The Decaying World-Chapter 40 - 35: Change of Heart (Part 3)

The dark wooden huts were scattered irregularly, like black stones on a beach.

Faint groans could be heard from some of the huts, like the death throes of those long tormented by illness.

Lin Hui and Deng Mingchao carefully stepped into the gap between two black huts, one with his sword raised, the other holding his horizontally.

Piles of black mud mixed with miscellaneous filth were heaped in the corners. A faint stench wafted through the air—the foul odor of long-decayed protein.

The two advanced, and within seconds, they found the half-rotted, dark-brown corpse of a woman in a corner to their right.

The flesh of the woman’s upper body had been mostly gnawed away by something unknown, revealing the white bones beneath her skin.

She was slumped against the corner of the wall, her eyes lifeless and purple. Slender, milky-white maggots occasionally crawled from the corners of her eyes into her nostrils.

She still wore a ragged brown cloth skirt and clutched something that looked like a stone in her right hand.

"She’s been dead a while. How did the night not completely devour her?" Deng Mingchao frowned, stepping forward to gently poke the corpse’s thigh with the tip of his sword.

"Junior Brother, look at this body. Here, people who show signs of the tumorous disease can’t receive Wanfu Meat, so any food is extremely precious. And a corpse, under normal circumstances, wouldn’t just be abandoned outside, unless... there’s one possibility."

"What possibility?" Lin Hui asked, wrinkling his nose against the stench.

"She died from the disease," Deng Mingchao’s voice was grave. "Otherwise, a normal corpse here would have been dragged away and stored as food."

"..." Lin Hui was speechless. Looking at the body on the ground, a doubt rose in his mind. ’There’s no clear barrier between this place and the suburbs, so why don’t the people here run to the suburbs to snatch food?’

"How do you know they haven’t tried? How do you know there isn’t some kind of barrier over there?" Deng Mingchao countered. "The path we just took was filled with a special power that ordinary people can’t feel. That power gets weaker the closer you are to the Fog Area and stronger the closer you are to the city proper. In fact, it’s precisely because of this power that the fog has been held back."

"Senior Brother, are you saying that the same invisible power that blocks the fog also blocks these patients? That it keeps them from daring to get closer to the city?" Lin Hui asked.

"Exactly. But it’s undeniable that as the number of patients grows, they pose a threat to the safety of the surrounding residents, which is why we need to be dispatched to clear them out periodically. We’re just one of the forces assigned to the cleanup," Deng Mingchao explained. "There are many other factions that have also taken on cleanup missions and will come to deal with the patients on a regular basis."

"Next, let’s see why these patients require Martial Artists like us to clean them up, and why even the Chief Constable was so cautious." Deng Mingchao sheathed his sword and exhaled.

Suddenly, he swung to his left, using his sword like a saber in a vertical slash toward the shadows.

At the same time, a point of red light shot out from the shadows, rapidly approaching. The light was soon revealed to be a person’s eye.

A one-eyed man in tattered black hemp clothes, his exposed, grayish-white skin covered in festering sores, let out a roar. His face was contorted as he leaped through the air at Deng Mingchao, only to meet the blade of the descending longsword.

SCHLICK.

The one-eyed man and Deng Mingchao passed each other, sending a spray of blood into the air.

As the blood spattered on the ground, the one-eyed man collapsed heavily, his life extinguished.

"One," Deng Mingchao said calmly. "A Blood-Eye patient."

"He was fast. An untrained person probably wouldn’t be able to react in time," Lin Hui commented, his expression tightening.

"This is just the lowest level, a Blood-Eye. Based on the progression of the disease, after Blood-Eye comes Blood-Body. Let’s go, deeper in." Deng Mingchao flicked the blood from his blade and continued walking slowly forward.

Behind him, a crack slowly split open on the head of the one-eyed man’s corpse.

"Just now, that wasn’t the Nine-Section Swift Sword, was it?" Lin Hui asked in a low voice.

"Of course it was. I just modified one of the techniques slightly, turning a thrust into an extended slash. Sword Techniques are meant to be flexible and adaptable, not rigid," Deng Mingchao replied.

The two continued on. This time, they hadn’t gone ten meters before two more patients with blood-red eyes appeared.

It was an old man and a young one, both male, and they were even clutching farming tools that looked like hoes.

"Meat... eat meat...!! I want meat!!" The moment the two patients saw Deng Mingchao, they lunged.

"One each." Deng Mingchao dodged to the side, leaping into the only open space and drawing the old man away.

He left a boy who looked to be in his teens for Lin Hui.

In an instant, the young man was upon Lin Hui, less than two meters away.

The boy’s hands were already clawing for Lin Hui’s face.

’Try not to get touched, or you might get infected.’ The Chief Constable’s prior warning flashed through Lin Hui’s mind.

He took a step back, and the sword in his hand suddenly left its sheath.

SHINK!

The instant the boy lunged closer, the silver tip of the sword precisely pierced his throat.

Then, the sword tip flicked sharply upward, slicing the boy’s entire throat and chin in two with a wet tear.

Black blood sprayed.

Even with such a grievous injury, the young man didn’t even cry out. He just continued to charge, trying to grab Lin Hui with his bare hands.

SCHLICK.

Just then, Lin Hui followed up with a second strike.

The Qinghe Sword retracted and then thrust out again, plunging straight through the boy’s right eye socket and out the back of his head. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

This strike finally stopped the young man for good.

