Chapter 288: A Hundred Corpses Bowing to the Fox (2)

"Yun Chuan, your face..." I stopped in my tracks, not daring to step any closer.

"What's wrong with my face?" Yun Chuan couldn't move, but he shook his head. No matter how much he shook it, he couldn't see his own cheeks.

"Don't move." I picked up the white towel from the ground, padded my palm with it, and reached from the side to touch Yun Chuan's jaw.

It felt incredibly ticklish to the touch, like stroking the soft down of a newborn animal.

"You're growing white hair on your face." I had never seen anything like it and didn't know how else to describe it, so I could only tell him exactly what I saw.

"Corpse hair? No, why would that grow on me?" Before corpse reanimation occurred, a corpse would display a series of signs, and growing corpse hair was one of them.

"This doesn't look like corpse hair. It looks more like fox fur." I remembered what Daoist Priest Xianqing had said: although the fox immortal was fiery red all over, it was originally a white fox that had only become a Blood Fox after being tainted by too much blood. "Could the corpse on your back be changing? Or maybe..."

I cautiously took another step back and carefully sized Yun Chuan up. Fox immortals were cunning, and I was afraid the Yun Chuan standing before me was actually the fox immortal in disguise.

"This is bad. Destined patron, hurry and call my master! The fox immortal is undergoing corpse reanimation! Hurry!"

Yun Chuan stood in the middle of the altar. His face was tight with anxiety, yet his body remained completely motionless.

I sensed that something was wrong as well. Yun Chuan's condition was incredibly strange. His consciousness was still intact, but he couldn't control his body. It seemed the fox immortal had imperceptibly seized control of his flesh.

Daoist Priest Xianqing was already risking his life to stall for time. Now that something had gone wrong with the Fox Immortal Corpse, I truly didn't know what to do. Qiu Ren was likely still hiding in the dark, and armed police surrounded me, ready to rush up and subdue me at any moment. The situation was an almost unsolvable dead end.

"Alright, wait here!" The white fur on Yun Chuan's face was growing thicker by the second. I watched with trepidation, quickly backing out of the room to look for Daoist Priest Xianqing.

Complications had arisen on both sides, but saving Yun Chuan took priority over Ye Bing. If the fox immortal underwent corpse reanimation and broke free of our control, tonight would become incredibly difficult to resolve.

Before I could even step out of the building, gunfire rang out outside. I stood at the door and took a look, my heart instantly leaping into my throat.

Daoist Priest Xianqing lay in the muddy water, his fate unknown, while several armed police officers were locked in combat with Ye Bing.

At first, they hadn't wanted to hurt Ye Bing. Facing a delicate woman, they had been somewhat careless. As a result, Ye Bing closed the distance and fell upon them. The yin energy whipped around her like a gale hiding invisible blades, and the officers closest to her couldn't withstand a single exchange.

"Are you kidding me?!" The armed police belonged to the Armed Forces Department and were part of the regular armed forces. If these highly skilled young men were no match for her, I stood absolutely no chance.

"To warp a defenseless woman into something like this... the evil spirit possessing her is truly extraordinary." Seeing Ye Bing like this reminded me of Xiaofeng, who had been possessed by a vicious ghost back at the Anxin Hotel. She had displayed the same immense strength and immunity to pain, as if the human body's hidden potential had been entirely unleashed.

I gripped the police pistol in my hand. There were still bullets left, and I aimed at Ye Bing's head, but this time, I simply couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger.

Although the armed police had fired their weapons just now, they had only shot into the air as a warning. By the time they realized they needed to shoot for real, it was already too late. Ye Bing was using the collapsed officers as human shields. Even as she violently assaulted them, she remained on high alert against her surroundings.

Two teams of highly trained armed police officers couldn't take down the possessed Ye Bing, meaning there was nothing I could do to help. I patted Bai Qi's head and pointed at Jiang Chen. "If he tries to run, bite his neck right off."

Hearing my words, Jiang Chen's lips trembled with fury, but he couldn't force out a single word.

I left the Incineration Trench, keeping my head down as I sprinted over to Daoist Priest Xianqing and hoisted him onto my back.

"Destined patron, you don't need to do this. Tonight is an inescapable calamity. If you can leave, you should leave now."

Daoist Priest Xianqing's voice was extremely weak. His face was an ashen gray, and his body was freezing cold.

"Yun Chuan is in trouble! That fox seems to be undergoing corpse reanimation; white fur has already grown all over his face!" I moved quickly, thinking I would slip by unnoticed, but who could have expected that Ye Bing had apparently locked onto me.

The moment she saw me, she immediately changed targets. She abandoned the armed police and sprinted straight in my direction.

"What the hell?" I didn't dare hesitate for a second. I bolted into the one-story house and slammed the door shut.

"Help the Daoist priest into the back room!"

I shouted at Jiang Chen, but he just watched coldly from the sidelines. "Why should I help you?"

