The Ancestral Legacy Begins in the Wild West

Chapter 179 Yan Fan

The moment you open your mouth, the air is filled with that pungent stench of decay, a mixture of the burnt smell of acid and the stench of blood, so strong it makes you want to vomit.

Zhang Chang'an's outer armor was covered in black blood and an unknown liquid, with bits of flesh and bone stuck in the gaps between the armor plates. Bingzi Jiaolin's blade was slightly worn, and the black blood was extremely viscous.

Zhang Chang'an roughly counted the corpses on the ground; there were nearly forty.

Some of them were still alive, some were buried under rubble with only half their bodies showing, and they were still digging at the ground with their claws, their nails even turning up, but they wouldn't stop.

His grayish-white pupils stared intently at him, his mouth opening and closing as he bit the air, saliva dripping down his chin in a line.

He wiped the blood from the knife on the sole of his shoe and looked around.

Between the terrifying tombs, all the interconnected pits leading deeper and deeper are still there, dark and bottomless.

At least for now, there are no signs of any monsters moving around in the back.

But from further away, deep in the darkness, sounds were still coming.

It was very fine, with the sound of fingernails scraping hard soil and uneven teeth grinding against each other, all mixed together, making it impossible to distinguish how much was there.

There was an even deeper sound mixed in, slightly discordant, but clearly not the footsteps of a ghoul.

Deep inside the cave, something heavier seemed to be moving.

Zhang Chang'an did not retreat, but he also did not rush forward.

He stood still, the Bingzi pepper stalk hanging at his side, the tip of the blade pointing downwards towards the ground. He silently adjusted his breathing.

Because the environment deep inside this cave is completely unknown, he encountered ghouls as soon as he arrived, and who knows what else is in the depths.

Furthermore, the speed at which those sounds approached was far beyond what ordinary people could imagine.

"Shh, shh, shh, creak, creak—"

The things deep in the darkness hadn't yet shown themselves. But Zhang Chang'an had already gripped the hilt of his sword again, his fingers tightening around the outer armor, making a soft clicking sound.

Soon, the floor beneath their feet began to tremble slightly.

Zhang Chang'an's pupils also trembled slightly. The vibrations coming from the rammed earth were very light, but the frequency was increasing. It was clear that there were too many things running over and their footsteps were too dense, so they formed a continuous, low hum.

The sounds from deep within the cave merged together, the rustling sounds rapidly approaching and mixing together, like a tide washing over a pebble beach.

"Isn't this quantity a bit too much?"

He muttered to himself, his thoughts racing: "Even if there are corpses everywhere down there, enough to support so many ghouls, why have they all suddenly come here? Is this right?"

He shook his head helplessly after having just killed dozens of ghouls.

"How about we stop being so reckless? We can unload our equipment, pretend we just discovered it, and go back to the guards at the Sharl prison gate to give them a good blast?"

He was certainly not afraid of these monsters, but as things stood, they seemed endless, and he was at a loss when dealing with them.

The underground laboratory is basically a closed structure. The warden trusts few guards who can provide him with valuable alchemical equipment, so there are never many patrols here. This situation has not yet been discovered.

If he were to use a revolver, or go back to get some materials and perform a more powerful alchemy, he could indeed solve the immediate problem more easily, but the commotion would definitely not be kept secret.

He hesitated for a moment, and then the tidal wave of sound drew closer.

So he didn't hesitate any longer. Firstly, he was genuinely interested in this underground catacombs that connected to other parts of Paris, since it could definitely connect the prison to the outside world.

Secondly, those things came too quickly, giving him almost no time to consider them.

In response, he quickly chose to temporarily plant the long sword in the ground.

Then, he raised his hand and pulled out a handful of powder from inside his clothes. With his other hand, he decisively grabbed a few ghoul bones from beside his feet, clenched them with his five fingers, and the bones immediately cracked into several pieces in his palm.

"Whoosh!" He slapped the powder and bone fragments together in his hands, and after they slowly fused together, he quickly scattered them at his feet and above his head into the narrow holes in the ground.

"Buzz—" As the powder drifted in, it emitted a very faint white light. The bone fragments landed at the edge of the cave entrance and rolled in as if they were being sucked in by something.

Ritual alchemy unfolded instantly in the darkness. The soil at the cave entrances began to grow on its own, the rammed earth layers turning outwards as if they had come alive.