Carried by his forward momentum, he collapsed heavily in front of Lin Hui.

"Hah... No sense of pain?" Lin Hui withdrew his longsword and glanced at his senior brother, Deng Mingchao, who had also finished his fight.

"That’s right. The patients have increased speed and strength, and they feel no pain. Their only weak point is the head. Even if you hack off their limbs, it’s useless. They can still attack and survive for a long time." Deng Mingchao’s expression was grim. "So don’t be careless. Try to kill them in one blow."

He glanced at the wounds on the young man’s corpse on the ground and nodded.

"You did well. Next, we might encounter a Blood-Body patient. They are much stronger, faster, and more durable than the Blood-Eyes. Once a fight starts, I might not be able to protect you. Be careful and hold on. I’ll come help you after I finish my fight."

"Don’t worry, Senior Brother. I won’t hold you back," Lin Hui said with a solemn nod.

Saying no more, the two raised their swords and continued deeper.

The narrow alley twisted and turned. Before long, they encountered two more Blood-Eyes, which they dispatched with ease.

After killing so many in a row, Deng Mingchao paused to rest for a moment. He wiped the filthy blood from his sword to prevent it from rusting, then continued to lead Lin Hui deeper in.

But this time, they had gone less than twenty meters when a grotesque figure, completely different from the Blood-Eye patients, appeared before them.

On the dark ground of the alley, a bald man, blood-red from head to toe, stood motionless in the middle of the path with his hands hanging at his sides.

The bald man wore no clothes, and his skin seemed to have been peeled away, exposing the muscles and tendons beneath.

"This is a Blood-Body... Stay back." Deng Mingchao lowered his voice, holding out an arm to stop Lin Hui.

"Watch our surroundings for me," he instructed, raising his sword and slowly approaching.

Lin Hui acknowledged the order, gripping his sword and vigilantly standing guard.

But in the instant his gaze flickered away, he lost sight of his senior brother and the Blood-Body patient.

CLANG!

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

In an instant, five consecutive clashes rang out, sending five sparks flying in the alley.

In the blink of an eye, Deng Mingchao and the Blood-Body patient were locked in close combat.

Both moved with extreme speed, exchanging more than a dozen attacks per second in a furious, wind-like flurry.

Attack, block, attack, block.

No dodging.

There was no time to dodge. In such a high-speed exchange, the goal was to seize the initiative. A single dodge would mean losing the upper hand and falling into a vicious cycle of purely defensive moves.

Deng Mingchao’s face was a mask of ferocity as he pushed the Nine-Section Swift Sword to its limit. The afterimages of his blade blurred, creating the faint illusion of wind.

Gray sword shadows constantly flew toward his opponent, only to be blocked by the Blood-Body patient’s high-speed hands.

The patient’s weapons were its jet-black fingernails, which were like ten sharp, black spikes, clearly coated in poison.

For a moment, violent collisions erupted in a continuous shower of sparks.

Lin Hui took another step back. In the dim light of the alley, his eyes could no longer clearly make out the details of their fight.

’Deng Mingchao’s Nine-Section Swift Sword is more refined and perfect than mine; his techniques more stable and powerful. Without my Special Effects and seals, I don’t think I could last a hundred moves against that kind of Sword Speed.’

The fact that the Blood-Body patient could withstand that flurry of sword shadows for so long made Lin Hui drastically upgrade his assessment of its threat level.

A short while later.

SCHLICK!

Deng Mingchao beheaded the Blood-Body patient with a single slash.

His sword seemed to have been modified; it wasn’t just suited for thrusting, but also for chopping.

He was now panting slightly as he flicked the filthy blood from his blade.

"See that? That’s a Blood-Body. Normally, back at our monastery, if you’re not in the top ten, you wouldn’t last ten seconds against one. This is why the standards for the Emergency Response Team are so high."

"I understand..." Lin Hui looked fearfully at the patient’s corpse on the ground. "Are there many of these? What’s the ratio?"

"Of course not. For every twenty or thirty Blood-Eyes, there’s about one that mutates into a Blood-Body. It depends on the patient’s constitution before they got sick," Deng Mingchao explained.

He checked the Blood-Body’s corpse to make sure it was dead before stepping over it.

"Let’s go. We continue."

"Do you need to rest?" Lin Hui asked, concerned.

"No need..."

"Junior Brother Deng, perhaps it would be better to rest..."

Suddenly, a familiar voice drifted over from not far behind them.

The expressions on Deng Mingchao’s and Lin Hui’s faces changed slightly. They both recognized the voice.

Mu Qiaozhi!

"Senior Sister Mu, I’ll call you that one last time. Weren’t you assigned to a different squad? Why have you come over to our area instead of clearing out patients?" Deng Mingchao’s face tightened, a bad feeling rising in his heart.

"I was just bored and thought I’d come see how my former junior brothers are doing. And I also wanted you to see my new proficiency in the Martial Arts of the Black Dragon Sect..."

Mu Qiaozhi’s figure suddenly emerged from the darkness behind them.

She wore the dark uniform of the Response Team, with a Black Sword on her back. Her right arm was encased in a black metal gauntlet, and her five fingers were tipped with sharp metal claws. Her entire style had changed.

"Junior Brother Deng, Junior Brother Lin, what was it you practiced Martial Arts for in the past?"