Stranger Danger

Chapter 40: Void

Ye Qing could clearly see the dark gray burial shirt glimmering darkly and shielding Feng Xuan from the Blood Shadows’ advances, but not without a cost. Not only did Feng Xuan look increasingly dead with every passing second, he had become so skinny that he was just skin and bones. The stout man wasn’t anything but stout anymore.

Ye Qing grinned wickedly. “Now I’m curious. How much longer can you hold on before your own Strange Artifact kills you?”

Ye Qing curled his fingers slightly, and the mist of blood abruptly tightened around Feng Xuan. At the center, the formerly stout man could hardly breathe. He felt as if a mountain was threatening to crush him as flat as a pancake. Although the burial shirt was temporarily keeping the crushing pressure at bay with a thick, deathly mist of its own, it came at the cost of his own health. His hair started wilting and snapping at the roots, his teeth started falling off his gums, and an eyeball literally fell off his eye sockets because the surrounding flesh had withered away completely. He looked like he was a hundred years old with one foot in the grave.

Crack crack crack!

Feng Xuan looked absolutely terrified right now. It was because he knew exactly what was happening to him. The burial shirt he was wearing was called the Burial Shirt of the Dead, and it was a Mundane-class Strange Artifact. Its wearer would gain access to its death energy and a temporary but massive boost in strength and speed. It also doubled as a powerful protection that shielded its wearer from all harm.

There was a reason the Strange Artifact was named the Burial Shirt of the Dead, however. Although a living person wearing the shirt would temporarily gain a massive amount of power, it was fueled by their own vigor and vitality. The wearer would die if they did not remove the Strange Artifact before they ran out of time.

Right now, Feng Xuan was facing this exact problem. He wanted to take off the Strange Artifact and beg for mercy, but the surrounding blood mist was like a mountain that was crushing him from all sides. Forget moving, he could not even squeeze out a sentence from his lungs.

Crack crack crack crack… crack.

Just a few breaths later, the last bit of light disappeared from Feng Xuan’s eyes. He did not collapse, however. Death energy so thick it almost looked tangible started flowed out of his corpse while a new light settled in his empty eye sockets—light that was deathly green in color.

“Is this how a Strange Artifact awakens after losing its wielder? Interesting!” Curiosity twinkled in Ye Qing’s eyes, but he did not allow it to affect his judgment. He curled his fingers a little more, and Feng Xuan’s corpse abruptly exploded into dust. Without a vessel to express its power, the Burial Shirt of the Dead had no choice but withdraw back unto itself and turn back to normal. It then slowly floated to the ground.

Ye Qing appeared underneath the Strange Artifact and caught it in one hand. Smiling, he shoved it into his Nature’s Shell.

Ye Qing didn’t know what the burial shirt was, but it was clearly a Strange Artifact. Its performance during the battle was subpar, but that was only because its opponent was him. Feng Xuan was a late-stage Qi Invoker, but he was a Vessel Augmentor, one who had cultivated the “Blood Shadow Divine Art”, a top tier Vessel Augmentation cultivation art no less. Not only did the cultivation art more than quadruple the amount of true qi he had, the Blood Shadow Magic was infinitely more powerful and flexible than the original thanks to his overwhelming vigor and unique blood. It was why Feng Xuan had seemed so powerless against him.

Had Ye Qing still been a late-stage Qi Invoker, Feng Xuan would’ve been a most formidable opponent for him. The stout man didn’t just have formidable strength, speed and defense, the death energy of Burial Shirt of the Dead was a direct counter to his greatest strengths. Evil, anti-life, and foul, the death energy could contaminate not just a person’s vitality, but also their spirit and consciousness. The combination would have been potent enough to severely injure him and force him to reconsider his revenge.

The Burial Shirt of the Dead was undeniably a powerful Strange Artifact. It was just that its opponent this time was too strong.

On a related note, the Nature’s Shell he used to store the burial shirt was of course the spoils he had gotten from Zheng Tianyuan and Prayer.

Ye Qing looked up at Zheng Tianqi after putting away his loot. The young master had not hesitated to make a run for August Hill Village while he was ending Feng Xuan’s life. Eyes growing cold, he took one step forward and suddenly froze in place. It wasn’t until a breeze blew past the “body” and disintegrated it that it was revealed that it was just an afterimage.

Meanwhile, the real Ye Qing appeared behind Zheng Tianqi and brought down his palm. The surrounding air abruptly turned red and drastically slowed the young master like he was stuck in a quagmire. No matter how he struggled, he could only watch as Ye Qing slowly walked toward him.

“Don’t come closer. I will kill everyone in August Hill Village if you do,” Zheng Tianqi threatened. The young master had stopped his futile struggle, but for some reason he didn’t look panicked anymore. Apparently, something had filled him with infinite confidence.

Ye Qing was confident he could handle anything Zheng Tianqi could throw at him, however. He snorted in disdain and said, “You think you can threaten me? And whatever makes you think I care about their lives?”

“Right back at you, trash. What makes you think you have the right to threaten me?”

In response, Ye Qing commanded a Blood Shadow to appear beneath Zheng Tianqi’s feet and slip into his body. The next second, the young master began shriveling at a visible rate.

Zheng Tianqi was stunned at first. Then, a crazed expression flitted across his face as he screamed, “You forced me to do this, you forced me to do this! LET’S DIE TOGETHER!”

