NOVEL WEB CHAPTER 354
CHAPTER 354: True Denizens of the Black Mist
“What is this thing?”
The creature before Lu Ming left him momentarily stunned. He had never encountered anything so twisted and grotesque in his life.
The first thing that caught his eye was the massive, slippery tongue crawling toward him. It moved slowly, but its length was astonishing—stretching nearly a thousand meters. As Lu Ming traced its path into the distance, he saw something even more disturbing.
About a kilometer away stood a war memorial, but it was unlike any monument Lu Ming had ever seen.
The ‘memorial’ was constructed entirely from human heads, piled up in a spherical shape. There were no limbs, just heads upon heads, clumped together like a bunch of grotesque grapes.
The heads varied in size. Some seemed to be sleeping, others were murmuring softly, a few looked around with wandering eyes, and several stuck out their tongues grotesquely.
The long, crawling tongue? It was one of the tongues spat out by these disembodied human heads.
“What the hell is this!?” Lu Ming muttered under his breath, unable to contain his disgust.
The hearing of the monstrosity seemed to be sharper than Lu Ming expected. The moment he spoke, the head with the tongue immediately turned to face him.
Its facial features were half-decayed, pieces of sticky, rotting flesh clinging to the skull. But beneath the decay, Lu Ming could still make out an expression of pure malice and murderous intent.
“Hungry!!” the head growled in a low, eerie tone. Whether it referred to its hunger or something else, Lu Ming couldn’t be sure.
In the next instant, the tongue shot toward him like a lightning bolt, moving with a speed that matched that of a Primordial Dao Pattern of Ascendant wielding a weapon with all their strength.
The speed of the monster’s attack would have overwhelmed most, but Lu Ming was far from ordinary. He had no intention of testing the creature’s attack power. Its grotesque appearance alone was enough to sap any desire he had to engage in combat.
With a swift sidestep, he easily dodged the incoming tongue. But then something unexpected happened.
The air wave generated by the tongue’s movement seemed to carry a strange, supernatural force. Even though Lu Ming was certain he hadn’t been physically touched, the mere brush of the air made his body feel momentarily sluggish.
In the next instant, two distinct streams of Origin Power began to drain from his body.
One stream came from the three Silver Dao Patterns etched into Lu Ming’s skin, while the other originated from the now shrunken Boshi Tower in his pocket.
Thanks to the Force System, the black mist no longer blocked Lu Ming’s senses. He could see clearly how the streams of Origin Power surged from his body toward the monstrous war memorial. Within moments, the creature greedily devoured the energy, absorbing it into the pile of heads.
Burp! The monster let out a guttural belch of satisfaction.
“Oh, oh, oh, oh—” it crooned, emitting strange, joyful cries.
Lu Ming could sense it immediately. As the monster consumed his Origin Power, its strength and speed increased. The next attack from its tongue came even faster, its deadly precision now heightened.
At the same time, Lu Ming began to hear more disturbing sounds—footsteps and more eerie cries. The air buzzed with the presence of approaching creatures.
Attracted by the residual Origin Power, more monsters were making their way toward him.
His eyes narrowed as understanding dawned.
“These things feed on Origin Power and Divine Origin,” he murmured. “Anything or anyone with those energies will be drawn to them… and devoured completely.”
“This even includes the power of Silver Dao Patterns,” Lu Ming realized.
The black mist itself wasn’t responsible for devouring Origin Power and Divine Origin. Its primary function was to isolate the perception of non-mutants. The real threat came from the strange monsters lurking within the mist—creatures specifically attuned to hunting those energies.
Understanding this, Lu Ming made a swift decision to leave.
Moving quickly, he managed to escape the immediate pursuit of the grotesque creatures from the war memorial. As he fled, he suppressed his own aura and the presence of the Boshi Tower to the absolute minimum, reducing the likelihood of detection.
While this tactic was effective, it wasn’t foolproof. The monsters' senses were unnervingly sharp— even the faintest fluctuation of Origin Power could draw them to their prey. Lu Ming could minimize the aura, but completely blocking the Origin Power emitted by the Silver Dao Patterns on his body and the Boshi Tower was impossible.
