"Father! Mother!"

Feng Bei, who was normally cold and rarely showed any emotion, finally broke down, sobbing on the Mighty Painter’s shoulder.

And who could blame her? The Treasure King’s Coiling Dragon Eighteen Slashes—Double Dragon Water-taking—had just split her mother’s skeleton in two, leaving it incomplete.

It is a great tragedy that the dead cannot be revived, but to have even their remains destroyed is sorrow upon sorrow.

The monster’s gesture of reaching out its arm made Zheng Xiu feel, in a daze, that it hadn’t meant to shatter the half of the skeleton, but rather to embrace it.

The shattered bones fell into the rushing rapids.

It was nearly time for the rooster’s crow, yet the night hadn’t faded. Instead, it grew thicker, deeper, as if someone had SPLASHED a basin of thick ink across the sky, letting the chaotic rain smear it open.

The night was a vast, dark expanse. In the swift rapids, the white carp thrashed about, their scales glinting with a strange, demonic light.

Zheng Xiu watched from his high vantage point. The surging floodwaters were filled with carp, looking like writhing clumps of dead flesh.

The memory of having taken a bite of one in the first round made Zheng Xiu’s stomach churn with acid.

Tens of thousands of carp leaped madly from the water, devouring the crushed bones until not a single speck remained.

"RAAAAAAAH—"

The roar came from the monster. Zheng Xiu felt his eardrums buzz as stars exploded in his vision.

The Treasure King, who had been struggling to maintain his footing in the flood while swinging his saber to slay the white carp, froze mid-action. Blood trickled from his ears, his expression one of agony.

The youth on his back fared even worse; his eyes rolled back as the sonic wave knocked him unconscious.

"Father! Father! Father!"

Feng Bei seemed to have snapped. She reached out helplessly from Zheng Xiu’s shoulder, crying and shouting.

The frenzied monster swung its three-meter-long arm. Layers of twisted, writhing flesh piled upon each other, forming what looked like a thick suit of flesh Armor on its arm.

WHOOSH!

The long arm swung, moving as if weightless, aimed straight for Wang Cangyun.

’Fair enough.’

’The Treasure King did just shatter the guy’s wife’s bones. Who else would he go after?’

The Treasure King barely managed to raise his saber in a defensive stance.

CLANG!

With a sharp crack, the Treasure King’s Treasure Saber snapped on impact. He was sent flying into the distance, still clutching Wei Chen, and landed with a SPLASH in the water. His fate was unknown.

The school of white carp surged high, the roar of the tide deafening.

Zheng Xiu’s pupils contracted.

’This is bad.’

’How bad?’

’Usually, no matter how big the crisis, Master Zheng could always find a few spare moments to step out for a cup of tea to calm his nerves.’

But now, Master Zheng had no time for calming his nerves. He shifted Feng Bei with one hand, changing his posture from carrying her over his shoulder to piggybacking her.

"Your father’s gone mad," Zheng Xiu said through gritted teeth. "Hold on tight."

’The atmosphere is already this tense, and clearing the stage seems within reach. I have to go for it.’

’I can’t let all the effort from the first half of the night go to waste.’

"Who exactly are you?"

Feng Bei asked through her tears.

’Zheng Xiu found her question odd.’

’She keeps asking who I am.’

’Didn’t I already tell her I’m Good man Zheng?’

"Hold on!"

Zheng Xiu didn’t answer, his gaze fixed intently on the monster-father’s back.

The number of white carp was now beyond estimation. It was as if they were replicating, instantly becoming a fish-pocalypse vast enough to overturn rivers and seas.

BOOM!

Behind the monster-father, within the surging flood, enormous, ghastly white blisters swelled up! They looked like fleshy tumors!

A closer look revealed that each bulging ’tumor’ was actually formed by white carp biting each other head to tail, packed together into a solid mass!

"Hungry... Hungry... Hungry..."

Shrieking wails, as if indistinctly crying out "hungry," echoed in all directions.

Zheng Xiu suddenly felt as if he were surrounded by tens of thousands of starving ghosts. His gaze was locked on the schools of white carp piling higher and higher in the darkness. A chill ran down his spine, because he could now see clearly that on the head of every single white carp, there grew an ugly tumor. The tumors were covered in holes—two small, one large—packed so densely they looked like countless faces of the wrongly-dead, all crushed together.

’Are my eyes broken, or has the world gone mad?’

’Master Zheng wanted to call it quits right then and there.’

’This scene was clearly not something a mere max-level alt account like him could handle.’

But what Zheng Xiu still couldn’t figure out was why, despite the faint light of dawn being visible in the outside world, Baili Village in this Ghostly Realm remained under a pitch-black sky after most of the night had passed. It was as if Dawn would never come.

’How bizarre!’

He watched, helpless, as the myriad white carp in the distance piled into a tsunami-like tidal wave of flesh.

On the crest of the wave, shadowy hollows looked like angry Human faces. The wave surged high into the air, then turned and plunged straight down like a waterfall onto the monster-father.

The house beneath him was on the verge of collapse. Under the force of the fish and the rapids, Zheng Xiu’s foothold wouldn’t last much longer.

Zheng Xiu leaped up, searching for another place to land.

BOOM!

The white carp school finally crashed down. Dadi shook violently, and terrifying whirlpools were gouged into the floodwaters.

