Chapter 257: A Fake Immortal

Chapter 257: Chapter 257: A Fake Immortal

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Waves of fire rolled through the once-silent air.

A violent wind rushed toward them. Even from nearly a hundred meters away, they could feel the intense heat from the blast.

Thick smoke and dust filled the air after the explosion, lingering for a long time.

Feng Ling looked up slightly. Before she could get a clear look at the mountain’s condition, her nose caught the thick, cloying scent of scorched flesh and blood. ℯℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

The surrounding fog began to turn red, which, combined with the scene of a veritable sea of blood and mountain of corpses before them, cranked the horror atmosphere up to the max.

Large clumps of flesh on the mountain’s body began to squirm outward, as if something inside was struggling to get out.

Feng Ling lowered her voice and said to Ye Zheng, "It’s creating a god again."

—creating a fake Immortal, having a group of rats carry it to enjoy the offerings and replenish its energy.

"The mountain is too massive to move normally, so this is the only way it can consume energy. Otherwise, a pile of stuff this big couldn’t sustain its life functions," Feng Ling continued to speculate.

Ye Zheng stared ahead and said in a low voice, "It’s not a mountain anymore."

After the first explosion, the mountain had collapsed like a cake with a sunken center. After the second, it was like a cake that had been smashed flat—specifically, dropped frosting-side down. The flesh-colored "frosting" from the bottom mixed with the dark red "fruit jam" from the inner layers, oozing outward in a sticky, fragmented, and disgusting mess.

From this disgusting mixture, humanoid rats crawled out one after another.

They were draped in bloody skin and flesh, with tumor-like human heads and long, trailing rat tails. They dragged an even larger humanoid rat out from the crowded pile of flesh.

This Mouse Monster’s head was enormous, almost as large as its body. Its facial features were clearer, its skin smoother, and it had even grown long, soft hair. Draped in a blood-soaked red cloak, it had the nascent form of a Pseudo-God.

Perhaps it could have been more refined—it should have at least appeared with a sedan chair and various musical instruments—but all Feng Ling and Ye Zheng saw was this large-sized Mouse Monster, surrounded by a swarm of smaller rats, crawling toward the street.

Feng Ling guessed this was because the explosions had severely damaged the mountain’s interior. After all, even the Pseudo-God’s blood-red cloak bore scorch marks.

She pulled out a grenade and said, "I’m going to go bomb them."

Ye Zheng frowned. "Be careful of the potential mental effects from the Divine Travel Team."

"Their group is disorganized and small. They aren’t beating drums or ringing bells. They seem pretty weak," Feng Ling replied.

Despite her words, she still narrowed her eyes and observed them cautiously.

The Divine Travel Team slowly circled the plaza, as if searching for something.

She looked back at the center of the plaza. The large clumps of fleshy tumors lay slumped on the ground, visually much smaller in volume than before.

This made Feng Ling even more eager to act. "I see this pile of sludge isn’t inexhaustible. As long as we kill every Mouse Monster that crawls out, the Maze Master should reveal its true form."

"Every time?" Ye Zheng asked dubiously. "How can you be sure there isn’t more than one Divine Travel Team in there?"

Feng Ling smiled. "Isn’t it obvious? Eight safe houses, eight offering tables, eight intersections... there might even be eight Divine Travel Teams. Speaking of which, the people of Guangshan City really like the number eight. It’s auspicious."

Just as she finished speaking, she noticed the Divine Travel Team, which had been circling, was now heading toward one of the intersections. The Mouse Monsters were gradually obscured by the buildings.

Feng Ling’s eyes lit up. She pointed it out to Ye Zheng. "On our way here, we destroyed three offering tables. If you count the one at the system’s Divine Statue, that’s four tables in total. The street they’re heading to is in the direction of the four tables we haven’t been to yet."

