Stranger Danger

Chapter 798: Hundred Ghost Parade

Gu Mingfei subconsciously looked forward. The girl was standing mere inches away from him before he knew it. She was giggling a most eerie giggle as bloody tears slid down both sides of her cheeks. Her flesh was falling off inch by inch as well.

“Hehe... Niuniu is the goodest girl. Niuniu never lies.”

“Ahhhh!!!”

Gu Mingfei let out a scream of terror. Both his chair and his person fell to the floor as he flailed in panic.

Coincidentally or not, the human head rolled right up to his face and said, “You took my head, so I’m going to take yours, boy. It’s only fair, right?”

The next moment, countless maggots crawled out of the head’s mouth and made their way toward Gu Mingfei.

“Argh! Save me!”

Gu Mingfei was scared out of his wits to begin with, and this scare nearly knocked the lights out of him. He clawed at his own face to swipe the maggots away.

It was at this moment Leng Tianjue grabbed Gu Mingfei and said angrily, “Mingfei! What the hell is going on with you?”

“Ghost... head...” Gu Mingfei replied incoherently.

“Ah!”

“Ahhh!”

It was at this moment Tan Tao and Fei Fei cried out in shock as well.

Tan Tao saw a muscular man setting his elbow on top of a stove, barbecuing it and sprinkling cumin on top of it from time to time. He could literally smell the aroma from where he was.

Fei Fei saw an old woman cooking a pale green baby that was screaming and giggling at the same time.

Cang Qingmei put her hand over her sword and gathered her energies. She said warily, “Something’s not right. Stay on your guard!”

At this point, even Leng Tianjue realized that something was terribly amiss. He wore a cautious look on his face as well.

The next moment, both warriors’ complexions turned an ugly shade. It was because the meat on the table had suddenly turned into torn, bitten limbs, the snacks in the plates had turned into innards, hearts and livers, and the soup in the bowls had turned into brain matter and blood.

There was no pretending that the food was normal when they ate it. They could literally see their bite marks on some of the food.

Everything they ate—the delicious food they ate and the sweet wine they drank—was a human body part of some sort.

“Blargh!”

They were warriors, but not even they could remain firm in face of such a realization. They began throwing up earnestly.

“Ah! Senior sister!”

It was at this moment Fei Fei let out another scream. Despite themselves, Cang Qingmei and Leng Tianjue temporarily forced down their disgust and looked up.

It might have been better if they hadn’t. Both warriors gasped and felt a tingling sensation up their scalps.

It wasn’t just the food that had transformed. The customers they were eating with had transformed as well.

One man’s innards were spilled all across the floor because he had a hole in his stomach. He picked them up and ate them one by one.

Another man was missing a face and his limbs. And yet, an eerie cackle was somehow out of his body.

One woman’s belly was as swollen as a drum, and she kept complaining how full she felt. Despite this, she kept eating like her life depended on it.

Another woman was missing a head, and her stomach was split open. A baby’s cry could be heard from within.

A man’s face was covered in countless mouths. They were crying, screaming, laughing, or yelling.

One person was so rotten that pieces of flesh were falling off their body, and the stench could be smelled from all across the room. It was impossible to tell what gender they were.

One man’s body was completely covered in blisters as if he had been covered in baking powder and fried inside a pan.

One child was crawling on all fours with his head arced all the way that it was pressed up against his back.

There were heads pressed up against each other until they formed a massive meat ball that kept rolling back and forth across the floor.

There were countless arms joining together to form a massive flesh tree that swayed back and forth without wind.

......

It was as if they had suddenly stumbled upon a Hundred Ghost Parade, or the inn had suddenly transformed into a ghost den in Fengdu. Naturally, all five warriors were shocked and chilled to the core.

“W-We need to leave now!”

Cang Qingmei was the fastest among them to recover. Once she yelled her warning, she immediately grabbed Fei Fei’s wrist and raced for the exit.

Leng Tianjue, Gu Mingfei and Tan Tao followed closely behind them.

Although the people—or more accurately, the ghosts—inside the inn did not stop them, they were watching the group of five with odd, ridiculing eyes.

Cang Qingmei let out a sigh of relief when she reached the wooden door. Unfortunately, that was all the relief she got before she noticed something and turned a shade paler.

She tried to push the wooden door open just now, but it refused to give way. She then threw her entire weight behind the door, but the seemingly fragile object still did not budge an inch.

“What’s going on, Qingmei?” Leng Tianjue asked a few tense seconds later.

“It’s not opening!” Cang Qingmei replied urgently.

“Move aside.”

Leng Tianjue stepped forward and pressed both hands against the door. Then, he unleashed his force. Unfortunately, the wooden door still did not react one bit.

Seeing this, Gu Mingfei and Tan Tao stepped forward to help him. However, their combined might still failed to push open the wooden door.

“Get out of the way!”

Leng Tianjue hmphed coldly and waved Gu Mingfei and Tan Tao away. Then, he launched a palm strike at the wooden door. As his right hand descended, it slowly turned pale white and became covered in ice.

“Great Frost Handprint”

Boom!

There was a terrible boom when the icy force struck the wooden door. Both the floor and the walls were covered in ice.

“Impossible!”

Leng Tianjue’s eyes were wide open in disbelief, however. It was because his full-powered strike had failed to affect the wooden door in the slightest. That’s right. Forget breaking it, it failed to leave behind a tiny scratch. A child could have done more damage if they punched a normal door.

He could not imagine how this was possible. Not only was he a bonafide middle-stage Spirit Master, he was among the best even considering his jianghu peers. Besides that, he had unleashed the attack with all his might, and he dared to say that its power was such that not even a Half-Step Trueman would dare to block it directly. And yet, it had failed to harm the measly wooden door in front of him.

How could he not be stunned by this?

While Leng Tianjue was busy picking up his shattered pride, an angry Cang Qingmei decided to unleash her own attack. She unsheathed her sword and fired ten thousand sword beams that struck the entire door with enough power to split boulders like hot knives through butter. Unfortunately, her attack did exactly the same amount of damage as Leng Tianjue did: nothing.

Seeing that her attacks were ineffective against the wooden door, Cang Qingmei decided to change targets and attacked the wall, the windows and so on. However, the outcome was the same.

“What should we do?”

Gu Mingfei and Tan Tao wallowed in despair. If Cang Qingmei or Leng Tianjue had been able to leave even a single scratch on the inn, then they would not be so despondent. Unfortunately, everything they saw proved that whatever that was trapping them was far, far beyond their might.

Fei Fei was sobbing uncontrollably, “Are we going to be trapped here until we... I don’t want to die, senior sister... I don’t want to die...”

“Kekeke...”

“Hahaha...”

It was at this moment the ghosts inside the inn began laughing in unison. Their smiles were exactly identical, but not their laughter. Some of their laughter were low and unsettling, some was loud and unrestrained, some almost sounded like sobbing, and some sounded like the roars of an angry man.

The effect was the same, however. The cacophony of laughter chilled the group of five to their very core.

“Stop laughing!”

Unable to stand the ghastly laughter any longer, Leng Tianjue roared and unleashed a wave of frigid intent. They transformed into icy beasts that rushed toward the laughing ghosts.

Strangely, the icy beasts abruptly disappeared into nothing when they were inches away from the ghosts. They had failed to inflict even the slightest bit of damage.

This outcome only riled up the ghosts even more, of course. Their laughter grew increasingly unrestrained and savage as they rose to their feet and began walking toward the group.