C22 — Strange Tales By The Lakeside
by UntamedSMarcus dived into the lake, and in the lake, he actually felt more relaxed and soothed than on the ground, like he was swimming in air, and everything mesmerized him.
But he didn’t forget his purpose.
Marcus swam towards the center of the golden lake. The Yin corpses around him seemed uninterested in him, just hurrying past him, wanting to climb to the shore to enjoy a feast of blo-od.
He saw it!
On a boulder at the bottom of the lake, there was an aged dagger stuck.
And on the shore, Zhuo Yu frowned, feeling that something was not quite right.
“Even if he wanted to run, he shouldn’t have escaped into the lake; it’s full of Yin corpses.” The more Zhuo Yu thought about it, the more strange he felt. He vigilantly stayed in the half-extinguished spell formation; the congregation inside had already been cleaned up by the Yin corpses, and with Asha present, those Yin corpses didn’t dare attack them.
But what kind of confidence did Marcus have that made him dare to do so?
“Xiao Liu, pay attention to the surroundings; don’t let the mayor have a chance to show his head.” Zhuo Yu handed his handgu-n to Liu Jingyun. “Shoot him when you see him surface.”
The boss got a little annoyed. Why did that scum dare to swim into the Golden Lake?
Holding his axe, he strode towards the shore, blowing his whistle and ordering the Yin Corpses to attack the human in the lake. The Yin Corpses were puzzled by this command, but they still went into the water, patrolling the territory like hounds.
In the bleak moonlight, a head floated up, stirring up the dense water vapor.
With the sound of a gu-nshot, Liu Jingyun drew her g-un and shot without saying a word. But she was inexperienced after all; the first shot was off, but she immediately made up a few shots, and at least two bullets hit the man in the lake.
But his body only trembled twice, and then he broke through the waves and swam rapidly towards the shore.
This was really too counterintuitive.
Zhuo Yu thought to himself, It was as if this guy had deliberately gone to the lake to find something. He knew that it was impossible for a film set to set up an unbeatable boss; there was bound to be a weakness in Asha, but he didn’t expect the mayor to have thought of this.
Marcus just stopped at the lake shore; his eyes were crimson, the whites of his eyes were covered in sickly red blo-od, and his lips were frozen purple, but he laughed as if he’d fallen into utter madness.
“You have destroyed fifty years of my heart and soul and k-illed my most loyal followers; I see, it is fate that brought us together; you are my natural rival.”
Zhuo Yu knew that Asha wasn’t a talker, so he said to him, “Are you worthy?”
“Hush, don’t be so rude, my boy.” It was Mayor Marcus who was more like a crocodile now, as he swooped onto the shore and charged straight in Asha’s direction. “We are both chosen by the Golden Lake and deserve to make a decision!”
Marcus’ hand flashed with silver light. “You and I—only one can live after all!”
Liu Jingyun tried to raise his g-un to stop him, yet just like before, the bullets hit him to no avail. Marcus’s injuries healed at a rapid pace, and the pink new flesh directly filled the empty hole. That outrageous repair speed was much faster than Asha.
“Do you think that you’re the only one who can’t die?”
The madness in Marcus’s eyes increased, and extreme jealousy and resentment permeated within as he finally revealed what he was holding in his hand.
It was a dagger that had been immersed in the lake for too long; it had rusted and had a number of parasitic small shells attached to it; it looked fragile and vulnerable; and it seemed that it would break just by gently knocking on a stone.
Zhuo Yu’s expression changed.
His anticipation came true.
Flexible like a loach, Marcus instantly got close to the boss, and this was just what the boss intended. He wandered in the Golden Lake for fifty years and had long wanted to settle the grudges of that year.
The two of them fought together, with a huge difference in size, like a fierce tiger attacking a jackal. Of course, Marcus couldn’t defeat Asha. Just by being grabbed by his arm, his arm bones were already broken. He endured the pain and plunged his knife into Asha’s heart.
Asha dodged, but his forehead was also slashed by the blade, revealing a wound had never healed.
It was the fatal wound he had been left with before he was transformed—the mark of a dagger plunged into his heart by the Son of Marcus, a hideous vertical wound perched on his chest—the only weakness of this indestructible man.
Enraged, Asha swung his axe towards Marcus, a blow that nearly tore through the air, and Marcus would never survive.
With a poof, under the huge force, the axe was like slicing into tofu, splitting the mayor’s chest in one go; skin, muscle, and bone were chopped off in one fell swoop, revealing a steaming cavity and internal organs spilling out all over the place.
Marcus wailed miserably, but he laughed strangely as he cried out in pain, looking utterly bizarre. In about a few seconds, the mayor lost his strength and collapsed on the grass, completely dead.
“Captain, it can’t be that simple, right?” Liu Jingyun stood next to Zhuo Yu and asked quietly.
Zhuo Yu raised his eyebrows. This girl had already started to change the way she addressed him. Ah, clearly, the union had not been established yet.
“I also feel that this won’t end.”
If it were really that simple to solve that town mayor problem, the film wouldn’t have done so much padding.
Just as the crowd was staring nervously at the corpse on the grass, a puff of smoke formed by water vapor blew by, and Marcus disappeared.
“Where did he go?” Liu Jingyun exclaimed.
In the golden lake, a human body reformed.
“I was right in my guess, wasn’t I?” Marcus’s voice came from a distance. Zhuo Yu fixed his eyes and found him floating in the lake; his body was actually intact, and the wound that split his chest was gone.
Marcus stared at Asha dead in the face, constantly playing with the dagger in his hand. “After I made it through the seventh day, the scratch on my leg didn’t heal; it seemed to be permanently fixed at that moment. I tried cutting my finger again, and the new wound healed.”
