Night of Despair

Chapter 143: Clearing
 

Regardless of what the two women were thinking, Yu Hong addressed their questions and still proceeded with his plan to leave.

Of course, he wouldn’t completely relax his vigilance, and had arranged for two black lizards to patrol the camp, ready to launch a sneak attack should the women dare to do anything to the camp.

Given the black lizard’s toxicity that could even corrode shadows, it might be just as terrifying to humans. After all, its original name included the word “plague.”

In the dense forest.

Yu Hong moved slowly forward, his feet crushing the dry, yellow fallen leaves.

The thick layer of fallen leaves formed a soft carpet under his feet, dry on the surface but still moist and soft underneath.

“This indicates a lack of sunlight, not sufficiently sun-dried,” he thought.

Yu Hong glanced at his own boots, where in some spots the soles had pierced through the dry leaves and touched the damp layer below, even picking up faint water stains.

Without pausing, he continued moving forward.

Fog enveloped the area with a visibility of only four or five meters.

Above, there was no sunlight, only a gray white expanse as the diffuse fog draped everything around as if layering it with a white veil.

The yellowish grass, the straight trees, the black and yellow soil—all of it took on a dim and blurry coloration.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated on ƝονǤο.ᴄօ

Yu Hong walked slowly through the woods, with seven black lizards quietly following on either side, ready to scout for any potential situations.

After a short while.

He gradually slowed down and stopped in the middle of a dark yellow dirt path.

Crouching down, he pressed his hand against the moist yellow soil.

The soil was slightly hard, resembling dried-out modeling clay, not as soft as he had imagined.

“A very regular path… as if something had uniformly compressed it.”

Yu Hong raised his head and looked along the mud path stretching straight into the distance, disappearing into the grey fog.

“Could it be the tick ball Zhang Kaijun mentioned?” he thought, apprehension tightening within him as he roughly estimated the size of a spherical object that would be required to roll out such a path.

Standing up, he looked around, his nose picking up a faint mint-like fragrance even through his breathing filter.

Unperturbed, he continued to let the black lizards lead the way towards the first point they needed to assault.

Crossing the strange yellow mud imprint, after walking for a few more minutes, a large locust tree with its leaves almost completely fallen and branches wildly outstretched finally appeared ahead.

The locust tree stood quietly in the fog, part of its crown obscured by distance and engulfed in fog, indiscernible.

Its trunk was dark, its surface subtly reflective of moisture. A strong mint-like scent was spreading from it.

Upon reaching this point, Yu Hong sharply sensed a trace of tension from the black lizards he controlled.

Indeed, the locust tree in front of him was no ordinary specimen, considering that it could even make such venomous creatures as black lizards feel anxious.

Immediately, he took out his detector, which had already unknowingly exceeded a reading of one hundred and was still fluctuating around one hundred and thirty.

After thinking for a moment, he took a step forward.

The Red Value on the detector instantly surged by more than a dozen points.

Then stepping back.

The Red Value immediately returned to its original range.

Understanding dawned on Yu Hong’s face, and he swiftly pulled out an enhanced pistol from his waist.

Aimed at the locust tree.

Bang!

A gunshot sounded, and the bullet burst forth without hesitation, fiercely embedding itself into the center of the locust tree.

The powerful pistol bullet instantly blasted a fist-sized black hole in the middle of the trunk.

Screech!

Just then, a huge black shadow the size of a bathtub suddenly swooped down from above the locust tree, rapidly approaching Yu Hong and extending its sharp claws.

With a hiss, the claws grabbed Yu Hong’s helmet, lifting upwards.

This creature actually tried to lift Yu Hong completely.

Though it was large, it was clearly much smaller compared to Yu Hong in his enhanced suit.

Yet, it nearly managed to lift him off the ground with one pull.

Pff!

At that moment, a circle of invisible radiation exploded from Yu Hong, enveloping him.

The detector’s readings shot up from a hundred to over negative seven thousand in the blink of an eye.

The invisible radiation, like a storm, instantly enveloped a radius of more than ten meters around him.

Including the black shadow that attempted to lift Yu Hong.

The huge negative Red Value directly neutralized the radiation on the black shadow’s body.

Screech!

It uttered a painful cry, released its claws and tried to flee.

But…

Yu Hong suddenly moved, his right leg kicking to the side.

The furious leg silhouette thunderously broke through the air, vanishing in a flash.

Boom!!!

The leg hit heavily on the black shadow’s body, sending it flying like a ball, its body caving in from the middle before it whistled through the fog and smashed into the grass on the left, tearing up a strip of turf.

The black shadow lay on the ground, struggling to rise, and only then was it truly clear what it was.

It was a huge black crow, the size of a bathtub, just like the crows Yu Hong had seen before at the mine entrance, only this one was particularly large.

The crow’s head bore a red gem-like crystal, an irregular polyhedron about the size of a peanut.

