CHAPTER 260: CRIMSON ROT

"Outsider, do you still refuse to surrender your remaining two companions?"

The masked elder before Wang Yu tapped his staff against the ground as he spoke, his tone hoarse, rough, and sly. His gaze remained fixed on Wang Yu, who stood unmoving before the encircling Crimson Clan.

"..."

Wang Yu said nothing. He stood in absolute silence, facing the masked men who now surrounded him, a still shadow among wolves.

"My patience has limits," the elder growled, his voice growing irritated. "If you insist on just standing there, I will—"

"Koff—koff—cough! Guh!"

A sudden fit of coughing interrupted the elder's words. One of the masked men beside him dropped to his knees, retching violently.

"What's the matter with you? Get up—we've yet to deal with the outsider."

The elder turned, confusion flashing in his eyes. The man beside him had collapsed, bracing himself on shaking arms, heaving and gagging as bile and blood spilled from his mouth.

The elder struck the man's head with his staff in frustration, urging him to rise. But that only made things worse.

From the fallen man's mouth poured an awful mess—half-digested food steeped in crimson blood, streaked with what looked disturbingly like brown, hair-like threads. Gasping, clawing at his own throat, he convulsed violently, smashing his chest against the ground in a futile attempt to expel whatever had taken root inside him.

But it was useless. Weak and wracked by poison, the man collapsed face-first into the vile pool of his own vomit and gore—whether dead or dying, no one could say.

Around the elder, others began to succumb to the same violent coughing and retching.

In minutes, all those below the level of an intermediate knight-in-training had dropped to the ground. The stronger ones clutched their throats and stumbled, staggering with wide, panicked eyes.

"What's happening? What's wrong with you all?!"

The elder spun around, his voice tinged with disbelief.

None answered. From the moment the symptoms appeared, not one of his comrades had spoken a word—only meaningless groans and rasping coughs. The elder's interrogation was destined to go unanswered.

"It was you! Damn you, outsider—you did this! How dare you defile the Crimson Clan?! Those who still draw breath—rise! Fight!"

His surprise gave way to fury. Though he hadn't analyzed the situation, he hurled an accusation at Wang Yu—and by sheer luck, hit the mark.

Wang Yu remained silent. He kept to hishabit of not wasting words in battle, and continued to watch with calculating eyes as more masked men fell around the elder.

The poison that Wang Yu had deployed was known as Crippling Miasma. It was simple in terms of toxicity, but particularly valuable because it was colorless and scentless—nearly impossible to detect without supernatural senses.

Absorbed through the skin, the poison seeped into the capillaries before spreading silently through the entire body. Once it took hold, muscle and lung alike would be paralyzed, leaving its victims choking, vomiting, and helpless.[1]

Those with weak constitutions who could not purge the poison were quickly rendered immobile—mere husks unable to even crawl.

Upon sensing the Crimson Clan's hostility, Wang Yu had unleashed this poison via his Chariot.

The surrounding forest had become a silent killing field, saturated with his deadly miasma. Those within its reach could be brought to their knees within moments, if he so willed.

The elder slammed his staff to the earth. A dull impact echoed through the trees.

An that moment, the poisoned warriors who still held breath ceased their convulsions.

Shaking, groaning, they forced themselves upright. Ignoring the effects of the miasma, they charged Wang Yu with desperate, unnatural strength.

A few hurled spears toward him; others unsheathed blades and surged forward in a frenzied charge.

Wang Yu's eyes narrowed. Something was wrong. The agony of Crippling Miasma should have drawn screams from them if they attempted to forcibly move their bodies. Even the strongest wills should have succumbed.

Even as he thought, his body didn't slow.

His Chariot surged. The spears flying toward him ground to a halt in mid-air, slowed as if pressing through stone.

With a flick of his hand, the spears reversed course, slicing back through the air—now faster and deadlier.

The enemy never saw it coming. Their own weapons pierced their chests, shattering bone, tearing organs apart, and pinning bodies to the ground in a spray of blood and agony.

As the spears struck home, Wang Yu vanished. His figure blurred into motion, propelled by the union of his refined fighting spirit and a body now at—in truth, past—the threshold of a grand knight.

The earth cracked beneath him. He reappeared behind one of the attackers—for a heartbeat, they were back-to-back—and drove his elbow into the man's spine. Bones crunched. The man's body bent unnaturally before collapsing.

He didn't pause. He followed up with his fist. Air hissed around him as he punched forward.

The blow shattered another foe's neck, severing his head from his shoulders. The body crumpled forward as the skull arced backward into the woods.

Without missing a beat, his left hand dipped to his waist. With the Chariot, he summoned his starsteel blade and swept it forward in a single, merciless slash.

Two more of the masked warriors were cleaved cleanly in two, their torsos sheared apart at the waist.

In mere moments, half the attackers lay dead—proof of the gulf between a knight-in-training and a grand knight. Numbers meant nothing against such a difference in power.