"Aaaargh—"

The monster-father swung its arms wildly in the water, tearing the schools of fish apart.

The fish seemed to crave the monster-father’s flesh. For every swarm he tore to shreds, another surged forward to take its place.

In the blink of an eye, the monster-father was covered in white carp like blood-sucking leeches, completely submerged.

The violent tremors and roaring flood completely flattened the village, sucking everything into the vortex.

Assailed by impacts from all sides, Zheng Xiu lost his footing and fell into the water. He was then surprised to find that he could breathe underwater. The viscous sensation reminded him of his experience in the "Path".

GLUG...

His back suddenly felt light. Feng Bei had been washed away.

The Human-faced white carp, having finally gotten their wish of the tender-skinned Master Zheng falling in the water, swarmed him madly. In an instant, they shredded his clothes, revealing a body of muscle as hard as steel.

CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH...

Pain flared all over his body. The Mighty Painter instinctively flexed his muscles, and the ghastly, sharp teeth of the Cannibal White Carp were simultaneously shattered.

TING TING TING TING...

Swarms of white carp in the surging flood were Bounced Away by his muscles, leaving only faint teeth marks.

’After being ’serviced’ all over, Master Zheng was both shocked and pleased. As expected of a max-level alt account. This physique is top-notch.’

Zheng Xiu bobbed in the water. He watched as whirlpools tore the entire village to pieces. With no footing, no matter how powerful he was, he couldn’t just take off from a standstill and leap to high ground.

After a violent lurch, he felt himself abruptly turned ninety degrees. Raising his head, Master Zheng was stunned again. The whirlpools had somehow merged into one. The torrent of fish and water plunged straight down, and in the center, a terrifying Void had appeared out of thin air, like an abyss that could swallow everything.

Zheng Xiu was being swept along, pushed toward that abyss!

"Younger Brother Zheng! Catch!"

Just then, on the outer edge of the terrifying abyssal vortex, a few dozen paces from Zheng Xiu, the pale-faced Treasure King threw him a coil of rope.

’The Treasure King is a badass!’

’Worthy of an old hand in the Jianghu. To find a way to survive in such a bizarre and desperate situation, and so quickly, too.’

Zheng Xiu reached out and caught it easily. The rope snapped taut, barely allowing him to stabilize himself.

The Treasure King was also holding the rope. He asked urgently, "Younger Brother Zheng! Have you seen the Young Master?"

Zheng Xiu shook his head in the water.

Hearing this, Old Wang’s face turned ashen.

The two of them held on with the rope for a while.

As the torrential rain poured down, the current grew stronger, and the smell of blood in the water became thicker.

Besides the smell of blood, Zheng Xiu also caught a whiff of a strange, floral scent.

CRACK!

A barely audible sound came from the distance. A tree in the village, unable to withstand the flood, snapped in half. Old Wang had tied the rope to that very tree. With the trunk broken, the two men, who had just managed to stabilize themselves, were once again dragged toward the abyss.

Then, Zheng Xiu saw it.

At the very bottom of the abyss, frenziedly writhing white carp tore each other apart, devouring one another and crying, "Hungry, hungry, hungry..."

The flesh of the fish, forcibly mashed together, looked from above like a flat, ghastly Human face. It wailed as it extended tentacles of fish flesh.

At the bottom of the abyss, the writhing fish flesh was like a quagmire. The maddened Father Feng was being dragged down by the swarm of white carp, sinking lower.

"Feng’er... Feng’er..."

The monster’s enormous, bell-like eyes lost some of their bloodlust, as if regaining a sliver of clarity. Its left arm suddenly shot out, wrapping around a section of the fish swarm. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

A small figure was pulled from the swarm. The monster-father had caught Feng Bei in its hand.

"Let’s go... see your mother..."

A hoarse voice came from the monster’s mouth.

"Father... stop killing."

Feng Bei, her neck wrapped by the twisted arm, cried with despair in her eyes. She slowly reached her two hands out toward the monster.

PFFT!

The instant Feng Bei’s hands made contact with the monster.

The monster froze. A web of fine, intersecting bloody lines appeared out of nowhere on its body.

In the blink of an eye, the monster disintegrated into countless pieces along those fine bloody lines!

It wasn’t just the monster-father. With Feng Bei at the center, the schools of carp also silently shattered.

At the bottom of the abyss, the monster and the fish vanished in an instant, leaving only bloodstains everywhere.

Beneath the white carp school, there was a strange blackness.

Feng Bei crouched there, motionless, whimpering in despair.

Her cries were like those of a phantom, eerie and terrifying in this scene. As she continued to cry, clusters of red flowers sprouted from thin air at her feet, linking together.

The moment the flowers appeared, the area around Feng Bei seemed to become another world. Everything, including her figure, was veiled in a hazy afterimage and halo, like an ethereal ink wash painting.

Zheng Xiu clung to a piece of wreckage in the water, hanging at the edge of the current. He was dumbfounded as he watched the horrifying scene unfold in the abyss below.

Just then, the "claw"-shaped pattern of veins on Zheng Xiu’s chest began to throb rhythmically once again.

Like a heartbeat, like a war drum!

THUMP! THUMP! THUMP!

THUMP—

Zheng Xiu clutched his chest in pain.

He felt like something was trying to force its way out, pushing past his ridiculously large pecs.

To burst out.