manynovel Chapter 618 Signs of Unease
Chapter 618 Signs of Unease
Chapter 618 Signs of Unease
It's raining in Black City.
This should have been an ordinary sight.
But in the dream world, in this medieval apocalypse shrouded in the shadow of the war of the gods, where the sky is often stained with the eerie colors of divine blood and gunpowder smoke, a single rain is enough to cast a heavy gloom, or even fear, over the hearts of all the survivors.
This is not the sweet rain that nourishes all things.
The howling wind carried a chilling and decaying aura that penetrated to the bone, like countless ghosts shrieking in the wilderness—it was a calamity wind formed from fragments of the laws left behind after the fall of the god of nature. It tore apart the already unstable clouds in the sky, and what it brought down was not clear rain.
Outside the window, under the gray sky, a viscous, turbid liquid with a faint grayish-green sheen was falling.
They pounded on the newly built stone roof, the gravel-strewn ground, and the wild grass that stubbornly peeked out from the gaps in the greenery nurtured by Tang Zijun's life force, making unsettling "plop plop" sounds.
Those weren't raindrops; they were more like the corrosive bodily fluids secreted by some kind of morbid organism, or diluted divine blood.
A strange, indescribable stench, a mixture of fishy sweetness and decay, permeated the air. Even through tightly closed doors and windows, the smell seeped in like maggots clinging to bones, irritating the nasal cavity and nerves.
The streets were deserted.
Thanks to Desk, who worked almost non-stop during this period, along with his engineering team and recruited refugees, the fragile, shivering tent clusters in Black City were replaced at an astonishing speed with sturdy and thick stone houses.
Although simple, they were enough to shelter us from the wind and rain, and most importantly, they became the only barrier to keep out this strange rain.
People huddled inside the stone houses, squeezed behind small windows with rough glass or covered with thick oilcloth. Their tired, numb faces, deeply marked by life, were filled with complex emotions—gratitude for the city lord, a sense of relief at the sturdy stone houses, but more than anything, an undisguised fear and bewilderment as they looked out at the gray-green rain curtain.
The children were held tightly in the arms of the adults, their faces pale, and they dared not look out the window. The elderly, on the other hand, whispered the names of gods or prayers of ancestors that had long since become blurred, their cloudy eyes filled with a deep fear of the unknown.
No one knows how long this rain of disaster, caused by a fallen god, will last, nor what it will ultimately bring—corrosion? Plague? Or... something even more terrifying and indescribable?
In the heart of Black City, inside the sturdy stone fortress that was originally the lord's mansion and now serves as the core command post, the largest room is filled with a relatively quiet but equally solemn atmosphere.
Inside the enormous fireplace, thick oak firewood was burning fiercely, and the leaping flames dispelled the chill seeping from the cracks in the stone and the dampness brought by the rain outside the window. The warm and dry air was filled with the fragrance of burning pine and the rich aroma of hot tea.
Tang Zijun, Tan Zhixin, Grelando, Qin Nan, Deske, and Scáthach, who stood silently in the corner like a shadow, all sat around the fireplace.
Tang Zijun sat in the large armchair in the main seat, holding a steaming cup of strong tea in his hands. The wisps of white steam blurred his well-defined jawline. He gazed at the leaping flames in the fireplace with deep eyes.
Tan Zhixin sat to his left, closer to him, still wearing that simple and elegant dress. A thick book was open on her lap, written in the language of the elves. She had been translating it for a long time, and it recorded some of the history and culture of the elves.
Grelando sat upright. Even during her rest, the mercenary leader remained vigilant. She sipped her hot tea, her brow furrowed, clearly worried about the city's defenses and patrols due to the view outside the window.
Qin Nan sat right next to Tang Zijun on the right, a position clearly chosen after careful consideration. She held a cup of honeyed flower tea, sipping it slowly, her cheeks flushed from the firelight.
She seemed to want to appear relaxed, her gaze often stealing glances at Tang Zijun's profile, carrying a hint of cunning and a subtly concealed lingering intimacy.
Scáthach, like a shadow cast by the fireplace, stood quietly in the darkest corner of the room. Her shadow armor absorbed most of the light, calmly watching the various expressions on the faces of the people around the fireplace, and also penetrating the walls to cast her gaze upon the world outside shrouded in stormy winds and filthy rain.
