Guns and Swords

Amid the scorching muzzle flashes, a cold gleam of steel suddenly burst forth!

Xia Lun flicked his wrist, driving his sharp short sword straight through the First Mate Walking Corpse's throat. The blade came out the other side trailing torn flesh. Before the Walking Corpse could react, Xia Lun bent his knees and surged upward, wrenching the blade hard to one side!

Crack!

With a bone-splitting sound that set teeth on edge, the blade swept a great crimson arc through the air!

Bang!

Half a head fell through a rain of blood. The headless body swayed, then collapsed again.

Beheaded in a single strike!

Xia Lun turned the blade slightly, shifting from a reverse grip to a forward one. Round drops of blood slid down the cold steel and pattered onto his boots.

He raised his head and fixed a chilling gaze on the horde in the distance. He no longer hid his desire to kill. His vicious intent surged out unchecked, mingling with the cold reek of blood!

He did not look back, but he sensed that his display had helped steady the pirates' morale, shaken as it was by their sudden encounter with supernatural monsters.

Bang, bang, bang! Dull blows against a wooden door sounded through the rolling fog, accompanied by the strained creak of buckling planks.

"What's that noise?!" the Priest called from behind him, panic edging into his voice.

Xia Lun did not turn. "The monster's breaking down the door."

The monster's actions followed a clear plan. It must have intended to use the Walking Corpses and its spy to finish them off. Now that plan had failed, it had no choice but to force its way through.

The monster was about to break out through the Forecastle companionway!

The pirates had anticipated this and spent the past few days reinforcing the companionway door with planks and nails. But that could only delay the monster, not keep it sealed in.

At an optimistic estimate, the reinforced door had five minutes left.

Xia Lun's chest tightened. A sense of urgency rose within him.

Once the monster broke through the Blockade and returned to the deck, the mass of Walking Corpses would help it turn the situation into a disaster!

They had to move now, reach the cargo hatch, and set the whale oil in the hold ablaze!

Xia Lun's thoughts raced as he strode forward.

The Walking Corpses' moans mingled with the pirates' ragged breathing. Gunshots thundered over the sound of lead tearing through flesh, while the dense fog made it all still more chaotic and terrifying!

The pirates had no idea how many enemies there were or what effect their attacks had. All they could see was a seemingly endless horde of dreadful Walking Corpses.

If Xia Lun had not dispatched one so cleanly, proving that the Undead could be killed, the pirates' morale would already have collapsed.

Even so, they were terrified. They were hopelessly outnumbered.

Because the crew worked in shifts, only seven men were with Xia Lun. A rough glance put their opponents at more than twenty!

"Where are you going?!" the Priest called, his voice trembling. "Don't be reckless! We need to hold formation. With muskets and polearms, we can deal with those Undead. We should wait for reinforcements!"

"We stick to the plan and light the whale oil." Xia Lun's voice and tone remained steady, as though the horrifying Walking Corpses meant nothing to him. "Follow me. We can't stand here waiting to die. Once that monster gets out, it's over."

"There are too many of them!" the Priest shouted as he fired. "Think, Xia Lun! We can barely protect ourselves!"

Xia Lun gave no answer. With a cold laugh, he quickened his pace.

Fear and cowardice were contagious, but so were courage and recklessness. All it took was one person determined enough to lead the way!

They had not known Xia Lun long, but most of the pirates respected him. When he charged ahead with such resolve, several of the more reckless men howled and followed.

The Priest gritted his teeth, tossed aside his musket, took up a long-handled harpoon, and followed with a savage look on his face.

He had nothing left to fear. From the day he had been framed and stripped of his clerical post, killed the Bishop with his own hands for revenge, and become a fugitive, he had had nothing left to lose.

"So what if we die?" The Priest licked his lips, casting off his doubts and fear as a violent urge to kill surged through him. "The Undying Sacred Flame is with us! Purify them!"

"Kill them!" shouted a skinny pirate with a pockmarked face, raising his hatchet.

With Xia Lun at their head, the pirates countercharged into the endless tide of corpses!

The fog rolled aside. As they closed in, the looming mass of Walking Corpses finally came into view.

The Walking Corpses were hunched and rotting, armed with knives, clubs, flintlocks, and all manner of other weapons.

