Chapter 1801 - 1058: The Mystery of Corruption_2

This Holy Light Sect believer belongs to the Mad Fire God Sect, and he’s a veteran who has directly come into contact with Mad Fire for quite a long time. A Demon Clan like him actually ranks pretty high inside the Mad Fire God Sect—at least middle management.

For Gong Qiying, people like this are basically his eyes.

Through the Sain Dungeon he can summon Mad Fire and then share these believers’ vision, and as long as he borrows the Mad Fire God’s name, he can influence their actions.

"It’s just a pity that Demon Clan with talent for Mad Fire are still too few."

The number of Demon Clan who can reach the point of sharing vision is way too small; if he forces untalented Demon Clan to be infected to that degree, it’ll only cause meaningless deaths.

Right now, this Demon Clan, who serves as middle management, is standing exactly on the border line between the Mad Fire God Sect’s sphere of influence and the corruption area.

His job is to build a burning Fire Wall to block the spread of corruption; now that the Fire Wall is complete, his job has naturally shifted to maintaining the flames and monitoring the corruption.

Through this Demon Clan’s eyes, Gong Qiying can clearly see what lies just beyond that single wall: the land infected by corruption.

Just a single glance makes Gong Qiying involuntarily think: similar—this looks way too similar.

That sea of white and crimson fungi all over the mountains, spores drifting everywhere—this scene is completely identical to what it looks like after Crimson Corruption spreads!

He even sees a few small animals that were infected by corruption hopping past right in front of him.

Wait, small animals? Infected by corruption?

They’re actually not dead yet?

Not only are they alive, those Demon Clan that look like rabbits are leaping dozens of meters in a single bound, like their physical functions have been enhanced; and that’s with their bodies already covered head to toe in corruption fungus.

If that’s the case, then it doesn’t look the same as Crimson Corruption.

No living thing infected by Crimson Corruption can hop around like nothing happened, let alone get physically buffed—what, you really think Crimson Corruption is some secret body-enhancement drug?

"Didn’t expect this Fire Wall to really hold back the spread of Crimson Corruption. Something that nasty is actually afraid of fire, hehe, then I’m safe now. Just guarding the border over here without going to the frontlines, this is god-tier cushy duty."

The Demon Clan believer whose vision Gong Qiying is piggybacking on doesn’t notice anything wrong at all; instead he happily mutters to himself.

"Still, that Crimson Corruption thrown out by the Sain Dungeon really is vicious. So many of our bros got infected by it, and now they spend all day babbling and praying to some God of Corruption, even made up their own prayer chants... tch, still not as good as the Mad Fire God."

God of Corruption? What the hell is that supposed to be...

From the Demon Clan believer’s mouth comes a line Gong Qiying doesn’t understand.

Since Mad Fire has a Mad Fire God, of course corruption has to copy the template and whip up a God of Corruption to match Mad Fire, huh? Really is a simple and easy-to-grasp thought process.

Gong Qiying keeps watching the corruption.

Even though these believers are calling this stuff Crimson Corruption, it’s obvious this is not a product of the Sain Dungeon.

Because Gong Qiying can’t feel any connection whatsoever between Sain and this thing.

If you look carefully, you can see that this corruption and Crimson Corruption differ in the details—like the shape of the growths produced after infecting organisms, the effects of the corruption’s erosion, and more; all kinds of small differences in the details.

If you haven’t seriously studied Crimson Corruption, you’d definitely get fooled by it.

But then again, how many people are free and bored enough to go research Crimson Corruption? You can’t even find more than a handful of such psychos among adventurers.

"I can confirm it now—this is a pirated copy."

This corruption imitates Crimson Corruption in way too many aspects; without those little mimicry details, Gong Qiying could at least entertain the idea that maybe it’s some local specialty from the Demon Continent. But now that he’s looking at it—

"Ninety-nine percent chance it’s some Evil God’s conspiracy."

Let’s just treat the remaining one percent as margin of error.

So that brings up a question.

"Why is he doing this?"

Gong Qiying thinks for a second, and a flash of insight streaks across his mind.

Since that believer said all his infected bros have started placing their Faith in the God of Corruption...

Could it be that the Evil God has set his sights on the Sain Dungeon’s Faith?

