The Dead of the Swamp

The three skeletons and five zombies clashed fiercely in the forest. The skeletons moved like streaks of white light, leaving afterimages as they circled the zombies. Their bone claws struck the zombies’ bodies with dull, pounding thuds.

Xiao Chen watched in astonishment. What he was witnessing defied belief.

The zombies, though less agile than the skeletons, possessed an uncanny resilience. The skeletons’ bone claws, which could pierce through massive trees, barely scratched them. Only when the claws aimed for their eyes did the zombies recoil in panic.

A terrible swamp. A battle between the dead.

After watching for half an hour, Xiao Chen saw the skeletons begin to falter. One-on-one, they were stronger than the zombies, but outnumbered three to five, they were clearly losing ground.

As dawn approached, the corpse miasma in the swamp thinned, nearly gone.

Xiao Chen made his decision. Holding his breath, he stepped into the swamp and shot toward a zombie like a bolt of lightning. His palms gleamed faintly, luminous as polished jade, as he struck with all his force.

Thump.

The zombie stumbled back a few steps but did not shatter. Xiao Chen felt as if he had struck divine iron; his palms ached, yet the zombie remained unharmed. Truly formidable dead things.

Up close, Xiao Chen now saw them clearly. The five zombies were tall, with hideous, twisted faces, yellow hair, and green eyes. Their clothes had long rotted away, and their appearance was utterly terrifying.

The zombie he had struck lunged at him with mechanical swings of its arms. Its movements were stiff but not slow.

Xiao Chen moved like lightning, attacking only the zombie’s eyes, forcing the dead thing to flinch and guard itself.

With Xiao Chen’s help, the pressure on the three skeletons eased. Soon, they regained the upper hand. Their bones were hard as iron, no less resilient than the zombies’, and their greater speed gave them an increasingly clear advantage.

The longer Xiao Chen fought, the more alarmed he grew. If he had not already reached a substantial level of cultivation, he would have undoubtedly died facing such dead things. Though still wounded and unable to use his full strength, the fact that the battle had dragged on for nearly half an hour was deeply unsettling.

Finally, after striking the same spot on a zombie’s chest eighteen times, the towering dead thing toppled like a collapsing mountain, its body shattering apart.

By the time Xiao Chen engaged another zombie, the three skeletons had achieved overwhelming dominance. They displayed a ferocity that even Xiao Chen found chilling. Three streaks of white light, trails of afterimages, six bone claws streaking toward chests and eyes with terrifying speed, tearing through the air with a sharp, piercing wail.

Thwip! A bone claw plunged into a zombie’s chest.

Crack! A bone claw snapped a zombie’s neck.

…

Thanks to Xiao Chen’s intervention, the five zombies were utterly defeated. Within another hour, the battle was over. Xiao Chen had taken down two zombies; the three skeletons had torn apart three. It was a cold, bloody scene, but that was the law of their existence.

Dawn was nearly upon them. The corpse miasma had almost completely dissipated.

The three skeletons stood before Xiao Chen. Their jaws clicked open and shut a few times, then they walked silently to the fallen zombies. From the shattered corpses, they retrieved five crystals that gleamed with an eerie, baleful light.

All five crystals were a pale, sickly green, exuding a chill, sinister aura. The gloomy green glow was unnerving, made all the more deathly by the pale bone claws holding them. Yet the energy they radiated was intense—far stronger than the dozen or so crystals Xiao Chen already possessed.

Xiao Chen watched them quietly. He had not expected them to bring two of the jade-green crystals to him, actually offering them. Interesting skeletons. He waved his hand, declining their gift.

The three skeletons’ eye sockets flickered with light. They gazed at him in silence for a moment, then withdrew the two crystals. Dividing the five crystals evenly among themselves, they tucked them into their eye sockets and began to absorb the pure energy.

A pallid green light, like dense, glowing mist, enveloped the skeletons’ bodies. Their joints creaked and popped as the radiance flowed through them, seemingly strengthening their bones.

When the green light faded, the skeletons’ frames were noticeably smoother, carrying a faint, healthy luster.

By now, dawn had fully broken, and the sky was growing bright. Xiao Chen wanted to see what other secrets this mysterious swamp might hold, so he walked deeper into the woodland.

At first, the three skeletons followed silently behind him. But as he neared the central region, they suddenly grabbed his arms. Their cold bone claws startled him.

They meant no harm. They seemed anxious, pointing toward the area ahead—a place thick with Yin energy—and shook their bone claws vigorously, warning him not to go further.

Xiao Chen sensed their fear. Something ahead was a king among dead things.

He did not insist. He turned and retraced his steps, though he did not leave the swamp.

The sun was up. A new day had begun. He decided this place would serve as a good defensive position and resolved to make camp in this accursed land.

He trusted that the “clues” he had left behind would keep his pursuers searching for most of the day, and that many of them would fall prey to wild beasts by nightfall. If they moved quickly, they might find him by dusk—and when they did, the swamp would serve its purpose.

On the morning beach, waves crashed against the shore, and the sunrise scattered countless specks of gold across the sea.

The Eight-Armed Malignant Dragon’s colossal body thrashed in the ocean, churning up massive waves.

Watching the terrible ancient beast, the brown-haired man, Gu Luo, frowned deeply. His ship had sailed from north to south and would likely emerge in this area. If reinforcements landed on this beach, they could face a catastrophic slaughter.

He had already hoisted a huge bamboo pole high atop a coconut tree, with a massive animal hide dyed in beast’s blood. But would the approaching ships spot the flag signals in time?

The sun climbed higher. The Eight-Armed Malignant Dragon swam into the distance, seeming to vanish into the sea. At the same moment, two great ships came sailing toward the island.