NOVEL NEXT Chapter 74: Festering Foulness
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"In death, rebirth. In pain, growth. In suffering, Immortality."
— 'The Hungry Decay', a common chant among supplicants of the Decaying Greyroots
4 years ago…
The Blighted Bog was, without a doubt, one of the worst places Feng had ever visited in his life.
Granted, Feng had not really lived for very long. Fourteen years was a pitifully short length of time for a mortal, let alone a cultivator. Still, the Young Master struggled to imagine a hell worse than the swamp he was currently trudging through.
The rancid carcasses of trees ran with pus, their excremental decay spilling in obscene abundance, innards hollowed out by diseases and vermin. The ruptured skin of their hide resembled not bark, but human flesh — one perforated in wounds that dripped with viscid mucus. Insects gathered upon those rotting rivers of slurry, suckling upon the nauseous nectar that leaked from widened orifices.
A curtain of flesh, with its filth-smeared bowels choked by a black sea of fat-bodied flies, ever-tireless in their voracious feeding.
"There are worse places in the world. You can be assured of that — most you had even once walked in the distant past, and will likely do so again in the near future."
Feng frowned, turning to face the pretty lady. Unlike him and Yunjin, the woman still looked impossibly pristine. Under normal circumstances, her unearthly beauty would be a welcome sight, doubly so in a place as horrid as the marsh.
At the moment, however, Feng was merely jealous of how dry and clean she looked.
"There is no need to tell me that, you know," the boy protested. "I am already miserable enough as is."
Yunjin perked up. "Did the lady say something?"
He scowled. "Just that I shouldn't complain. According to her, there are worse places to be stuck in than this hell."
"Ah." Yunjin's expression conflicted between respect and exasperation. "Inform her I… appreciate her efforts to cheer us up."
"You're welcome."
The air was thick with virulent spores and vile contagions. Yunjin could not stop gagging. Boils repeatedly formed on her skin, her fingers had turned leprous, and the scrap wounds on her leg wept with pus. Already, Feng had torn the cleanest fabric of his robe to craft her a makeshift mask, soaking it in his blood as the pretty lady advised.
It helped, but there was only so much that they could do within the horridness of their surroundings.
"I see her reverence quickly fail in the face of discomfort. Though I suppose I can't really blame her in this case."
This goes a little beyond mere 'discomfort', pretty lady, Feng thought.
The pair of scions were currently caked from head to toe in filth, having needed to thread, wade, and swim through miles of the vilest mud for the past weeks. Hygiene boiled down to Feng periodically using fire to bake away the liquefied filth clinging to their frame. It left them still caked in soil, but at least they were occasionally dry.
The stinking quagmire resisted their attempts to make good progress. The swamp had a loathsome habit of clogging up the natural waterways and rivers. Like choked arteries, the blocked flow built and seeped into the earth, forming vast reefs of sucking muck which left no distinction between solid ground and liquid mud.
Discomfort aside, there was something supernaturally unsettling about the swamp as well. There were times when the slurry they trudged through felt more akin to an expanse of mired corpse-flesh — as if they were ants, walking upon the half-submerged body of some unspeakably enormous beast.
Feng, with his cultivated build and movement techniques, could navigate the Bog with reasonable ease. Previously, the lady had helped pick the safest routes with his abilities in mind, allowing him to reach Yunjin in the mere span of three days. Cultivators twice his standing would have struggled to do so in three weeks.
However, getting out was not so easy, for Yunjin herself was wholly mortal, and thus, their avenues of safe travel were severely limited. Feng was not strong enough to carry her the whole way, so there were times when they were forced to make the journey on foot.
The putrescent mud and diseased water of the swamp were the least of their problem. Unpleasant and deadly as the contagion might be, Feng's cultivation was potent enough to ward off the worst of it, provided he managed himself carefully. The blood he gave Yunjin also seemed to grant her a degree of immunity. Otherwise, she would surely have already perished.
The larger issue stemmed from the other denizens of the swamp. Cohorts of monsters ruled the Blighted Bog. Within the last week, the pair had to hide and run from all manner of threats.
Droning blizzards of flies, their black clouds carrying promises of contagions and flesh-rending assaults. Belching toads of revolting sizes, disturbing grins on their human-like faces as they attempted to squash the youths with their hulking mass or gobble them up after snaring them in greyish tongues. Mushroom ape-things that knuckle-walked on massive arms, charging with shrieking roars as they tossed lumps of horrid excrement as projectiles, the sheer force of which shattered whole strips of rotting trees with each impact.
The Young Lord also occasionally spotted moving figures in the water, too — as if the swamp was not content with assaulting them from land alone. They looked to be corpses, submerged too long in the mud, their skins swagging from mushy sinew. The bloated fats on their frame played host to frantic life, parasites writhing beneath the jiggling expanse of waterlogged flesh, their movements giving the obese corpses false semblances of life.
A grim reminder of what would become of the pair should they fall here.
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Some threats, Feng defeated. His fire abilities countered the vile fecundity of the swamp well. Heat erupted against filth-sodden hides. Gales of flames turned the droning of flies into screams. His infernal fists and flaming knife-hands seared and wounded countless foes.
But not kill. Never kill. Not because of mercy, but because these things refused to die.
Feng could slow them, but he was too weak to land a fatal blow. The regeneration of these creatures exceeded the pace of violence he could dish out. Fire warded them off for a time, but eventually, their blackened burns would regrow scabrous armour and films of incombustible mucus.
Still, the pair were making progress. Slowly but surely, the forest was becoming a little drier, a little less hostile. The pretty lady guided them with impossibly precise knowledge of the Bog, telling them when and where to hide, rest, and run. It was as if she knew the movements of every monster and the layout of the entire swamp. She brought them to the safest and driest routes, accounting even for Yunjin's weakness.
