Chapter 194 - 194 51

Words : 1375 Updated : Sep 23rd, 2025

194: 51. Helping Lu Li, helping oneself 194: 51. Helping Lu Li, helping oneself The campfire flickered erratically, its light dimming as the cold wind swept recklessly into the cabin. The sudden turn of events left Anna, who had been ready to act, stunned and unsure what to do, her mind a chaotic mess. Had Lu Li not aimed properly? Had the gun gone off by accident? Was Lu Li hallucinating? It wasn’t until she saw the woman’s headless body sway a few times and then slowly turn around, raising her hands, unsteady as she approached Lu Li. Above her lips, everything was gone, revealing a fleshly, broken stub that once was a mouth, with a constantly quivering tongue. An indistinct voice, along with the flow of air, emanated from the base of that remaining tongue, “You... are not... the guest...” She, or rather it, took a few steps forward, knocking into a stone on the edge of the fire pit. The woman, now mostly brainless and blind, didn’t react, spilling the boiling meat soup over the campfire, causing sparks to scatter erratically. The woman’s clothes caught fire first, and then her body. A bright, crimson light shone from beneath her skin, her torso glowing like red-hot charcoal before bursting into dark-red flames with a whoosh. A normal human wouldn’t ignite upon contact with fire like it did, not to mention that a normal person would have died the instant their head exploded. Lu Li stepped back, watching the headless woman manage to rise from the nearly extinguished fire pit. Dark-red flames burst from the cracks in her parched body as it left the subdued campfire behind. Without a scream or a sign of pain, it merely moved its twisted body woodenly and ran towards the rainy outdoors. It paid no mind to the “husband” struggling and entangled with the Six-legged Savages at the doorway and ran past them, charging into the rain that fell like a deluge outside. The torrential rain beat down, with the woman’s body hissing as if magma had encountered water. The glowing, dark-red form emitted steam and cooled at a visibly fast rate, turning to a pitch-black like obsidian. The frigid rain also took away its life force. Its movement slowed, became stiff, and it fell to its knees in a puddle. It clutched its chest, its hands slowly curling inward into a pose akin to prayer. Towards the Mother of the Marsh. The body cooled quickly, and the headless figure finally came to a standstill. Hiss— The last wisp of smoke drifted out, shattered by the rain, dispersing into the rainy night. “Hiss!!!” At that moment, the young boy suddenly let out an inhuman scream and lunged at Lu Li. Like waking from a dream, Anna quickly set up a telekinetic barrier in front of Lu Li, shielding him from the little boy. Lu Li lowered the arm he had used for protection and pulled a burning stick from the campfire, jabbing it into the boy’s mouth. With a burst of strength from his foot, he surged forward, pushing the boy back with the force of the wind. Bang! The boy’s back slammed hard against the wooden wall, the burning stick piercing through his body from his mouth and out the back of his head, lodging into a crevice in the wall. Lu Li quickly retreated, dodging the boy’s wild kicks and scratches. The boy, like his “mother,” was highly flammable. In a matter of seconds, his head began to emit steam and thick smoke like a steamer, with flames flickering inside his gaping mouth and eye sockets. The boy, pinned to the wall, struggled violently, but the flames inside him quickly spread through his entire body. His dry, cracking skin broke open, ejecting a stream of fire. His struggles weakened until his arms drooped, and he remained motionless, pinned to the wall. The flames on his surface gradually died down, with occasional dark-red flickers inside his body. Lu Li, having reloaded his bullets, put away the Spirit-Calling Gun, not only because it was of little use against the family of three but also because the fight was drawing to an end. The man’s arm was torn off by the Six-legged Savages, the stump not bleeding but spewing an odd mix of sawdust-like matter. Five Six-legged Savages swarmed him, followed by the other arm, legs, and even the torso. The attack method of the Six-legged Savages seemed to be tearing the adversary apart, or as if venting emotions through this form of violence. The man didn’t scream or bleed, making the scene less gory, as if a group of monkeys had torn apart a life-sized wooden puppet. The last piece was torn apart, and the heads of the Six-legged Savages occupying half the space of the cabin all turned towards Lu Li in unison, eerily holding still for several seconds before crowding together again, a dense sound of teeth grinding arose. The grinding sounds became more soothing, no longer aggressive. “So, they are helping us?” Anna asked in a whisper. “Perhaps.” Lu Li nodded. “I think this is why people call them Six-legged Savages instead of monsters.” After dozens of seconds, the group of Six-legged Savages seemed to finish whatever they were communicating and turned to leave the cabin, heading around to a woodshed at the back. Lu Li put on his rain cape and took the oil lamp to follow, arriving at the woodshed door that had been smashed open by the Six-legged Savages. They crawled into the darkness behind the door, and sounds of heavy objects being dragged echoed. Lu Li stretched his arm into the darkness behind the door and slightly lifted the oil lamp. Under the dim light of the oil lamp, a pile of grimy corpses caked with mud was stacked in the corner of the shed, roughly looking to be more than a dozen piled up together. These were the corpses of Six-legged Savages. They all lost four arms in unison, leaving only a pair of legs, entangled together, one might mistake them for humans at first glance. The Six-legged Savages surrounded the corpses of their kind, touching them one by one with their arms, but none of them were survivors. “Ugh—” Anna, who was floating behind, retched. “If you can’t stand it, don’t look.” Lu Li said without turning back. “It’s not that, I just remembered the meat soup cooking in the pot... it’s from these creatures, isn’t it...” “You’ve already smelled it, what’s the point of feeling disgusted afterwards.” Anna felt that what Lu Li said made sense—but she couldn’t do it. With no surviving kin to be found, the Six-legged Savages changed their purpose; they approached the pile of bodies one by one, dragging their kind’s corpses out of the shed like ants transporting their load, moving them into the depths of the jungle. Lu Li and Anna witnessed the bodies in the shed steadily decreasing until the last corpse was dragged deeper into the jungle. A Six-legged Savage crawled out from the jungle, passing by Lu Li to enter the woodshed, and after circling inside, it found no more corpses of its kind. Clearly, the last Six-legged Savage to leave hadn’t informed it that the bodies had all been moved. The mud on its body had been completely washed off, revealing pale rough skin covered with blotches, and the triangular piece of cloth around its waist looked somewhat familiar to Anna and Lu Li. It was the first Six-legged Savage that followed Lu Li, the one that was spared and then saved. “Gara—” The sound of grinding teeth faded into the noise of the rain, the Six-legged Savage used all six of its limbs to crawl away without looking back. From beginning to end, they didn’t interact with Lu Li. “What the heck... I thought they came to help us, but they were just looking for their companions.” Anna felt somewhat dismayed. “Or maybe it’s both.” Lu Li spoke, his gaze directed towards the jungle. Lightning flashed, and within the slowly darkening shadows, the figure of that Six-legged Savage disappeared into the depths of the jungle.

Chapter 194 - 194 51

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