followed close behind, landing right in the middle of the pile of corpses. Fuel splattered in all directions, and the temperature inside the stall spiked violently.
The mutants still trying to crawl out were instantly engulfed by the fire. Their tentacles writhed and thrashed wildly in the flames, and their mutated limbs crackled and popped as their skin and flesh charred and shriveled, releasing a sickening stench.
They had no mouths, but the sharp hissing sound of their convulsing tentacles sounded like agonized shrieks.
A few of the larger corpses managed to drag themselves forward, but they were promptly pinned back by crossbow bolts fitted with copper tips.
Tongues of fire licked out from the doorway, dragging them back into the inferno.
From the moment Lu Yuan ordered the door opened to the time the flames consumed the last struggling mutant, barely five minutes had passed.
The corpses had already been gathered in one spot, and with the door secured, they had no way of breaking out. Furthermore, because the Nightwatchers had kept watch all afternoon, they had detected the movement immediately. The molotov cocktails and silver arrows had been kept close at hand, ready to be deployed at a moment's notice.
Every step of the operation had gone smoothly thanks to Lu Yuan's meticulous preparations.
Lu Yuan stood by the stables, watching the last few tentacles shrivel and char in the flames until nothing moved anymore.
The fire continued to rage, fueled by the wood and straw inside the stall. The blaze grew rapidly, already starting to spread to the adjacent partition wall.
He had no intention of putting it out.
The inn was meant to be burned down anyway.
Lu Yuan pulled the leather-bound notebook from his waist pouch, flipped to the page he had written on earlier, and added a few lines beneath the entry for “weak pollution source.”
Delayed activation of pollution. The weak pollution remaining inside the corpses awakens on its own roughly half a day after death, mutating them into low-level mutants. Morphology: twisted tentacles and mutated limbs sprout from within uninjured bodies, sharing the same origin as the dried tentacles left by the culprit. They possess weak mobility and are vulnerable to fire and copper.
He paused his pen for a moment before adding another line.
This type of residual pollution shows no outward abnormalities on the corpses. The Holy Light Stone only turns a light red, and they remain quiet and inactive during the day. Recommendation: Any corpses with unknown causes of death encountered on the road in the future must be gathered and incinerated immediately. Under no circumstances should they be left overnight.
He finished writing and closed the notebook.
Dunn had approached at some point, standing a few paces away. The bandages on his right arm had loosened slightly from his movements earlier. He stared at the burning stall, his lips trembling. It took him a long moment to speak.
“Captain Lu, all the residents are in the carriages.”
“Understood. Let's move out.”
Lu Yuan turned and walked toward the courtyard.
The fire spread rapidly, quickly escaping the stables.
The partition walls of the stables were old lath-and-plaster structures. The wooden frames cracked in the heat, allowing the flames to slip through the gaps and ignite the adjacent hayloft.
The dry hay in the loft caught fire with a loud whoosh. Thick smoke, laden with sparks, billowed into the sky, and the crackling of the blaze echoed from the back of the inn throughout the inner courtyard.
Lu Yuan did not look back.
“Don't stare. Let's move.”
When he stepped through the archway, a dozen carriages were already lined up. The Nightwatchers' troop carriages guarded the front and rear of the convoy. The horses, still chewing their last mouthfuls of feed, were being harnessed to the rigs.
Lu Yuan leaped onto the lead carriage and surveyed the convoy. Bo Er held the reins, waiting for his command, while Dunn had already returned to his seat.
“Move out.”
Bo Er snapped the reins, and the lead carriage lurched forward. The remaining carriages followed in succession, their wheels creaking in unison as they rolled onto the imperial road.
Behind them, the inn burned.
The fire had already spread from the stables to the main building. Thick smoke billowed from the second-floor windows, and the stonework above the archway was blackened by the licking flames. Before long, the entire inn would collapse into ashes.
But it did not matter. Fire was a natural purifier of pollution, and burning the place down would also serve as a warning to any travelers who came after them.
As the convoy rounded a bend, the woods blocked out the glow of the fire, leaving only a pillar of black smoke rising into the twilight sky.
Lu Yuan leaned against the side of the carriage, never looking back.
