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Outside the gas station, the decaying woods were filled with the faint smells of blood and oil.
Gu Su leaned against a half-dead old tree, holding half a fragrant piece of roast wild chicken between his fingers. Grease dripped through them, leaving a small dark stain on the ground.
He chewed the tender chicken, but his gaze remained fixed on the dilapidated gas station nearby. His deep eyes showed no sign of relaxation, only calm scrutiny and calculation.
The ones gathered around him now represented all the fighting strength at his disposal.
Aside from the ten ordinary skeletons left behind on the supply route through the ruins of the shopping mall to scavenge and haul supplies, he had brought all the remaining elite skeletons and most of the ordinary ones here.
The wind swept through the woods, scattering dead leaves. Faint ghostly flames flickered in the skeletons' empty eye sockets. They stood rigid but orderly, waiting in silence without so much as a clatter of bone.
Ten elite skeletons stood in a semicircle around a crackling bonfire.
In their blackened hands they held iron weapons Gu Su had hastily made.
Rusty iron cleavers and sharpened iron spears were wrapped densely with scraps of torn plastic around their blades and points.
A little congealed corpse oil clung to the plastic and iron, making them easy to ignite.
They stood motionless at the edge of the firelight. At Gu Su's command, they could turn their weapons into highly lethal flaming arms at once.
In front of Gu Su, another squad of skeletons had already made thorough preparations, standing neatly in a single file.
The skeletons at the front each held a torch in both hands. Dry firewood wrapped in strips of cloth had been soaked in corpse oil, burning fiercely as orange flames swayed in the wind.
Several skeletons behind them carried heavy fur sacks on their backs. Snow-white granules peeked out from the openings: industrial salt Gu Su had scavenged from the supermarket ruins.
At the end of the line, a slightly shorter skeleton steadily pushed a rusty shopping cart packed with thick, white fungal strands.
No one would think these skeletons were the main force meant to charge into battle.
Gu Su knew that too. They were test subjects, pawns for probing the Oil Abomination's weaknesses, and cannon fodder destined to be sacrificed in this battle.
Their task was simple and cruel: take the materials in their hands and charge at the gas station without hesitation, using their own bones to test whether the methods for dealing with the Oil Abomination actually worked.
Gu Su tossed aside the chicken carcass he had picked clean, then repeatedly wiped the grease from his fingertips against the rough bark beside him.
When he looked up, his gaze swept over the nearby branches. Seeing the small animal carcasses hanging upside down from them, reduced to bones, he couldn't help smiling.
He remembered that when he had first arrived in these woods, most of the branches had been hung with dried corpses: wild rabbits, sparrows, and several carcasses of unidentified small beasts. They were densely packed, lending the place an eerie stillness.
Now, those dried corpses had long since been devoured, leaving only bare bones.
Gu Su didn't need to think hard to guess that the Harpy had prepared them as food for the Oil Abomination.
Like herders storing fodder for their livestock, the symbiotic relationship between the Harpy and the Oil Abomination could be glimpsed in those dried corpses.
Gu Su lightly rubbed his chin as he silently considered his escape route.
If the three methods he had prepared—fire, industrial salt, and corrosive fungal strands—were all useless against the bizarre Oil Abomination, he would have to find another way.
The bones hanging before him might be the best place to start.
With that, Gu Su gave the order. "Move out."
The moment the command fell, the skeleton holding two torches sprang into action.
Its body was rigid, but it moved swiftly, clutching the torches tightly in its blackened hands as it hurried forward.
The distance from the edge of the woods to the gas station was only a little over fifty meters. The road was littered with rubble and weeds, as well as discarded car parts.
The skeleton strode over the rubble, its bones clacking sharply as it rushed ahead. Yet everything went smoothly, and nothing out of the ordinary happened.
The gas station was utterly quiet, as though it hadn't heard a thing.
But the moment the skeleton approached the gas station's front entrance, everything changed!
A mass of thick, pitch-black liquid suddenly surged out of the seemingly empty gas station. As if alive, it gathered into a black wave, reeking of oil and decay, then shot up from the ground and lunged at the skeleton carrying the torches!
The torch-bearing skeleton didn't hesitate or show the slightest fear.
It had no consciousness of its own; only Gu Su's command was carved into the depths of its bones.
As the Oil Abomination surged upward, it fiercely hurled one of its burning torches at the black, viscous wave.
The torch, its orange flame blazing, cut through the air and struck the Oil Abomination squarely.
Yet the wildfire Gu Su had expected never came. The torch hit the Oil Abomination's sticky body with a heavy thud.
The oil immediately engulfed the flame and snuffed it out, leaving not even a spark behind. It was as if someone had simply thrown a piece of ordinary wood. The Oil Abomination suffered no real damage.
Instead, the enraged Oil Abomination swelled violently. Its black body surged like a raging tide, swallowing the skeleton still holding its other torch whole.
The crisp crack of breaking bones was drowned out by the Oil Abomination's bubbling flow. In just a few seconds, the skeleton had been completely corroded and dissolved by the thick oil, leaving not a single intact bone fragment behind.
Watching from the woods, Gu Su furrowed his brow and let out a soft sigh. There was no surprise in his voice, only the calm of someone who had expected this. "Fire doesn't work, inside or out."
He had long suspected that an uncanny creature made of oil would guard against fire, its greatest weakness.
He didn't know what kind of trick this was, but fire probably wouldn't be of any use for now.
Without pausing, Gu Su turned his gaze to another skeleton in the squad, pointed at it, and ordered in a cold, decisive voice, "You, go."
The skeleton immediately obeyed. In its bony hands it carried two bulging fur sacks, tightly tied with hemp rope. They were heavy, and rubbed softly against each other as it walked.
A large bundle of industrial salt wrapped in plastic was also strapped to its torso. Hemp rope bound the plastic tightly, so it wouldn't come loose while running.
Its task was exactly the same as that of the skeleton carrying the torches.
It would use its own bones and life to test whether salt could do anything against the bizarre Oil Abomination.
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