"Everyone, stay on full alert. There's something wrong with this place. We…" Liu Shaoyu shouted sharply, her voice cracking as she forced down the churning blood and the heat of fury in her chest.
Before she could finish her command, the once calm gray-white lake surface suddenly rippled in silent, widening rings that disturbed the stagnant mist. Then, one by one, pale, bloated arms surfaced from beneath the water, tangled with slick water weeds and smeared with thick, pitch-black slime. More arms followed, then heads, shoulders, and torsos. Figures in tattered, sodden clothes, their faces blurred and skin soaked until it was swollen and white, slowly rose and stood up out of the gray-white water.
Their movements were stiff and sluggish at first, their limbs heavy with the weight of the lake. Their joints creaked with a teeth-grinding sound that echoed off the rocks as hollow eye sockets turned in unison toward the uninvited guests on the shore.
"They're… drowned corpses. No, Water Grudge Corpses." A well-informed female disciple cried out, her voice shaking as all color drained from her face until she was as pale as the monsters. "They're evil creatures unique to the outer edge of Corpse Burial Abyss. They're corroded by resentment and yin qi, soaked at the bottom for years without rotting. They're incredibly strong, and…"
She didn't finish her sentence.
The Water Grudge Corpses closest to the shore suddenly moved with a terrifying burst of energy. They looked clumsy, but their speed was horrifying. They charged straight across the water toward the shore, dragging a nauseating, fishy stench of death and decay behind them.
"Form up! Defend!" Liu Shaoyu barked. Ignoring her internal injuries, she summoned a pair of curved blades into her hands, the steel gleaming in the dim light. Her aura was still unstable, but as a late-stage Core Formation cultivator, her reactions remained sharp.
Still, they had just survived a brutal fight and then a rushed, essence-draining teleport. Their spiritual energy was heavily depleted. Faced with this sudden, bizarre assault, the hastily formed defensive formation was riddled with gaps.
"Rooaar!"
A pale, swollen arm slammed down with monstrous force onto a disciple's barely raised spiritual shield at the front.
Bang!
The shield shattered instantly like glass. The disciple screamed, spewing blood as she was sent flying backward. A clear, sickening depression appeared in her chest where the blow had landed.
"Junior Sister!" someone cried out in horror.
But more Water Grudge Corpses were already upon them, their wet feet slapping against the stone. For a moment, spells flared wildly along the shore in a desperate defense. Spiritual energy clashed and eroded against the gray-white death qi that clung to the attackers.
"Don't let them get close! The water on them is poisonous. Their yin qi corrodes spiritual energy!" Liu Shaoyu shouted anxiously while swinging her curved blades. She severed a rotten, reaching arm, but no blood spilled from the stump. Only thick black fluid oozed out, sizzling as it hit the ground like acid.
"Hua Wuying, what are you standing there for? Do you want to die here?" Liu Shaoyu roared when she saw the other woman momentarily frozen by the initial impact of the carnage.
"Burn!" Hua Wuying snapped back to her senses. Guilt still weighed on her heart, but facing life and death, she knew she had to fight with everything she had. The blazing flame whip reappeared in her hand, cracking forward in a scorching arc toward the leading Water Grudge Corpses.
Boom!
Flames collided with the slime coating the corpses, sending up clouds of thick black smoke. The Water Grudge Corpses staggered back several steps, their bodies charred and their movements noticeably slower. Yet none of them fell. They howled and lunged again, their defenses far tougher than the disciples expected.
"Thunder talismans, go!" Senior Sister Liu Shaoyu shouted, flinging a handful of golden talismans into the air. They transformed into arm-thick bolts of thunder that slammed down on several of the corpses.
Thunder exploded across the shoreline. Thunder techniques were highly effective against yin evil, and the struck corpses convulsed violently as their movements locked up. One was blasted apart entirely, collapsing into a pool of foul black water and scattered white bones.
"It works! Use thunder techniques! Fire techniques!" the disciples cried, their spirits lifting as they unleashed fire and thunder spells or activated their matching artifacts and talismans.
But the Water Grudge Corpses seemed endless. As soon as they killed one wave, more immediately crawled up from the gray depths. Worse still, the moisture and yin qi saturating the area suppressed their spell power, and their spiritual energy recovered at an alarmingly slow rate.
"This won't work! Our spiritual energy won't last much longer!" a disciple shouted desperately. She had just decapitated a Water Grudge Corpse with her flying sword, only to have another tear into her shoulder. Numbness and icy cold spread instantly from the wound.
"Hold the formation! Shrink the defensive circle!" Hua Wuying roared, whipping her flames into a dense wall that forced several corpses back. She knew her mistake had brought this on. Now she fought desperately, trying to make up for her lapse in judgment.
Liu Shaoyu's face was deathly pale. She kept triggering talismans while urgently sensing in the direction of Young Sect Master Yu Xiaotang. "Young Sect Master… please hurry…"
Gurgle, gurgle.
Huge, foul-smelling bubbles suddenly burst up from the center of the lake. A stronger wave of death qi rolled outward, chilling them to the bone. The water churned as a massive Water Grudge Corpse, several times larger than the rest and clad in shattered ancient armor, slowly rose from the lake's center. Two points of ghostly green fire flickered in its hollow eye sockets as it locked onto the most powerful and conspicuous targets on the shore: Hua Wuying and Senior Sister Liu Shaoyu.
"Late-stage Golden Core… no, almost peak," the two women both sucked in cold breaths as they felt the monster's pressure.
"Rooaar!"
The Water Grudge Corpse commander let out a low roar and swung the long, rusted halberd in its hand toward the shore.
Boom!
"Dodge!"
"Flame Shield!"
A water blade crashed into Hua Wuying's flaming shield. The flames wavered violently before dimming fast. She grunted as the impact forced her to stumble back, fresh blood spilling from the corner of her mouth.
The others weren't so lucky. A female disciple at early Golden Core couldn't dodge in time. The edge of the water blade grazed her, and her protective light shattered instantly. One of her arms was severed clean at the shoulder. No blood flowed from the wound; instead, it rapidly turned gray-white and shriveled. She screamed in agony and collapsed, her body convulsing on the rocks.
"Ah Ling!"
"Senior Sister!"
The remaining disciples' eyes burned red with grief.
"This won't hold. We have to retreat," Liu Shaoyu said, staring at the commander raising its halberd again and the swarm of corpses closing in. A flicker of despair crossed her eyes.
"Where can we retreat? We're surrounded by water on three sides!" Hua Wuying shouted back.
"There! There's a crack!" a sharp-eyed disciple yelled, pointing behind the lake where a rock wall was hidden by dense aquatic plants and thick vines. A narrow fissure seemed to lead deep into the mountain.
"Go! Into the fissure!" Liu Shaoyu decided instantly. "Hua Wuying, you cover the rear. Everyone else, follow me and push through!"
"I…" Hua Wuying clenched her teeth. This wasn't the time to argue. "Fine!"
"Blazing Inferno Scorches the Sky!"
She spat out another mouthful of essence blood onto her flame whip. It erupted in blinding fire, spreading into a sea of flames that temporarily blocked most of the ordinary Water Grudge Corpses and obscured the commander's vision.
"Move!" Liu Shaoyu shouted, leading the five or six disciples who could still move. They supported the wounded and charged for the fissure without hesitation.
"Trying to leave?"
The Water Grudge Corpse commander seemed to possess crude intelligence. Green fire flared in its eyes as it swung the halberd again, bypassing the firestorm and slashing straight at a female disciple who was supporting an injured sect member.
"Watch out."