Chapter 246
Chapter 246
“Thank goodness! We’re finally saved.”
A flicker of joy crossed my mind.
At the same time, immense water pressure bore down on my body from every direction.
Clearly, the underground river emerged into the Chuan River at a considerable depth.
I thrashed my arms and legs, fighting my way toward the surface.
Although the underground river’s violent current had swept us out of the mountain rock and into the Chuan River, we were still in danger until we reached shore!
I kept swimming upward…
Even with my eyes open, I could see nothing in the river at night. But I could feel the pressure around me steadily diminishing, and my compressed lungs gradually expanding again.
That meant I was getting closer to the surface!
Finally…
Splash!
My head broke the surface. River wind brushed my face, and I felt as though I had been given a new life. I opened my mouth and gulped air desperately.
Huff, huff…
I breathed deeply for at least half a minute before I finally felt normal again. Only a dull ache remained in my lungs and chest.
I looked around the dark, turbulent Chuan River, searching for any sign of Old Cao and Roundy.
“Old Cao! Roundy! Where are you? Did you make it to the surface?”
No one answered.
All I heard was the rushing river and the wind sweeping past…
My heart tightened.
“They couldn’t have failed to surface, could they? But the underground river was only so wide, and it had no other outlet. We must have entered the Chuan River at the same place.”
I was afraid that Old Cao and Roundy simply did not have my lung capacity and could not hold their breath for so long.
Even I had suffered terribly. If they had been underwater too long and were already dazed or half-conscious when they entered the Chuan River, they would be in grave danger!
“No! I have to go back down and look.”
Ignoring the fact that my strength had not fully returned, I drew a deep breath and dived underwater again.
This time, I had time to prepare. The current beneath the river’s surface was far less violent than the underground river, and the water was clearer. When I concentrated qi in my eyes, I could roughly make out the area nearby.
“The underground river’s outlet should be over there…”
Relying on my memory, I swam toward the place where I had emerged.
Sure enough!
Even from a distance, I could see a murky area deeper below. A broad patch of water held a faint muddy yellow tint, caused by sulfurous underground spring water pouring from the mountain rock into the river.
I did not dare approach the turbid water. I swam around the surrounding area but found nothing.
“The three of us were swept out together, so Old Cao and Roundy should be nearby, shouldn’t they? I hope the river didn’t carry them away.”
My anxiety grew.
I was nearing the limit of my breath again and planned to return to the surface for air.
But the instant I raised my head to swim upward, a deathly pale face suddenly appeared before my eyes without warning!
It was a man’s face.
A sunken corpse floated above me!
He–or rather, it–had been submerged for an unknown length of time, leaving its face ghastly pale. Yet because it had clearly undergone corpse transformation and become an evil creature, it was not bloated. Its skin merely bore an eerie pattern of fine wrinkles.
Worst of all, both corners of the damned thing’s mouth curled upward in a strange, horrifying smile. Its icy gaze bored straight into me!
This sunken corpse wanted to harm the living!
An ordinary person who encountered that sight while diving might have died of fright before it even attacked.
But at that moment, the sight filled me with nothing but fury!
“Goddamn it! I’ve already endured one miserable thing after another tonight. Now Old Cao and Roundy are missing, and I’m burning with rage. Yet you, a sunken corpse, still come looking for trouble? You sensed that I’ve used up most of my qi and thought you could take advantage, didn’t you?”
I drew the ritual blade from my waist. Ignoring how depleted I already was, I poured qi into it and thrust viciously at the male corpse!
Shnk…
The ritual blade plunged straight into the corpse-fiend’s forehead. Yang qi churned through its brain and torso. Almost instantly, the sinister smile and icy look vanished from its face, leaving its eyes vacant.
I pulled my hand back and yanked out the ritual blade.
Like a true, ordinary, harmless corpse, it drifted downstream with the river.
That was right. I had destroyed the corpse-fiend and turned it into a genuine corpse!
But striking in anger had left my already depleted body even more exhausted. Very little qi remained in my dantian, and my muscles ached.
More importantly, my lungs and chest, which had already endured a long breath hold, felt unbearable. I had to surface for air immediately, or I would start choking on water…
It was actually quite dangerous.
Yet at that critical moment, several more sunken corpses unexpectedly drifted from the dark depths beside me. Their bodies and limbs were stiff and motionless as logs, but they sped through the water like fish!
In the blink of an eye, they reached me and surrounded me from above, below, left, and right.
Some were men, others women.