Their exposed blue-gray skin looked like fish hide, and barnacles clung to their bodies like parasites. As the pirates approached, the barnacles turned toward them like eyes!

"Ugh!" The Walking Corpses seemed to spot the living. Their stiff, sluggish movements suddenly quickened, and the reanimated dead lunged like feeding hyenas!

Closer. Closer still. Xia Lun could almost smell the stench of rotting flesh...

Then he raised his flintlock and entered Heightened Focus.

Time slowed again. For an instant, Xia Lun felt as if he had sunk into the deep sea, every sound around him rapidly fading away.

Aim with intent, fire without thought—

Click. Bang!

A Walking Corpse holding a flintlock took a shot to the head. The impact sent its remaining body spinning backward into a cluster of its fellows, knocking them down.

That was only the beginning.

Xia Lun dropped the flintlock, drew a second from his belt, raised his wrist, and fired.

Click. Bang!

The lead ball spun out, bursting a squat Walking Corpse's head like a watermelon. It punched on through into the head of a second Walking Corpse behind it.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

To the Priest, Xia Lun changed guns so fast it looked like a magic trick. He caught only fleeting blurs of firearms, followed by one terrifying report after another!

Muzzle flashes flared in rapid succession. The packed Walking Corpses looked as though a spinning millstone had struck them, grinding them into heaps of red and white pulp.

Bang, bang, bang!

Yesterday, the Priest had wondered why Xia Lun carried so many flintlocks. Now he understood...

Xia Lun had unleashed a storm of bullets all by himself!

Hot metal slammed into cold corpses. Bullets shattered the Undead and sent splinters flying from the deck. The Walking Corpses' chilling moans vanished beneath the barrage!

The corpse tide that had surged toward them moments ago struck what seemed an invisible wall and fell like wheat before a scythe.

Bang!

A muzzle flash lit Xia Lun's impassive face. His dark eyes swept calmly over every corner of his field of fire, like the eyes of death itself.

Bang!

As the muzzle flashes flickered, the Priest gripped his Holy Emblem, stunned and uneasy. The sharp whistle of bullets, the dull sound of metal tearing flesh, the Undead's dying screams, and the clockwork precision of each click left his Worldview crumbling further...

He knew Xia Lun was a good shot, but this was so far beyond anything he expected that he wondered if he was dreaming.

Could a human really do this?

Bang! Click.

The terrifying storm of bullets stopped with the crisp sound of a gun being cast aside.

Xia Lun let out a long breath and left Heightened Focus.

Eleven bullets, fifteen Undead. Acceptable efficiency. After that barrage, he could finally count the Walking Corpses that remained.

He gave a slight nod.

Taking control of the pirate crew had done more than reduce the number of potential enemies and increase the number of available allies. More importantly, it let him make full use of the ship's resources.

The flintlocks he had forcibly collected were proof of that.

Loading a flintlock was a complicated process. With time running short, he had no intention of picking up the spent guns to reload them. He still had three flintlocks in reserve.

[Slaughter! You killed 16 Deep-Sea Walking Corpses and gained 160 Memory Points!]

Fifteen Walking Corpses, plus the First Mate Walking Corpse he had killed at the start, made sixteen in all.

Xia Lun waved the pirates forward, signaling them to charge the remaining corpses. Not one of them moved.

His marksmanship had left them all dumbstruck!

Xia Lun had no choice but to shout, "Charge!"

The pirates snapped out of it. At his command, they howled like zealous crusaders and rushed the remaining Undead!

Their morale soared!

The melee turned savage the moment it began.

Amid frenzied shouts, hard blades tore mercilessly through the Walking Corpses' soft flesh. But the corpses could withstand horrifying damage. Even with broken bones and guts spilling out, they kept attacking the pirates.

Both sides fought with such brutality that even Xia Lun's eyelid twitched.

One pirate had his nose bitten off by a Walking Corpse. He went berserk and bit through its throat. Another had a lung pierced by a short spear and threw himself into the mass of Walking Corpses anyway, breaking up their formation...

Such acts drove the pirates into a greater frenzy, and they began killing faster!

In some ways, the pirates were more terrifying than the Walking Corpses. These outlaws did not care if they had to suffer a wound—or even die—to kill an enemy.

Xia Lun wiped away a nosebleed, twirled the short sword in his right hand, stepped over the piled bodies, and joined the melee.

