The City God’s Corruption

Pfft!

With a casual pinch, Bai Cangshu crushed the crimson serpent head. A slightly pungent stench leaked out, and the old man’s rotten body collapsed completely with a squelch.

You killed Demon Demon and obtained Dimensional Points*1500

World Exploration Progress slightly increased. Current: 0% (For every 1% increase in exploration progress, you will receive A-rank Anomaly Point*1)

From the other party’s words, he roughly learned about this place. It was called Youzhou and belonged to a feudal dynasty known as Great Gan.

This place was a small city under Jinhua Prefecture. Because it was close to the Temple of Lanruo, it was called Lanruo City.

Hearing that name, Bai Cangshu came up with many conjectures.

Boom!

The sound of powerful force erupting exploded from the west side of the city. Majestic force, accompanied by the unique aura of a Cosmo, burst through the night.

Bai Cangshu’s ears twitched as Skylark’s furious roar—that "hypocrite"—reached him.

"I’ll hold these demons back! Run!"

Boom!

Another punch tore through the air. Bai Cangshu saw Blazing White vapor rise like a roaring dragon through the night, accompanied by a familiar foul stench as a demon’s body exploded.

But before long, the formerly quiet city began stirring in scattered pockets. Countless footsteps started converging toward the western part of the city.

With a tap of his toes, Bai Cangshu was already atop the wall of a nearby alley. Rather than flying with the Sky Dancing Technique, he relied on his current realm, beyond that of an ordinary Grand Martial Arts Master, to control his body with perfect ease.

Under the moonlight, Bai Cangshu walked along the wall without making the slightest sound or revealing even a trace of his aura.

Several figures ran out of the alley beneath him. They merely sniffed the corpses on the ground, looked around without finding their target, then continued westward.

Following the countless faint noises with his gaze, Bai Cangshu saw a huge phantom emerge in the west of the city.

Several Fate Stars shone brilliantly within that phantom. Beneath its shroud, every punch Skylark threw carried the force of heaven and earth collapsing.

With just one punch, a demon that had transformed into a twisted serpent shape was blown apart. Its flesh and blood, along with the air itself, crashed like a wall through the earthen city wall over four or five meters high in the west, smashing into the woods beyond the city.

"The city walls have fallen!"

A shrill voice slipped into Bai Cangshu’s ears with the night wind. It carried a frequency inherently unpleasant to the human mind; ordinary people would probably feel unsettled and terrified just from hearing it.

Soon, strange whimpering roars began sounding outside the city.

Tok, tok, tok…

Bai Cangshu heard the familiar sound of a night watchman’s clapper. Rings of sound waves spread with Demonic Power. Skylark only froze for an instant before backhanding the watchman-like demon to death.

But more magical artifacts began to be used.

Most were ordinary human tools—mirrors, gongs, drums, flutes, and xiaos. These magical artifacts seemed to amplify the operation of Demonic Power and magical power through sound and light.

Skylark’s movements began to slow. Without realizing it himself, his face had already turned pale, and sweat poured from his body.

Monsters and demons continued flooding in from throughout the city. From the corner of his eye, Skylark saw that behind the door he had inadvertently pushed open, the family of four was still huddled together in the courtyard, clutching their heads. They showed no intention of fleeing.

Panic rose in his heart.

"Run! While I can still hold them back!"

Skylark realized that some special "rule," or perhaps "ordinance," existed in this city. As long as people obediently hid inside their homes, the demons would not attack them.

An utterly ordinary door could keep demons out…

Such a thing was bizarre to ordinary people, but much easier for Reincarnators to understand. Skylark had experienced something similar in the world of Nightmare Town.

Although the monsters in that world had ultimately proven not to be bound by rules at all and had merely been "playing," such rules seemed to genuinely exist here.

To test the rules, Skylark had deliberately pushed open a door, only to find the family inside terrified beyond measure. Then the demons arrived one after another, leaving him no choice but to fight.

Pfft!

Amid an almost inaudible cutting sound, Bai Cangshu turned his head and saw Life of Silence’s silver-gray hair gleaming strangely beneath the moonlight in an alley on the other side.

The alley behind her was already carpeted with demon corpses.

She noticed Bai Cangshu as well. Her figure flickered, and she seemed to appear beside him out of thin air.