He quickly grasped a key principle: the stronger and more concentrated the Origin Power, the more dangerous the predators it attracted. Large prey would inevitably draw larger, more formidable hunters. By keeping his aura small, he hoped to avoid attracting the most dangerous creatures, like a small insect evading a bird’s predatory gaze.
So far, the strategy has allowed Lu Ming to travel relatively safely.
Carefully, he avoided a strange creature resembling a toilet bowl, observing it briefly before confirming that he had left the urban area of Xuanshui City behind. But the black mist had spread far too quickly—even outside the city, it hung heavy in the air, covering everything like a suffocating blanket.
Looking into the distance, the black mist stretched endlessly. The boundary was impossible to discern, and worse yet, more monsters were emerging from its depths.
“There are more and more of them,” Lu Ming muttered, his gaze sharpening as he realized the density of the abnormalities was increasing by the moment.
Logically, since the Ten Thousand Devil Abyss was the origin of the black mist outbreak, Lu Ming expected that the farther he ventured from it, the fewer abnormalities he would encounter. Yet, reality seemed to defy this logic.
This realization made Lu Ming frown as he fell into deep thought.
It didn’t take long for him to form a plan.
“I can’t keep moving forward,” he muttered to himself.
The fluctuations of Origin Power within him couldn’t be entirely concealed. This made Lu Ming a beacon in the darkness, attracting more abnormalities as he traveled. While many of these creatures were weak, even the weakest of them triggered reactions from the Origin Power within the Silver Dao Patterns on his body and Boshi Tower, causing him to leak more aura during any encounters.
More leaked Origin Power would inevitably attract more powerful creatures. It was a vicious cycle.
Recognizing this, Lu Ming glanced around cautiously. Spotting a relatively intact house nearby, he quickly darted inside, seeking temporary refuge.
The house was empty. No signs of life remained, and it was unclear whether the original inhabitants had been devoured by Ancient Demons or the monsters from the black mist. All Lu Ming found were bloodstains and the gnawed remnants of bones—haunting evidence of the fate of those who once lived there.
He moved toward the window, peering outside cautiously. The streets were largely deserted, with only the occasional glimpse of abnormalities wandering through the mist.
Suddenly, a distant explosion echoed through the air.
Lu Ming’s gaze snapped toward the source of the noise. In the distance, he saw an Ascendant realm Ancient Demon soaring into the sky, its expression one of pure despair. Hundreds of Primordial Dao Patterns crisscrossed its demonic body, and from what Lu Ming could make out, the demon had just as many Primordial Dao Patterns as he did—if not more. Its body was also adorned with an impressive Array of Gold and Silver Dao Patterns.
But despite all its power, the Ancient Demon was blind in the black mist, just like everyone else.
Like a headless fly, the Ascendant-level Ancient Demon flailed aimlessly, unable to find its direction. It ascended higher and higher into the sky, flying blindly—until it crashed directly into a colossal jellyfish-like creature floating nearby, easily over a hundred meters in size.
Pfft!
The Ancient Demon was sucked into the jellyfish’s gelatinous body. Through the creature’s transparent skin, Lu Ming could clearly see the Gold and Silver Dao Patterns on the demon’s body begin to collapse. Its Origin Power cultivation dropped rapidly, spiraling downward with no sign of recovery.
Suddenly, Lu Ming’s gaze sharpened.
At the very moment when the demon’s Origin Power and cultivation had been completely stripped away, its senses returned—it could perceive the world around it once more.
But it was far too late.
From within the jellyfish, faint air currents began to swirl. These eerie currents swept across the Ancient Demon’s body, stripping away its scales, flesh, and bones layer by layer. Within three seconds, the Ascendant of the Ancient Demon Clan, far stronger than Lu Ming himself, was reduced to nothing. Only a spreading pool of blood remained inside the jellyfish’s strange, translucent body.
Wuwuwu—
The jellyfish let out a strange, joyful cry before lazily drifting away, its enormous form swaying as it leisurely flew into the distance.
Lu Ming stood frozen, watching the grotesque jellyfish vanish from sight. His eyes narrowed, and he muttered to himself, “The version has been updated, huh…”
End of Chapter 354