In the chaos, a Walking Corpse lunged for his throat with its teeth. Without looking, he relied on instincts honed by countless hours of training and drove his sword backward into its temple, giving the blade a slight twist.

The rotten flesh parted like butter around the blade.

Xia Lun kept moving. He slashed diagonally from the Walking Corpse's temple through its jaw and swept past it through a spray of blood. A flick of his wrist buried the sword in another Walking Corpse's shoulder blade.

Crack!

Flesh and bone split. As the blade gave a cool, clear hum, a bloody line ran from the Walking Corpse's right shoulder straight down to its waist. Blood welled out like a crimson ribbon.

His heart raced and his blood surged. The stench of rotten blood, the grotesque sights before him, and the faint resistance that kept catching at his blade drew Xia Lun into deeper focus. Time seemed to slow. He felt as though he had entered a lesser version of Heightened Focus.

Unlike the sword fights in his dreams, this fresh killing was real, and the dreadful pressure of dancing on a knife's edge sent his adrenaline soaring. All his fatigue vanished, replaced by strength and exhilaration.

Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!

Xia Lun drew a sharp breath, planted his foot, and twisted at the waist. His sword swept out in a circle, its humming edge unstoppable as it cut through the throats of three Walking Corpses. Blood and flesh flew, and the sound of splintering bone filled the air!

Hummm...

A blade's cool hum rushed toward him. Xia Lun bent his knees and brought up his sword on instinct. His wrist jolted. Without even looking, he stepped forward and pulled his blade sideways to deflect the blow. The Walking Corpse's head flew into the air atop a spout of blood!

"Long live Xia Lun!" a pirate shouted.

Another pirate hacked down a Walking Corpse, then threw back his head and howled like a werewolf. "The heads for Xia Lun, the blood for us!"

"Kill them!" the pirates roared together.

The Walking Corpses kept coming, but they could not stop the pirates' advance. Led by Xia Lun, the frenzied crew surged ahead like a flood, smashing straight through the corpses' resistance.

As the killing continued, Xia Lun and the pirates soon reached the middle of the ship. The cargo hatch was close!

The monster was still hammering at the door, but the reinforced main companionway door remained firm.

The Walking Corpses all seemed to be under the monster's control. As the pirates approached the cargo hatch, a group that had been helping the monster open the door turned and charged back toward them.

Xia Lun narrowed his eyes.

There were five of them. Unlike the others, these Walking Corpses were the "offerings" Xia Lun had thrown overboard. Perhaps because they were fresher, their movements were quicker and more fluid.

"More of them coming to die!" a pirate laughed.

Then a familiar sound came from the distance, one that made Xia Lun's scalp prickle: "Click."

A chill ran through him. Every one of those Walking Corpses had a flintlock!

"Get down!" he shouted at once, throwing himself flat.

The instant he hit the deck, flintlocks thundered. Then came the dull thuds of bullets punching through flesh.

The smell of gunpowder and blood rushed into Xia Lun's nose. He glanced aside and saw pirates who had charged this far with him drop all at once!

Anger flared in Xia Lun, and his urge to kill burned hotter. He was about to rise and return fire when another tight volley erupted!

Those Walking Corpses carried a heap of flintlocks too. Each time they fired, they switched to another gun!

Under the relentless gunfire, the pirates had to lie flat, struggling to dodge the incoming bullets behind planks and bodies. They had been pinned down!

Boom! The Forecastle door shuddered. With another heavy impact, one of the thick timbers reinforcing it snapped in two.

A scrawny pirate seemed to have had enough of being pinned down. He tried to move between volleys, but the moment he raised his head, a lead ball slammed into it!

Splat!

Blood pattered onto the deck. The headless body fell, its legs still twitching.

Xia Lun's eyelid twitched. One of those Walking Corpses was a Marksman!

"What do we do?" the Priest shouted, lying on his side.

"Wait," Xia Lun shouted back. "They only have so many guns. Let them finish this round!"

"That monster's about to break through!" the Priest warned. "We're out of time. Listen, I have an idea..."

Before he could finish, another volley rang out—this time from the side of the ship.

Xia Lun looked up. The Walking Corpses that had pinned them down had all been shot to the deck.

"It's the captain!" a pirate cried excitedly. "Our reinforcements are here!"