254 Black Zone (1/2)
The song rode the cold wind but instantly disappeared, giving Ye Qingxuan the chills.
The guy hanging on the tree was clearly sent by the parliament. Before coming, he was definitely like a tiger and could take on ten enemies at the same time. Now, he had become a corpse for some reason and hung from the tree like a ragged doll.
All his blood had run dry and flowed into the Blood Path. His corpse was dry as a matchstick. Ye Qingxuan looked at the ‘matchstick’ and the ‘matchstick’ looked back at him. He looked and looked, and a sticky tear rolled out of the dried out eyes.
”Save me, save me,” the mouth without a jaw stammered. He begged with a muffled voice, ”Please help—no, kill—kill me…”
He was still alive?
The moment he spoke, his withered body suddenly swelled as if dozens of rats were scuttling within him and chewing something. It swelled larger and larger. In the end, something ate the last bit of his flesh and broke through!
Boom! There was a muffled sound. Ye Qingxuan quickly retreated but he still felt his vision going black. Then he felt something pounce at him.
With no time to think, he raised his hand. A complex music note appeared out of thin air. Instantly, hundreds of notes were flattened and were complete at the same time. They formed a music score and shot forward.
The melody overlapped, transforming into a hoarse murmur that announced gravely, ”Do not turn the three realms into ashes!”
The darkness was torn apart by the wild electric light. The electricity shot out like a flood. Heat surged, swallowing the thing coming toward him and that corpse. Ye Qingxuan did not dare to hold back during this moment. He used his strongest weapon at once—Indrah’s Eye.
After the sublimation ritual, his power had finally reached the lowest threshold and no longer needed to use his blood to activate the Eye; however, it was harder.
Indrah’s Eye was the best at destruction. Even if there was a third level musician clad in full armor and shield, he would still be destroyed. Soon, the moonlight in Ye Qingxuan’s eye brightened again, breaking through the darkness.
The hanging corpse had fallen onto the ground in pieces. The weird thing that had jumped out of its stomach rolled on the ground, already charred.
It looked like a child, but it had four long and thin limbs. Its burnt face was like a beast. As it writhed on the ground, its burnt body cracked open and something dust-like floated out of it. The dust melted into the wind.
Soon, it stopped moving. It fossilized and then broke apart, turning into powder. The powder disappeared quickly as well. All that remained was its skeleton and the stunned Ye Qingxuan.
He soon snapped out of it. After pondering, he took two coins out of his pocket and hurled them toward the deep end of the street. The coins flew through the air and landed with a crisp ding.
After the small sound, Ye Qingxuan saw the dust around the coin rise up for no reason, converge, and swallow the coin like a living thing. The dust scattered quickly but the coin had already lost all luster. It had been eroded into scrap metal. Then, it broke into a few grains of sand without anyone touching it, and rolled into the darkness with the wind.
Ye Qingxuan was covered in cold sweat. This truly was a black zone. The so-called black zone was actually a general term for the Dark World on the map. The safe zones for living were white zones, unstable areas were yellow, and dangerous areas were red. The black zone was the area of death.
In actuality, not even the Dark World had many places that could truly be called a black zone. In a black zone, the aether had already mutated and was uncontrollable. It had eroded the environment, turning it into unreliable and abnormal territory.
Any sound could create unpredictable reactions and consequences. It was like causing an avalanche by coughing on a snowy mountain but worse. To a human, it was an entirely different world. Just like now…
According to Ye Qingxuan’s guess, any outside interference could lead it to be eroded and assimilated by Avalon’s Shadow. In other words, it would become one with Avalon’s Shadow.
This was probably what had happened to the guy who had been hung. He most likely awakened the sleeping darkness and instantly fell to the painful state of not even being able to die. His companions did not dare to help him and abandoned him.
Ye Qingxuan was terrified too. Thankfully, he did not fully activate Indrah’s Eye. Otherwise, the crack of lightning would be enough to kill him, or at least skin him. Any music score would probably create unpredictable consequences here.
But he was not exactly safe, even if he did not make any sound. The flash of light just then had attracted many of the…weird things living here.
Crackle…crackle… Amidst the broken crackles, some things appeared under the broken tiles behind the decayed wall. Sticky black aura emanated from them. Under the pale moonlight, they latched onto everything and transformed into primates, formless ghosts, water demons and other unstable figures. They solidified and came from all directions.
Red eyes looked toward Ye Qingxuan. They froze and then burst into roars because there was nothing there. Hearing the screams behind him, Ye Qingxuan sped up.
He ran—of course he ran! Why would he wait for those things to come fight him as if he had run into a beehive? Who knew what would happen if they got into a fight if things were already this bad? Life was short and he did not need to try that.
Ye Qingxuan did not stop until he had run far enough. Gasping for his breath, he just felt that Avalon’s Shadow was too weird. He was far into downtown now. The farther he went, the slower the connection between him and aether. Like a fish out of water, the connection was getting weaker and more broken.
A musician’s roots had been taken away. If he was a regular musician, he would probably be like an average person now.
”This sucks. If you’re so powerful, then give me something even worse and I’ll respect—” Ye Qingxuan muttered. Suddenly feeling something wrong, he looked up.
Pairs of red eyes looked down at him from a withered tree. The eyes were cold and the things opened their black wings, shooting up. Sharp caws followed immediately after.
What was worse than angering a beehive?
Angering a crow’s nest!
Hundreds upon thousands of these sinister birds flew up from the withered trees instantly. They hovered around Ye Qingxuan’s head like a black cloud that screamed like a siren.