An odd-looking sculpture appeared in Zheng Tianqi’s hand. It was pure white like it was carved from white jade, and it was glowing with some sort of illusory, invisible, and mysterious pattern. The sculpture clearly had a face and an appearance, but for some reason all Ye Qing could see was pale, hollow void. It was indescribable.

Shit. Realizing he might have screwed up, Ye Qing immediately detonated the Blood Shadow in Zheng Tianqi’s body and shattered his heart. He was hoping it would end the young master’s life immediately.

Zheng Tianqi did not react to his injury at all, however. Still laughing like a madman and contorting his face into a warped and evil visage, he abruptly crushed the white sculpture he was holding.

Buzz!

The second the sculpture was crushed, Zheng Tianqi’s body started disappearing little by little. He wasn’t falling apart or disintegrating, he was literally turning into nothing as some sort of unimaginable power was slowly erasing his very existence from this world and returning it to the void. The next moment, an indescribable, terrible power descended from above, and everything—the grass, the trees, the farms, the clouds, the wind and more—started distorting and fading away. It did not matter if the objects were animate or inanimate. They were all slowly but surely turning into nothing.

Run!!!

Terror like nothing Ye Qing had ever felt before seized control of his limbs and took him far, far away before his brain could even process what was happening. Pushing “Blood Sea Fragrance” to the absolute limits, he cut across the meadow like lightning and made a beeline for Little August Hill.

Ye Qing wasn’t the only one who was seized by primordial terror. Countless other Strangers such as the Mud Dolls, the Wind Children, the Lantern Grass, the Human Head Flower, the Two-headed Leopard; the harmful, the harmless, the strong and the weak were all running away from the power and toward Little August Hill with all their might.

Not all of them made it. Countless Strangers were caught by the power of the void and slowly erased from existence itself.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Ye Qing could see that Little August Hill was not exempt from the power. The entire village grew increasingly faint and distorted until it looked more like a mirage than a real thing. He even saw a couple of watchmen on the walls going about their daily routines when suddenly, an unnatural shudder seized them all at the same time. He could see the terror and confusion on their faces before they vanished into nothing.

This wasn’t even the worst part. The worst part was that the unnatural void was rapidly spreading toward its surroundings as if it would wipe out this entire corner of the world.

“What the bloody hell is this thing!?” Ye Qing swore in horror and disbelief. He had thought that Zheng Tianqi was bluffing and trying to buy time to save his sorry ass. That was why he had attacked him with the Blood Shadow. He never thought that the bastard actually had something that was capable of killing him, much less a weapon of mass destruction that seemed capable of erasing an entire corner of the fucking world itself from existence! If he knew this would happen, he would never have pushed him like this!

Impulse really is the devil!

“What do I do?” Ye Qing’s eyes darted all over the place as he tried to think of a way out. He looked like a cloud of blood as his true qi surged, and his Blood Shadows were killing every Stranger who was stupid or panicked enough to get between him and Little August Hill.

Right now, the only solution he could think of was to pray that the mysterious, powerful Strangers residing in Little August Hill could stop the spread of the void. If even they couldn’t stop it, then he and every unfortunate fuck around him was going to pay the price of his arrogance!

Buzz!

The second he entered Little August Hill, the mountains abruptly shook as if it had awoken from its slumber. A cool breeze blew past the hillocks, rainbow clouds soared through the sky, flocks of birds flew over the forest… every living creature in Little August Hill had mobilized to action at the same time.

Appearance wise Little August Hill looked the same as ever, but Ye Qing’s senses told a completely different story. He could feel layers of astonishing power pouring down its peak like tidal waves and crashing against the unnatural void before it could get close. At that moment, space itself vibrated as if destabilizing from the inside out, and formless storms erupted across the entire perimeter and transformed into terrifying vortices of nothingness, void and chaos.

It was amidst this utter chaos that an illusory yet imposing figure appeared into view. The entity was transparent, formless and seemingly did not exist in this world. Ye Qing also saw countless equally transparent and formless tentacles occupying the space that was August Hill Village and everything around it. It would seem that these tentacles were the true culprit behind the very world slowly fading into non-existence.

The gigantic tentacles were stretching toward Little August Hill and attempting to turn the mountains into nothing as well, but they were unable to make any progress as if some sort of mysterious power was keeping them at bay.

“Get lost!”

Suddenly, a great will overflowing with an unimaginable amount of power crashed down from the peak of Little August Hill. The formless tentacles proving the air instantly vanished into nothing.

“That sounded like the mountain god’s voice?” Ye Qing was trying to observe the battle, but when the invisible energy in the sky scattered his eyes started bleeding as if it could not withstand the pressure. He hurriedly looked down like a frightened chick. However, he was almost certain that the voice just now was very similar to the mountain god’s voice during his wedding.

“Void…”

It wasn’t over, however. As if responding to the mountain god’s challenge, the illusory yet definitely terrifying entity in the sky trembled once before waves of unimaginable power crashed down like a ring of waterfalls. It was so terrible that the entire Little August Hill shook for a second, and every living being in the mountains felt a primordial terror that came from their very soul.

“He’s looking at us!” Ye Qing couldn’t see the entity clearly, but he could still feel their gaze focusing on him—or rather, the entire Little August Hill.

It was at this moment a sweet, charming voice broke the silence, “It looks like you’re having performance issues, mountain boy! Haha! I suppose your big sis will lend you a hand!”

The voice was soft and gentle, but it swept across the entire Little Azure Hill like a refreshing breeze. It gradually suppressed the uncontrollable fear that was afflicting its refugees and residents.