Chapter 221

Chapter 221: She Ran Into Something Fresh—It Eats Rotting Corpses

In the instant before it struck, Jiang Tea Tea dipped her body and slid away, light as a feather.

The black shape lunged into empty air, slammed into the opposite wall, and melted into it—vanishing as if it had never existed at all.

Jiang Tea Tea’s eyes swept the walls, a chill crawling up her spine. She’d expected something in the pool. She hadn’t expected the walls themselves to be alive.

Under the Flame Staff’s glow, the black surface wasn’t brickwork or uneven stone.

It was packed—densely packed—with things.

Jiang Tea Tea sprang upward. The Flame Staff surged beneath her, snapping back into her hand and shrinking into a slender rod.

She swung.

The staff struck the wall where the ambusher had been, and the blow carried magic power and fire like a death sentence. The creatures clinging there reacted as if they’d sensed slaughter, leaping away in frantic waves and scrambling onto other sections of wall.

The slower ones weren’t fast enough.

The staff caught them. Flame crawled across their bodies. Their throats tore open with a screech somewhere between a wolf and a tiger as they fell—

One. Two. Three. Four.

Every burning body that dropped into the pool disappeared at once, dragged under and swallowed by whatever lurked below.

Now Jiang Tea Tea could see them clearly: naked, human-shaped things, flesh rotted away in patches to expose white bone. The stink rolling off them was rancid. Their limbs were strong and agile, climbing like monkeys.

Living dead.

Jiang Tea Tea hovered, one hand tight on the Flame Staff, the other reaching for her earpiece on reflex—to report to Chong Ming—

And then she remembered. No signal.

Fine.

Leave one alive. Kill the rest.

Jiang Tea Tea snapped her staff outward and sent flame surging across the walls.

Anything the fire touched ignited instantly, as if the living dead were soaked in oil. Flames climbed, wrapped, and devoured them.

The stench thickened—rotten meat, fresh blood, burning flesh. The mix was so foul her stomach clenched.

She clamped her breath down hard. If she inhaled, she’d vomit straight into the pool.

“Sister Tea! What the hell is that?”

“Roommate, what is that?!”

Sui Xuan Chu, Huang Da Zhuang, and Ju Que were dangling down on ropes now. They stared at her while burning bodies rained into the pool.

And the moment they spoke, the living dead that hadn’t caught fire yet reacted to their voices.

They shrieked, braced hands and feet against the walls, and launched themselves outward like black blurs—jaws yawning wide, breath thick with decay—as they went straight for the men on the ropes.

“Holy—watch out!”

“Swing the rope—move!”

“Don’t let them touch you!”

The three men yanked and twisted their lines, swinging wildly to avoid the lunges.

Somehow, their panicked flailing worked. Their ropes braided into a tangled twist, and not one of the living dead managed to make contact.

They even had breath left to scream.

“Sister Tea, save us—save us! They stink! They stink so bad!”

“This doesn’t look like the mutated humans the Leader told us to catch!”

“Roommate, stop watching! Our ropes are about to snap—my uncle up in the sky, please!”

“Your ropes won’t snap,” Jiang Tea Tea said—and then she laughed. Actually laughed.

She shot forward, the Flame Staff cracking like a whip. Each strike landed clean.

Every living dead she hit flew off the wall and dropped straight into the pool.

And whatever lived down there ate them like snacks.

Sui Xuan Chu and Huang Da Zhuang turned into instant cheerleaders, shouting like they were watching a show.

“Sister Tea, left! Right! Yeah—smash its head!”

“Roommate, behind you—nice!”

Jiang Tea Tea was faster than the living dead by a wide margin. In a blink, the walls that had been crawling with them were nearly clear.

Only two remained.

She snapped branches from the Flame Staff, bound the last pair, and tossed the living branches up to Sui Xuan Chu and Huang Da Zhuang—one each.

The bound living dead struggled violently. Rotten flesh sloughed off in chunks, dropping away until bare bone showed in places. Even half-decayed, they still snarled and twisted like they refused to die.

A roar rumbled up from the pool again.

Sui Xuan Chu’s eyes widened. “Sister Tea… that sounds like a dragon.”

Jiang Tea Tea planted the Flame Staff into the pool’s surface. “You sure that’s a dragon? It doesn’t sound right.”

“It’s… like one,” he admitted. “But not exactly.”

“Fine.” Jiang Tea Tea’s voice hardened. “I’m going down to check. You stay up there. Don’t get in the way.”

The three men looked deeply offended by that.

Still, they did as told. One of them crackled with lightning and sent a clean jolt through the two bound living dead, knocking them unconscious so they stopped thrashing.

Jiang Tea Tea lowered herself onto the Flame Staff, letting it support her as it stood in the pool. Fire flowed around the shaft, and the staff began to expand again.

The pool couldn’t contain it. Blood-dark water spilled over the edges, sloshing outward, stinking like a thousand corpses steeped in gore. Where the staff’s fire touched the water, bubbles rose as if it were boiling.

The creature under the surface roared louder and louder… yet it still didn’t emerge.

Even when the Flame Staff expanded until it filled the entire pool, forcing water to pour out in waves, the thing stayed hidden. Only the sound persisted.

Jiang Tea Tea frowned. She began shrinking the staff again.

Water still spilled out.

Meaning the pool wasn’t a sealed basin of stagnant liquid. It was being fed from somewhere—endless, alive.

You couldn’t empty it.

Jiang Tea Tea formed several quick seals, layering protections over herself, and then—without hesitation—she jumped and vanished into the black-red water.

Up above, Sui Xuan Chu and the others stared like their eyes might pop out of their sockets.

That water reeked.

And Sister Tea—roommate—went in like she didn’t even feel it.

Under the surface, a water-avoidance art kept the filth from touching her. She breathed freely as she dove deeper.

The black-red layer thinned into pure black. Deeper still, the water cleared into something almost normal.

Jiang Tea Tea didn’t bother hiding her demonic aura. It spread through the water like pressure from a mountain, and the creature’s roaring faltered, turning wary.

She followed the fading sound for several minutes until the world opened up.

Ahead was a connection point between the pool and an underground river.

And at that junction stood a large platform—part altar, part raised stage—wrapped in a web of iron chains.

The thickest chain bound a jiao.

Black-gold scales gleamed faintly. It had a serpent’s long body, two legs, four claws, and a dragon head with short horns.

It had the outline of a true dragon—but it wasn’t one yet. It was a jiao.

In the Demon Clan, something like this could cultivate water control and, with time, even have a chance to become a dragon.

Jiang Tea Tea landed on the platform.

The black-gold jiao lunged instantly, mouth gaping wide, clearly intending to swallow her whole.

Jiang Tea Tea didn’t step back.

She raised her hand and slapped him straight across the face.

The jiao’s head snapped sideways. With a violent shudder, it forced its upper body into human form—scales gone from the torso, scars lacing every inch. One eye black, the other gold, it stared at her like she was an omen.

“You’re not human,” it said. “Who are you? Who sent you to kill me?”