Chapter 119: Riverbank of Lost Hope

Rush toward the riverbank.

Thanks to Yenir’s full sprint, he was back at the Settlement in mere seconds.

Through the thickening fog, he instantly spotted a gigantic female corpse hidden in the water mist.

Hurry… faster!

While carrying Zhang Xuemei and racing with his head down, the woman—who had been completely unaware until now—wore raw terror in her eyes upon seeing the enormous corpse.

As an ordinary person, the most frightening creature she had ever encountered was a zombie. Never had she witnessed a horror like this.

“C-Commander!?”

“Wh-what is that!?”

Unable to fathom how the Settlement could transform in just a few days, Zhang Xuemei’s fear immediately turned to concern for her daughter.

“Commander! What on earth is happening? And what about my daughter!?”

“Your daughter… mistook that monster for you!”

He replied briefly.

While answering, Yenir’s eyes betrayed a flash of compassion and reluctance. But fate was sealed; this was the only way out.

Soon, after reaching a riverbank farther from the corpse, Yenir heard a series of agonized screams.

Without a moment’s hesitation.

Gazing at the river shrouded in a chilling mist, Yenir leaped and dived deep beneath the surface.

Now he could only bet that the little girl’s corpse was nearby! If it, too, was swept away and became untraceable, he would have no choice but to accept his fate!

……..

Regret and unwillingness.

Clinging desperately to the ground, Wang Zheng felt an ever-strengthening pull from behind, filling him with bitter remorse.

He had believed his preparations were more than sufficient—he’d enlisted the experienced Fang He, secured Third-Stage fighter Ye Lin’s assistance, and with the challenge being little more than a trial run, everything should have gone smoothly.

But he never imagined the difficulty would twist into something so perverse! Everything was wrong—absolutely everything!

Fang He had died silently, and Ye Lin was nowhere to be found!

To this day, he can’t figure out where he went wrong.

With only himself, Chen Yong, and another Second-Stage fighter left alive, despair nearly overpowered his sanity.

Gripping the ground tightly, no one could face the threat of death with calm.

“Ahhhhh!!”

As another agonized scream of someone being sucked in and chewed echoed, Wang Zheng’s body shuddered like a premonition of his own fate.

Not far away, Chen Yong—struggling against the pull—let out a grim laugh and brandished a dagger, seemingly ready to end his own life.

He would rather commit suicide than die in such a horrifying manner.

“Splash”

Suddenly, the sound of rushing water burst from a nearby riverbank.

Instinctively, Chen Yong craned his neck; the next instant, his eyes widened in shock.

There, clutching a corpse bloated to a pale, swollen state, Yenir was sprinting toward the riverbank.

“Ye Lin!?”

He cried out in astonishment.

Though they couldn’t fathom why the fleeing Yenir had reappeared—or why he’d retrieved a corpse from the river—the sight sparked a glimmer of hope in Chen Yong and Wang Zheng. Had Yenir found a solution?

Without another word, Yenir followed the pull, dragging the corpse right to the little girl’s side.

Straining to steady himself—and before the corpse could strike—Yenir snatched the little girl and pulled her eastward, shouting aloud:

“Li Rou!”

“Look closely! Who is that!?”

As his words faded, a staggering middle-aged woman appeared through the mist, clutching a parcel and anxiously scanning her surroundings as if searching for something.

Her whole body froze.

Li Rou’s attention was immediately captured by the woman’s silhouette; she didn’t even register the corpse Yenir had brought.

Staring in shock at that familiar face—even through the mist and from afar—she recognized it as her mother.

Unbelievable.

Li Rou shuddered and instinctively looked again at the corpse she believed to be her mother.

Realizing her mother was still alive, she trembled in terror and backed away continuously.

“Mom…”

“Mom, you’re not dead!?”

In the next moment, the woman searching for Li Rou seemed to sense her instantly and turned her gaze this way. Upon realizing that the figure beside Yenir was her daughter, maternal instinct took over, leaving her no time to worry about the approaching corpse.

“Daughter! Run!”

“Hurry to me!”

Unsure of what was happening and clueless about the monster’s nature, the woman, driven by desperate worry, recklessly and clumsily ran over.

“Mom!”

The little girl’s eyes instantly welled with tears as she snapped back to reality, and upon hearing her mother’s call, she began to run.

However, the enormous female corpse nearby seemed to take notice of this.

“Swish”

Its gaping maw abruptly shifted direction, and with a powerful suction, it devoured the ordinary Zhang Xuemei in an instant amid a startled cry.

“Crunch crunch—”

Chewed chunks of flesh burst with blood, splattering from its ghastly mouth.

As the chewing sounds echoed, Li Rou, who had barely taken a few steps, suddenly froze in place.

“No!!!!”

………

From a distance, Chen Yong, gasping in shock, kept glancing between the two fierce ghostly figures and Yenir.

“W-what… what’s happening!?”

Only seconds earlier, Yenir had nonchalantly discarded a corpse amid the girl’s collapse and informed her that she was already dead.

After witnessing her mother’s gruesome death and the truth, Li Rou’s sanity shattered in an instant as she transformed into a vengeful ghost.

Perhaps driven by a lingering instinct, the little girl—now a giant ghostly corpse herself—engaged in a fierce battle with the first vengeful spirit, fueled by extreme rage.

Watching from afar as the two ghostly corpses tore into each other, Yenir shook his head gently, as if to say that explanations would follow later.

Sure enough, the two ghostly corpses would soon vanish amid the struggle, and it would all be over.

Indeed, the first clue from Fang He had already revealed the key to surviving this mission.

(Don’t provoke the girl… find the corpse…)

Just the thought that Zhang Xuemei’s death had been his doing made Yenir sigh softly.

He couldn’t bring himself to protect the female ghost once she discovered Zhang Xuemei; in truth, inciting the clash between the little girl and the first vengeful ghost required Zhang Xuemei to serve as the bait.

This entire event was like a closed loop of cause and effect—a tragic inevitability.

…..

One minute later.

At the sound of a resentful, piercing shriek, the girl—now reduced to half her body by the devouring—silently scooped up a wad of shredded flesh from the corpse’s stomach.

Blood and tears flowed; a few seconds later, a glimmer of clarity flickered in the eyes of her ghostly form.

Staring at the shredded flesh in her hands, she staggered upright and began to weep softly.

“Mom… mom…”

“Splash”

Moments later, her body dissolved into a pool of icy river water that slowly flowed away.

From above, that small patch of clear water on the ground looked like the tears of the earth.