Ye Zheng nodded slightly. "It seems our previous speculation was correct. The Maze Master can indeed sense whether there are offerings on the tables. After taking heavy damage, it needs offerings to repair its body. Right now, there must be a table piled high with offerings directly in front of this Divine Travel Team."

Feng Ling bounced the grenade in her hand and said with a smile, "You keep an eye on things here. I’m going after them."

Ye Zheng nodded with a serious expression. "Be careful."

Feng Ling grinned, leaped from the rooftop, and swiftly chased after the Divine Travel Team. When she was still twenty or thirty meters away, she impatiently raised her arm and threw the grenade!

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The explosion roared through the street, blowing the orderly procession to smithereens! The glass in nearby buildings was also shattered!

The smaller Mouse Monsters in the group were either knocked to the ground, unable to get up, or were left rolling and struggling. Only the largest Pseudo-God Mouse Monster shook its massive head and climbed back to its feet.

Feng Ling strode forward, feeling no effects from any spiritual power.

She recalled her fight with The Queen Mother of the West. Every time her opponent released spiritual power, she would interrupt it with a grenade. It was a foolproof tactic, and she figured the situation was the same this time.

Just as she was thinking this, the loud sound of drums and music suddenly echoed in her ears!

Feng Ling was stunned for a moment, her steps faltering. A faint sense of joy began to well up inside her, and she felt a sense of intimacy toward the bizarre, large-headed Pseudo-God before her.

’How bizarre.’

Feng Ling quickly realized what was happening. The sound of drums and music was also a part of its spiritual power, not real music!

The farther away she was, the fainter the music; the closer she got, the louder it became!

’It made sense, when she thought about it. After all, these instruments were made of flesh, skin, membranes, and bone; naturally, they couldn’t produce the sounds of normal instruments.’

Ahead, the large-headed Pseudo-God, its head broken and bleeding from the blast, smiled at her and opened its arms in a welcoming embrace.

As she ran forward, Feng Ling considered whether she should throw another grenade to disrupt its Spiritual Power Field.

In the end, she decided to conserve her resources.

She suddenly unleashed her Spiritual Suppression!

Caught completely off guard, the large-headed Pseudo-God’s legs gave out, and it fell to its knees! Its forehead hit the ground with a THUD, a perfect kowtow right at Feng Ling’s feet!

Feng Ling swiftly extended her tentacles!

Six cone spikes simultaneously pierced the Pseudo-God’s torso and limbs!

Two Bone Blades, one slashing horizontally and the other vertically, carved a deep cross into its freakishly large skull!

Then, the Bone Blades lifted, and her Teeth and Claws plunged in. The head, barely hanging on by threads of flesh, was completely torn apart, splitting into four pieces.

The inside of the skull was packed with rice-sized fleshy nodules. There was no brain, not even a cranium.

The head seemed to be nothing more than a bodily accessory made of these nodules—an ornament, one might say.

Having lost its head, the Pseudo-God’s body, still pinned to the ground, began to struggle violently!

Feng Ling increased the intensity of her Spiritual Suppression, and the Pseudo-God was stunned into stillness.

’So weak.’

Feng Ling was slightly disappointed. She gave it no chance to recover. ’Since shredding its brain didn’t kill it, I’ll just have to go through the trouble of chopping up its body, too.’

She struck with her blade, and a strange voice spilled out from the flesh: "I don’t want to die, I want to live! I don’t want to die!..."

She struck again.

"I want money, I want lots and lots of money! I want money!"

Feng Ling frowned, striking again and again.

The desperate cries grew fainter with each blow, like a life fading away.

When the voice finally vanished, she let out a sigh of relief. ’For something so weak, it was surprisingly resilient,’ she thought.

"Feng Ling!"

Ye Zheng’s shout suddenly came from behind her.

Feng Ling turned to look, her eyes widening slightly.

In the distance, from that large, blasted-apart pile of fleshy sludge, new Pseudo-Gods were surging forth. And—

There wasn’t just one.