Thinking of this, Gong Qiying can’t help rubbing his brow as he says:

"Here we go again—one after another treating Faith like some priceless treasure. I’m already sick of the aesthetic."

Faith wars, Faith struggles—he’s really had enough of evaluating that kind of thing; can we just clear the table already?

The Evil God has already seen Viskasa’s faceplant; he’s not seriously planning to repeat the same mistake, right?

As far as Gong Qiying remembers, there were people in Scameroon who tried to set up a Church devoted to Crimson Corruption, but without Gong Qiying’s help they never developed at all. Crimson Corruption looks way too creepy—anyone remotely sane wouldn’t put their Faith in it.

Still, even if believers are few, the Sain Dungeon should be able more or less to receive a bit of Faith from it, right?

Gong Qiying swipes a few times on the City Lord Panel, and immediately uses transformation authority to turn into a huge mass of aggregated Crimson Corruption—this sanity-draining form looks even more like the Corruption Goddess than Marlenia does.

After turning into this form, he can examine how much Faith the concept of Crimson Corruption has actually accumulated.

"There aren’t many people who believe in this to begin with; if that damn Evil God really did set his sights on this bit of Faith, then I shouldn’t see much at all... huh?"

Gong Qiying suddenly freezes.

The amount of Faith converging on Crimson Corruption is way beyond expectations!?

"Why is there so much?"

Honestly speaking, the Faith on Crimson Corruption is still less than a tenth of Mad Fire’s; it’s only enough to slightly edge out guys like Greg, who only get worshipped half-jokingly by Scameroon’s troublemakers. The Faith here is also pretty limited in how much it benefits the Sain Dungeon.

But the quantity really is beyond what Gong Qiying imagined.

The Faith on Crimson Corruption hasn’t dropped—in fact, it’s grown?

Thinking back to the believers outside calling that corruption Crimson Corruption, could it be...

"The people infected by the corruption created by the Evil God have mistakenly placed their Faith in Crimson Corruption instead?"

This sounds like a good thing, doesn’t it? Meaning the Sain Dungeon just picked up a bargain for free, and the Evil God’s scheme went down the drain.

"Like hell something that nice would happen."

Gong Qiying can feel an unusual scent of conspiracy.

The Hidden Dull Star has already witnessed the Sain Dungeon’s methods; there’s no way he’s some shortsighted idiot.

"If I just assume his effort lets me freeload, then that means I’ve really walked right into his trap."

Gong Qiying changes back into his original form.

Turns out the Hidden Dull Star has already made a move against Sain, and he’s played a hand no one can quite read.

"..."

Gong Qiying thinks in silence for a moment, then finally makes up his mind.

Even though he can’t read what the Hidden Dull Star is up to, if he himself does nothing, that’s what would really be marching straight toward defeat.

Right now, thanks to the Evil God, a bunch of Demon Clan have mistakenly developed Faith in Crimson Corruption. Their Faith is genuine, but the source of that Faith is packed full of hidden danger.

Since he can’t figure it out—

"Then flip the damn table. No one gets to eat."

Gong Qiying inputs a few commands on the City Lord Panel, and very soon, a fresh Demon Clan corpse is delivered to him. He refines it into a body that can leave the Dungeon, then uses transformation authority to remodel it into a high-speed bird.

After that, high-concentration Crimson Corruption appears all over the bird’s body; its flesh starts rotting and breeding maggots at a speed visible to the naked eye.

"Fly, Victory Swallow Mk.I."

He personally controls the bird as it whooshes out of the Dungeon. The instant it makes contact with the Demon Clan miasma, it dies, but inertia carries it into one of the Demon Clan loitering by the gate.

Crimson Corruption immediately spreads across that Demon Clan’s body, and Mad Fire erupts in his eyes; his mind is instantly taken over.

This Demon Clan scratches his head, and then turns to run toward the nearby pens where livestock are being kept.

Not long after, a large number of birds and beasts loaded with Crimson Corruption break out.

They flee grandly into the sunlight, and the direction they run in, naturally, is the area where Crimson Corruption is spreading.

Is Gong Qiying planning to use real Crimson Corruption to overwrite the bootleg version, and then have the locals worship the real Crimson Corruption?

No.

He plans to have Crimson Corruption wipe out all the locals in the corruption area.