Bai Cangshu’s eyes trembled. Even with his dynamic vision, he could not see her movement clearly. So… it was an ability like Teleportation.

He roughly understood this Supreme Expert’s fighting style. Close combat-focused, possessing a powerful Title Ability that ignored more than 40% of immunity, killing intent intense enough to terrify people, and a Teleportation ability that let her instantly close in on a Martial Artist like him…

"Tsk, truly terrifying, Miss Qiqi~"

He sighed. The threat emitted by this type of Supreme Expert did not lie in the grand spectacle of the Great Sun of Finality, which could alter the heavens at a whim.

Rather, once Life of Silence had set her sights on you, the fear that you could die at any moment would coil around you like a snake, squeezing so tightly you could not breathe.

Qiqi nodded. Whether she was accepting Mercenary Tao’s "compliment" or simply felt nothing toward Mercenary Tao’s teasing personality, she only said:

"His realm isn’t high enough. They’ll notice him."

Bai Cangshu instantly understood another reason why this lady had sought him out. This world likely possessed some highly unique means of sensing aura and energy.

That was why a Grand Martial Arts Master like him was best suited for infiltration and assassination.

As for Skylark, whom he had temporarily invited over, while his actual combat power could probably approach the Fierce-tier when fully unleashed—and if he already possessed part of his Cloth, he could indeed step into that level—Skylark was not skilled enough at concealing his aura.

And besides… that fellow’s abnormal "kindness" probably made it impossible for him to accept a world like this…

Bai Cangshu had no intention of helping. Standing on the wall, he quietly watched as Skylark was gradually forced into a disadvantage.

The magical artifacts of this world truly left an impression on Bai Cangshu. Their frequency and effectiveness were astonishing, almost absurd.

It was equivalent to saying that among these demons, whose overall strength ranged from Ordinary to Strong, nearly every one or two carried a special item capable of producing a "mechanics-type ability."

Even though Skylark was stronger than them, when surrounded and subjected to numerous magical artifacts at once, constantly forced through immunity checks, he could not completely withstand them.

Hiss~

A foul stench rose with the sound of countless trees collapsing. A gigantic black serpent raised its head from the woods outside the city.

The snake stood over fifty meters tall, its eyes crimson and its entire body emanating dense Demonic Qi.

"Mortal, do you intend to tear apart the City God’s pact?!"

You triggered the mission City God

Mission Description: You have discovered the mysteries of Lanruo City in this world. Everything seems connected to the City God and demons. Find the City God and end the tragedy of Lanruo Ghost City.

Mission Reward: B-rank Anomaly Point*1, Dimensional Points*8000

Looking at the prompt that seemed almost eager to leap out before his eyes, Bai Cangshu could even vaguely sense the intent of the Infinite Dimensional Space.

This world’s Exploration Progress was unimaginably low. It could be said that Reincarnators had barely set foot in this world at all.

Therefore, the mission rewards were shockingly generous.

It seemed that the Infinite Dimensional Space could not wait for Bai Cangshu and the others to become involved in the various events of this world.

This should be related to a struggle of interests between Observers.

Moreover, this mission had no penalty, so Bai Cangshu directly chose to accept it.

Below, the family protected by Skylark in the courtyard heard that familiar, terrifying voice. Their faces went deathly pale. The Shōnen in rough hemp clothing had already collapsed beneath his parents and older sister.

The middle-aged woman was also weeping, but despite her trembling body, she still struggled to rise.

The man trembled as he shouted loudly.

"My lord, no, we did not break the agreement!"

As he spoke, he forcibly dragged his shaking body toward the courtyard entrance.

He looked back at his children. The woman understood what he meant and rose with a bitter smile to follow him.

"My wife and I broke the rules. We deserve to die, we deserve to die!"

As they spoke, the two supported each other and prepared to leave the courtyard. Skylark turned back to stop them, but the man had already stepped outside.

Pfft, pfft!

The moment he stepped out of the house, chunks of flesh began falling from that foot, while maggots crawled out from his leg.

The man endured his terror and could only turn back to shout.

"Yingzi, take care of your brother! Don’t open the door for strangers at night!"

Then he walked out completely. In the next moment, his body hunched over as dense Demonic Qi began emerging from within him.

Seeing her husband change like this, the woman wept bitterly, yet she still walked outside. Skylark’s expression twisted as rings of magical artifact light and Demonic Power around his body were covered by his burning Cosmo.

