70: Chapter 70 Three Sticks of Funeral Incense

The night wind was biting, carrying a pungent stench mixed with sulfur and rotting flesh.

The gates of Paper Mill No. 44 in Heishui Town had long been covered in rust.

The two towering iron gates hung crookedly on their hinges.

The air raid siren had been abandoned for many years, like a blind one-eyed crow, staring fixedly at the living people who broke into this forbidden zone.

The hydraulic door of the armored command vehicle slowly closed behind them, completely cutting off the final retreat route.

Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan made a tactical gesture.

Ten fully armed field operatives of The Ninth Bureau, holding assault rifles loaded with cinnabar armor-piercing rounds, quickly spread out in a fan shape toward both sides of the factory gate.

The infrared laser beams on their tactical helmets cut back and forth through the thick black fog, interweaving an airtight network of lethal firepower.

"Mr. Lin, the outer cordon has been set up. Skynet satellite data shows that in the main factory area five hundred meters ahead, the concentration of Yin energy is off the charts, and radar cannot penetrate it."

Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan lowered her voice, her fingers resting on her holster, with a grim expression.

Lin Ye nodded slightly, his gaze passing over the dilapidated iron gate and casting into the depths of the factory area.

The night sky was tightly covered by a thick layer of haze, preventing even a sliver of starlight from shining through.

At the end of his line of sight, three abandoned exhaust chimneys standing one hundred meters tall were like three sharp swords, stabbing straight into the firmament.

He pulled out the Sanyuan Fengshui compass from his tactical backpack and glanced down at it.

The magnetic needle in the compass pool spun frantically like a mad demon, its magnetic field having completely collapsed long ago.

"No wonder the Yinshan Sect chose this damn place as their lair."

Lin Ye put away the compass and pointed at the three towering chimneys in the distance.

"In Fengshui geomancy, three pillars rising from flat ground—if the factory area were prosperous, this would be called [Three Yangs Bring Prosperity], capable of gathering wealth from all directions..."

"Yet this place has been abandoned for many years, completely uninhabited, and underneath it lies a mass grave. These three black chimneys have thus become a literal [Three Mourning Incense Malignancy]!"

Lin Ye's tone was low, echoing at the entrance of the empty factory area.

"These three sticks of incense do not worship gods or Buddhas; they pay respect to the thousands of departed souls beneath the earth. Leveraging this geographical advantage, the Yinshan Sect continuously gathers the resentment from a ten-li radius here."

"Once the midnight hour arrives tonight, the Mourning Incense Malignancy will be completely ignited, and that Hundred Ghosts Night Parade grand formation will be unstoppable by anyone."

Fatty Wang followed behind, and upon hearing the three words "Mourning Incense Malignancy", the fat all over his body trembled uncontrollably.

He took a deep breath, his hands gripping tightly onto the menacing boning knife wrapped in old cloth at his waist.

This knife had drunk the blood of countless live pigs, carrying an extremely heavy baleful aura.

Gripped in his hand at this moment, a faint warm pulsation came from the hilt, forcefully helping the fatty stabilize his weak legs.

"Y-Ye-zi."

Fatty's teeth chattered as he forced out a smile uglier than crying, turning his head to look at Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan.

"Captain Chu, if Fatty-brother here dies a glorious martyr tonight, does your The Ninth Bureau manage housing and land distribution? Does this count as martyr treatment for me?"

Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan was amused by the fatty's brazen attitude and let out a cold snort. "If you can make it out alive, The Ninth Bureau will award you a Good Citizen Medal. Now shut your mouth, stay close to me, and don't fall behind."

Cutting the chatter short, the group stepped on the withered yellow weeds all over the ground and officially entered the factory gate.

As soon as they stepped over the rusted iron threshold, the surrounding temperature suddenly plummeted below freezing point.

Leng Yue walked on Lin Ye's left, her long black trench coat snapping loudly in the night wind.

The faint light flashing in her deep red pupils within the darkness and her acute intuition allowed her to instantly lock onto a trace of faint abnormality in the air.

