# Chapter 556: Battling the Corpse in the Downpour

"Trouble — a large horde of Rotting Corpses is converging on our position! They seem to be responding to this Corpse General's call!" Ah Li, one of the retainers, shouted at the top of his lungs.

"Stay calm. Ah Xin, Ah Li — deal with the Rotting Corpses coming our way." Meng'e, the Woman in Black Stockings, spoke with quiet authority.

Her hair was already soaked through, and the black veil over her face looked ready to slide from her exquisite features at any moment.

It had seemed her covered face would forever remain a mystery — but now she made no move to hide it. Without ceremony she reached up and tore the veil away, letting it fall to the rain-soaked ground. What it revealed was a face of flawless, jade-white perfection...

It wasn't entirely a Western face — at a passing glance, she might even have been mistaken for an Eastern woman — yet her eyes shone with an extraordinary brilliance, bright as stars. Her long lashes were heavy with rain now, and she looked achingly beautiful standing in the storm.

Mo Fan had long been curious about what she looked like, and now he had his fill. Pity that the grotesque Blade-Axe Corpse General looming before them formed the starkest possible contrast to the woman beside him — there really wasn't time to linger on the view.

Meng'e had clearly sized up Mo Fan's abilities. After sending her two subordinates to handle the oncoming Undead, she swept swiftly to Mo Fan and Liu Ru's side, her voice sharp and resolute: "We take it down together!"

"Run! Just run, all of you — we are no match for a Corpse General that size!" Shorty shouted. To his credit, he hadn't simply turned and bolted.

After all his years in the Ancient Capital, Shorty understood better than most how terrifying a Corpse General could be.

The vast majority of Undead were Servant-class, but once Rotting Corpses began to mass in numbers, an entire team of Intermediate-Level Mages could be wiped out to the last.

And disturbing a Corpse General was even worse — a near-certain death sentence. A single Corpse General could summon every Undead within a kilometer, and no matter how many hundreds you cut down, you could never hold back thousands converging like a tide.

A Corpse General was already the nightmare of Intermediate-Level Mages — let alone one that had spent decades feeding and growing in the Land of the Undead.

A Great Corpse General of that caliber was something only High-Level Mages could hope to handle. No matter how elite the Intermediate-Level team, they would die without leaving a single intact body.

"We're surrounded by Undead, and the rain has killed our sense of direction. Running blind will only get us picked off one by one. Dawn isn't far — we hold out until then..." Mo Fan said.

Meng'e shared his thinking exactly. Running was pointless in these circumstances — the Great Corpse General was not only massively built, it was extraordinarily fast. One roar from it and the surrounding Undead would close in from every angle, making escape impossible.

While the rest of the Undead hadn't yet flooded in, taking down the Great Corpse General as quickly as possible was the only sound strategy.

"Liu Ru, draw the Undead away from that direction." Mo Fan glanced at the sheets of filthy water churning through the rain curtain and turned immediately to Liu Ru.

Liu Ru gave a brief nod and vanished into the wall of rain with startling speed.

"Can she manage on her own?" Brawny watched Liu Ru — a slight, apparently fragile young woman — charge alone into a swarm of Undead, unease plain on his face.

"Don't worry about her," Mo Fan said. "She's tougher than she looks."

*Liu Ru's strength by now probably surpassed even that Vampire, Nie Dong. When she had first transformed into one of the Blood Clan, she had already demonstrated the jaw-dropping combat power to leave Nie Dong gravely wounded. Now that she had fully grown accustomed to her Blood Clan abilities, those lesser Undead were no match for her at all.*

*And even outnumbered, she only had to suppress her aura and the Undead would leave her alone entirely. Strictly speaking, what she breathed out wasn't the breath of the living.*

"Come keep me company — come, all of you, keep me company!!"

The Blade-Axe Corpse General's grotesque face twisted in a rictus, and the malice dripping from its words made every hair stand on end.

Cold rain hammered down. The Great Corpse General swung its blunt axes with raw brute force, stomping furiously toward Mo Fan and Meng'e. It wasn't using the edges of its weapons to kill — it was simply driving them down with sheer weight, crushing everything in its path.

"Shadow Fade!"

"Shadow Fade!"

Mo Fan spoke the Shadow Element incantation, and his body sank into the darkness beneath the rain-soaked earth, flowing over twenty meters away in an instant.

Meng'e likewise commanded Shadow Element magic. Her Shadow Fade was third-tier — slightly slower than Mo Fan's, and without the real-and-false shadow doubles he could produce.

With some distance now opened between them and the Blade-Axe Corpse General, Mo Fan glanced over at Meng'e. Through the blurring curtain of rain he caught only the ghost of her striking beauty. "Find your opening and use Shadow Nail to pin it down. I'll hold its attention first."

Meng'e gave a nod, and her graceful figure vanished from the spot with that same uncanny ease.

"Lightning Seal!"

Mo Fan completed the initial Lightning Element incantation in an instant. His fourth-tier Lightning Seal wreathed the area in countless electric eels, and the rain itself served as a perfect conductor — arcs of electricity crackled and spat wherever lightning met water.

Channeling every Lightning Seal mark, Mo Fan laid down a dense electrical field across the ground directly in the Blade-Axe Corpse General's path. The purple-black arcs carried a faint spatial vibration that pushed their reach even farther outward.

The Blade-Axe Corpse General surged forward — and planted one foot squarely in the Lightning Seal field. Its body was drenched in gore, which served as an excellent conduit, letting the Lightning Seal surge deep into its flesh.

But a corpse's bones and muscles were already dead, and the Blade-Axe Corpse General's hide was thick as old leather. The paralysis effect wasn't enough to halt it in its tracks — only barely enough to slow its charge.

The Great Corpse General was ferocious beyond measure. Even a fourth-tier initial-stage spell could barely affect it. Shrugging off the electrical barrage, it charged at Mo Fan in a frenzy, swinging its massive axes as it ran — a flesh-and-bone threshing machine.

"Blood Beast Boots!"

Mo Fan held nothing back and activated his Footwear Enchanted Gear.

Power exploded through his legs. Mo Fan launched off the ground in a single leap, clearing over ten meters to the side and dodging the Great Corpse General's tank-like charge.

But the moment he landed, the Blade-Axe Corpse General whipped around with terrifying speed — and was already on top of him. All four axes came crashing down in unison.

*That speed — it was even faster than he'd expected. Shorty hadn't been exaggerating: no squad of Intermediate-Level Mages could deal with this thing.*

Fortunately, Mo Fan had planned ahead. He'd leaped in this direction precisely because a pocket of darkness here would let him vanish.

At the exact moment the axes came sweeping down, Mo Fan's body dissolved into a mass of shadow.

The shadow split in two with blinding speed. One dark phantom shot away like a black cat bolting through the night, gone in the blink of an eye.

The Blade-Axe Corpse General spotted the rapidly moving shape — knowing the human was fleeing — and launched itself in pursuit before its axes had even finished their arc. It hadn't covered many meters before it hacked the phantom to ribbons.

*This Great Corpse General is stronger than the Dread Fiend — by more than a little.* Mo Fan materialized from the true pocket of darkness where he had actually been hiding, heart still hammering, and fixed his gaze on the raging creature before him.

*Battle-General-class creatures weren't all equal — there were tiers within the rank. Back then, an entire squad of student Intermediate-Level Mages had nearly been wiped out in Jinlin Desolate City, caught in the trap laid by that tree-monster, the Dread Fiend...*

*And this Great Corpse General ranked even higher than the trap-setting Dread Fiend. Its raw combat power was staggering — even a seasoned Hunter-mage would stand no chance against it.*