The Dead's Remains

What role the Witch played in all this, Lu Li had no way of knowing. What he could be sure of was that it wasn't simple. That mass of flesh could rapidly boost one's strength, but aside from the known physical mutations, personality changes, and side effect of being afraid of light, what other hidden tricks the Witch had put in place was even harder to tell. So Lu Li would never give in to his body's instincts and eat that stuff. What mattered now was how to bring the mass of flesh back.

The mass was nearly half the size of the room and firmly attached to the wall. With Lu Li's current abilities, even if he sent out all his shadows, he wouldn't be able to carry much of it away. Yet the Witch had told him to bring it back.

Returning to that passage, he found it even more cramped than before. The thing grew very quickly, provided it had enough food. The shadows behind Lu Li stirred and emerged from the ground, piercing into the mass of flesh as they searched through it.

"According to the diary, this thing wasn't very big to begin with. Otherwise, a ball of flesh half the size of a room would've been noticed long ago." Lu Li's shadow tentacles continued probing and rummaging through the fleshy mass. Dark red blood seeped from the wounds, making the place look like hell.

"Found it..." Lu Li stepped closer. The tentacles tore open the mass of flesh on the floor, revealing an upside-down "heart" that writhed incessantly. Countless fine black threads connected it to the surrounding flesh. The shadows snapped those threads, and the "heart" unfurled like a flower, or a lingzhi mushroom. It wasn't a "heart" at all, but a flower bud curled up tight.

Without the lingzhi to sustain it, the surrounding flesh began to wither before Lu Li's eyes, releasing gas as it did. He caught a faint whiff of the odor, and hunger welled up inside him. It felt as though every cell in his body was leaping, pleading with him to eat the flesh that was drying up.

Lu Li immediately stopped breathing and sealed off his pores. The shadow tentacles pulled the lingzhi from the pit in the ground and secured it. Lu Li hurried away. As the lingzhi moved farther away, the fleshy growth withered even faster. Dark red blood flowed out and gathered together, condensing and changing shape until it slowly took on a human form. Kneeling amid the withered remains, the creature made of blood let out a resentful roar.

Death wasn't the end, and a corpse wasn't just a pile of rotting flesh. All sorts of things could dwell within one. If a corpse wasn't handled properly, strange events could easily occur. Even showing disrespect to the dead could bring bad luck to ordinary people. It wouldn't cause any serious harm, but at the very least, they would suffer misfortune. And certain actions could even cause a corpse to mutate.

For example, folk tales claimed that if a cat jumped over a corpse after someone died, the corpse might rise again. That was because something dwelling inside the corpse reacted with the cat. The Ghouls had fed corpses to the lingzhi, producing large amounts of fleshy growth. Most of the corpses became nutrients that nourished it, but some of the things dwelling within them couldn't be broken down or digested. Call them dregs or resentment; either way, they were emotions left behind by the dead.

As long as the fleshy growth remained active, those things could only wait patiently to fade away. But once the growth lost its vitality and the lingzhi was taken away, the dead's lingering bitterness and the resentment of being treated as food gathered together. Then, by attaching themselves to something, they formed a strange monster.

"Destroy it, destroy it, destroy it..." The monster kept muttering the same words in a strange cadence. It took a step forward, then collapsed into a pool of blood before gathering itself together again. This time, it could no longer manage a human shape. It was just a shapeless, dark red, soft-bodied mass that writhed as it moved forward.

Lu Li stopped in the passage leading out. The pure malice behind him was unmistakable. With his current spiritual fortitude, the legendary sixth sense had grown increasingly sharp. He could clearly feel that something behind him was approaching with hostile intent.

After a brief pause, Lu Li activated his skill and summoned a Shadow Assassin. "Stay here and intercept it. Don't let anything through..."

The Shadow Assassin knelt on one knee, bowed its head, and accepted the order. Then it turned and vanished into the darkness, waiting quietly to fulfill its master's command. In essence, the Shadow Assassin was made from Lu Li's own shadow. Thanks to the modules in the skill, it had escaped many of the limitations that bound his shadow. For instance, Lu Li's shadow could currently extend only a little over ten meters from his body, but the Shadow Assassin was no longer limited by distance once the skill had shaped it. However, if Lu Li went too far away, his orders wouldn't reach it in time, and it would only carry out its last command mechanically.

Leaving the Shadow Assassin behind to block the passage, Lu Li hurried toward the exit. According to the information he'd gathered earlier, the Ghouls feared light. Perhaps the source of these Ghouls shared the same weakness. To be safe, Lu Li wrapped the lingzhi in shadow.

When he emerged from the cave, the increased brightness sharply reduced the distance his shadow could extend. Even with the tree leaves blocking some of the light, only a basketball-sized mass of shadow remained, tightly wrapped around the lingzhi as it followed Lu Li.

At the same time, Lu Li sensed, vaguely, that the Shadow Assassin had begun fighting something. A few minutes later, he felt the portion of his shadow that had formed the Shadow Assassin return to him, which meant the Shadow Assassin was dead.

"That was pretty good. The Assassin class isn't meant for direct combat, after all. If I can solve the problem of the limited number of shadows in the future, I'll need to expand my roster and develop classes for different situations." Lu Li began planning the skill's future upgrades. He already had an Assassin class, though it still needed constant refinement. Later, he would need a frontline tank for breaking through defenses, a ranged attacker, a close-combat fighter, a flying unit... and more.

Lu Li had filled all three of his skill slots. One was the Tranquility Meditation Method, which enhanced his mental strength. Another was the troop-summoning skill that called forth Shadow Assassins. The last could only be called half a skill. Lu Li had simply combined the two remaining modules to create this final half-skill: Touch of Fear...

He would need to improve this skill after the game dungeon, Lu Li thought. His pace didn't slow as he followed the route he'd taken in and hurried back. Meanwhile, in the Ghoul cave, the monster was drawing the Ghouls' dark green blood from their corpses. It was becoming even more chaotic and terrifying...