Aspiring to the Immortal Path
Aspiring to the Immortal Path - Chapter 648: Devastating Losses

With the combat puppet leading the way, the group had a much easier time pushing through.

As they advanced, various ghosts appeared endlessly, and they also began to see more and more bodies on the ground.

As Sun Shuming and the fiends had already been through here, and they had the combat puppet serving as their vanguard, Tang Jie's group wasn't under much pressure. Even so, Tang Jie still noticed that something was off.

There were simply too many ghosts!

Boom!

A punch blasted through a ghostly horse, and Tang Jie turned and asked, "How long until we reach our destination?"

Shentu Yuan replied, "I'm not sure either. I just know that we'll get there if we just keep following the river. Shit, when I heard them talk about this, they didn't mention anything about there being this many ghosts."

"Is that so?" Tang Jie whispered. Raising a hand, he blasted apart a skeleton that had been charging in, but his eyes were fixed on the ground nearby. There lay the body of a fiend general, completely drained of blood and apparently having died a most wretched death. Looking at this corpse, Tang Jie said, "Then did the person you talked with ever mention casualties?"

Shentu Yuan shook his head. "There were casualties, but not a lot."

"That means something is wrong." Ye Xiao pointed at the body. "Those fiends followed behind the humans, but we've run into more than twenty of their bodies. This isn't something ordinary danger could cause!"

Even Ye Xiao could see that something was wrong. The dangers they had encountered were clearly much greater than those they should have encountered. If not for the Mother Cloud combat puppet, even standing here would have been a problem.

Tang Jie sternly said, "There are only two possible explanations. Either there's a problem with Shentu's information and exploring the Inkcloud Abyss has always been this dangerous, or there is no problem with the information and something has changed this time, leading there to be exponentially more ghosts and leading to a similar boost in danger."

Everyone nodded in agreement with Tang Jie's analysis. Ximen Changfeng said, "Then, Brother Tang Jie, which do you think is more likely?"

After some thought, Tang Jie replied, "From what Shentu knows, Fengshan has been gathering the Umbra Cactus's flower for one thousand years. If it had really been this dangerous, they wouldn't have been so persistent about it. And to be honest, the person who told Shentu this had no need to lie. And if he wanted to hurt him, this method is a little too clumsy and inefficient. Thus, I would prefer the latter explanation… Something strange must have happened here to cause the current situation."

"What changed?" everyone asked in unison.

Tang Jie didn't directly answer the question, instead asking, "Don't you think something has been missing among what we've seen so far?"

What's missing?

They all exchanged looks, not understanding what Tang Jie was referring to.

In the end, Yiyi was the smart one, shouting, "There were no human corpses!"

Shentu Yuan and the others were struck by realization.

That's right!

Why had they only seen fiend corpses and not human corpses?

The humans were weaker than the fiends, and they were at the very front, so they should have suffered the greatest impact. But why was it that they had not seen any human deaths? That was just too abnormal.

Ice Phoenix blurted out, "Could this be Sun Shuming's trickery!?"

Sun Shuming had come to the Inkcloud Abyss before to get the flower for the royal family, and he had come again. And the fact that he had come before a great host of enemies and volunteered himself to lead the way was a major problem. But if he was connected with everything that had happened, then everything that didn't make sense now made sense—Sun Shuming planned to use the Inkcloud Abyss to weaken the fiends.

It was no wonder he was bold enough to head straight in. He actually already had a plan on what to do.

Tang Jie sighed. "We still can't be sure that he's related to all this, but they truly are the most suspicious."

"Then what do we do?"

"'We'?" Tang Jie laughed and shrugged. "We keep following, of course. So long as the fiends are still in front of us, the sky won't be falling."

―――――――――――

"This isn't right!" A frenzied roar resounded through the dark riverside.

It was that dumb bear.

Even someone as stupid as the bear fiend had realized that something was wrong. Why was it that they who were following the humans were being besieged by ghosts, but the humans had yet to leave behind a single corpse?

Around them, ghosts were still emerging from the river. Fog ghosts, rotting corpses, skeletons, phantom horses, ghost generals, and other kinds of ghosts were popping up from the Blackwater River so frequently that the river sounded like it was boiling.

They far outnumbered Tang Jie's group, but Tang Jie's group was actually just dealing with the remnants of the battle with the fiends. And on the actual battlefield, the battle was commencing on a grandiose scale, gales and flames ripping across the field while the lights of spell arts lit up the world.