The stones and clods of earth at the edges came together in the middle with a few clicks, and the opening was sealed tightly, even more solid than the surrounding rammed earth.

Soon after the sealed cave was opened, a chaotic noise came from behind. It seemed that several ghouls that couldn't brake in time crashed into the newly sealed earthen wall under the shoving of the ghouls behind them. The sound of bones breaking and screams were mixed together.

Of course, Zhang Chang'an knew this seal wouldn't last long. Those things would find a way around from somewhere else, or they might simply dig up this new layer of soil again.

Moreover, he couldn't seal off the main tomb passage in front of him.

In response, he simply raised his head decisively.

From the depths of darkness, those things emerged.

Not just one or two, but a whole swarm! Gray, hunched, and festering shadows emerged in droves from the darkness, crowding the entire tomb passage.

Many of those running ahead were similar to those he had killed before, but a quick glance revealed many others that were clearly different.

Some were so badly rotten that half of their flesh had decayed away, revealing dark red muscles and blackened bones underneath. When they ran, their joints creaked and groaned, yet they were faster than those that were still intact.

Some were soaking wet, just like the one that vomited acid earlier, their bellies bulging, swaying with every step they took, and drool dripping from the corners of their mouths.

Some were exceptionally large, with bellies so big they dragged on the ground. When they ran, the flesh under their bellies scraped against the rammed earth, making a rustling sound and leaving a wet trail.

He could see at a glance that there were at least a dozen. And there were more, still pouring out.

However, his pupils narrowed for a moment before he took a step forward in an instant.

"Bang!" The moment his foot landed, a puff of white steam shot out from the steam valve at the knee of his outer armor, and his foot took root on the ground.

Two bizarre ghoul variants ran in the lead. The one on the left was soaking wet, its mouth open, liquid churning deep in its throat.

The one on the right had a huge belly, but its claws were clearly longer and more ferocious than those around it.

In response, Zhang Chang'an simply gripped the knife with both hands, lowered his body slightly, and then suddenly sprang forward.

"Buzz!" His gaze flickered slightly, and the Death Eye, which had previously slowed down, was instantly activated again.

The boiler behind the steam armor started spinning rapidly, and the accumulated power suddenly exploded. At that moment, his hands also began to swing rapidly.

"Whoosh!" The first slash went from the lower right to the upper left, the blade instantly slicing open the jaw of the acid ghoul on the left, severing its throat from which liquid was gushing out, and shooting out from the top of its head. Black blood and yellow acid sprayed into the air at the same time.

At the same time, his blade continued to move, quickly drawing another arc in mid-air, slicing directly into the shoulder of the fat ghoul on the right.

The blade pierced the flesh, encountering considerable resistance at first, but it still quickly pierced diagonally through the entire chest cavity and emerged from the side of the abdomen.

The two variants fell to the ground at the same time. One's head was split in two, and the other's upper body was almost cut open diagonally. Internal organs and black blood gushed out from the cuts, splattering all over the ground.

His movements, however, did not stop.

With a whoosh, the longsword in his hand appeared above his head as if by teleportation. The strange blood from the ghoul didn't even have time to stain the blade before he slashed out.

"Pfft!" The familiar sensation of the blade slicing through bone traveled through the hilt to his hands once again.

Zhang Chang'an cleaved down a variant of the ghouls that was much larger than the ones around him with a single vertical slash.

The strange corpse was cut vertically in two, and like the previous two, it fell directly to the ground.

He decisively sheathed his sword, held it at his side, and continued preparing for the endless layers of monsters that lay behind him.

But just as these incredibly swift ghouls were about to pounce on him...

"Buzz!" Zhang Chang'an unconsciously turned his head and covered his ears.

Suddenly, a strange sound came from deep within the tomb.

The sound was very low, almost inaudible, more like something vibrating. It wasn't loud, and most people could hardly hear it, like some kind of infrasound.

However, it made him extremely uncomfortable.

The sound, once it entered his ears, seemed to climb up his bones, reaching the back of his head, buzzing and vibrating, making his teeth ache.

"What's going on—"

But at that moment, he became alert and gripped the knife with both hands again, forcibly suppressing his discomfort, and looked ahead to guard against a sneak attack.

But those ghouls, who are undead creatures and are not afraid of even combat auras, clearly stopped in their tracks amidst the chaotic noise, as if they had begun to fear the commotion.