“Little White Night, Auntie’s luck is just terrible.”
“The gold coin was tossed and there’s still no change. Am I really going to die here and be a pair of ill-fated lovers with you?”
Mu Yingying’s mouth didn’t stop, and neither did the knife in her hand.
“Dead Yingying, can you shut your crow beak!?” Su Shuang’er said angrily.
White Night had no time to respond.
She was fully focused on observing the surrounding Weirdness, reminding the two aunties to attack the disease focuses.
Meanwhile, she frantically flipped through the System Store list in her mind, looking for anything that could help them break out of this dead end.
The Level 2 Store list scrolled rapidly through her consciousness.
Compressed biscuits, clean water, fuel, daggers… they were all things that were useless at this moment.
White Night’s heart grew more and more anxious.
Scrolling further down, two entries caught her eye —
[Primary Stamina Recovery Potion: 15 Points. Upon consumption, restores 30% stamina within 5 minutes. Duration: 10 minutes.]
[Short-term Burst Potion: 25 Points. Upon consumption, increases Strength and speed by 50% for 3 minutes. After the duration ends, enters a 2-hour weakness period.]
‘Exchange for two Short-term Burst Potions.’
White Night didn’t hesitate for a second and immediately gave the order in her mind.
[Ding — 50 Points consumed. Exchange successful.]
Two deep blue potions, each the size of a thumb, appeared out of thin air in the bicycle basket.
The bottles glowed with a faint blue light, emitting a weak medicinal scent.
“Auntie Frost! Auntie Ying! I exchanged some potions in the System Store. They’re in the basket!” White Night reminded them, her voice urgent.
Su Shuang’er killed a Weirdness, reached into the basket, and grabbed a potion. Popping the cap with her thumb, she tilted her head back and downed it.
Her eyes remained fixed on the Weirdness ahead, not daring to relax even a little.
Mu Yingying also ran over, picked up a potion, bit the cap off, and gulped it down in one go.
Wiping the corner of her mouth, she continued to swing her blade at the surrounding Weirdness.
The effects of the medicine came extremely fast, taking effect almost the moment the potion hit their throats.
Su Shuang’er felt a burning power explode from her stomach, rushing through her blood vessels to every limb of her body.
Her muscle fibers felt like tightened springs, every inch accumulating an astonishing amount of power.
Her previously heavy body now felt light and powerful.
She slammed her foot down on the pedal, and the bicycle shot out like a bullet, its speed incredible.
Wind rushed into her ears with a whoosh, and the Weirdness on both sides didn’t even have time to react before they were instantly left behind.
The Alloy Javelin in Su Shuang’er’s hand turned into an afterimage, thrusting and parrying.
The Weirdness blocking the way exploded into blood mist one after another, unable to even let out a scream.
Mu Yingying followed behind at a sprint, her speed surprisingly not falling too far behind the bicycle.
The strength from the potion’s effect filled her entire body with vigor, and the hand holding the Tang Dao was as steady as a rock.
The speed of her blade was so fast that it was nothing but a white flash.
Any Weirdness that tried to close in from the side had its disease focus sliced open before it could even get within 3 meters, dissipating into blood mist.
The two aunties were incredibly fierce, forcefully slaughtering a path of blood through the dense crowd of Weirdness.
Blades and spear tips danced together; blood mist and black mist intertwined.
Howls and the sound of slicing air mixed together.
“It’s just ahead! We’re about to break out!” Mu Yingying shouted as she and Su Shuang’er increased their speed.
But just then, they suddenly stopped.
The black mist ahead had suddenly thinned.
It wasn’t that the mist had dissipated, but rather that it had been physically pushed aside by something massive, creating a weird hollow.
A stench so thick it was nauseating hit them in the face.
The smell was a mixture of rotting meat and pus and blood, so pungent that it made their eyes water.
Mu Yingying’s face grew even paler.
