# Chapter 523 — Ambushed by the Corpse Horde!

"My legs, my legs!!!"

Someone screamed — a wail so sharp it cut through the curtain of the newly fallen night.

Zhang Xiaohou spun around. Lu Hongjing was standing atop a mud mound bristling with rotting arms, his legs seized by several corpse hands that clamped around his ankles like iron spikes, holding him completely immobilized.

More corpse hands and claws tore and raked at his flesh, while one particularly ravenous creature burst from the soil, its iron-dark head driving straight into the calf of his leg and sinking its teeth in...

By the time everyone snapped to their senses and moved to help, everything below Lu Hongjing's knees had been stripped to glistening white bone. He toppled backward in agony.

"Don't fall!" Captain Qin Hu bellowed.

If Lu Hongjing went down on his back, he would be stripped to nothing. The Undead tore and gnawed faster than any school of piranhas.

"Earth Wave!"

Zhang Xiaohou reacted in an instant, immediately chanting the Star Trail incantation.

He seized control of the earth in that area, drawing on the Flowing Marsh's second property to forcibly harden the loose, soft ground into stone.

The Flowing Marsh could go soft as a swamp or quicksand — trapping Demon-Beasts and holding them fast — or it could harden like bedrock. Zhang Xiaohou forced the ground beneath Lu Hongjing to become solid rock, locking the freely-moving corpse claws in place.

The Earth Element Spirit Seed proved its worth in that moment. The corpse claws, encased in stone, could only thrash and pound uselessly — unable to reach Lu Hongjing for precious seconds. His body instinctively slumped backward, and thankfully he landed on the hardened ground. Had it still been soft earth, he would have been dead in moments.

"Get him," Qin Hu ordered Wang Tong urgently.

Wang Tong hesitated for just a heartbeat, then activated his Wind Track and shot toward Lu Hongjing at blinding speed.

There was nothing left below Lu Hongjing's knees. Wang Tong simply hauled him over his shoulder and carried him back to the group.

**Urrgh! Urrgh!**

Muffled, gurgling shrieks erupted all around them. Hideous, misshapen skulls forced themselves up through the mud, and eyes blazing with savage red light fixed on the nine living humans. The smell of blood drove the creatures to a frenzy — they clawed at the earth as though they could rip it apart to reach their prey.

The Undead rising from this soil all took human form. The Ancient Capital had endured countless dynasties and innumerable wars against the Demon-Beasts; far more humans had perished here than monsters. After thousands of years of accumulated death, the soil itself was no longer ordinary earth — it was saturated with a deathly aura that nourished the dead. Once sunlight ceased to fall, these creatures would claw their way up like plants forced into bloom; cut them down, and the next wave of deathly wind would sweep through and they would rise again.

Yet something about this land — some curse no one could name — caused the Undead here to manifest in human shape, regardless of what they had once been...

Beast bones were cobbled together into grotesque skeletal giants, their skulls the half-rotted heads of Qinling monsters, their bodies assembled from human skeletal remains.

Or a Demon-Beast crawling on all fours, mottled with corpse-spots, wearing a decayed human head on its shoulders...

Whatever the means, these dead things contrived to take human form — half-human, half-beast; stitched from several incomplete corpses; or pure beast bones bent into the silhouette of a towering giant.

The Undead this nine-person squad now faced were predominantly human in shape. A settlement must have died here not long ago; once the earth had nourished them long enough to grant them corpse rank, they had clawed their way out and fallen upon the living.

"Quick thinking, kid — you just saved that arrogant fool's life," Qin Hu said to Zhang Xiaohou.

Zhang Xiaohou managed a weak smile. He had the Flowing Marsh to thank — the Earth Element Spirit Seed he had acquired at Sunset Valley. So long as something came from underground, he could hold it.

"We need to keep moving. We'll be safer once we reach Yangyang Village. These dead things surfaced before full dark and caught us off guard — the deathly aura here must be so thick it's smothering what little sunlight remains," said Shi Shaoju, the squad's female strategist.

There was no Healing Element Mage in the group, so all they could do was wrap what remained of Lu Hongjing's legs and press hard to staunch the bleeding.

He had lost far too much blood and needed treatment immediately. The medicine they carried could only buy him time — delay any longer and he would die not just from blood loss, but from the corpse toxin working through him.

"I'll lead the way!" Zhang Xiaohou volunteered.

"Good — your Spirit Seed can suppress how fast they surface."

"God, there are so many Undead rushing at us..."

"How can there be this many? Even for a blood zone, there's no reason this many would surface the instant night falls."

"Probably means a large number of people died here recently."

They reformed their formation. The initial attack had rattled them, but composure returned quickly. Star Charts of every element blazed beneath their feet, and waves of frost, flame, lightning, and wind crashed into the hideous dead, shattering them to pieces.

"Kun Grove!"

Shi Shaoju was a Plant Element Mage. As the group found their path cut off by a cluster of over a dozen Undead, she unleashed her intermediate-tier Plant Element spell and trapped every one of them inside it.

Kun Grove erupted into dense masses of vines and branches, forming an impenetrable living cage. The Undead, possessing little intelligence, simply gnawed furiously at whatever blocked their path — giving the whole scene an almost comical resemblance to zombies chomping on nuts in that old video game...

In truth, the Undead here were anything but harmless. They were savage and bloodthirsty, and any living person who got too close would be gnawed down to bare bone — as Lu Hongjing had already learned firsthand.

"Move! Don't waste time trying to kill them all!" Shi Shaoju snapped, seeing the others still caught up in the fighting.

Everyone hurriedly withdrew their spells and fell in behind Zhang Xiaohou.

He led the way at the front. Wherever he walked, the soft earth hardened instantly beneath his feet, preventing anyone from being dragged under by whatever lurked below.

They were four kilometers from the village. Moving at full speed, they should be able to make it safely.

The villagers had their own ways of keeping the Undead at bay — once they reached the village, they would no longer be facing the threat of being surrounded by the dead.