45: Chapter 45 Regret

The Gate Guide in his right eye socket tightened slightly, continuously transmitting a tugging sensation.

Tu Ziguan followed behind him, keeping his footsteps very light. The copper shell of the earth-shaking thunder grew warm in his palm as he gripped it. He did not infuse it with spiritual power; igniting spiritual power in darkness of this density was no different from walking into an ammunition depot with a lit torch.

The darkness persisted for a distance of about a dozen steps, then suddenly thinned out.

Passing through a membrane, the perception of his spiritual power had been compressed to three feet in front of him the moment before, but the next moment it suddenly unfurled outward.

Xie Feng felt like a drowning person finally poking his head out of the water.

The main hall of the City Defense Mansion no longer existed, with two gigantic figures occupying both sides.

The roof was completely gone, and looking up, one could directly see the grayish-white light dome of the Formation. Light poured down from above, illuminating the ruins of the entire main hall like an excised abdominal cavity.

Broken beams and pillars pierced diagonally out of the ground, charred wooden stumps hanging with wisps of black mucus that trickled down the wood grain, pooling into small puddles of semi-solidified colloid at the base of the pillars.

Most of the bluestone bricks on the ground were shattered, revealing the damp soil beneath. Something was wriggling within the soil, and upon careful perception, grayish-white mycelium drilled out from the earth, spreading along the edges of the broken bricks.

The ends of the mycelium twitched from time to time, and each twitch oozed a few drops of milky-white sap from the fractured mycelial tubes. The sap fell to the ground and was immediately absorbed by more mycelium.

Xie Feng's blind staff tapped against a cluster of mycelium, which shrank violently like an insect leg being scalded, causing the entire mycelial network to contract and tremble slightly with that movement, spreading all the way from the ruins of the main hall toward the floral hall.

"The mycelium of the Black Pine Forest." Xie Feng said.

"It's here too?" Tu Ziguan's voice was lowered very much.

"Yes, and it's even denser than in the Black Pine Forest." Xie Feng's spiritual power probed deeper along the mycelial network, suddenly touching upon a huge, constantly wriggling spiritual fluctuation when it reached the location of the floral hall—something produced after weird auras and human spiritual power were forcibly blended together.

Meng Yi stood in the center of the floral hall's ruins.

Meng Yi was still wearing the official robe of a city defense Cultivator, but the robe had become mere rags hanging from his skeleton.

His body had expanded by at least two full circles compared to when he was drinking tea in the floral hall yesterday evening, something stretching his skin open from within. Grayish-green skin membranes rolled out from his collar and cuffs, covering his original human skin, and the membranes were covered with dense scales.

A part of him had also been transformed into a Ghoul.

His face still retained a part of Meng Yi's outline, and the right half of his face was still human skin—pale, withered, like a piece of rice paper that had been crumpled up and smoothed out again.

The right eye belonging to the human was still open, the surface of the eyeball covered with bloodshot veins, its pupil shrunk to the size of a needle tip, trembling slowly and irregularly.

There was more than one kind of weird aura on his body.

Weird grayish-white mycelium drilled out from beneath his official robe, entangling his left leg and spreading all the way to his ankle, with the ends of the mycelium piercing into the soil of the ground. Coiled upon his right shoulder was a cluster of weird aura that Xie Feng had never perceived before—something lighter, more scattered, resembling mist.

That mist wriggled slowly against the side of his right neck, occasionally revealing a blurred face within it—flat, without facial features, having only three irregular apertures.

That thing's mouth—if the largest of those three apertures could be considered a mouth... was pressed right next to Meng Yi's right ear, moving silently as if whispering something to him.

What concerned Xie Feng the most was the mark on Meng Yi's chest.

The front of his official robe was completely shattered, exposing the grayish-green skin membrane. On the left chest near the collarbone, that bizarre symbol was engraved.

A real, living mark of the Great Old Ones engraved upon flesh and blood, that mark was beating slowly like a small heart buried beneath the skin membrane. Every beat caused the scales in the recessed area to open and close once, revealing the black, constantly wriggling core underneath.

The two newly entered people caused Meng Yi's right eye to stop trembling.

At the other end of the floral hall's ruins, a thing whose size far exceeded that of an ordinary Ghoul was struggling.

Its torso was more than twice as large as Xie Yuanqing's, nearly a zhang high from the ground to the top of its shoulders. The grayish-green skin membrane was stretched to its limit, and the muscles beneath bulged out one by one like twisted steel cables. Four overly long arms extended from both sides of the torso, the ends of each arm growing sharp claws over a foot long, their tips plunging deep into the soil of the ground as it desperately resisted some invisible force.

