Yisela finished shouting. The commotion in the crowd paused for a moment.
But soon, the crowd erupted into even louder cries and shouts than before.
“What nonsense are you spouting, little girl!”
Wang Er, the strong villager whom Lina had called Lao Li’s neighbor, said with bloodshot eyes and spittle flying.
“I saw Lao Li with my own eyes in that crowd!”
“He was holding the cloth tiger that his third child loves to play with!”
“Are you telling me that magic beast can conjure a cloth tiger?!”
His roar instantly stirred up even greater turmoil.
“That’s right, that’s right!”
“My little Bobby is only three years old! His leg is lame when he walks, and that person outside has a limp too!”
“My mother has a mole behind her ear! Could I be wrong about that?!”
These people began using all sorts of small details to prove their judgment was correct.
Those details sounded too real, so real that it made one’s heart tremble.
They also made the knights’ defensive line waver, as if it might collapse at any moment.
Captain Lei Meng’s forehead bulged with throbbing veins.
‘He knew clearly that his men could barely hold them back.’
‘If this kept up, before the magic beast even made a move, they would descend into chaos themselves.’
At this moment of great difficulty, Yisela’s heart also sank.
She knew that words alone were no longer effective.
The nose of her Silver Dragon clan would never be wrong—that thick stench of rotting corpses was undeniable evidence.
But what Lina and the villagers saw with their own eyes were living, breathing loved ones standing right before them.
Just then, a strange change suddenly occurred.
Outside the camp, the woman with the red headscarf whom Lina had mistaken for her mother raised her hand.
It was extremely stiff, pointing toward the crowd inside the camp.
Then, the faces of the villagers outside broke out into eerie smiles.
That smile was exactly the same as the smile on the woman outside, making one’s hair stand on end.
Their mouths opened of their own accord, emitting sounds that were utterly inhuman.
Those sounds pierced right through the crowd’s crying.
“What is that noise?!”
Lina shuddered all over in fear.
She instinctively shrank into Yisela’s arms.
Yisela did not answer her question.
Her eyes remained fixed on the outside.
She saw that those things that looked like villagers began twisting their bodies at awkward angles.
Something seemed to be moving under their skin, rolling around as if it would burst through flesh and bone at any moment.
“Everyone fall back!”
Captain Lei Meng seized this opportunity.
He took a step forward and used his shield to forcefully knock aside Wang Er, who was at the front.
He shouted with all his might.
“Did you all see that?! That’s not human! That’s a monster! Everyone get to the center of the magic array! Now!”
But it was already too late.
Just as those villager-like things let out those screeches, inside the camp, among the wounded, women, and children that the knights were shielding, there came a few suppressed, pained groans.
“Ugh!”
“Ah!”
“So cold!”
Yisela immediately turned around.
She saw an old woman who had been crying for her son just moments ago, now convulsing all over, collapsing to the ground.
In the blink of an eye, her skin was covered with bloodshot streaks.
The corners of her mouth curled upward uncontrollably, revealing the same strange smile as the villagers outside.
“Infection!”
The word leaped into Yisela’s mind.
At that moment, she finally understood what was going on.
These magic beasts were not simply disguising themselves as humans.
They were a type of demon that could infect people first, then command the corpses!
Not only did they use the faces of living people as bait outside, but even worse, they had already brought something infectious into the camp using some method!
Those who had been wounded in previous battles, or those who were too grief-stricken and weak, had become their perfect nests.
“Aaah—!”
A particularly harsh scream pierced the night sky.
A young woman, a mother, stared in horror at the child in her arms.
The child had been running a fever, drowsy and asleep, but suddenly his eyes snapped open.
There was no life in those eyes; they looked ravenous.
He opened his mouth and bit hard into his mother’s arm!
“Monster! There’s a monster in the camp! Help! My son! He’s gone mad!”
The camp immediately fell into even greater chaos than before.
People no longer tried to rush outward; instead, they began running wildly in all directions, pushing and shoving each other, some getting knocked down and trampled.
The infected traitors inside the crowd created even more fear and wounded people.
“Damn it!”
Captain Lei Meng’s eyes were about to burst.
‘He knew he had made a grave mistake.’
‘He had only guarded against the outside, never imagining that the enemy had already destroyed them from within.’
“Guard the magic array core!”
He roared with a hoarse voice, trying to reorganize the defenses, but it was too late.
The knights were scattered by the panicked crowd.
At this dire moment, Yisela firmly shielded the trembling Lina behind her.
Her small body erupted with an unprecedented aura.
“Lina, don’t be afraid,” Yisela said to her.
‘She knew that now the only one she could rely on was herself.’
She lifted her head.
Her eyes gazed outside the camp.
The villagers had stopped pretending.
Their bodies twisted and contorted into half-human, half-beast monsters.
They looked at the feast they had created inside the camp with greedy, cruel eyes.
And the man in gray clothes whom Lina had mistaken for her father stood at the front.
His mouth split all the way to his ears, revealing a mouthful of jagged, sharp teeth.
His dead-fish eyes reflected Lina’s terrified little face.
“Lina!”
He let out a hoarse, inhuman sound from his throat.
“Come here! Come to your daddy!”
Lina’s body stiffened.
She looked at the monster.
Then she looked at the silver-haired girl beside her, tense and protective.
At that moment, Lina finally understood.
The loved ones she had seen, the miracles she had believed in, were nothing but demons in human skin.
They had set a trap specifically to lure her out of the protective circle.
“Waaa—!”
Lina couldn’t hold it in anymore and burst into loud sobs.
This time, her crying was not from joy, but from sheer terror and despair.
Yisela took a deep breath.
She began to draw upon the physical strength of the Dragon clan, and cursed black patterns emerged on her arms.
She bent her knees, concentrating all her power into her right fist.
“You’re too noisy.”
The next second, she swung her fist fiercely, slamming it into the ground before her.
BOOM—!!!
A tremendous sound.
The hard-packed earth was smashed into a large crater.
Stone fragments flew everywhere, and dust rose into the air.
That immense impact force traveled through the ground, turning into a visible shockwave.
The shockwave swept across the entire camp in an instant.
The infected traitors that had been lunging at the crowd were sent flying by the blast.
They crashed heavily into walls or the ground, accompanied by the crisp sound of breaking bones.
And the panicked crowd, stunned by this sudden power from nowhere, stopped in their tracks involuntarily.
Yisela stood in the dust.
She shook her slightly numb fist.
Coldly, she looked at the monsters outside the camp.
“You,” she said, word by word, “are not worthy of wearing their faces to deceive people.”
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