At the most intense areas of the battle, the frenzied flames melted everything in the surroundings, and it was so terrifying that not even someone as strong as Tang Jie would have dared to go in.

"Those damn humans must have played some sort of trick!" the Ghostface King said between clenched teeth. He was fighting alongside the Whitebrow King and the Small Peach Queen, but they had only a single opponent. This was a ghost wreathed in black energy, wearing spiked black armor, a cape, and a crown of white bone atop its head, and mounted atop a black phantom horse. This phantom horse was much larger than the regular ghost horse. Horns sprouted from its head, and its hooves trod upon the Yellow Springs, spreading yellow water wherever it went that corroded any fiend or human it touched.

Despite it being three versus one, the Ghostface King's group didn't have any sort of edge.

That ghost king repeatedly swung a large sword of white bone which flickered with ghostly flames. Every swing would send the flames spilling out, and just the slightest ember would eat away a large chunk of flesh from even fiend kings.

"There's no point in mentioning it now. We need to think of a way to push through first!" the wildcat fiend king said.

There were myriad ghosts and only a single path, so pushing through wasn't easy. But if they didn't, they had no hope of stopping Sun Shuming, and even less of getting the flower.

"Let me!" The rhino fiend king strode over. Getting down on the ground, he turned into a massive rhino more than forty feet tall. Aiming his horn forward, he spat out, "Follow me!"

He lowered his head and charged forward.

This charge wasn't to be underestimated, the rhino obliterating all the ghosts in his way and instantly opening a path in the sea of corpses. But the rhino suffered for this, the attacks of those ghosts eating away at his soul. Even though he was at the equivalent of Soul Transformation, he was in so much pain that even death was preferable. With a moan, he collapsed to the ground.

"Hurry!" someone shouted.

The fiends began to fight their way through the path the rhino had opened, and the ghosts flooded in. Several screams quickly arose from the fiends as several fiend generals failed to hold and were slain by the ghosts.

"Die!" There was a frenzied roar as a giant crimson claw appeared above the ghosts and killed great numbers of them.

The Ghostface King also got serious, his repulsive face twisting as he spat out a blue flame at the ghost king. The ghost king let out a piercing howl, and then its imposing figure withered to nothing as it died. A blood-red pearl dropped to the ground: its ghost essence. This blue flame had clearly cost the Ghostface King dearly, his face turning pale. Seeing the ghost essence, he grabbed it and smiled. "At least I got something out of it."

The fiend kings all began to use their powerful moves, and while this finally pushed back the ghosts, it came at great personal cost. More than twenty of the fiend generals had been slain, and the fiend kings had been greatly weakened from using some of their secret moves.

The fiend kings were filled with resentment, having suffered such a setback before having even seen the flower, so they all made up their minds to subject Sun Shuming to excruciating torment once they caught up to him.

With this thought in mind, the fiend kings rushed forward. Finally, they broke through the ghosts, and the world opened up before them.

The dense fog dissipated, and the fiends saw a black river gushing down from above.

It emerged from the void, the water flowing out without end. Through that tear in space, one could hear countless faint wails, as if hundreds of thousands of ghosts were weeping.

Suddenly, a ghost general jumped out of that tear in space. Shrieking, it tumbled through the river waters and began to make its way toward the fiends.

Sure enough, the ghosts had come from the Nether Domain.

But the fiends had never heard of so many ghosts crossing over from the Nether Domain.

Upon examining the origin of the Blackwater River more closely, they saw something sparkling.

An eagle fiend looked over and shrieked, "Stellarite! It's Stellarite! These humans used Stellarite to widen the Nether Domain entrance, letting in more ghosts!"

Using Stellarite to widen the Nether Domain passage, allowing the ghosts to get in more easily, was truly a simple and practical method.

The fiends were enraged over how Sun Shuming had hoodwinked them. But when they looked around, they found no sign of Sun Shuming.

They wondered where Sun Shuming was. Suddenly, a fiend pointed at the Blackwater River. "Look!"

The surface of the river seethed as if countless fish were frolicking within it. If one looked carefully, it became apparent that these were actually little snakes, only as thick as a thumb, swimming down the river. Suddenly, they leaped out of the river, filling the air with hundreds of black creatures.

Blackwater Snakes!