Chương 201: Chapter 168: Impossible to Ignore

~~~ Their footsteps echo loudly throughout the corridors. A vicious battle rages outside, but the sounds cannot reach them down here. The temple is too strong and sturdy to ever tremble, and the walls too thick to allow any noise to pass through. The battle outside could be happening in some distant kingdom, and it wouldn't make a difference to them. For Feng Hao, that is doubly true. The call gets stronger the deeper they go, effortlessly overpowering everything else in his perception.

It calls him not with words, but it calls him all the same. The attraction is so potent it almost feels like his body is being physically pulled into the temple. Were it not for the heavy guilt he feels at having to hide while others fight, Feng Hao would have already forgotten all about the disciples outside and their battle against the unnatural creatures.

"Are you sure this is the way?" Feng Hao looks at Sister Mei, though it is a struggle to do so. It is almost like his body does not want to look away from the path.

"It is," he says with utter certainty.

"You must be feeling it as well, Sister Mei. You have to." The older girl frowns, her lips forming a thin line as she looks away.

"I am sure I have no idea what the Young Master is talking about." Her reply is maddening. Feng Hao is confident it was Sister Mei who used the Eternal Flame to save him and Elder Brother from the Core Disciples. That means she must have Feng blood somewhere in her family. More importantly, it means she is someone he can talk to about the Eternal Flame and what is happening right now! If only she weren't so intent on denying it! On some level, Feng Hao understands the need for her to pretend.

It is not a good time to be someone of Feng blood in the Eternal Flame Clan, much less someone who can call on the Eternal Flame with such strength. Feng Hao is not so thoughtless as to ignore that. On a more profound, far more urgent level, Feng Hao needs someone to talk to about this! His instructors taught him of the Eternal Flame, but that was all theory and philosophy that paled when compared to the reality of feeling the Flame in his body.

His brother had been in a position to guide him through this, but Feng Zhi had firmly denied him that knowledge. Feng Hao feels the Eternal Flame more keenly than ever before. It tells him to listen to the call, to follow it all the way to its source. It is like a language he had always known but was only now hearing for the first time. He wants, needs, to talk to someone having the same experience! Yet the one person available to him denies him.

"Sister Mei," he says, his voice gaining a pleading tone that almost always works on his mother.

"Please!" For a moment, she falters. However, it is only for a moment.

"For the sake of the argument," she begins, "if I were to feel what the Young Master is feeling, I wouldn't be feeling it nearly as strongly. Certainly not enough to make me venture into the unknown."

"Oh," Feng Hao says. He looks down in disappointment. However, the feeling does not last long. Not with the call still in his ears.

"But we are in the right direction! I swear! This… I can't explain it, but it feels important!"

"I certainly hope that is the case," says Sister Fan, the third and last member of their group. She walks at a moderate pace beside them.

"As someone who can not feel anything at all, this enterprise seems dubious at best."

"You did not have to follow us," Sister Mei says in the same tone his mother often uses to address servants.

"I most certainly do. You do not know your way around the temple, nor can you read its words. Most of the traps have been disabled due to…" Sister Fan glances at him.

"... previous incidents. But that's only true for the upper floors. The deeper we go, the more dangerous this could become. We do not know what could be down here." Resolve glows in her eyes.

"Though protecting the wounded was a job given to me by Brother Qing, this takes priority." Sister Mei elegantly raises an eyebrow, clearly far less impressed by her resolve than Feng Hao is.

"And does this not have anything to do with you clearly wanting to explore the temple?" Fan Bingbing frowns.

"I will not deny this temple represents a great mystery to me, but having to abandon my duties was a bitter choice."

"Please," Lu Mei shakes her head.

"We both know you are protecting exactly who you are meant to protect right now."

"What?" Feng Hao blinks.

"But what about the wounded?" Fan Bingbing's gaze sharpens.

"Sister Lu! Do not-""They were never expected to survive," Sister Mei tells Feng Hao bluntly.

