The Ancestral Legacy Begins in the Wild West

Chapter 178 Alchemy Armor Drowns Ghouls

This is naturally an exoskeleton ability that has been modified through alchemy.

He is not a Fullmetal Alchemist, nor can he perform instantaneous alchemy that can affect delicate mechanical structures. However, alchemy, as a technique rather than a magic, has a significant characteristic: it requires a great deal of advance preparation.

Previously, he used Vulban's blood as material to perform inscription spells on the exoskeleton, and that was exactly what it was.

At this moment, the exoskeleton he wore was gleaming in the darkness. Blood-red runes flickered in many places.

Another notable feature is that the runes are not entirely in ancient Western scripts such as Latin; they also incorporate some talisman-like structures.

"Crack—" Zhang Chang'an's iron gloves made a cracking sound because his hands were forming a hand seal.

"Buzz!" Within his body, the energy flowed slowly through his limbs and meridians, and further, it was channeled into the armor. The iron armor on his hands thus began to slowly revert to its original light and agile form.

That's right, this is another structure that combines elements, and to some extent, it's even more complete.

The exoskeleton parts, inscribed with special runes, can undergo a certain degree of reshaping and extension upon receiving commands from his hand gestures or movements. For example, thickening the armor, or—extending a blade!

"Pfft!" A blade suddenly popped out from Zhang Chang'an's wrist from beneath his restored hand armor.

The gleaming blade sliced ​​through the chin of a ghoul that was about to pounce, then emerged from the top of its head. The creature's teeth were embedded in Zhang Chang'an's arm guard, but its entire head had been split in two.

Zhang Chang'an took a half step back, continuing to fight while slowly observing his surroundings. The bones all around had been buried underground for who knows how long, and many of them had become extremely fragile.

As he roamed with the countless ghouls, many bones cracked and crumbled, scattered across the ground.

At the same time, there were also many gaps in the rammed earth vault above, as well as in the surrounding walls and floor.

Various things are hidden in the cracks.

While fighting, Zhang Chang'an caught a glimpse of several pairs of grayish-white pupils shining in the darkness, waiting for an opportunity.

Meanwhile, ghouls were emerging directly from the pits in the surrounding walls.

He turned and killed one, but immediately another one, alerted by the news, emerged from the hole and rushed towards his side.

Soon, his killing speed couldn't keep up with the speed at which the ghouls surrounded him. Many ghouls immediately hunched over, drooling, and surrounded him.

All around, countless strange things like these flickered.

"call!"

Soon, another ghoul sprang out from the shadows to his right rear, its blood-stained bone claws aimed straight for his lower back. His psionic senses, however, activated slightly at that moment, allowing him to detect this change in advance.

Zhang Chang'an didn't turn around. He decisively stabbed the knife from under his armpit backward, and the tip of the knife instantly pierced the thing's chest.

He turned around and pushed the knife forward, causing the creature to slide back two steps, its back colliding with another ghoul that was about to pounce. He then flicked the knife back, turned around and slashed, instantly shattering both ghouls on the spot.

As soon as he turned around, even more ghouls filled the gap and had already surged in front of him.

All around, there were those ferocious, bizarre, and hunched shadows that looked like mad dogs. Their grayish-white pupils shone densely in the darkness, like a nest of maggots that had been poked.

He flicked the hilt of his knife with a backhand: "Bang!" He instantly knocked down one of the knives that had rushed in front of him, took a half step back, and prepared to slash downwards to finish it off.

But just as he took that half step, "Crack!" A section of the rammed earth beneath his feet suddenly collapsed, and he stepped into a hole, tilting to the right.

A sharp screech suddenly came from above, and a dark shadow hung upside down from the crack in the ceiling, its claws reaching straight for his face.

He didn't have time to regain his balance, so he could only hold the knife horizontally in front of him and take the blow head-on.

"Crack!" The bone claw struck the blade, sparks flying out and splashing onto his face, burning him so much that he squinted.

However, he quickly realized what was happening and decisively freed one hand to grab its wrist.

"Crack!!" The iron fingers of the outer armor tightened, and the sound of bones breaking came from the palm. The thing screamed and was pulled off along with a large amount of sand. Then, with a whoosh, it was thrown out and smashed into the wall, breaking into several pieces.

