After a baby’s cry rang out, it seemed to have triggered a switch.
Several more sharp, thin baby cries followed, echoing through the corridor, making everyone dizzy and confused.
Wang Yi had collapsed on the ground, unconscious.
The ghost possessing her was already weakened to near death by Zhang Xianyu, and now under this sonic assault, it had no strength left to resist.
“Whoever’s coming is no friend.”
Zhang Xianyu and Xie Dingxin were both cultivators, so they weren’t easily shaken.
Lin Wushui, now a vague human-shaped figure made of black mist, looked intrigued.
“Shall we go see what it is?”
Zhang Xianyu glanced at the remaining talismans in his hand and regretted not bringing more, realizing he lacked dungeon experience.
Looking at the weakened Xie Dingxin, he shamelessly asked: “Did you bring any talisman paper or cinnabar? Or any usable magical tools?”
Xie Dingxin, at first not understanding, thought he was asking for drawn talismans.
He pointed to the tossed backpack,
“There are still a few inside. See what you can use.”
Zhang Xianyu thanked him, rummaged through the pack, and found a few pre-drawn talismans—though not very powerful.
Used to high-grade Five Thunder Talismans, he scoffed and set them aside.
After searching a bit, he found ten sheets of crimson talisman paper and four spirit banners.
Not many, but high quality—his personal stash.
He felt embarrassed using them since they were expensive.
“Can I use the paper and banners?”
Xie Dingxin, while dressing his wounds, was puzzled: “You can, but what for?”
He had thrown them in on a whim and hadn’t expected them to be needed.
“To draw talismans, obviously.”
Without a brush or cinnabar, Zhang Xianyu crouched and bit his finger, using blood to draw quickly.
Ten red talismans, plus the three purple ones in his pocket—that was his backup plan.
If even this didn’t work…they’d better retreat.
Better a live coward than a dead hero.
As Zhang Xianyu squatted and drew talismans rapidly, Xie Dingxin stared in disbelief, rubbing his eyes for a long time before murmuring,
“What is he doing?”
Lin Wushui, though not a Daoist expert, could recognize talisman drawing.
“As you can see—drawing talismans.”
Xie Dingxin’s face contorted.
His heart clenched.
He wanted to shout: “That’s not how you draw talismans!”
One should bathe, burn incense, pray to the heavens, and ensure a clean body and quiet environment to channel divine energy—
Not squat on the ground, using finger blood like a street scribbler!
Totally unorthodox!
His mind in chaos, he recalled Zhang Xianyu flinging talismans earlier like they were free samples, and a wild suspicion emerged: “No way he’s that OP, right…”
While he was in a daze, Zhang Xianyu had already finished drawing ten talismans.
After licking his wound, he handed three Vajra Talismans to Xie Dingxin.
“Stay here, meditate, recover as much as you can. I’ll go with…”
He glanced at Lin Wushui, unsure what to call him, and simply pointed: “…this thing to fight whatever’s in the corpse pool. If we can’t beat it, we retreat.”
“I’m borrowing this too.”
He casually pulled the coin sword from the ground, speaking like someone about to join a gang fight: “I saw a guy lying in the hallway earlier. I put a barrier around him. If we need to bail, carry him out.”
Xie Dingxin blankly stared at the talismans in his hand, barely registering the words.
Zhang Xianyu felt he’d said all that was needed, waved at Lin Wushui: “Let’s go. Time to see what’s going on.”
Lin Wushui followed, his eyes nervously drifting toward the passage holding his physical body.
While Zhang Xianyu drew talismans, the crying gradually decreased.
One by one, the cries faded.
“Doesn’t this feel weird?”
Zhang Xianyu sped up, a sinking feeling rising within him.
“If the crying stops completely, we’ll be in trouble. We have to move fast.”
Seeing him run with the coin sword, Lin Wushui turned into mist, a tendril gently wrapping his waist,
“I’ll take you.”
Without waiting for permission, he whisked Zhang Xianyu toward the corpse pool.
Three cries remained.
The babies had been crying continuously like preset machines.
No breaks, no breaths.
But now the silence was more unsettling.
No monsters blocked the way.
No ghosts attacked.
The corpse pool was unexpectedly clean.
All corpses had vanished.
The murky red liquid had turned clear and even fragrant.
By the pool lay three pale, adorable infants, waving their limbs and crying sharply.
“What’s going on?”
Zhang Xianyu tried to approach, but Lin Wushui’s black mist held him back.