"Not truly. Do not misunderstand. My Jin is too good to leave them in such a poor condition that they'd die. Should the siege hold, they will live to see another day. However, should the monsters breach the temple, they are in no condition to evacuate." She gestures at Fan Bingbing dismissively.

"This woman is only meant to help us escape should it come down to it. The others are not important enough." Fan Bingbing's reply is silence. For the first time, the call cannot overpower Feng Hao's guilt. ~~~ As Huang Shing dashes through the undead horde and leaves a trail of broken bones in his wake, he does not wish for more power, more speed, or more grace. He just wishes he knew how to disable his sense of smell.

Once upon a time, back when he was still the Young Master of the Huang Clan, his uncle brought him a big red fruit from his travels. Rather than eating it right away, Huang Shing decided to save it for a special occasion. Alas, it was not to be. A month later, he entered his room and found it full of the foulest stench imaginable. He looked all around until he found the culprit. The delicious-looking fruit his uncle brought him was now misshapen and blackened.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. That was how Huang Shing first became familiar with the smell of rotten things. Years later, he realized people were not much different. It hadn't been apparent at first. Corpses smelled of blood and little else. The servants threw them out before he ever saw what became of them. However, as his journey to gain the power to defeat Feng Zhi continued, Huang Shing became more and more familiar with the aftermath of battles.

He has had to dig graves for corpses that would otherwise have been left to waste under the sun. Those had not been pleasant experiences. They cannot possibly compare to the smell right now. There is an entire field of corpses around him. Everywhere he turns, there is decaying flesh and crawling maggots. His aura blazes all around him, protecting his skin from direct contact as he tears his way through the creatures. No matter how many creatures he destroys, there are always more.

The ground under his feet moves, and an ugly worm-like thing emerges to grab his ankle. Huang Shing instinctively dodges and stomps the ugly critter with all his might. The force is enough to turn the animal into little more than paste. Annoying trash. Huang Shing will never claim to be particularly smart, but even he can recognize a pattern once he sees it repeated often enough. The creatures they are fighting can roughly be divided into two types. The first type are the normal animated corpses.

They have a wide variety of grotesque shapes, but they are still all animated corpses. The second type are the creatures made of pink wiggling flesh, the ones that attacked him while he was traveling with the Young Master and the ones that left that flesh bud inside him. They are sneaky, always moving underground and trying to catch them by surprise, which arguably makes them more dangerous. Regardless, the method for dealing with them is the same. Smash them until they can't move anymore.

It plays to his strengths, and yet… Huang Shing breathes heavily as his fists, blazing with Qi, tear another monster in half. To avoid direct contact, he must cloak himself entirely in a dense layer of Qi. That means every action he takes uses more Qi than it otherwise would have. Even though he is in the True Realm, Huang Shing can already feel the toll this takes on him. Already he has taken several sips of the elixir Brother Jin gave them. If he is already feeling tired, then the others….

"Brother Hong!" Huang Shing sees him out of the corner of his eye and immediately dashes for him. Bei Hong is on his knees, his golden body rapidly dulling and turning back to flesh. A large monster advances toward him. Huang Shing's body smashes right through it and destroys it.

"Brother Hong! Are you okay?" Huang Shing asks even as he continues clearing the area of monsters to give Bei Hong a moment to catch his breath.

"I had that handled," Bei Hong says as he stands up, gold covering his skin once more, but not quickly enough for Huang Shing to miss the blood seeping into his bandages." We had that handled," says Bei Duyi, who Huang Shing had not noticed in his haste. Bei Hong's cousin burns monster after monster by touching them with his molten body. His technique seems uniquely suited for dealing with these creatures.

"You waste your efforts here."

"What?" Huang Shing roars, even as he keeps fighting.

"I just save-""He's right!" Bei Hong says as he slams into some sort of giant wolf with six legs and half a head sticking out from his neck.

"It pains me to say this, but he's right."

"The blood loss has made you smarter. Who would have thought?"

"Shut up!" Bei Hong yells at Bei Duyi as he brings his fists down on a monster.

"And you!" Bei Hong turns around to point at Huang Shing.

"Do you think being in the True Realm means you must take care of me?! Don't get cocky!'