“So, more than anything, I think the Fountain is keeping people at a certain point in time, and when we are injured, yes, it heals quickly, because we have long since transcended humanity. But once we die, our bodies revert back to the anchor point they were at when they were transformed in the lake.”
Marcus gave Asha an impishly disdainful smile. “And I wasn’t mortally wounded before I was transformed.”
As soon as he reinserted the dagger that had wounded his opponent into his heart, the “physical status quo” of the strange man would overlap with that year, reverting back to the timeline before he was transformed and he’d lose his Guardian powers because he couldn’t be resurrected.
The dagger would ki-ll the other, and Mayor Marcus was sure of it.
“Great Fountain, grant me the power of the gods; I will slay this dove-tossing monster and gain your dominion, and from now on, all who drink of the divine water will be blessed!”
Marcus bounced up, no longer having any qualms when he had already practiced his guess.
The two fought again, and no matter how many times Asha k-illed him, Marcus’ body could return to its original point, using a terrifying consumption tactic to wear down the opponent. He knew that this strong and robust monster did not want to die without dignity, and resurrection was a shame to him, let alone the fact the fact that he would never resurrect.
This guy had the will of a warrior.
But so what?
Marcus had already died more than ten times in a short period of time. He had gradually figured out his opponent’s attack routine, but just because his brain understood it didn’t mean his body could keep up, and this time he was caught by the neck again and had his spine twisted.
“Have you noticed that Marcus has become different?” Zhuo Yu was inside the spell; the bright light allowed him to see the battle in the distance. “After each resurrection, his body swells a little; he’s slowly becoming deformed.”
“I’ve noticed that too.” The two ordinary people, Liu Jingyun and Zhuo Yu, were unable to intervene in the battle between the two undead; they could only be anxious.
Zhuo Yu felt that the current situation was very dangerous and that Mayor Marcus was able to rely on the power of the Golden Lake to resurrect indefinitely. It was like a player who was able to archive; as long as he didn’t die for a single day, he would always be able to find a chance to pass the level. No matter if the boss was strong enough, he would be able to find out the characteristics of the attack so that he would be able to understand how to dodge it.
It was only a matter of time before someone with this kind of ability would win the game.
Asha’s situation was getting worse and worse.
When Marcus’s blade slashed across Asha’s forehead, finally cutting through the skin, Zhuo Yu couldn’t hold back any longer.
It was his own will, and the will of the character he was assigned, who were completely unable to accept Asha being hurt in front of their eyes. Especially to Zhuo Yu, the sight of Asha’s perfect body being cut by such scum was simply something that was too much to bear.
“I know!” Zhuo Yu quickly summoned a fork from the grid space and stabbed it into his own arm without changing his expression, using the sharpened side to make deep and long cuts, and a large amount of blo-od suddenly gushed out.
“Captain, what are you doing?” Liu Jingyun gaped, clearly not understanding what was happening in front of her.
But Zhuo Yu’s plan took effect.
Marcus’s movements suddenly stopped. Sniffing in a dog-like manner, he suddenly placed his gaze on Zhuo Yu’s body, or, to be precise, on the bleeding wound.
Marcus wasn’t the only one thinking about the enemy’s weaknesses, Zhuo Yu was also thinking non-stop. From the very beginning, he felt that Marcus was out of place. How did he know about the Golden Lake’s Seven-Day Curse unless he had come into contact with those who had survived, or if he himself was a survivor?
Coupled with the fact that he wasn’t an approved guardian of the Golden Lake, yet he still dared to dive into the lake without fear of an attack by a Yin Corpse, there was only one conclusion.
Marcus wasn’t blessed by the Fountain of Youth; he was just an “ageless” corpse!
He was cursed!
When Zhuo Yu saw that Marcus was no longer looking at Asha but was attracted by the blo-od and running towards the formation, he immediately turned his wheelchair and headed in the direction of the hexagram.
This was the eye of King Solomon’s spell formation; the six bottles were the town objects; once opened, only the owner could close them, and all those who wanted to destroy the formation would be attacked.
But the fastest way Zhuo Yu could think of was only this!
He reached out and probed into the eye of the formation that emitted a sharp silver aura, and instantly, the powerful gravity caused the blo-od vessels in his right hand to explode inch by inch, and in half a second, it had already turned purple, and his skin was filled with bruises.
“The pressure is too strong.” Even Zhuo Yu could barely endure the intense pain; he only felt like his hand had been put into the bottom of the ocean, several thousand meters deep. The pressure was about to crush his entire hand.
“Help me!” Zhuo Yu looked towards Liu Jingyun.
Liu Jingyun had already been frightened by Zhuo Yu’s injuries to the point that tears were welling up in her eyes, but Marcus was still a few steps away, so she gritted her teeth and closed her eyes, using all her strength to push Zhuo Yu towards the eye of the formation.
Zhuo Yu’s entire right arm probed in, his flesh crumbling, revealing blo-ody fascia and bone. He had never experienced this kind of torture before and was about to let a hoarse cry of pain, but his hand still firmly and forcefully gripped the holy vase at the corner of the hexagram and ripped it out with one hand.
King Solomon’s Third Phalanx was broken.
At the same time, Marcus, who was holding a dagger, rushed to Zhuo Yu’s body; his eyes were cloudy, and after too many rebirths, his sanity that belonged to a human being had been worn down.
The current him was a bloo-dthirsty Yin Corpse!
Marcus stabbed Zhuo Yu’s heart.
TN:
I was going to upload two chapters as usual, but the next chapter is really, really long so I’m still working on it.
So see ya tomorrow or next ✌️
Thank you for the update~