Ghost Fog Invades!!

"The fog's rolling in."

Embroiderer nestled in Qin Ming's arms and spoke softly.

Qin Ming looked around.

He wasn't sure if it was a trick of the eyes, but he vaguely saw figures moving several miles away. Before long, the fog swallowed them up.

"Were my eyes playing tricks on me?"

Qin Ming narrowed his eyes and looked again, but saw nothing.

"Junior Brother, there's something strange about this fog."

Li Shengnan walked over.

"What's strange about it?"

"It's cold."

Li Shengnan murmured, "I went over there to relieve myself just now, and it felt as though something in the fog was watching me. When I walked through it, I distinctly felt a chill. It was so cold it felt like it would freeze the marrow in my bones."

Qin Ming's expression quickly grew grave.

Li Shengnan was at the late skin-refining realm and cultivated the body-hardening martial art Savage Bull Strength. Her Qi and blood were several times stronger than an ordinary person's. She could sleep in the snow all night in a single layer of clothing and be fine, so how could a little morning fog make her feel cold?

Qin Ming looked up at the sky.

The moon on the seventh day of the first lunar month wasn't very round, and its hazy light fell on the thin mist.

Suddenly, a figure flashed through the distant fog.

Qin Ming sprang to his feet.

"What is it, Junior Brother?"

Startled, Li Shengnan immediately drew the long saber from her back.

It was Bloodhand's Cold Iron Saber, worth three hundred taels of silver. Qin Ming had lent it to Li Shengnan for self-defense.

With the Cold Iron Saber's sharp edge, Li Shengnan could hold her own against a martial artist at the perfected skin-refining realm.

"Brother Qin!"

Embroiderer's small hand instinctively tightened on the hem of Qin Ming's clothes.

"Shh. Don't make a sound."

Qin Ming slowly drew the butcher's knife from behind his waist.

It was late at night. Some people slept in their clothes, while more than a dozen campfires burned brightly, crackling and popping without pause.

Gray fog closed in from every direction. With a gentle puff, it instantly snuffed out a roaring fire on the outermost edge!

It was like a burning candle pinched out between someone's fingers!

The people sleeping beside the fire gave no reaction as the fog quickly enveloped them.

[Cook Ding Dissects the Ox active skill activated]

Qin Ming stared intently at the fog, inadvertently triggering Cook Ding Dissects the Ox. Soon, a human-shaped black shadow gradually came into focus within it.

To Qin Ming's utter astonishment, the figure's feet weren't touching the ground. It was floating in midair!

That was simply impossible. No matter how powerful a martial art or cultivation method was, it couldn't do that. It defied all common sense.

Unless—

It wasn't human!

"Senior Sister."

Qin Ming's expression was graver than ever, his face even turning faintly pale. Something beyond common sense had frightened him.

It was the first time Li Shengnan had seen Junior Brother Qin, who feared neither heaven nor earth, look like this.

"What is it?"

"Tell me, what could look like a person and float motionless in midair?"

Li Shengnan fell silent.

Then she wanted to speak of several strange incidents her father had occasionally mentioned when he was alive.

One had happened in Qingshan Town.

A family of five had all met violent deaths in their home overnight. Their internal organs had been scooped out, yet there hadn't been a trace of blood in the house. To this day, there wasn't a single clue about the killer.

Another had happened on a rainy night during an escort job, when Li Kui was still young. He had taken shelter from the rain with the escort party in an abandoned Mountain God Temple. In the middle of the night, he had gone outside to take a piss, and when he turned around, the Mountain God Temple was gone.

The entire escort party and their clients, more than a hundred living people and dozens of horses, had all vanished in the blink of an eye.

Li Kui had been so frightened that he hadn't recovered for half a year.

Another incident had happened in a village at the foot of a mountain in Qingyang County.

Several hundred people in a farming settlement had all died mysteriously overnight. Every villager had been skinned, and their skins hung from the old locust tree at the village entrance.

Li Kui had come across it himself and reported it to the Qingyang County yamen, but to this day, not a scrap of news had come out.

Those were the three strangest things Li Kui had encountered since he started working as an escort.

"Father said that if you encounter anything abnormal like that, you have to get away immediately, the farther the better. They're stranger than we can imagine. Ordinary blades and swords are useless against them, and a martial artist's Qi and blood are delicious food to them."

As Li Shengnan spoke, the hand gripping the Cold Iron Saber had turned faintly pale from the force of her grip.

Who wouldn't be afraid of running into such ghostly things?

"Is there really no way to deal with them?"

"There are a few. I've heard that some special martial arts can hurt them, and some powerful firearms can hurt them too, but only the low-level ones."

Li Shengnan's voice was low.

Qin Ming understood what she meant.

Against something powerful, like that Mountain God Temple that had vanished on the spot, what good would a firearm do?