“There’s something in the pool.”
He extended a tendril of mist into the water, only for it to be instantly severed.
Watching his silent “limb” vanish, Lin Wushui’s expression darkened—though his current formless state made emotion hard to convey.
Zhang Xianyu frowned at the three infants, who looked too normal.
If not for the creepy setup, they could’ve passed for real babies.
“Let’s wait and see.”
Lin Wushui stared at the still surface.
The pool looked clear, but who knew what was lurking beneath?
At first, there were many cries.
Now only three remained.
It had to be connected.
They cautiously backed off and watched.
After about 15 minutes, the crying changed.
Slightly higher pitched—easy to miss unless paying close attention.
Zhang Xianyu, alert, instantly looked at the water’s surface.
Ripples spread gently.
Then, one baby deflated like a balloon, as if its life force was sucked out.
Now only two cries remained.
Zhang Xianyu’s eyes turned cold.
“Did you see it?”
“No, but I noticed—”
Before he finished, Lin Wushui suddenly grabbed Zhang Xianyu and pulled him aside—
Two red tentacles suddenly shot up from where they’d just stood.
Calling them tentacles wasn’t quite right—
They were red, oozing yellow fluid, and looked more like enormous, tumor-ridden blood vessels.
The two blood vessels, having missed their strike, were about to retract—but Lin Wushui wasn’t going to let them escape that easily.
He split off a wisp of black mist to hurl Zhang Xianyu over to the babies’ side while binding the blood vessels in black mist, engulfing them completely in a primitive struggle of mutual devouring.
Zhang Xianyu landed right next to the infants.
The moment he was thrown, he understood Lin Wushui’s intention.
He picked up the baby lying on the ground and confirmed his suspicion—no matter how much they resembled real babies, these things were creatures, not humans.
The baby was still crying, but upon closer inspection, there was no expression of crying on its face—its features were stiff, mouth gaping in a dry wail.
Their bodies were extremely soft, heavier than normal babies, and felt more like they were filled with fluid, rather than organs and flesh.
Zhang Xianyu tried cutting the fine blood vessel on the back of one of the babies, and sure enough, a dark red, nearly black liquid gushed out endlessly from the severed vein.
As soon as the liquid hit the ground, it evaporated into white mist.
The baby in his arms shrivelled bit by bit, its crying fading away.
“Roar—!”
A deep roar suddenly came from the bottom of the pool, shaking the ground.
Zhang Xianyu rolled to the side just in time—another tumor-covered blood vessel silently emerged at the spot where he had stood.
It twitched and pulsed, oozing pale yellow slime onto the floor in a disgusting display.
Zhang Xianyu, unable to bear it any longer, slapped it with a Five Thunder Talisman.
Lightning crackled, charring the red blood vessel black, but it still wasn’t stopped.
He dodged its counterattack and dashed toward the last baby.
He realized now that these fake babies were vital to the monster.
Damaging just one had triggered such fury.
There was no way he could let the last one fall into its hands.
The baby was still wailing, unaware of anything.
Zhang Xianyu dared not hesitate, knowing the monster likely had a time window for consuming the infants.
He drew his coin sword and slashed fiercely at the baby—
Just before the sword could land, another tentacle shot out from the pool, knocking the weapon aside and trying to drag the baby into the water.
“By the Five Thunders and Wind Deity, in the name of lightning I command! By the steps of the stars, purge this evil!”
In a flash of desperation, Zhang Xianyu formed hand seals and stepped the Seven Stars formation.
A deep violet lightning bolt appeared above the blood pool.
Before the monster could react, it struck down violently—
The entire cavern shook, and the crying baby evaporated into mist in an instant.
The blood vessel wrapped around it was split in two by the lightning, twitched violently on the floor a few times, and went still.
But Zhang Xianyu felt no relief.
Now that even the last fake baby had been destroyed, whatever lurked beneath the pool was enraged.
The ground began to tremble again, and the red moss instantly withered, revealing cracked and barren earth beneath.
“Watch out!”
Lin Wushui wrapped Zhang Xianyu completely in black mist and lifted him into the air.
Below, the entire ground had crumbled away, exposing a terrifying sight—
Beneath a thin layer of soil, countless pulsating blood vessels spread out from the corpse pool like a spiderweb, covering the entire central zone.
The red fluid in the pool was slowly receding, and from the bottom of the pool, a pale white female body was beginning to emerge…