Their hair streamed like black waterweed, their skin was deathly pale, and their gazes were ice-cold. They looked like something out of a nightmare.
“Damn! Seriously? Why did so many sunken corpses appear all at once…?”
My heart tightened.
Under ordinary circumstances, I would not have worried about facing these corpse-fiends in the water. None of them looked particularly powerful.
The problem was that tonight’s relentless succession of events had left me utterly exhausted. I had just used the ritual blade once more too.
Worse, I was underwater and could barely hold my breath any longer!
Even without these damned things, I would die if I did not reach the surface soon.
“Get out of my way!”
I roared inwardly and tried to swing the ritual blade, but it felt as heavy as a thousand jin. I could not lift it at all! I could not even pour qi into it.
Knowing I might no longer be able to wield the powerful ritual implement, I hurriedly swam to the side, trying to slip through a gap between the corpses and escape their encirclement.
As expected, that did not work…
As I passed the sunken corpses, two pale, hard, ice-cold hands suddenly seized my arms!
A male and a female corpse each reached out a pale hand and caught me. Their grips clamped down like iron pincers, preventing me from swimming forward or upward.
“Let go!”
Anger flared within me. The last trace of qi surged from my dantian and burst through my arms.
Strange, horrifying cries of pain sounded by my ears. The two corpse-fiends released me at once. I could see their pale palms crumbling apart like burned ash…
Yet they did not retreat. Each reached for me with its other hand.
“Damn it! If I were in normal condition, destroying sunken corpses of this level would be effortless. Yet now they’ve driven me into such a sorry state.”
Not only that, the other three sunken corpses stretched out bone-white arms and reached for my neck!
These damned things truly meant to keep me in the river and kill me.
For corpse-fiends, killing a cultivator offered far more power than killing an ordinary person!
Normally, they would not dare attack a cultivator stronger than themselves. But perhaps tonight they had sensed my weakness…
The fallen tiger truly was bullied by dogs!
Pairs of hands radiating sinister ghostly qi closed around my throat.
Cold, hard, evil.
I had already reached the limit of my breath, and now I could endure no longer. I did not even get the chance to choke on water. I thrashed my limbs desperately, trying to struggle free.
It did no good!
Almost utterly spent, I could no longer deal with even these “minor sunken corpses” that I normally would have thought nothing of…
“Am I really going to be brought down by something so minor? Or is this my third tribulation? It can’t be this ridiculous, can it? Am I going to be killed by sunken corpses this weak…?”
My consciousness began to blur.
My head lolled involuntarily to one side.
Then I saw a rope shoot toward me like a snake racing through the water!
It churned through the river and lashed out. Bang, bang, bang! Water exploded as it knocked away every corpse clutching my throat and arms.
The rope swept downward, wrapped around my waist, and a tremendous force pulled me backward at great speed…
Then it kept hauling me upward toward the surface.
Splash!
Huff, huff…
The moment my head broke the surface, I gulped air madly. Stars swam before my eyes, my vision blurred, and I could see nothing. I seemed to be trying to drag all the air in the world into my lungs before I could recover.
I breathed like that for more than half a minute before finally coming around.
Then I saw Old Cao’s head above the water beside me.
“That was close, Xiao Wu! If I hadn’t arrived in time, you would’ve been in terrible danger tonight.”
Cough, cough…
I coughed several times and wiped the water from my face.
“What about those sunken corpses?”
“After pushing you to the surface, I went back down and destroyed every one of them. Those damned drowned corpses tried to take advantage? If they dare attack cultivators, they deserve to have their souls scattered and suffer eternal damnation!”
Anger flashed across Old Cao’s face as he spoke.
I smiled wryly.
“I was too careless… Old Cao, you saved my life again. Thank you.”
He waved a hand.
“There’s no need for thanks between us. Think back to when we entered the underground river from that cavern covered in Corpseglow Moss beneath your school hill. Without your Water-Repelling Talisman, I probably would’ve died then.”
“But you came to the hill to help me…”
“Heh, the karmic burdens between us have long been tangled together. Why divide them so precisely?”
I smiled too.
“True. By the way, where’s that fat bird Roundy? Did you see it, Old Cao? I couldn’t find either of you after the underground river swept us out, so I got worried and dived back down to look.”
Old Cao shook his head and said that he had not seen Roundy either.
But Roundy was a miraculous Jade-Talon Gyrfalcon. Since the underground river truly did lead into the Chuan River and offered a means of escape, it was unlikely that anything had genuinely happened to it…