125: decay

“What?” The three people in the room had the same reaction.

“What did you say, Hugo? The City is on fire?” Ikusa asked.

“Yes, Master. Please come out. We need to go help,” Hugo said before quickly walking out. The three of them quickly followed the man out of the building.

In the distance, the red-orange of the Night could be seen as smoke reached the sky. The City was completely on fire.

“What happened? Hugo, go call every Elder and Disciple and tell them to assist the City in controlling the fire,” Ikusa commanded.

“Volunteer Ning, I will rush ahead, please come as quickly as you can,” Kaezir said before flying away immediately.

Ning was also a little panicked when he saw the City on fire. “Is it the same group of people?” he thought. “Fire? Are they trying to cause another panic? Or is this fire merely a consequence of what is happening?

Ning stopped thinking such things and started running.

His 7th Qi Condensation Realm cultivation base, along with his 8th-level Body Cultivation, made him very strong, so he could also run very fast.

From time to time, he would emit bursts of Qi behind him to propel himself forward. He still hadn’t learned how to fly, but he had gone far enough to know that you manipulated Qi to propel you.

He was still not used to doing that, so it was the best he could do for now. Luckily, that was all that was needed. Ning didn’t bother to run all the way to the City gates. That was too far.

So, he just ran towards the wall and then jumped. A large amount of Qi pushed him from behind, making him fly very high.

With one jump, he almost cleared half the wall. He immediately spread his fingers and turned them into hardened claws.

Slam!

He dug his fingers into the wall and got stuck there. He lowered his body as much as he could while hanging, pulling himself up again with immense strength and jumping quite high. His Qi also propelled him.

In three such movements, he reached the top of the wall.

Normally, there would be soldiers stationed here, guarding the City and enforcing the no-fly law. But now, there was no one here.

Ning looked at the Cityscape from above.

Flames consumed a large part of the City. Cries of death and despair were everywhere. Men, women, children, animals, Ning could hear the cries of everything in the City from here.

It was truly a terrifying sight. Fear and despair began to sprout in Ning’s heart again. The “curse” that the system had left him with hadn’t disappeared. However, Ning had felt this feeling many times before and had learned to ignore it quite easily.

“AAAHH,” he heard a sound coming from below the wall. He quickly looked down and saw someone attacking a woman. The woman tried to run, but the attacker kept chasing her.

Ning quickly jumped down from the wall and used Qi to slightly divert his fall so that he landed directly on the attacker below.

The attacker’s body was crushed when Ning landed on his shoulder. However, no blood flowed from the man’s body.

“No! You killed him,” the woman shouted.

“Hm?” Ning was surprised.

“You killed my husband!” the woman shouted.

“Damn it, he was clearly attacking her, why is she mad at me?

And why would her own husband attack her in this chaos? Ning couldn’t understand the situation at all.

“Miss, he was attacking you. I saved you,” he said.

“But that’s my husband—” The woman’s eyes widened as she looked behind Ning. Ning also slowly turned around after realizing something was happening.

The husband’s crushed body slowly recovered, with arms and shoulders disfigured. Ning felt no cultivation base, so he was surprised. “How is he still alive?” he wondered.

“ARRRGGGGGHHH,” the husband said despite his heart being crushed. Ning couldn’t believe the husband was not only standing but also shouting.

Boom!

An explosion sounded in the distance, and a huge fireball flew into the sky, and in the light of that flame, Ning finally saw the husband’s body.

He was covered in black spots all over his body, just like the others.

However, his skin was very wrinkled, and he seemed to have lost most of his hair.

His eyes didn’t even blink, and most shockingly, the husband wasn’t breathing at all. Ning quickly checked the husband’s cultivation and found that he was indeed a mortal.

“How can a mortal be alive and shouting without breathing? And what’s wrong with his body? Ning wondered if this was a side effect of the Yang Festering Bugs, but they were harmless, so it couldn’t be them.

“Wait a minute,” Ning thought of a possibility. He immediately stepped forward and placed his palm on the man’s chest.

He waited a few seconds to feel his beating heart, but there was no feeling. This man’s heart wasn’t beating at all.

“He’s really dead. In fact, he’s even walking and talking like a corpse, which means… Is he a zombie?” Ning said in surprise. He immediately remembered the movies he had watched in the orphanage. Those slow-moving, infected, dead people attacked anything that moved.

“RRAAAWR”

The zombie walked towards him. “Darling!” The woman ran past him and ran towards her husband. Ning immediately grabbed her arm and pulled her back, barely missing the zombie’s attack.

Then he walked forward and blew off the zombie’s head with the Fanged Claw technique, immediately rendering it motionless.

“Miss, come back. Your husband has passed away. He’s now a—OW,” he felt a tension from his right arm. He immediately pulled it in front of him and saw his arm rotting and wrinkling.

His arm turned into the same arm as the zombie’s arm..