Su Shuang’er slowly stopped the bicycle, her body tensing.
She stared at the hollow ahead, her brow furrowed into a knot, even her breathing becoming cautious.
The black mist formed a semi-circular hollow about 10 meters ahead.
In the center of the hollow, a giant object was slowly rolling. Its speed was slow, but it carried a suffocating sense of pressure.
It was huge. From a distance, it looked like a massive meatball, slowly turning in the darkness.
White Night’s Soul Body trembled slightly.
She squinted to take a closer look before finally seeing the true face of that thing.
It wasn’t a meatball; it was people.
Countless human corpses were twisted and mangled together. Arms, legs, torsos, and heads were forcefully kneaded into a single mass.
They were nested, intertwined, and fused together, making it impossible to tell which limb belonged to which body.
The sticky flesh was glued together, the surface covered in a thick layer of pus, emitting a disgusting, putrid stench.
The surface of the corpse mass was covered in various symptoms.
Some areas were packed with dense, yellow-white gout stones; others were covered in a layer of translucent blisters filled with yellow-green pus.
In other areas, the skin was stretched tight and shiny, with grey-white stones embedded underneath.
There were even places where the temples bulged, with protruding blood vessels pulsing wildly, identical to the Migraine Anomaly from before.
Every single ailment they had seen before could be found on this Giant Corpse Ball.
It was like a collection of all Weirdness, the incarnation of pain and despair.
It rolled slowly, making the ground vibrate slightly with every movement.
Wherever it passed, it left a wide, sticky trail of black-red pus mixed with yellow-green rot, corroding the ground into pits.
Then, the sounds reached them.
It wasn’t a single voice, but dozens of voices layered on top of one another, wailing in unison.
The sounds were shrill and desperate, piercing through the black mist and drilling into their ears, repeatedly tearing at their nerves.
“It hurts… it hurts so much… kill me…”
“My head… my head is going to explode…”
“Burning… it’s burning in my bones…”
“Rotten… my stomach is rotten…”
“Eyes… I can’t see…”
Each voice corresponded precisely to a certain disease focus on the surface of the corpse mass.
It was as if those fused corpses still retained a final shred of consciousness, and in that consciousness, only heart-wrenching pain remained.
There were no other emotions, only endless despair and pleading.
White Night’s Soul Body shook violently, feeling a bone-chilling cold.
This thing was blocking their only way out.
The direction where the black mist was thinnest was directly behind this giant Weirdness.
Aside from that, the surrounding area was filled with thick, impenetrable black mist and a dense crowd of Weirdness.
“Go around it,” Su Shuang’er’s voice was low and firm.
Her eyes remained fixed on the giant Weirdness as she slowly turned the bike, preparing to bypass it from the side.
As soon as she finished speaking, several cracks suddenly opened on the surface of the corpse mass.
Yellow-green pus sprayed out like a high-pressure hose, instantly covering a large area of the ground ahead.
The pus hit the ground, corroding the rocks and soil into bubbling black pits, the pungent acid smell becoming even stronger.
“Back up!”
Su Shuang’er reacted incredibly fast, slamming on the brakes. The bicycle tires left a long black skid mark on the ground.
Mu Yingying was even quicker, grabbing the back of the seat and dragging both the person and the bike back 2 meters, narrowly avoiding the spraying pus.
If they had been half a second slower, that highly corrosive pus would have poured directly onto them.
“We can’t get around it,” Mu Yingying wiped the cold sweat from her face, her voice extremely hoarse.
She looked at the ground covered in pus, a hint of despair in her voice.
“The things it sprayed blocked the road ahead completely. There’s no gap to go around.”
White Night stared fixedly at the Giant Corpse Ball, frantically searching for its disease focus.
The previous Weirdness all had a core disease focus that could be hit for a killing blow.
But this thing was covered in disease focuses from head to toe. Gout stones, blisters, stones, bulging blood vessels… every part was a lesion, and every part was ulcerating.
