Yang Dingding had already fainted.
Blood was still seeping from his severed arm, and the edges of the wound were tinged with an unnatural greenish black color. It was clear he had been infected by the plague of the hundred corpse patchwork.
He lay amidst the pile of rubble, the rise and fall of his chest so faint it was nearly invisible.
Several little demons surrounded him, wanting to help but not daring to move him, pacing anxiously in circles.
Chen Zhou walked over, knelt down, and stuffed two Flesh Reconstitution Pills into his mouth. Yang Dingding let out a low groan, and his complexion improved slightly, though he did not wake.
“He won't die.” Chen Zhou stood up and scanned the dozens of surviving little demons in the room. “Tell me what happened. What did Tao Tuantuan do?”
The little demons looked at each other, none of them daring to speak first.
When Chen Zhou entered earlier, his chilling aura had nearly scared them senseless.
Though they knew this lord was a good person, the fear emanating from the depths of their souls was not something reason could suppress.
Finally, the little rabbit stepped forward.
“Lord, it was Tuantuan... Tao Tuantuan harmed Lord Jian, and she harmed us too!”
“She lied to all of us! She is a bad person! We trusted her so much, how could she do this?!”
As the little rabbit spoke, he began to cry, tears streaming down his face and mixing with the snot smeared across his cheeks.
Chen Zhou asked, “Weren't you all supposed to have left? How did you end up back here?”
The little rabbit sniffled, trying his best to calm himself down.
“Lord, we were originally with Lord Jian, and we had made it out of the underground city. Lord Jian said he would take us to the stone forest to find the main group.”
“We walked for a long time, a very long way, and then the ground split open with massive cracks. So many rotting monsters crawled out from the gaps. They were disgusting and smelled horrible.”
“The situation was very dangerous then.”
“Lord Jian told us to leave first while he stayed behind to cover our retreat.”
“He killed so many monsters, but there were just too many of them. They kept crawling out of the cracks in the earth, one wave after another.”
“Tao Tuantuan said that we couldn't keep going like this. We couldn't outrun those monsters, so we had to find a place to hide first.”
“She said she knew a place and told us to follow her.”
At this point, the little rabbit's voice began to fill with anger.
“At the time, I was stupid enough to think it was lucky Tuantuan was there. She was so smart, I thought she could definitely lead us to safety.”
“Then she led us back into the underground city through another crack in the ground.”
“I even asked her then, Tuantuan, so there are other exits from the underground city besides the two stone doors? Why didn't you tell us before?”
“She said she had only just found out.”
“She claimed that when we were leaving, she saw some writing on the stone walls near the stone doors and deciphered it from the sealing text.”
“Supposedly, besides those two stone doors, there was a secret passage built by the Jiao Mu Kingdom as an escape route.”
“She said you all knew her ability to extract information from text, so she couldn't be wrong.”
The little rabbit finished and spat on the ground in fury.
“I actually believed her! I thought it was wonderful, that we were so lucky to have her, otherwise we would have never escaped!”
“Thinking back now, she must have known about that secret passage all along!”
“She lived in the underground city for over eight hundred years and read so many ancient texts left by the ancestors. How could she not know? She kept it hidden on purpose!”
A little mouse demon nearby chimed in indignantly, “Exactly! She definitely did it on purpose! She is wicked to the core. All these years, every time there was a sacrifice to heaven, she never mentioned we could leave. She just told us to be obedient and wait to be sacrifices. She just didn't want us to run!”
Another little demon shouted, “She is in league with Wan Xiu! We were fools to trust her and listen to everything she said!”
“Every time there was a sacrifice, she said there was no other way, that it was the only way to save more people! Now that I think about it, she just wanted us to stay in the underground city forever, to remain as sacrifices to be given to those villains from the Central Province!”
“She is a liar! A big liar!”
The little demons grew more agitated as they spoke, shouting over one another and even beginning to hurl curses.
Chen Zhou waited for them to vent for a while before asking, “And then?”
The little rabbit panted for a few breaths and continued, “Then we followed Tao Tuantuan back to the underground city. She said Jianmu Hall was the safest place and told us to hide inside, so we all went in.”
“But there were already many monsters inside.”
“Massive monsters, with countless corpses hanging off their bodies. Some were rotted down to the bone, while others were still moving and screaming.”
The little gecko coughed weakly twice and took over the story.
“Lord... those monsters were so tall, taller than the pillars in Jianmu Hall.”
“Their bodies were covered in rotting flesh that fell off in chunks, and when those chunks hit the ground, they would move and turn into smaller monsters.”
Hearing the description, Chen Zhou had a good idea of what they were. They had likely encountered a giant hundred corpse patchwork.
The little rabbit said hatefully, “The monsters injured many of our companions, but they didn't attack Tao Tuantuan at all!”
“She stood right in the middle of them, and it was like they couldn't even see her!”
“She was even talking to them, asking things like ‘is this enough sacrifices’ and ‘how many more does the master need’!”
“It was only then that I realized she hadn't brought us there to hide. She had delivered us to those monsters!”
“Then the smaller rotting monsters from the ground came down and captured everyone. So many of our companions were taken away, and I don't know where they were brought.”
Chen Zhou raised an eyebrow. “They only injured you? They didn't kill anyone? What about Jian Huaishuang?”
The little rabbit's expression turned even more grim.
“Lord Jian... to protect us, he fought those rotting giants for a long time.”
“Later, Tao Tuantuan said something, and the rotting giants rushed him all at once and surrounded him. Lord Jian was injured and was captured by them as well.”
Chen Zhou listened expressionlessly, his gaze calm.
He was thinking about one thing.
The body of an evil spirit cannot be injured.
There are only two states: being active or being dead and awaiting revival.
The concept of being injured simply does not exist for them.
Death qi is the source of an evil spirit's power. As long as death qi is abundant, they can repair their bodies with ease.
A few hundred corpse patchworks, even the giant ones, were merely mindless, puppet like low level creations. It was impossible for them to possess secret techniques or divine arts capable of heavily wounding an evil spirit.
Just as Chen Zhou himself could not expect a few skeleton ghost servants to directly take down Wan Xiu.
They were simply not on the same level.
To achieve the special state of being injured, Jian Huaishuang must have done it on purpose, actively exposing a weakness.
Rate on N.U.