Both of the crow’s wings were broken by the kick, its body deeply dented on one side, clearly unable to fly, only able to lie on the ground and emit sorrowful cries.

Yu Hong approached, reached out to grab the creature, and the crow still tried to bite him.

“Smack.”

He slapped the crow’s head on the spot, causing blood and flesh to splatter, with only a bit of skin still connecting the neck to the bird’s body.

“Gah!”

The creature was still squawking, refusing to die.

‘It seems to have mutated.’ Yu Hong sighed lightly, plucked the ruby from the crow’s forehead with one hand, pocketed it, and then crushed the crow’s head with his bare hands, tossing the corpse aside.

He took out the detector and checked; the environmental values here had returned to normal. It signified that the clearing was directly completed here.

‘Next.’ He turned around, left a black lizard to monitor the area, and then headed towards the second clearing site.

Soon, the second location was on the middle of the path towards Baiqiu Village.

On the right side of the road, a rotting, dark tree stump had, from a distance, a gray-white humanoid figure with slender hands sitting on it.

The humanoid was completely naked, its whole body covered with patchy mold-like spots, and bald on top of its head without any hair.

The strangest thing was the air constantly flowing and distorting around this creature as if heat waves were twisting the light.

Yu Hong stopped about ten meters away from this creature.

He looked around to ensure there were no other Evil Shadows, then commanded the black lizards to spread out and form a fan shape to surround the humanoid.

Silently, six black lizards had completely encircled the humanoid.

‘Prepare.’ Yu Hong ordered mentally.

The six black lizards each gathered a mouthful of old phlegm, their chins lowered.

‘Now!’

Spurt!!

In an instant, six gobs of black phlegm shot out, aiming simultaneously at the humanoid from six directions.

Smack!

All six gobs hit their target.

The sheer potency of the poison began to corrode the gray-white humanoid rapidly.

“Ah!!!”

The humanoid threw back its head and screamed, but its resistance to toxins was surprisingly strong; its skin merely emitted black smoke and did not melt into mucus like the Evil Shadows.

Suddenly, the humanoid turned its head towards Yu Hong, seemingly aware that it was him controlling the attack.

Instantly, the creature stood up and lunged forward.

Hiss!

Its silhouette moved incredibly fast, the air around it twisting even more violently like a booster, covering the distance of more than ten meters in the blink of an eye, far faster than Yu Hong.

Thump!

Yu Hong, already on high alert, burst forth with energy, his Thunderbolt Leg kicking forward sharply!

Bang!!

The two figures collided, the enormous impact forcing Yu Hong to stagger back two steps.

He felt as if his right leg had kicked a heavy piece of iron, pain faintly spreading from his sole up through his knee to his waist; the vibration was immense.

“Damn! That was strong! Again!” His heart flared up from the collision.

He steadied himself, lunging forward aggressively towards where the humanoid had rebounded.

Hisss.

Sharp spikes shot from his feet, his hands adeptly reaching forward to seize.

But just as his palms touched the humanoid’s shoulders, it dissolved into a puddle of black liquid, collapsing down without a trace of its human form.

‘That fast!?’ Yu Hong grabbed at air, his consecutive moves completely disrupted, stuffing his rising anger back down forcibly.

He looked around, took out his detector, and noticed the Red Value had already recovered to thirty or forty normal values.

Only then did he realize that the humanoid had thoroughly vanished.

He huffed heavily, frustration making him kick fiercely at the trunk of a nearby tree.

Bang!

The tree trunk shattered instantly, wood chips flying as the thick tree slowly tilted and fell to the side.

With a dense crashing sound, the tree broke completely and fell onto another tree’s branch, stopping there.

Yu Hong controlled his black lizards, preparing to leave.

As he turned, changing direction, his gaze sharpened suddenly, and he looked back towards where he had last seen the humanoid.

On that rotten tree stump.

Now, incredibly, another gray-white humanoid identical to the earlier one appeared.

It still sat on the stump, its back towards Yu Hong and the black lizards, unmoving, with slender hands.

‘This creature… resurrects so quickly!?’ Yu Hong checked his detector again, Red Value 311.731.

‘A Red Value over three hundred, considered a low-level Evil Shadow… But.’ This time he did not attack immediately.

Having used a dose of Thunderbolt Inner Qi, he needed to keep one for emergency self-defense.

Watching the humanoid, Yu Hong slowly directed the black lizards to pull back, marking this area as off-limits.

Then he proceeded to the third location.

‘This world, besides the official count of Blood Tide and Evil Shadows, who knows what other bizarre threats have emerged.’

On the road, Yu Hong steadied his breathing, took out talisman array and Radiation Hand Grenade, planning to resolve the issue with tools this time.

Fortunately, the third location had no surprises, just a group of five Evil Shadows wandering together. He didn’t even use his hand grenade, charging in with the Silver Talisman Plate and instantly exploding them.

After dealing with them all, Yu Hong ordered two black lizards to stay and guard the area, directly spitting to kill any possibly resurrecting Evil Shadows.