Upon hearing that cry, Li Hai’s expression first softened, then he turned around and waved his hand.
He unleashed a force from a distance, pulverizing the ruins a hundred zhang away into a cloud of dust.
After all the dust and debris were swept away, the ruins, which had been piled up from several collapsed houses, transformed into a slanted stone platform a few zhang wide.
And in the center of that stone platform, a frail, hunched, neither-human-nor-ghost, ugly monster was sprawled.
Character Name: Unknown Rank: Evil Parasite → Aggregated Evil Abnormality Skills: 《Yin Absorption and Evil Storage》 《Enduring Death and Stealing Life》
Trait: 【Resurrection Lv. 1】
Stronghold Fragment: None “So-called Evil Parasite – from the name, could it be a malevolent species produced after a body and soul are parasitized by Evil Qi? A kind of… deformed life?
And this 【Resurrection】 trait… I feel this is an even stronger characteristic than 【Self-Healing】. This is truly… good bamboo shoots come from good roots.”
Thinking to himself, Li Hai instantly learned all of this monster’s techniques, then stepped in front of it and asked in a deep voice:
“Were you speaking just now? Who… exactly are you?”
In fact, when Li Hai first arrived, he had already ‘seen’ through his spiritual sense this ugly monster called an Evil Parasite hiding beneath the ruins.
But because it was too weak, weaker even than an ordinary person, Li Hai didn’t pay much attention to it.
However, now this neither-human-nor-ghost monster could actually recognize his identity.
This… was very unusual.
It must be someone he knew transformed.
“Li, Li Hai, it’s me, I’m—”
The monster, covered in black festering sores, lifted its head and rasped, “I’m—Zheng Dashan.”
Shock!
Li Hai was immediately stunned.
He slowly lowered his head, his gaze fixed on this monster that claimed to be Zheng Dashan.
He saw that besides being covered in grey-black festering sores, its facial features were also extremely distorted and twisted.
Even its two empty eye sockets only had two faint blue phosphorescent lights flickering, without a single normal eyeball.
This was nowhere near Zheng Dashan’s appearance.
But Li Hai still believed him.
He asked with a solemn expression:
“Why did you turn into this? And weren’t your family in the Yunpan Mountain cave? Why are you in the ruins of Niujiao Town?”
“Li, Li Hai, it’s like this.”
Zheng Dashan stammered, “Before you left the cave, you… you suggested that our family return to Niujiao Town. I, I refused you at the time.
Later, I… I thought about it again and felt that you were so good to us, you would never harm us. To refuse your kindness like that would truly be… truly heartless and very regrettable.
So… so after you left for a while, our family… we found a way to get the two oxen out of the cave, and then we drove the oxen back, back to Niujiao Town.”
Perhaps after being reduced to a neither-human-nor-ghost monster, speaking too much would consume a lot of energy. So after saying all this, Zheng Dashan took several deep breaths before speaking again:
“Li Hai, when our family returned to the town, we found… found that our home was already… already dilapidated. The surrounding streets and alleys were also overgrown, and many acquaintances had moved away.
But thankfully, even though the house was broken, it could be tidied up, and once tidied, we could live in it. It was fine without acquaintances too, we… we were just afraid of people.
But after we spent several days tidying up the house, just as we were about to cook a good meal to celebrate, that dark, heavy wind and fog came.
And the yellow river water also came. That river washed away the house and knocked down the walls. The river water was poisonous. My wife and two children, after they were submerged in the river, they… they died immediately. Their bodies collapsed and shriveled.
Then I, I didn’t die, but I turned into this monstrous appearance. And… and the two oxen you gave me, *sob sob sob sob*~”
Zheng Dashan suddenly burst into tears, repeatedly kowtowing, “Sir, I’m sorry! Your oxen—those two oxen, I didn’t take good care of them. They were washed away and died by that river. Both of them died, all of them died!”
“It’s fine.”
Looking at the remorseful, sobbing Zheng Dashan, Li Hai’s expression was somber, but his tone was extremely gentle as he said, “They’re just two oxen. If they’re gone, they’re gone.”
2
Strangely, even though Li Hai said this, Zheng Dashan continued to weep.
However, now that he had become a monster, he could only weep out streaks of dirty blood-ash, without a single true tear of a living person.
Li Hai just quietly watched Zheng Dashan weep, letting him vent his sorrow, without saying a word.
Only after a long while did Zheng Dashan calm down, lift his head, and say:
“Sir, please, can you… can you save my wife and my children?”
Clearly, in his heart, Li Hai was an omnipotent living deity who could easily resolve any crisis.
“Hmm? They’re still alive?”
Without hesitation, Li Hai asked directly, “Take me to see them.”
“Thank you, Sir, thank you, Sir!”
Hearing Li Hai agree, Zheng Dashan was overjoyed and quickly straightened up, repeatedly kowtowing.
Immediately, he stood up from the ground and, limping, walked to the edge of the ruins, grabbed a few torn straw mats, and pulled them back, revealing three dried corpses, one large and two small.
Li Hai stepped over, frowned as he examined the three bodies, and asked doubtfully:
“They seem to be dead, but there’s a strange Qi moving within their bodies. This Qi is neither human nor ghost; I don’t know what category it belongs to.”
“They’re alive, Sir.”
Zheng Dashan said somewhat excitedly, “They really aren’t dead. I, I, I’ll prove it to you!”
Saying that, he lowered his head, bit his own arm, and pulled hard, tearing open a bleeding wound.
Then Zheng Dashan lifted his arm and extended it to the mouth of the larger dried corpse.
“Ah!”
As if stimulated by the blood Qi, the dried corpse suddenly opened its mouth, revealing a row of sharp teeth, and bit fiercely into the bleeding wound on Zheng Dashan’s arm, beginning to suck greedily.
After sucking for a good while, Zheng Dashan quickly patted the dried corpse’s head and said:
“Alright, alright, Yu Fen, that’s enough, stop sucking, the children still need to eat.”
Strangely, as soon as the dried corpse heard the word “children,” it immediately released its bite and lay back down lifelessly, allowing Zheng Dashan to smoothly withdraw his arm.
“Sir.”
Afterward, Zheng Dashan turned his head to explain to Li Hai, while also using his own blood to feed the two smaller dried corpses next to them. “These two or three days, I feed them several times a day, a few mouthfuls each time, just afraid that their mother and children won’t survive.”
But Li Hai, watching his actions, questioned, “Aren’t you afraid of further injury, and finally dying from severe injury, by mutilating yourself and bleeding every day like this?”
“Sir, actually I—”
Zheng Dashan lifted his head and said, “I’ve already died several times.”