Sha Abyss — Pit of Ten Thousand Corpses (Part One)
There are two ways for the Undead to advance.
The first is through nourishment by dense death energy and killing aura — much like the fermentation of spirits. The longer they steep, the more terrifying they become.
The second is through assembly and devourment.
By forcibly grafting the remains of others onto themselves, they acquire a portion of the abilities those remains possessed in life.
The Corpse General that had mounted female officer Jia Xi's head as its own possessed unmistakably human vision. And because Jia Xi had not been dead long, her resentment had not dispersed in the slightest — so when night fell, she came hunting for their group.
Gray Garlic, standing still — none of it worked against a Corpse General burning with such profound resentment. Only a single day had passed; she still recognized every one of their eight faces with perfect clarity.
"You... come keep me company! All of you, come keep me company!!!" The head of the Blade-Axe Corpse General let out a horrifying shriek.
A Corpse General possessed the power to command. The moment its roar rang out, every Undead within hundreds of meters fell under its authority — and whatever target it had fixed upon became the target of every creature in the area.
The horde screamed. The Rotting Corpses, which had been shambling along like worn-out clockwork puppets, seemed to surge with fierce new energy. One by one they transformed into ravening beasts, converging on their position with overwhelming force...
Dark figures blanketed the landscape. The Undead in this area were already dense, and after the call to arms, the entire stretch of earth erupted into frenzy. In an instant, the eight officers who had been hiding among the Undead became the most tempting living prey imaginable.
"Run — run now!!!" Qin Hu bellowed.
There were even more Undead here than before. With a Corpse General driven by such consuming resentment, they had no hope of standing their ground...
The eight officers fled in a panicked scramble. Magic flared in bursts — fierce columns of flame, howling storms of wind — yet no matter how many bodies were shredded, no matter how much blood and viscera painted the earth, the Undead gave no ground in their pursuit.
A shriek tore through the chaos.
In the pandemonium of flight, no one had thought to spare a glance for Lu Hongjing, whose legs had been stripped to the bone.
Lu Hongjing was a Water Element Mage. He barely managed to keep a Water Domain swirling around himself, using it to hold the Undead at bay...
But they were relentless. They piled onto him one after another — the scene was like a rugby scrum — and even as one layer smothered him, another wave of Rotting Corpses was still worming into every gap.
His screams were muffled entirely beneath them. All that remained visible was a writhing mass of Rotting Corpses, with blood-soaked chunks of flesh occasionally torn free and instantly fought over by several at once — the creatures dropping to their knees to lap up even the blood that spattered onto the ground.
"Don't look back!!"
Shi Shaoju snapped the order at Zhang Xiaohou.
In the Land of the Undead, looking back was the one thing you never did.
Even if your own brother was taken, you could not go back for him. The most you could do was return when everything had settled — when daylight came — to collect what remained and spare him from joining their ranks...
"On this land, there is no such thing as rescue," Shi Shaoju said again, her voice iron-hard. "A rescue team is nothing but a body-collection team."
Zhang Xiaohou bit his lip and kept running.
The Undead around them showed no sign of thinning. Fresh Rotting Corpses always seemed to materialize in their path.
The Undead seemed to have boundless endurance. No matter how far ahead they pulled, the Rotting Corpses kept coming.
"I... I've got you... come... come keep me company!"
The words sent ice down Zhang Xiaohou's spine. He turned — and realized with a jolt that Captain Qin Hu had somehow fallen to the rear...
Two Rotting Corpses had latched onto his legs. Then one of the Blade-Axe Corpse General's arms drove clean through his torso.
The arm rose slowly, lifting Qin Hu — impaled and helpless — up before the Blade-Axe Corpse General. Up before Jia Xi's face.
Jia Xi's face twisted into a hideous grin, as though she intended to tear Qin Hu open with her own teeth.
Qin Hu wrenched his head around. Still clinging to life, he fixed his gaze on Zhang Xiaohou, who had turned to look.
His mouth was full of blood. He opened it in agony, as if struggling to say something.
"Don't... don't look... back!" Qin Hu forced the words out on his final breath.
The next instant, the Blade-Axe Corpse General's three remaining arms came down, hacking Qin Hu apart in a spray of blood and flesh. Only his head remained — collected and kept by that abominable creature.
"Damn it — damn it — DAMN IT!!!"
Zhang Xiaohou put his head down and ran with everything he had.
The wind whipped his cheeks until they stung raw. He had no idea how fast he was moving — only that every Rotting Corpse in his path was nothing but a flimsy obstacle.
No Rotting Corpse could stop him. Not even a Battle-General-class Corpse General could hold him back.
And yet — his only offensive magic was a single Wind Disk. He couldn't save anyone who had been taken. He couldn't obliterate the Rotting Corpses swarming his comrades in a single decisive blow.
He had thought he'd grown stronger. He had thought he could handle things now — could save the people he cared about. But here he was, the same as ever. Small, powerless, able only to run.
*If only Mo Fan were here.* He would use his most devastating magic to wipe every last creature from this land clean. Even facing a Corpse General that powerful, Mo Fan would find a way to deal with it — he always did.
Two elements were nowhere near enough against the Undead.
Zhang Xiaohou had never wanted to become a High-Level Mage as desperately as he did right now.
A High-Level Mage commanded three elements — at least one magic he could use in an actual fight.
At High Level, he could unleash advanced skills. Whether Stone Element's Stone Demon Eye — Petrify, or Wind Element's Wings of Wind — anything would be better than this cowardly flight...
"Zhang Xiaohou, not that way!" Shi Shaoju's shout cut through the air.
Zhang Xiaohou snapped back to his senses. The ground ahead had begun to sink without warning.
First the earth went soft, then the soil buckled inward — hollow beneath. Some tremor sent the thin surface layer plunging all at once, and a pitch-black abyss yawned open before him with no warning at all.
Dozens of Undead had been on the surface above it, but the moment the abyss was exposed, every one of them plummeted in.
Moonlight slanted down and caught only the upper walls of the sunken pit — half-illuminated at an angle, the other half still swallowed in shadow. Nothing was visible deeper below. Just blackness — broken only by the sounds of frenzied gnawing and tearing as the fallen Undead were devoured.
**"GRRAAAHH——!! GRRAAAHH!!!!!"**
**"GRRAAAHH GRRAAAHH!!!! WRRAAAHH!!! WRRAAAHH!!!"**
The Undead shrieks exploded through the pit like thunder, and the earth trembled with the sound.
"What... what is this?"
Zhang Xiaohou skidded to a halt at the edge of the collapsed abyss. His momentum had carried him sliding right to the rim.
He peered over the edge, face drained of color — and looked upon the most horrifying sight of his life...