When the whole body is a weakness, it’s the same as having no weakness at all.
“It has too many disease focuses.”
White Night’s voice was tight, carrying an imperceptible tremble.
“Striking one spot will only break a small piece. It won’t kill it; it will only enrage it.”
Su Shuang’er’s gaze darkened.
She gripped her Alloy Javelin tightly, her mind racing as she tried to find a breakthrough.
“Reroute, go the other way.”
She turned the bike and rushed in the opposite direction with Mu Yingying and White Night.
But before they had even covered 50 meters, a group of Weirdness emerged from the black mist, dense as a wall, blocking the way forward.
They tried another direction, but it was the same sight.
Countless Weirdness poured out of the black mist, layer upon layer, sealing all exits tightly.
The scattered Weirdness from different parts of the black mist were continuously converging on them.
The circle was like a tightening net, closing in by the second.
And behind them, the Giant Corpse Ball was still slowly rolling, unhurriedly crushing its way toward them. It wasn’t in a rush, as if it was certain that these prey would eventually become part of its body.
Su Shuang’er bit her lip. She felt her body becoming heavier and heavier.
The Alloy Javelin slammed into the temple of a blocking Migraine Anomaly. Blood mist exploded, but she didn’t pause for a second, continuing to charge forward.
Mu Yingying was on the other side, struggling to cut down two Calculus Ghosts.
Her heavy breathing became more and more obvious, and cold sweat from her forehead slid down her cheeks.
The burned skin on her face had begun to bleed, and her steps were no longer as solid as before, becoming somewhat flighty.
The side effects of the potion were plunging the two aunties into a period of weakness, making their situation even worse.
Fifteen, eighteen, twenty…
The number of Weirdness they killed continued to increase.
But the number of Weirdness seemed infinite.
Mu Yingying’s blade speed was clearly slowing down, and the intervals between her swings were growing longer.
Every strike cost her an immense amount of effort. Her arms began to ache and tremble.
The color gradually drained from her face, leaving only paleness and fatigue. Every breath she took carried a heavy scent of blood.
Su Shuang’er’s situation wasn’t much better.
The force behind her javelin thrusts remained precise and fierce, but her pedaling frequency had clearly dropped, and the bicycle’s speed was slowly decreasing.
The blisters on her forearm had burst, and yellow pus slid down her arm.
The burning sensation returned, the pain causing fine beads of cold sweat to break out on her forehead, yet she still gritted her teeth, refusing to stop.
The two ink-colored silk threads on their wrists were also slowly fading, becoming faint and indistinct.
The power of the Butterfly Knot was also continuously weakening.
White Night looked down at the Butterfly Knot on her hand.
The ink-colored luster had dimmed by more than half, like an oil lamp about to burn out, weak and faint.
It wouldn’t last much longer.
And with the Points she had left, she couldn’t buy anything good from the System Store.
The encirclement was still shrinking, and the screeches of the Weirdness were getting closer.
The stench was as thick as a physical wall, making it hard to breathe.
Behind them, the wailing of the Giant Corpse Ball was also drawing closer.
Every time it rolled, it felt like a hammer against their hearts, as despair slowly consumed their will.
“Kill me… kill me… it hurts so much…”
The shrill wails echoed in her ears. White Night gripped the Butterfly Knot tightly, her Soul Body trembling slightly.
Squelch! Squelch!
In the distance, the Giant Corpse Ball began to roll faster and faster, spraying pus at Su Shuang’er.
In the face of the surrounding Weirdness and the attacks from the giant ball, Su Shuang’er had no choice but to carry White Night and dodge to the side to avoid the pus.
With a kick of her long legs, she and the bike crashed heavily onto the sand at the side. Her left arm was scraped against the rough ground, leaving a patch of bloody skin.
‘Abandon her, and I can let you live.’
A woman’s indifferent whisper echoed in Su Shuang’er’s mind.