He could finally connect the dots regarding everything they had encountered along the way. The Lost Ones, the Sinking Ones, the Split-carcass Beasts, and the Ocular-Spine Centipedes had all come from the direction of the city, only to turn back toward it. Now, even this inn—less than a day's travel from the city—had been slaughtered.
He had no idea what was drawing these eerie entities back into the city.
But whatever it was, returning was bound to be a nightmare...
“Captain Lu,” Bo Er called out from the front, the reins held loosely in his hands. “We'll keep moving through the night. We've got plenty of sandworm oil lamps in the carriages, so they'll come in handy.”
Lu Yuan gave a quiet nod, his expression complex as he stared at the road behind them.
Dunn followed his gaze to look westward, but seeing nothing but trees, he turned back.
“Everything on this road... seems to be heading toward the city,” the youth murmured, his voice barely audible.
Lu Yuan did not reply.
He knew better than anyone what state the city was in right now.
Meanwhile, at the Bronze City Nightwatchers branch.
A large hall that was usually left vacant was now packed. Inner city nobles and the heads of several merchant associations sat shoulder-to-shoulder along both sides of a long table, whispering to one another in hushed tones.
Kraus swept his gaze over the faces before him, a faint, almost imperceptible smirk playing at the corner of his mouth.
Ever since the ghouls beneath the city had attempted to break out again two days prior, Kraus had contacted the Count to have him summon the other nobles and merchant leaders.
He had been waiting for this day ever since the first greater ghoul appeared.
Based on previous intelligence and historical records, Kraus knew there was only one way to ensure the long-term stability of Bronze City: they had to either destroy the source of the greater ghouls below or wipe them out entirely.
To achieve this, he had spent the past few weeks secretly smuggling critical supplies out of the city while quietly evacuating the outer city residents in small, staggered groups.
Had it not been for the sudden outbreak of the greater ghouls, they might have evacuated even more. Lu Yuan and his team were merely the ones openly escorting the very last batch of residents.
As for those who remained in the outer city and refused to leave, they were mostly old residents who could not bear to abandon their life savings. Kraus had not wasted his breath trying to convince them; he had simply distributed weapons for self-defense to every household, leaving them to fend for themselves as best they could.
The necessary provisions had long been stockpiled. Furthermore, the resources he had diverted earlier and the copper weapons exchanged using Nightwatchers points—implements capable of drawing blood from ghouls and eerie entities—had been packed into the branch's warehouses box by box. The branch office was now, for all intents and purposes, a massive armory.
Kraus did not particularly care about the lives of the nobles sitting around the table. The tragedy of the previous outbreak was still fresh in his mind; thousands of residents had died in the northern and southern subsidence zones, and that was despite the rapid deployment of the Nightwatchers.
Yet, what about the inner city? Aside from a few massive ghouls appearing at the center of the sinkhole, they had suffered almost zero casualties, and the only ones who had died were the knights guarding their estates.
However, this gathering was the perfect opportunity to lay all his cards on the table.
An imperial city was on the verge of collapse. It would be unacceptable for those holding noble titles from the Empire to refuse to contribute.
Kraus knew full well that the Nightwatchers, the Holy Armored Army, and the Iron Guard alone could not defend the city.
The sole reason he had invited these people to the branch was to squeeze out the wealth and resources they possessed.
Unlike the composed Kraus, the nobles sitting around the long table looked pale and anxious.
During the first outbreak, Bronze City had spent a fortune to repair the city walls and appease the residents, and the Empire had also contributed a massive amount of resources.
Having caught wind of the situation, these nobles and merchants had shipped vast quantities of goods into the city, hoping to make a killing off the price hikes. But before they could sell off their stockpiles, another crisis had erupted beneath the city.
Now, their goods were trapped.
Yet, forcing them to abandon those stockpiles was a fate worse than death.
One of the merchant leaders finally spoke up, offering a polite, strained smile. His words danced around the issue, but his intent was clear: he wanted to know if the city could actually be defended, and if he could be permitted to smuggle his goods out first.
A few others quickly chimed in to support him.
Kraus did not rush to answer. He picked up his teacup and took a slow sip, waiting for the murmurs to die down before setting it back on the table.
“Gentlemen, if you have any requests, feel free to raise them,” he said, scanning the room with a cold, superficial smile. “But that is assuming this city is still standing.”
The hall fell into a dead silence.
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