43: Why translate this kind of book, Chapter 43?

That direction is the City Defense Mansion.

Something was exploding consecutively, the paper pasted on the window lattice was pushed bulging inward by the pressure wave, and the teacup on Tu Ziguan's table slid off the table edge, shattering on the blue brick floor. By the time the porcelain shards splattered outward, the two had already rushed out the door.

Cangyun City had already changed completely.

A huge cloud of smoke and dust rose from the direction of the City Defense Mansion. A grayish-yellow pillar of dust rose from the east of the city, slowly diffusing in mid-air like a mushroom spraying spores.

At the bottom of the smoke pillar, dark red light surged, resembling the lingering afterglow after some kind of spiritual power explosion, flickering cluster by cluster in the dust and fog.

Following closely was the sound of buildings being torn apart from the inside. The crisp cracking sound of wood and the muffled sound of brick and stone collapsing mixed together, rolling over from the eastern part of the city.

The smell of gunpowder smoke mixed with a colder, fishier scent, interspersed with Meng Yi's spiritual power, spreading outward from the ruins of the City Defense Mansion.

The street was in complete chaos. Vegetable peddlers dropped their carrying poles and dived into the alleys, with vegetable leaves and steelyard weights scattered all over the ground. The cloth shop clerk hurriedly put away the door panels; before the panels were even closed, he had already hidden behind the counter. A woman ran past the alley entrance holding a child; one of the child's shoes fell off, dropping in the middle of the road, and was kicked to the roadside by the surging crowd behind.

Everywhere in the city were footsteps, shouts, cries, and curses, mixed with the continuous sounds of building collapses coming from the eastern part of the city.

Xie Feng and Tu Ziguan walked against the crowd towards the direction of the city gate. Having walked less than half a street, Xie Feng's blind cane suddenly tapped out something that shouldn't exist on the stone slab road.

An extremely faint barrier spread upward close to the ground.

Xie Feng probed his spiritual power along the edges of the barrier to both sides. With the City Defense Mansion as the center, the barrier extended in all directions, passing through streets and alleys, houses, and city walls, closing into a complete circle on the outskirts of Cangyun City.

"It's a Formation."

A city-sealing Formation laid down by a Peak Nine Heavens Cultivator using all of his spiritual power.

Tu Ziguan's hand had already pressed onto the earth-shaking thunder at his waist. He looked up at the transparent barrier, which extended from the ground all the way to heights beyond the reach of sight. A large inverted bell covered Cangyun City completely, people and houses alike. Several muffled sounds came from the direction of the city wall—it was the city defense guards attempting to break the Formation with spiritual power. Their attacks landed on the barrier without stirring even a trace of ripples.

"Can it be broken?" Tu Ziguan asked.

Xie Feng probed along the base of the barrier with his spiritual power.

"It can't be broken. This is the full effort of a Peak realm Cultivator. The core of the entire Formation is probably in the City Defense Mansion. Without destroying the core, attacking in from the outside would be difficult, let alone fighting out from the inside."

Another sharp and violent sound came from the eastern part of the city, sounding as if the beams and pillars of an entire house were snapped off at the exact same instant.

"He doesn't want us to go out," Xie Feng said.

Tu Ziguan untied the earth-shaking thunder from his waist and held it in his hand. "Then he'd better not expect to make it easy for us either."

The blind cane tapped lightly on the stone slab road, and the crowd surged past them, running toward anywhere they could hide.

Xie Feng and Tu Ziguan walked close to the walls along the street, spreading their spiritual power within a range of several feet around their bodies like an invisible cushion, gently deflecting the surging crowd from both sides.

The light seeping up from the ground by the Formation's barrier grew stronger and stronger, taking on a visible grayish-white layer that soaked the entire Cangyun City into diluted rice soup.

That cold, fishy smell spreading from the ruins of the City Defense Mansion, mixed with a hint of fishy sweetness underneath, had nowhere to escape under the shroud of the Formation and could only surge back and forth among the streets and alleys of the city.

Smelling this odor, Xie Feng felt the Gate Guide in his right eye socket tighten slightly, as if an extremely thin thread was being pulled outward from deep within his eye socket.

"Did you smell that?" Tu Ziguan lowered his voice.

"I smelled it," Xie Feng said. "It smells just like those three pools of mucus in Xie Yuan's house."

"Didn't he seal the city? Locking himself inside too?" Tu Ziguan tilted his head and glanced at him.

"You ask me, who do I ask?" Xie Feng's blind cane tapped over a warped stone slab. "Perhaps it's for defending the city?"

"Then he has quite a strong professional ethics."

"He's a city defense Cultivator, after all."

Chatting along the way, the two finally reached the edge of their spiritual power perception, where the City Defense Mansion appeared.

When Xie Feng's spiritual power swept over, what it touched first was not the buildings, but the temperature.

The ground temperature of the entire circle surrounding the outer perimeter of the City Defense Mansion was much lower than normal ground. Xie Feng was all too familiar with that kind of gloomy cold.

"There are even strange anomalies interfering? The heroes of Mount Liang are truly gathered together."

The main structure of the City Defense Mansion was still standing, but half of the main hall's roof had collapsed. Tiles and rafters hung down from the broken ridge, looking like a smashed set of ribs under the grayish-white light of the Formation.

The floral hall behind the main hall was even more miserable; the entire house leaned to the left, and the spotted bamboos were uprooted by the pressure wave, with frozen lumps of mud still hanging on their roots.

It was unknown whether Meng Yi was still inside.

The two saw something moving in the ruins on the periphery of the City Defense Mansion.

When Xie Feng's spiritual power swept across, the silhouette fed back was humanoid, but the proportions of the limbs were entirely wrong. The arms were very long, and the length from the shoulder to the fingertips could almost hang down to the ankles. Moreover, the number of joints seemed to be more than that of humans, and the bending angles reeked of unnaturalness everywhere.

Their way of moving was also with all four limbs on the ground, leaping and climbing among the rubble. Every landing was nimble, and their foot structures were suited for traveling through such broken terrain.

There were no spiritual power fluctuations on their skin, only an extremely faint, gloomy aura that almost blended into the grayish-white light of the Formation.

Tu Ziguan's eyes widened greatly in the dark, watching how those things moved in the shadows at the edge of the ruins.

Skin with a membranous texture, grayish-green, covered with a layer of very fine scales on the surface, radiating a damp luster under the moonlight.

The contours of their heads were canine-like, with shorter and wider muzzles, high cheekbones, deep-set eye sockets, and eyes positioned completely out of the same plane as humans.

A few were turning their faces over, and Tu Ziguan saw their lips—very thin, grinning backward to reveal two rows of sharp, fine teeth, the teeth of a carnivorous beast interlocking inside the mouth.

"What kind of monsters are these?" Tu Ziguan tilted his head and shivered.

"Ghouls!"

Xie Feng recognized them instantly.

Ghouls in the cthulhu mythos are different from the undead Ghoul creatures in traditional western fantasy; they are not servants transformed from corpses. Ghouls mutate from humans or require a human prototype. They are an independent, higher-race, with an extremely long lifespan, generally living deep in the Dreamlands.

The memories in Xie Feng's mind were instantly connected—the book Xie Tianxiong read was the "ghoul manuscript"!

It recorded the details of the Great Old Ones—King of Ghouls, Mordiggian, and His followers. Every person reading it needs to conduct a will contest; once failed, they will begin to transform into a Ghoul. The most insidious part is that this effect needs to be triggered every time it is opened and read!

Xie Feng really couldn't take it anymore.

"Where on earth did you guys get the Jiuzhou language version of the "ghoul manuscript"!?"