"Ah~"

Skylark explosively burned his strength. He understood that the two people’s sacrifice had been caused by him, but he also knew that he was not the root of this tragedy.

Some evil bastards had used even more disgusting power to create these rules, then forced him and these blameless ordinary people into a moral choice.

But…

They were not in the wrong, and neither was I. You are!

Skylark’s eyes widened in fury. The anger and righteousness in his heart burned as fiercely as real flames, while a gentle Cosmo that seemed to come from distant time and space flowed through him.

A silver radiance lit up from his hand as his Cloth began to form around him. This made Bai Cangshu narrow his eyes. The next moment, he clapped his hands.

Illusory ripples emerged behind Skylark one circle after another. Though unstable, they were undoubtedly signs of Heart Light Pulse.

Ha~

The smile on Bai Cangshu’s lips spread fully as he looked down from above at the enraged Skylark, filled with the delight of seeing the fruit of his own choice begin to grow.

On the other side, Qiqi tilted her head and watched Mercenary Tao at this moment. She felt that only at this moment was Mercenary Tao truly real.

That joy, so intense it had curdled… how interesting.

"The City God is underground."

Bai Cangshu nodded and reluctantly withdrew his gaze. This was only Skylark’s first unconscious contact with Heart Light Pulse, much like when Bai Cangshu had touched upon it while imitating Li Qingzi’s heart in Korea.

It was extremely unstable, and its effect was not powerful either.

He looked beneath the ground. The instant that man had stepped out of the house, dense Demonic Qi and another form of negatively aligned energy had emerged from deep underground.

Before that, those things had seemed never to exist at all.

Yet in that instant, he and Qiqi had sensed the city’s peculiarity.

The entire city seemed to sit atop a massive energy formation. Each house and wall formed symbolic paths within the formation, separating the people in the city from monsters and demons.

And once someone left the city, the nature of humans and monsters would instantly change.

Bai Cangshu further guessed that the city would likely undergo other changes during the day.

This kind of ability was beyond what Plot Characters in ordinary mission worlds could achieve. All he could say was that a world with so many East Xia myths and supernatural tale settings truly possessed a high-level power system.

Based on the term Ghost City in the mission prompt, as well as names such as Lanruo City and the Temple of Lanruo, he had already guessed that this place was likely somewhat connected to parts of Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, among East Xia’s mythological and supernatural fiction.

He simply did not know to what extent they were connected, or whether there was any link to the underworld.

Bai Cangshu landed lightly. Did these rules only affect people within the city because the three of them were Reincarnators?

Or…

He suddenly raised one leg high and stomped down fiercely.

At the instant his foot fell, the air first stilled, then sank like a viscous surface of water. In the next moment, it was shattered by that unobstructed, all-encompassing realm of perfect ease.

Pfft~boom!

The ground shook violently. The bluestone slabs turned red in an instant, then dissolved and vanished like foam. A terrifying shockwave exploded outward in a flash.

The surrounding alleys, courtyard walls, and city walls shook violently before collapsing downward.

The woman, whose body was still only halfway out of the courtyard, revealed a look of despair. She only had time to turn back and shake her head at her children, hoping they could move farther away.

But she had already seen the city walls outside collapsing as well.

It’s over… the city walls have fallen. Everything is over…

As Skylark, his Cosmo burning wildly, shot forward like an arrow, he felt that terrifying momentum. His eyes trembled as he saw the man with half-black, half-white hair shatter the ground within the city with a single stomp.

Countless demons screamed as they were thrown flying.

Yet that horrifying scene somehow gave Skylark a sense of relief.

If a guy like this, a monster like this, made a move, then the thing inside the city probably would not have it easy either… right?

He fixed his gaze on the demons charging madly from the woods outside. His figure became a streak of light as sonic booms erupted in succession.

Sonic Fist!

Boom boom boom boom!

Life of Silence took in everything before leaping upward like a falling leaf, narrowly avoiding the violent shockwave. She rode the momentum even higher, and by the moonlight, she indeed saw a huge mausoleum in the woods outside the city.

"Black Emperor… you’re still putting up such pointless disguises…"

"Ruofeng Lin, I’ve come to kill you."

As she spoke softly, the girl’s eyes blinked several times, and her boundless killing intent could no longer be concealed.