The Natives of This World Are So Fierce - Chapter 16: Dread Marsh
Only after Doudou finally started breathing again under Qin Xiaoxia's shaking did the two of them manage to catch their breath.
Doudou was still tense from his fear of water, but Qin Xiaoxia was already beginning to make sense of things.
Nothing had gone wrong with the wish. It was probably taking them straight to the source of the river's problems.
But guessing was one thing, and reality was another.
Given their current state, Qin Xiaoxia suspected they might not actually be in the river, but he hardly dared take that as fact.
What if there really was a monster? What if they actually ran into it?
Wouldn't the two of them, one big and one small, sitting on the sofa be serving themselves up as a meal?
Unfortunately, no amount of mental activity could change their situation.
The river, which should have been filthy, was exceptionally clear now. They could see dozens of meters into the distance.
He had no idea whether that was the wish's doing or the result of his changed eyesight.
That made the patch of murky blackness ahead particularly conspicuous.
"Doudou, Doudou! Quick, look! What's that?"
But Qin Xiaoxia and Doudou soon realized, to their horror, that the sofa showed no intention of stopping. It kept charging straight ahead.
"Stop, stop, stop, stop!"
The sofa went from full speed to a dead stop in an instant, halting a few meters in front of the murky black patch.
Qin Xiaoxia only had time to curse, "Damn it."
Then inertia turned the pressure against his back into a violent, weightless lurch forward.
Just as Qin Xiaoxia and Doudou thought they were about to plunge into that filth, they somehow remained within the confines of the sofa.
The sensation of inertia was entirely real, yet their bottoms stayed "glued" to the sofa.
Several seconds later, the two of them finally came to a complete stop, just like the sofa.
Qin Xiaoxia slumped like a dead dog. Looking at Doudou, who was scarcely better off, he managed a feeble joke.
"Th-that was a thrill."
Doudou tugged on Qin Xiaoxia's clothes, then pointed ahead.
The pitch-black shadows resembled clumps of rotting matter formed from all kinds of filth.
They writhed together at a spot on the riverbed.
Murky currents seeped from them, constantly contaminating the surrounding river water and making it even filthier.
Qin Xiaoxia suddenly spotted corpses.
There were cats and dogs-and even people!
The corpses were already thoroughly decomposed, occasionally tumbling out of the black murk for a fleeting moment.
"Urgh."
Seeing the half-rotted face of a human corpse and the thick, foul sludge surrounding it, even someone with Qin Xiaoxia's nerve couldn't help dry-heaving.
It was probably one of the environmental bureau employees who had gone missing a couple of days earlier.
These things were clearly the source of the changes in the Crooked Loach River. They seemed alive, but he couldn't be sure.
"B-big cousin... this thing is a Dread Marsh..."
Doudou's voice alone conveyed a scalp-prickling dread.
Just as Doudou finished speaking, while Qin Xiaoxia's mind was full of questions, something happened.
A pulling force dozens of times stronger than before came from behind them.
In less than half a second, Qin Xiaoxia and Doudou felt themselves being flung away.
About a dozen seconds passed.
Qin Xiaoxia opened his eyes, his limbs limp, and found himself and Doudou sitting on the sofa in the living room.
Doudou still had his eyes shut.
The sofa felt soaking wet, but Qin Xiaoxia quickly realized it wasn't water. It was his own sweat.
"Doudou, wake up."
Qin Xiaoxia shook him a few times. Doudou's eyes snapped open, and he looked around for a moment.
"Phew, thank goodness, thank goodness..."
Qin Xiaoxia: "..."
"Enough with the 'thank goodness.' What exactly was that 'Dread Marsh' you mentioned? Is it a monster?"
"Sort of, I-I guess."
Looking worried, Doudou explained what he knew about Dread Marshes.
A Dread Marsh couldn't be classified as a living thing in the conventional sense.
It was more like a natural phenomenon.
It usually formed deep within a treacherous swamp, where the lingering resentment of countless creatures that had died there over the years gathered into a mass of "filthy" magical power.
A Dread Marsh had none of the basic attributes of living creatures, such as life, death, or reproduction, yet it was extraordinarily jealous of living things.
Any swamp where a Dread Marsh appeared was an extremely dangerous place, and finding it there was difficult enough, let alone destroying it.
Dread Marshes weren't the only things of their kind. There were also special places such as Corpse-Gathering Grounds and Cities of Calamity, formed from accumulated resentment and rage. All of them were extremely dangerous.
Doudou had only heard of them before. This was his first time seeing one in person.
Qin Xiaoxia was utterly bewildered by the explanation.
"What are we supposed to do? There's no way the two of us can deal with it, right?"
But the normally timid Doudou suddenly thought of something.
"But the hardest part about dealing with a Dread Marsh is finding its source. Usually, it hides in a huge swamp, or it becomes one with the entire swamp. But the Crooked Loach River..."
Qin Xiaoxia caught on and immediately finished the thought.
"Obviously isn't a swamp!"
Not only was it not a swamp, the Crooked Loach River was a flowing river, with running water.
Although the influence of the Dread Marsh was slowly making it worse, it was still a long way from becoming a swamp.
Besides, this was only a small river, about thirty meters across at its widest point. Compared with the vast swamps Doudou said produced Dread Marshes, it was an extremely confined space.
"And although that clump looks pretty big, it's actually tiny compared with the ones in the stories. It must be a newly formed Dread Marsh."
Doudou added that as well.
The two of them got quite excited for a while, only to deflate again soon afterward.
"What the hell are we getting excited about? Even if it's newly formed and not that strong, the two of us still can't handle it!"
He had never wanted to be some hero anyway, but he couldn't help feeling powerless when he knew its weakness yet could do nothing about it.
The television in the living room was still on, and the news broadcast continued.
"Next, more news on the river cleanup in Qing Town. We have just received word that the Kehua District environmental authorities and the Ninghua Kuncheng Cleaning Company have decided to launch a comprehensive project to drain and dredge Qing Town's waterways section by section. Work to dam off sections of the river has reportedly already begun..."
Qin Xiaoxia's eyes lit up at the news.
A draining and dredging project? If they could trap the Dread Marsh in one section and pump the water out, could they do something about it?
His legs still felt a little weak, but Qin Xiaoxia was eager to go and see what was happening.
By the time he brought Doudou to a spot some distance from the riverbank, they could already see workboats installing temporary dams.
Tomorrow, this stretch of river would be completely cut off at both ends, and pumps would drain all the polluted water from the middle.
Qin Xiaoxia and Doudou only dared watch from a distance, not approach the bank. Qin Xiaoxia, for his part, was still a little worried about the workers.
But he resisted the urge to go over and warn them.
First, draining the river was their current hope of dealing with the Dread Marsh. Second, the workers wouldn't stop just because he said something. If he went over and told them there was a monster in the water, they would definitely think he belonged in a hospital.
"Huh?"
As he endured the stench, Qin Xiaoxia suddenly sensed something that startled him.
He seemed able to sense the Dread Marsh's location.
Could it be because of that Wish Spell?
But Doudou showed no sign of sensing the same thing. He was still staring fearfully at the river.
Perhaps because of the rumbling machinery on the workboats upstream and downstream, the Dread Marsh remained in the middle of the section being dammed off, without moving toward either end.
By the way, the pacing is a little slow at the beginning, but the cheat ability definitely isn't that half-baked Wish.