Chapter 249
Chapter 249
“I-is it that thing again?”
Xie Shao heard the commotion behind him. When he turned, he saw teeth and droplets of blood spraying through the air like scattered petals.
Afraid he might lose control and be manipulated, Xie Shao immediately swung his arm in a full arc and slapped himself across the face with a resounding smack.
Even a thick-skinned Monstrous Beast like a Dang Kang would see stars after hitting himself that hard.
Bright specks danced before Xie Shao’s eyes, and it took him two full breaths to recover.
Before he could ask what had happened, an enormous wail suddenly came from behind the ancestral hall.
The cry was deep and sonorous as a great bell, yet the breathy sobs between each wail sounded like a small child’s.
It was the Earth Womb.
Qin Ying and Han Lie exchanged a glance.
“If the Wet Nurse is injured, does the Earth Womb get hurt too?”
Then, if they killed the Earth Womb, would the Wet Nurse dissipate?
There was only one way to find out.
Xie Shao rallied and headed toward the crying first.
They soon reached a passage wide enough for horses to gallop through, but it was completely blocked by wooden racks and black jars.
Xie Shao warned, “Don’t touch any of this stuff.”
Following behind him, Qin Ying saw the muscles across his back bulge. An instant later, he charged straight into the blockage.
A deafening series of crashes rang out as Xie Shao plowed through everything like a battering ram.
With him clearing the way, everything obstructing the passage was flattened.
Qin Ying hurriedly raised her sleeve over her mouth and nose.
Han Lie swept aside a broken bone that came flying toward her.
The thunderous crashes receded into the distance as Xie Shao disappeared around a corner.
The beam from Qin Ying’s phone flashlight swung wildly with her running steps as she and Han Lie hurried after him.
They had to watch their footing, however. One careless step on a jagged bone shard could drive it straight through the top of a foot.
When they were only a few steps from catching up, Qin Ying saw Xie Shao skid to an abrupt halt.
Then he cursed.
When they came forward, they found two heavily armored corpses standing at the end of the corridor.
Both corpses were unusually enormous.
Their desiccated skin clung tightly to their skulls. They must have been fat and powerfully built in life, though the skin on their faces now sagged in death.
Like bodyguards or gatekeepers, they stood watch over the door behind them.
Under the trio’s gazes, the two corpses suddenly moved!
At the same time, blue-green flames sprang up one after another throughout the passage.
They had encountered this cold-hued fire before and knew exactly how dangerous its temperature was. None of them dared lower their guard.
Faced with this eerie scene, Xie Shao lowered his voice as though afraid of alerting the two dried corpses. “Stay close behind me.”
“I heal fast. I’ll force my way through.”
Before he could put his reckless plan into action, the two armored corpses at the end of the corridor moved again.
Their bodies began inflating like balloons, and their shriveled eyeballs bulged from their sockets as though something inside was pushing them out.
A nub of something white and jade-like was also silently forcing its way out of each corpse’s nose.
Their mouths had been sealed shut by some unknown means. As their insides filled, their cheeks puffed up like pufferfish.
Xie Shao exclaimed, “The corpses are changing!”
But Qin Ying heard a faint hissing sound. Her eyes slowly widened.
Beside her, Han Lie said, “There’s an acrid smell.”
Qin Ying looked from the two swollen, balloon-like corpses to the blue-green flames in the passage.
A deeply ominous feeling rose within her.
She wasn’t the sort to disregard her instincts and soothe herself with the thought that she was merely overthinking things.
“Retreat,” she said at once.
“Those damn things might explode.”
Like hydrogen balloons brought too close to a flame.
If those two things exploded while they stood here, there would be nowhere to dodge.
The moment Qin Ying finished speaking, Xie Shao’s and Han Lie’s expressions changed at once.
The three of them hurried back the way they had come, but it was already too late.
At the far end of the passage, the bodies of the two Iron-Armored Corpse monsters had swollen tight.
The leather straps securing their armor snapped, sending rusty iron plates flying in every direction like blades.
When the two corpses swelled to their limit, they exploded with a deafening boom!
Two deafening blasts erupted as both Iron-Armored Corpse monsters burst like shredded balloons.
Gas hissed from their ruptured bodies and ignited the instant it met the flames.
Pain stabbed through Qin Ying’s ears. A heartbeat later, the shock wave came roaring from behind them, wreathed in fire.
The blast hurled her forward beyond her control.
She felt like a doll in the hands of a destructive brat, shaken so violently that her brains nearly turned to mush.
Being the lightest of the three, she was sent flying.
Just as she was about to crash into the bone shards littering the ground, a black-scaled clawed hand suddenly wrapped around her waist.
Han Lie, now in his Monstrous Beast Transformation, hauled her back into his arms. With his other hand, he grabbed the Thunderbird perched on her shoulder and stuffed it into Qin Ying’s embrace.
Using his own body as a cushion, he shielded her as they crashed into the jagged bones together.
When Qin Ying opened her eyes again, the air around her was scorching hot. She looked up and found herself staring straight into Han Lie’s teardrop-shaped gray eyes.
Behind him, blue-green flames filled the air.
Qin Ying could practically hear the flames sizzling against his back.
Her heart jolted, and Han Lie immediately pressed her head back against his chest.
“Careful. You’ll get burned.”
The flames had driven the surrounding temperature unbearably high.
The blaze had also consumed all the oxygen, leaving Qin Ying unable to breathe.
She felt as though she had been shoved into an oven and was about to turn into roast duck.
Fortunately, the flash fire lasted only an instant.
The flames soon vanished without a trace.
Charred bones and teeth lay scattered everywhere.
Qin Ying’s chest heaved several times before she hurriedly looked down at the Thunderbird in her arms.
It had nearly been squashed into a bird pancake, and the long trailing feathers on its tail had been burned clean off.
Only after the flames were completely gone did Han Lie release Qin Ying. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Qin Ying replied tersely, though it felt as if her neck had nearly snapped.
Still shaken, she hurriedly checked Han Lie’s back.
Compared to the last time he had been roasted into a tiny charred peanut on Golden Saddle Mountain, at least his black scales had protected him this time.
Aside from the scales being burning hot, his injuries were nowhere near as severe as she had feared. Even his silver-blue mane was only slightly singed and curled.
The one in serious trouble was Xie Shao.
He lay curled into a ball on Qin Ying’s right. When danger struck, he had instinctively tried to shield both Qin Ying and Han Lie.
He, too, had used his back as a shield, but his fire resistance was clearly nowhere near Han Lie’s.
Smoke curled from his body, and the black fur covering his back had been scorched and shriveled.
An ordinary person would probably have been roasted to death by now.
But Xie Shao was tough enough to take it, and he was still surprisingly lucid.
“Holy shit.” He stared at Han Lie, dumbfounded.
Han Lie had been dusted with Shadowgrass Powder. Not only could it mask a person’s presence, but it clung extremely well. A single pinch was enough to keep anyone from detecting the wearer’s presence for seven days.
More importantly, Han Lie wasn’t wearing a Chi-Hide Trench Coat to conceal the mutations caused by Monstrous Beast Transformation.
Until this moment, Xie Shao had never noticed anything different about Han Lie from an ordinary human.
Now, staring at the twin horns growing from Han Lie’s head, Xie Shao finally realized that Han Lie could undergo Monstrous Beast Transformation as well.
Ignoring the charred wounds covering his body, he rolled over and sat bolt upright.
Whether it was because his injuries were too severe or because the sudden revelation had stunned him senseless, he could only stammer,
“Bro, you… How?”