Tang Cao and Su Siyao, the two little girls, sat on the carpet in front of the fireplace with Katie, Tania, Xiao Xiao and others. They held beef jerky and tripe with sesame sauce in their hands, and the heavy rain outside the window seemed to whet their appetites.
The howling wind outside the window was mostly blocked by the thick stone walls, leaving only a muffled wail, which only made the space inside feel warmer.
The fire in the fireplace burned quietly, its warm glow dancing on everyone's faces, yet it could not dispel the gray-green rain curtain outside the window. After a brief moment of calm, the silence was broken by Tang Zijun's deep voice.
"...This rain is not that simple."
Gloria immediately put down her teacup. "My scouts, whom I sent out to keep watch under the eaves, reported that the raindrops falling on the newly paved flagstones make a slight, corrosive sound. It's slow, but it's definitely eroding the stone, and... that strange smell in the air is making people dizzy and nauseous after a while. Several of my brothers have already started experiencing mild hallucinations."
Her report made the room feel even colder.
Desk suddenly raised his head, a gloomy look flashing across his weathered face. The stone house he built could keep out the rain, but if the rain could corrode the stone, how long could the stone house's defense last?
Tan Zhixin closed the heavy book on her lap, her clear, cold voice trembling slightly as she added.
"It's not just corrosion and poisonous miasma. I used my mental power to try and probe the essence of the rainwater. It contains... an extremely filthy and chaotic life force, like countless twisted, tiny creatures wriggling. They are very faint, but their numbers are so vast that they are uncountable. They seem to be... reproducing in the rainwater..."
Upon hearing this, Tang Zijun's gaze shifted slightly to Xiao Xiao, who was standing not far away beside her.
She is a magical girl of the water element, so she should have a clearer sense of this change.
Noticing Tang Zijun's gaze, Xiao Xiao nodded and said, "This rainwater is indeed something special, or rather, this rain... is alive."
"Divine abominations!?" Glundor suddenly realized something and gasped. "Those filthy, twisted filth born from the fall of gods...are they going to descend...with this rain?"
"Not just divine abominations." Scáthach's voice, as cold as ice rubbing together, came from the shadows.
Deeper within this filthy rain... there mingled an extremely faint, yet clinging, aura of the ancient rulers, chaotic, blasphemous, and filled with hatred for the very essence of all order and life...
"The Great Old Ones..." Grilando and Deske's expressions changed simultaneously.
The name itself represents fear.
Tang Zijun's eyes instantly sharpened; Scáthach's confirmation confirmed his suspicions.
"A creature of undulating pleasure," he uttered the name softly.
"Being so close to Black City, possessing enough power to unleash corruption and launch attacks, and filled with a twisted and blasphemous desire for life itself—this is probably the only Great Old One among them."
He remembered the crimson hair that writhed and grew on Ilúvatar's chest, and the blasphemous feeling that seeped into his bones. The shadow of that battle had not yet dissipated, and this greedy ancient monster, taking advantage of the calamity caused by the fall of the god of nature, once again extended its filthy tentacles toward Black City.
It is using this rain to spread its tentacles.
What Tang Zijun couldn't understand was where that guy had gathered so many believers from, and wasn't its main body already sealed? Even if there was a problem with the seal, it shouldn't be able to unleash so much power.
"Brother, we've found something here too." As soon as Tang Cao spoke, everyone's eyes were immediately focused on her.
Tangcao chewed and chewed, then swallowed the dried meat in her mouth and said.
"Little White, Katie, and I were cleaning up the aberrations on the outskirts of the forest as planned, and everything was going smoothly until the day before yesterday when things started to go wrong."
"The newly appeared monsters... are completely different. They are no longer the corrupted beasts or low-level aberrations of the past. They are more like... things that crawled directly out of the rotting swamp and twisted lake."
Little White, standing nearby, licked its paws and added, "Some of them were covered in the same grayish-green slime as outside the window, instantly withering and rotting any plants they passed through. Others looked like countless rotting limbs forcibly pieced together, clumsy yet incredibly strong, emitting a strong stench of corpses. And some... were simply writhing, multiplying clumps of flesh with sharp teeth, devouring each other and growing wildly."
She took a deep breath, her voice tinged with lingering fear.
"Moreover, the forest itself... seems to be coming 'alive'."
"The twisted tree roots were writhing, and the vines attacked like venomous snakes, engulfing the entire Ghost Mist Forest..."
The pervasive fog was more than ten times thicker than before, filled with malice and... an indescribable feeling.
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