Another week, the lady had said. Then, Feng would see Yunjin free.
~~~
Days passed, and they could almost see the sky now.
It was still hazy — the purple miasma of the swamp still hung in the air, and the black swarms of flies still blocked sunlight as they flew skyward — but the atmosphere was definitely cleaner. The pair could see the luminous Jade Clouds past the thinning toxic mist.
The frequency of dodging giant monsters grew lesser, but paradoxically, Feng saw more fighting the closer to freedom they went.
"Just leave us alone already! How many of you are there?!" Feng shouted as he punched another walking carcass in the face. His flame-wreathed hand detonated against the slobbering mutated humanoid's head, exploding it into a dozen wet chunks.
Maggots gushed forth from the stump like a fountain. The body fell back into the mud, twitching as it sank back into the waist-high muck.
The Young Master spat out a putrid lump of brain that entered his mouth, before groaning as a dozen more human corpses stumbled out of the mire around them.
They were massive, bloated beyond reason, yet they stood and walked all the same. Rheum and swamp water ran down their faces as they stumbled forth. A most sickening groan gurgled and burped from rotted lips.
Yunjin desperately stabbed one of them with a makeshift wooden spear. Feng had made it for her to use as a walking stick, not to fight. The sharpened tip plunged soggily into the head of the nearest creature, but it did little to help, as its fat arms still reached for the girl.
"You said this path was safe!" The Young Miss yelled as she twisted the weapon. Maggots spilt from the creature's lips. It was clear something utterly unwholesome was powering these corpses' movements.
"Don't blame me!" Feng shouted back as he executed a high kick, caving in the chest of another walking corpse. Stinking matter rained over them. The boy pulled the squirming maggots from his hair and incinerated them with a clenched fist. "Blame the pretty lady!"
"This path is the safest. Believe me, the other routes had far worse traps in place."
Traps? It was a strange choice of words, and for the first time, there was a tenseness to the lady's voice where before only calm existed. Feng had no time to question it as he rushed to Yunjin's aid.
Minutes later, the reanimated corpses were all dead. Numerous and dogged as their advance was, the 'ambush' was doomed from the start. Feng's preternatural strength and speed were more than enough to deal with their slow-moving bodies.
Once the pair made it to relatively dry land once more, the Young Lord flared his qi, purifying the contamination clinging to their threadbare clothes. Maggots shrivelled and died. The mud on them dried.
Yunjin muttered thanks as she found a relatively dry tree to lean against. The past three weeks had transformed her. She still looked terrible — one eye blinded, her hair existing only in tortured clumps, and her limbs gaunt — but there was a reforged defiance in her gaze.
The disgusting trials they endured in that sickening Bog should have broken any mortal, yet Yunjin held herself with a modicum of dignity that spat in the face of the swamp's horror.
If anything, she looked far more poised and sane than when Feng had found her in that cell.
Such resilient spirits… It made him smile. She held no special powers, no cultivation of her own, yet she pushed on. She suffered the worst the Bog had to throw at her, yet only grew more defiant as the days passed.
He was glad he saved her. Such strength had no purpose dying unused within the dark pits of a cell.
"The frequency of the attacks is concerning," Yunjin murmured. The steel in her remaining eye sharpened.
"We are close to the outer layers of the swamp," Feng commented. "Villagers are more likely to wander nearer to the outside, right? It would explain the increase in corpses, at least. Not many make their way to the core."
"True. Few ever venture that far. The human corpses we face, however…" Yunjin grimaced. "Those were failed supplicants to the Sect."
Feng blinked. Then recoiled. "You mean… those were…"
"Failed candidates to the Sect entrance exams, dumped into the Bog," Yunjin confirmed. "The mud preserves the bodies while the maggots continue to breed within them. Seedbed bodies, we call them. They yield precious toxins for the Sect's harvest. Some of those seedbeds might have been there for centuries."
"But… they were already dead, right?" Feng tentatively asked. "There's no way those things were still… people…"
Yunjin didn't answer for a time. The Young Master felt sickened.
To remain conscious under such conditions… How long must they have screamed for before the oblivion of madness took them?
"The Sect promised them immortality," Yunjin whispered. "I suppose they got what they wished."
"That's monstrous," Feng spat. "How can they… Such inhuman cruelty…"
"And yet, not surprising at all. There are profits to cruelty, after all. Especially when it is cruelty suffered by others in your stead."
Yunjin hesitated before speaking. "Sometimes, very rarely, the Seedbeds do Awaken."
Feng stared at her. "Those things can cultivate?"
"Not the person," Yunjin corrected softly. "The maggots. When they reach sufficient mass, there is a chance they may form a collective, hive-mind intelligence. Then, if fate favours them once more, they might one day awaken. A sapient Spirit Beast."
"Yāoguài (妖怪 ). Rare, for the Outer Provinces. No doubt the work of that rotting God. But for what purpose?"
The pretty lady murmured with curiosity. Feng wanted to ask her more, but Yunjin spoke up again.
"I have seen a few walk around the Sect before — there are not more than ten, I think. They barely look human any more, but they are quite powerful," she explained grimly. "All of them eventually reach the ranks of Core Disciples, and most even become Elders in time."
Yunjin snorted. "But to obtain those ten Yaoguai, the Sect must have sacrificed thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, to the Bog over the last centuries."
"That's disgusting," Feng hissed. "Your Elders allowed this? Your Patriarch encouraged this?"
The smile on the Young Miss was nothing but mocking. "I suppose our vaulted leaders thought it was worth the exchange. Talent is rare, after all. What are the lives of worms worth, if they cannot even cultivate?"
The answer was obvious. The pretty lady chuckled.
"Nothing. Nothing at all."