"I wasn't-""What my foolish cousin means to say," Bei Duyi cuts in, "is that your talents are wasted protecting one specific person. Like it or not, you have grown stronger than us-""Temporarily!" Bei Hong shouts.

"And as such, you must use that strength wisely. Keep moving. Rampage. Sow chaos among the enemy, useless though that may seem." Huang Shing opens his mouth to argue but stops halfway. They are right.

"Brother Bei… Brother Hong. Don't die."

"Who do you think you're talking to?" Huang Shing smiles.

"My mistake." He takes off. Huang Shing's Qi burns as he streaks through the battlefield, doing his best to dwindle the enemies' numbers down. Ten. Fifty. A hundred. Two hundred. He cannot keep count of how many monsters he kills, only that it is not enough. He has already run five laps around the battlefield, and still, there is more to be done. More. Always more. His heart roars in his ears, but he cannot stop.

"-other Huang! Brother Huang!" It takes him a while to hear the voice calling out to him. That was how lost he had become in the battle. The one who calls is one of the disciples who helped rescue them from the Core Disciples. Ten, he believes his name is.

"Fall back!" The disciple shouts, struggling to keep up with him. Were it not for the monsters slowing down Huang Shing as he kills them, it would be impossible for him to catch him.

"Brother Qing has given the order! The long-range attackers are ready! We all need to fall back!"

"Already?" He asks, not sure if too much or too little time has passed.

"If I fall back, how is everyone going to retreat safely?" His answer comes not from Ten but from the gigantic Qi snake that suddenly rampages into the battlefield. It is a construct made of pure Qi. Qing Jin's Qi. Huang Shing's astonishment grows as he sees Qing Jin riding the Qi construct, breaking the enemy lines (if the chaos around them could be called such) and giving the disciples the space they need to retreat.

"He's amazing, isn't he?" Ten asks. If Huang Shing looks awed, then Ten looks downright worshipful.

"Completely different from the rest of us." And Huang Shing has to agree to that. Though his cultivation has surpassed Qing Jin's, he does not feel at all superior to him. There is something about Qing Jin. Something ethereal yet impossible to ignore that somehow makes him more. It is as if he has grasped something the rest lack. Maybe under other circumstances, it'd make him jealous. Right now, it makes him feel they will win. ~~~ Liu Jin feels like he is dying. He shouldn't be feeling that way.

He has numbed his body to pain so much that he should hardly be feeling anything at all. Though useful, pain has neither a time nor place here. Liu Jin needs to keep moving. Only once he has cleared everyone's retreat back to the temple does he pause. For a moment. For a second. It is enough. It has to be. The long-range attackers fire at the horde. As that happens, Ni Cai calls him to examine their fighters.

They need to get them ready for when they inevitably have to jump into the fray once more, and Liu Jin is the only one who can detect the flesh buds. The others are still not ready for that. The earth rumbles. Liu Jin turns back to the battle as panicked yells rise from the disciples. Step. Step. Step. Gigantic corpse-like beasts numbering in the dozens. The creatures they have fought so far cannot compare to these ones. One after another, they walk over the wall and make the earth tremble.

It occurs to Liu Jin that the one controlling the monsters could have dispatched them at any moment. He hadn't. Because he'd been playing them. Dangling false hope in front of them just to dash it. Cries of dismay rise from the other disciples as they realize the same thing. Some even stop firing as they fall to their knees in despair.

"What are you doing?" Liu Jin roars as he marches toward them.

"Keep firing!"

"Senior Brother, but-""Keep firing. If you don't, you die. We all die." The disciple flinches, then blinks in surprise as Liu Jin passes right by him and keeps walking. Towards the monsters.

"We do not have the luxury of retreat! We do not have the luxury of surrender!" He dashes into the fray.

"Brother Qing!" He does not listen. He does not stop. Some may think he is being reckless, but he has considered this possibility from the beginning. It is the only way in which they might survive. As he nears the horde, one of the monsters leaps for his throat. Liu Jin holds out his arm. He makes contact. ~~~