"Enemy attack! Enemy attack!!"

Qin Ming roared, waking everyone.

"Has the Ninth Boss of Clearwind Stronghold come after us?"

Everyone thought the bandits from Clearwind Stronghold had caught up and hurriedly gathered their things. But when they looked up, all was quiet around them.

"Little Junior Brother, where's the enemy?"

Lu Liu asked hurriedly.

"In the fog!"

Qin Ming spoke in a low voice, his heart sinking.

Not the slightest sound had come from the people the fog had enveloped.

Like clay oxen sinking into the sea, they had vanished silently into the fog without raising a ripple.

"It's Ghost Fog!"

Huo Zheng shouted. The dignified master of the Tiger Martial Arts Academy was now wide-eyed with terror, every hair on his body standing on end. His voice trembled, and his face had gone white.

"Ghost Fog?"

Pei Heng seemed to recall something and drew a sharp breath.

"Father, what is Ghost Fog?"

It was the first time Huo Lan had seen Huo Zheng so frightened, and she hurriedly asked.

"There are always ghosts in Ghost Fog! They feed on the Qi and blood of living people. Even martial artists have no way out but death if they run into them, because their bodies are insubstantial and transparent. Blades and swords can't hurt them at all. Once they come into contact with you and possess you, they'll quickly devour every last bit of your Qi and blood!"

Before he had finished speaking, a scream suddenly rang out from the crowd.

It was a martial artist at the mid-stage skin-refining realm.

He had been standing at the edge of the Ghost Fog when an invisible ghostly hand dragged him inside.

Bang!

Two breaths later, a dried corpse was flung out of the Ghost Fog.

It was the man from just now.

The essence of his flesh and blood had been devoured, leaving only a thin layer of shriveled human skin stretched tightly over his bones.

"Run! Run!"

Huo Zheng's pupils contracted. He and the people from the Tiger Martial Arts Academy mounted their horses and galloped away.

Everyone scattered.

The next moment, the Ghost Fog's spread abruptly accelerated, enveloping everyone in an instant.

Qin Ming finally understood what Li Shengnan had meant by cold.

It was an extreme, sinister chill, as though countless fine ox hairs were forcing their way through the pores of his skin, burrowing into his body and deep into his marrow to snuff out the flame of life within him.

"Hee hee hee."

A woman's silvery laughter rang out from the Ghost Fog, crisp and clear, yet tinged with an eerie, chilling quality.

"Don't go. Come play with me."

A female ghost in a red dress slowly floated out of the Ghost Fog.

She was exceptionally beautiful, her jade feet bare and her body half-visible.

She beckoned gently, and several young men immediately staggered toward her as though drunk.

After only a few steps, their cheeks rapidly caved in, and their limbs shriveled before the eye. Finally, they fell heavily to the ground and became dried corpses.

"Monster!"

A late skin-refining realm martial artist drew an arrow and shot.

Whoosh!

The arrow passed through the female ghost's head as though through a curtain of water, raising faint ripples but doing her no harm.

"Hee hee hee."

The female ghost chuckled, possessed the man, and drew a gentle breath, instantly sucking all the Qi and blood from his body.

"A martial artist's Qi and blood really are different."

The female ghost licked her lips, a trace of satisfaction on her face.

Ghosts kept floating out of the Ghost Fog. They possessed the martial artists and greedily devoured their Qi and blood.

"Go! Now!"

Liao Jun galloped away on horseback, his face deathly pale.

As a man of the yamen, he knew very well that ordinary methods were useless against these ghosts. Only the people from Wangjing Prefecture could deal with them!

More than a dozen white spirits darted back and forth above the Ghost Fog, sucking people dry. Before these ghosts, martial artists were no different from ordinary people; instead, their abundant Qi and blood drew the ghosts' attention.

Seeing a ghost dive at him from the sky, Liao Jun's expression changed drastically, and he jumped from his horse without hesitation.

He looked back to see the warhorse he had just been riding already lying on the ground, the essence of its flesh and blood completely devoured.

Liao Jun drew a sharp breath. He looked around and spotted a carriage only a few steps away.

Without time to think, he rushed toward it.

There were several people in the carriage.

They were Wang Shun's family and Embroiderer.

"Get out!"

Liao Jun's presence surged, and with a wave of his hand he drove Wang Shun and the other two off the carriage. Seeing the ghost turn and pursue him, Liao Jun seized Embroiderer as she was about to jump down and hurled her at it.

"Brother Qin!"

Embroiderer's face turned deathly pale as she watched the white spirit rush toward her.

"Embroiderer!"

Qin Ming's eyes nearly split with rage. Driving hard off his right knee, he shot forward like an arrow loosed from a bow, reaching out with his large hand to grab the white spirit directly!