"call----"

Zhang Chang'an looked closely and saw that the blade of Bingzi Jiaolin's knife, which was usually not stained with blood when killing people, was now covered with black blood. Some parts of the blood had even dried and formed a sticky, hard crust, making it much harder for the blade to cut into the flesh than before.

"Mythical creatures are just different!"

Although he has now traversed three and a half anomalous timelines and can be considered worldly-wise, he still doesn't really know much about these supernatural beings.

So far during my trip to Paris, my most frequent contact with this topic has actually come from records in some ancient alchemical books.

Of course, all those vague records combined cannot compare to his profound personal experience at this moment.

"Crack!" Zhang Chang'an turned his head decisively after hearing the sound of the rammed earth cracking beside him.

From one of the holes there, a ghoul had already poked half its body out, its claws aimed straight at his face.

Zhang Chang'an decisively turned his head to dodge, and slapped the thing from the side with his left hand. The palm of his outer armor struck the side of the creature's face, and the sound of bones breaking and the creature's scream rang out at the same time.

He clenched his fingers, gripping the deformed head, and immediately raised his knife in his right hand, ready to chop it down.

Who knew: "Snap—" A claw that had appeared out of nowhere suddenly grabbed his wrist as he stretched out his right hand behind him, preparing to unleash a powerful slash.

Zhang Chang'an decisively sidestepped and crashed into the ghoul he was holding, smashing its head with his elbow with a crack.

As he turned back, he immediately saw the figure behind him.

Being able to grab his hand and slightly stop his movements, it was clear that although the one in front of him was still a ghoul, it was indeed very different from the others.

The slender nails dug into the gaps between the outer nail plates, creating a sharp, screeching noise.

The ghoul in front of him had more sparse, incomplete hair than the others, sticking to its grayish skin as if it had been soaking in water for a long time.

Not only that, its grayish-green body was also clearly soaking wet, covered with what was unclear whether it was water or some other liquid, which was dripping down its festering skin.

This monster had limbs as thin and long as other ghouls, but its chest and abdomen were unusually swollen and bulging, as if something had been stuffed inside, making its skin and flesh shiny.

The blood vessels underneath were visible, dark purple, like a tangled mass of worms.

As Zhang Chang'an decisively withdrew his right hand to observe the situation, the monster also acted decisively, lunging at him with a sudden tumble and a violent contraction in its abdomen, as if something was pushing up from its stomach.

Zhang Chang'an's eyes widened suddenly.

Because the thing opened its mouth, the wet monster, which looked like the other ghouls around it and seemed ready to bite people to death, didn't seem to be in a hurry to bite. Instead, a stream of liquid suddenly gushed out from deep in its throat.

"Sizzle!!" A strong, pungent stench wafted up, like the smell of a rotting corpse soaking in water for months. This was followed by a large amount of murky, yellowish-green liquid.

It had been pickled inside the ghoul's belly for who knows how long; it was both toxic and corrosive, and equally dangerous.

"Whoosh!" He was practically thrown backward. His heels hit the rammed earth, and his body slid back, almost touching the ground.

The liquid grazed past him less than a palm's width away, with a few drops splashing onto the breastplate of his outer armor, immediately emitting white smoke and a sizzling corrosive sound.

Several small pits were burned into the coating on the surface of the breastplate, and the edges curled up, revealing the metal underneath.

"Holy crap—this thing looks like a drowned ghost? There are even variants?"

After dodging the attack, Zhang Chang'an didn't hesitate at all. He looked down at the ghoul.

After expelling the foul water from its belly, the creature's body deflated considerably, its abdomen collapsing like a punctured balloon. Zhang Chang'an, however, didn't give it a second chance. *Thud!* A knife pierced its eye socket, the tip penetrating its skull and exiting from the back of its head, pinning it to the rammed earth.

The thing's body convulsed violently twice, then stopped moving.

Zhang Chang'an pulled out the knife, retreated to the corner of the wall, and gasped for breath.

The number of ghouls around him had already decreased significantly after his continuous slaughter.

Zhang Chang'an, who finally caught his breath, found himself surrounded by more than a dozen corpses lying haphazardly on the ground. Some were still twitching, while others were completely still.

Black blood pooled on the ground, seeping down the cracks in the rammed earth and into the crevices of the piles of bones, making a very faint sound.