Now fully awakened, Wang Yu had finally risen to strength. His powers—his body, his will, his Chariot—all marked him as a true warrior, worthy of fear.

He scooped two fallen blades from the ground, then tossed them forward. The blades flashed like lightning, too fast to track. Two more enemies clutched their throats and fell.

It didn't end there. The Chariot subtly guided the blades, adjusting their trajectory mid-flight. They carved elegant, crimson arcs in the air, slitting throats as they passed and claiming more lives in one breathless moment.

From the forest behind Wang Yu came two arrows, their tips glowing green. They struck the final masked warriors dead between the eyes. In less than a minute, the Crimson Clan's hunting party had been utterly annihilated, their bodies strewn among the leaves.

Only the elder remained.

He stood paralyzed, terror in his eyes. He staggered backward as Wang Yu advanced, but it was useless. The Chariot had already claimed the ground beneath him, turning the earth into chains that bound his feet.

Wang Yu had not intended to kill, at least not at first. But once they insisted on binding him to the laws of their tribe, he had no reason to show mercy.

They were welcome to their laws. But once they tried to impose them upon him—that was where he drew the line.

There were many who sought to force their rules upon others—clans, kingdoms, would-be empires. But such imposition required strength. Without it, such laws were merely delusions.

The Crimson Clan had no such strength, and they had paid the price for their arrogance.

Wang Yu stopped before the elder. Unlike the others, whose chests were bared, the elder was robed. Wang Yu seized the robe and ripped it open.

It wasn't as if Wang Yu had any perverse intentions. He just wanted to understand why the elder had remained unaffected by his poison.

Wang Yu had spread the poison around indiscriminately. The elder should have been struck down from the very beginning, and the fact that the man still stood demanded an explanation.

"So that's it," Wang Yu murmured to himself. "It's a miracle that a body like this can even remain functional. Just what is this ancestral spirit of your Crimson Clan supposed to be?"

The moment he caught a clear glimpse of the elder's physical form, the mystery was resolved.

"Putrid rot" barely sufficed to describe it. The elder's emaciated frame was marred by wounds in various shapes and sizes. Raw, decaying flesh clung loosely to splintered muscle and ruptured skin. The corruption ran deep, down to the jaundiced bone slick with viscous, yellow slime. How this... thing... still moved, Wang Yu could not fathom.

Yet given that the elder's body had already been reduced to such a grotesque ruin, it made perfect sense why he was immune to Wang Yu's poison.

Wang Yu intended to observe further. He wanted to know how the ancestral spirit of the Crimson Clan had sensed their arrival—and more importantly, how it had turned their clansmen into such abominations.

Though this ruinous state bore little resemblance to the "corruption" Holo had described, Wang Yu suspected that there was a definite link between the two.

Back in the elven capital of Liaheim, within the Eden Plain that lay beneath the great Tree of Life, an elven elder sat quietly inside one of the small wooden lodges reserved for the Council. In his hand was a letter passed to him by a waiting forest ranger who stood respectfully outside. The elder's fingers slowly traced the surface of the parchment—a habit of his when he was deep in thought.

"Moira... If this came from her, it's worth taking seriously—despite how unbelievable it sounds on the surface."

Murmuring to himself, the elder slipped the letter back into its envelope and set it gently on the desk.

Wang Yu and Avia had penned the letter. They had leveraged Moira's connections to pass it directly to an elder.

Its contents described their understanding of the corruption afflicting the Sorensen Mountains, along with speculation as to why, despite festering for years, it had never spread beyond those peaks.

Wang Yu had even briefly mentioned devils. Back during the Hellgate incident in Aleisterre, Wang Yu had confronted the devil within Pernia's body inside her mindscape. During that confrontation, he had questioned the creature about the corruption in Sorensen and whether it had been their doing.

In a rare show of twisted candor, the devil had admitted it outright, claiming that it was the handiwork of the devil Three.

Still, trusting a devil at face value was the height of folly. Wang Yu knew that well. Only a fool would take a devil's word as truth, and he wasn't about to make that mistake. He mentioned the exchange in his letter, but merely in passing.

"Devils... Creatures that dwell in the shadows of history, and yet who seem to appear all too often. The rest of this message might be plausible, but this part veers far too close to fantasy."

The elven elder shook his head slightly. The moment he'd read the word "devil," the credibility of the entire letter had, almost subconsciously, been lowered in his mind.

"Still, if it concerns the Tree of Life, we cannot afford to be careless. If their hypothesis is correct—and the Tree has, all these years, been feeding life force to some undefined ‘corruption'—then the Root Network must have extended that energy toward the Sorensen range..."

He paused for only a moment before issuing a calm order: "Bring a team—those same rangers who dealt with the Tree of Life's root network. I want a full investigation. Find out whether any roots from the Tree of Life extend in the direction of the Sorensen Mountains."

The ranger bowed and departed at once, setting the plan into motion.

1. Hmm... ☜