Before his voice could even fade, a heavy impact smashed into the door. If I hadn't been bracing it with my body, the old wooden door probably would have been busted wide open.

"Go!"

Jiang Chen remained entirely unmoved. Daoist Priest Xianqing, on the other hand, was bracing himself against the wall with one hand and slowly inching his way inward. "I'll go check on Yun Chuan."

Bang!

The door was violently struck once again. The webbing of my hand went numb, and I felt as if my spine was about to shatter from the impact.

Bang!

After three fruitless rams against the door, there was a long pause before a nearby window shattered with an explosive crack.

Shards of glass went flying everywhere. I whipped my head around, my eyes landing squarely on Ye Bing, who was standing outside the window with a cold, grotesque expression.

Her arm, covered in a spreading blue-black hue, reached through the broken window and stretched closer and closer to me. I could even clearly see the leftover glass shards still embedded in it.

They had dug deep into her flesh, and beads of blood had already congealed around the wounds.

Seeing his own wife's face outside the window, Jiang Chen stumbled back several steps. With nowhere left to run inside the small house, he resigned himself to his fate, limping over to support Daoist Priest Xianqing and help him into the back room.

Bang!

The door buckled under another violent charge. While bracing it, I also had to dodge that arm as it snatched closer and closer. My shoulder was red and swollen, slowly going completely numb.

"Why do you have to target me of all people?"

Outside the window, Ye Bing's face was fixed squarely on me. She remained utterly expressionless; I had no idea what she was thinking, but her dead stare gave me the creeps.

The hinges on the door grew loose. I watched helplessly as the rusted screws rattled out of their sockets, and the lock shook more violently by the second.

"Snap out of it, Ye Bing!"

Expressions could be faked, but eyes could rarely deceive. Two vertical slits stood upright in Ye Bing's pupils, a clear sign that she was under the influence of a spell or hex sorcery. Beyond that, the depths of her eyes held nothing but profound loneliness and a desperate plea. Those two emotions completely consumed her.

The crashing was ceaseless, and half of my body had already gone numb. But truly, a leaking house happens to encounter all-night rain—right at that moment, the hinges snapped under the force, and a massive chunk of the wooden doorframe broke off.

'This is bad,' I thought. Before I could even retreat, the entire door collapsed on top of me.

The impact knocked me to the floor, and the back of my head slammed against the ground. I pushed off the floor with my feet for all I was worth, scooting backward. But even after using every ounce of my strength, I only managed to slide my head out from under the door. When I looked up, I wasn't greeted by the hope of escape, but by a face deeply carved into my memories.

Ye Bing was sprawled on top of the door. I hadn't been this close to her in five years. The tip of her nose was practically touching my eye! I could feel the bone-deep chill radiating off her body.

Her reaction was incredibly strange. She didn't attack me directly. Instead, her open mouth hovered right above my eyes, while the color of her skin shifted between a sickly blue-black and a fair, pale white.

Swish!

A pale yellow blur flashed past, and Ye Bing was tackled to the side. Using both my hands and feet, I scrambled away and fled into the back room. "Daoist priest, she got in!"

Standing in the doorway to the back room, the breath I had just managed to catch caught in my throat once again. The scene inside was even more bizarre.

Yun Chuan was carrying the Fox Immortal Corpse on his back. The two of them were pressed tightly together, back-to-back, looking like conjoined twins. The longer I stared, the more terrifying it looked.

Daoist Priest Xianqing held the Soul-Capturing Bell, rapidly chanting a spell. The white fur on Yun Chuan's face slowly receded, and he regained his human appearance.

But this didn't come without a price for Daoist Priest Xianqing. Blood dripped from his fingertips, and the Bronze Bell was densely covered in cracks.

What was even more terrifying was that, drawn in by the chime of the Soul-Capturing Bell, the student corpses scattered throughout the back room seemed to have come alive. I hadn't been looking for just a moment, yet they had all inexplicably turned around to face the center of the room. They formed rows upon rows of corpse walls, packed tightly together with no gaps to escape through.

"Daoist priest!" At this point, the only person I could rely on was Daoist Priest Xianqing. I didn't even know what kind of Talisman Paper I had in my pocket, let alone how to take it out and use it against our enemies.

Daoist Priest Xianqing didn't even turn his head. He continued chanting his incantation amidst the horde of corpses, his words coming faster and faster.

Just as I was about to push my way into the crowd of corpses, Bai Qi's frantic barking rang out from behind me. I whipped my head around. "Oh no!"

A heavy weight pressed down on my shoulder. It was a blue-black hand.

At that exact same moment, a massive crash echoed out from within the back room. Daoist Priest Xianqing stopped chanting and raised his blood-drenched hand. Clutched tightly in his palm was a broken half of the Soul-Capturing Bell.

"The Bronze Bell... it shattered."

The yin energy rolled backward. A surge of yin energy, even more overbearing than Ye Bing's, swirled through the back room, radiating such immense pressure that it forced every single corpse to bow its head.