Ghoul Binding Technique was simply too restrictive against the transformed Xie Tianxiong; no matter how much he calculated, he still missed a trick.

When Xie Feng's spiritual power swept across, he perceived it: several extremely thin threads of spiritual power extended from Meng Yi's direction, each thread entangling the limbs and torso of that giant Ghoul.

The surface of the threads was attached with a faint grayish-white halo, originating from the same source as the light of the Formation. Every time the threads tightened, a charred strangulation mark would appear on the giant Ghoul's skin membrane.

Tu Ziguan's earth-shaking thunder was already raised to his chest. "What is that?"

Xie Feng's spiritual power swept across that giant Ghoul. Amidst the encirclement of the giant Ghoul's grayish-green skin membrane, two eyeballs that still retained human shapes were staring fixedly at Meng Yi.

The surface of the eyeballs was crawling with bloodshot veins, their pupils shrunk to the size of a needle tip, filled with human hatred.

Xie Feng recognized that pair of eyes. In the side courtyard of the Xie Residence that evening, Xie Tianxiong had stood under the jujube tree and called out "Feng'er" to him, his voice suppressing a trace of undisguised trembling, which he hadn't cared about at the time. Now he knew that it wasn't fear; it was an involuntary spasm produced in the throat when the transformation reached its final stage.

"My dad."

The earth-shaking thunder in Tu Ziguan's hand almost slipped out of his grasp.

Xie Tianxiong heard the sound, its human eyeballs turning toward Xie Feng, its pupils contracting violently.

Another low roar issued from its throat, this time mixed with a few broken syllables as it used the Ghoul's throat to try with all its might to speak human language.

"Go."

Xie Feng did not leave; his blind staff tapped against the mycelium-covered ground as he took a step forward.

Tu Ziguan lowered his voice behind him: "Xie Feng, your dad's spiritual power is only at the Third Realm right now."

"I know."

Xie Feng's spiritual power spread toward Meng Yi once more. Meng Yi's right eye was still staring at Xie Tianxiong, the trembling frequency of its pupil growing faster and faster. The mist-like weirdness clinging to the side of his right neck was accelerating its wriggling, and that flat face with only three apertures within the mist continuously surfaced and dissipated, dissipated and surfaced, repeatedly attempting to drill into Meng Yi's right ear.

He was simultaneously enduring the erosion of at least three weird forces: the mycelial weirdness was rooting into his body from the outside, the mist-like weirdness was infiltrating his consciousness from the mental level, and the mark was remodeling his essence from the deepest core. The three forces pulled at each other, treating his body as a battlefield.

This was the weirdest part that Xie Feng felt.

Meng Yi's inner self was still human.

Xie Feng's spiritual power repeatedly confirmed it several times: beneath that disintegrating weird shell, in the deepest depths of the mycelium, mist, and mark, Meng Yi himself—that city defense Cultivator who had opened the fragments of ancient texts forty years ago, that Fifth Realm expert who mistakenly thought he was pursuing longevity—his consciousness was still there.

His right eye was still trembling, and the right half of his face still retained human skin. Therefore, he was using the Ghoul Binding Technique to suppress Xie Tianxiong instead of killing Xie Tianxiong.

"Meng Yi." Xie Feng called out again.

This time, Meng Yi's right eye turned toward him.

On that half of his face that was human, his lips moved without sound, but Xie Feng's spiritual power captured the lip shape.

"Go."

Meng Yi had merely wanted longevity; he had been plotted against by weirdness. Ever since he administered the drug to Xie Feng, he was no longer himself.

He wouldn't hold out much longer. Once he was completely suppressed back, and the weirdness regained control of this body and killed Xie Tianxiong, a monster carrying both mycelial weirdness and mist-like weirdness would stand up in the center of Cangyun City. The city-sealing Formation was still operating, and hundreds of thousands of commoners could not run out. Yet the only person around him who could still fight, Tu Ziguan, had a few pieces of earth-shaking thunder tucked in his pocket, with a cultivation base at the Second Realm of the Nine Heavens.

Meng Yi's lips parted, and a voice squeezed out from his throat, as light as mist:

"A hundred years of slaying demons and subduing fiends is difficult, trekking across green mountains while our bones are not yet cold.

A single greedy thought of longevity, tricked in turn by demons and evil spirits, trapping us as a coffin within the city.

Failing the common people and failing the heavens, how can this remnant body have the face to stand among the mortal realm?

Only turning this final moment of clarity into a sigh within the wind."