"Husband, there is corpse poison in the air; they have poisonous miasma melted into those chemical waste liquids."

Leng Yue's voice was clear and crisp as she spoke to remind him.

Frost Star walked on Lin Ye's right, the little girl sniffing fearlessly as a flash of excited blue light flickered in her heterochromatic pupils.

"Such a foul smell, like a dead rat soaked in a sewer for half a month. But it doesn't matter, Frost Star is not afraid of poison."

She waved the faint blue small bone knife in her hand, her oversized Pikachu T-shirt swaying slightly with her movements.

Lin Ye felt out a few triangular-folded Qingxin Miasma-Evading Talismans from his pocket and handed them to Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan and the fatty.

"Stick them to your chests to prevent corpse poison from entering your bodies. Let's go straight to the main factory building; the pulp dissolution pools there are definitely the outer nodes of the formation."

The group proceeded along the cracked cement road toward the direction of the three giant chimneys.

Along the way, it was dead silent; not even the chirping of an insect could be heard.

The doors of the abandoned warehouses by the roadside were wide open, pitch black inside.

Before long, a giant factory building covering an area the size of half a football field appeared before everyone's eyes.

Over half of the factory's roof had already collapsed, exposing an intricate skeleton of steel structures.

The walls were crawling with eerie dark green moss.

A pungent mixed odor of ammonia and formalin poured backward out from inside the factory building.

Everyone held their breath and cautiously stepped into the factory gate.

Borrowing the faint beam of the shoulder lamps from The Ninth Bureau's special operations operatives, the scene inside gradually became clear.

In the center of the hall, five huge cement pulp dissolution pools with diameters exceeding ten meters were shockingly sunken side by side.

The papermaking waste liquid in the pools had long dried up, and what filled them at this moment was actually a highly toxic sludge as thick as asphalt, bubbling with dark red bubbles.

This sludge exuded an extremely evil and chilly aura, and a thick layer of black frost had formed at the edges of the pools.

"Drip... Drip..."

From the broken steel pipes overhead, black water droplets continuously fell, smashing into the sludge pools and making a terrifyingly sticky sound.

Lin Ye furrowed his brows deeply, his gaze sweeping across the five pools filled with poisonous sludge.

"Five Ghosts Soul-Sealing Formation."

He spoke in a low voice, his speaking speed extremely fast.

"Those scumbags of the Yinshan Sect dug up the severed limbs and broken arms from the mass graves back then and threw them into these pulp dissolution pools. Supplemented by the chemical toxic liquids of the paper mill for cultivation, they forcefully turned this place into a toxic pool for raising corpses."

"This is acting as guard dogs to patrol their core grand formation."

As soon as his voice fell,

inside the largest pulp dissolution pool in the center, a deafening muffled sound suddenly erupted.

"Glug-glug—Boom!"

The viscous poisonous sludge exploded like a fountain, and mud splashed everywhere.

Several distorted, huge black shadows slowly crawled out from the depths of the mud pool.

These monsters were close to two meters tall, and not a single piece of complete skin could be found on their entire bodies.

The grayish-white rotting flesh was eerily fused together with the abandoned steel bars and rusted gears from the factory.

The dark red poisonous sludge dripped down patter-patter along their swollen bodies.

Wherever they passed, the hard cement ground was instantly corroded into uneven, pitted holes.

Toxic Pool Corpse Melters!

Not only was this kind of monster infinitely strong, but its entire body was also covered in deadly poison. When ordinary swords and sabers hacked onto it, the splashed poisonous blood could instantly dissolve a living person into a puddle of bloody water.

"Open fire!"

Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan reacted extremely quickly, giving a sharp shout as she pulled out the twin guns at her waist.

"Bang, bang, bang, bang!"

The deafening gunfire instantly shattered the dead silence of the factory building.

Ten operatives of The Ninth Bureau pulled their triggers, and the dense armor-piercing cinnabar rounds formed a net of fire, pouring crazily onto those monsters crawling out of the mud pool.

The moment the bullet heads sank into the rotting flesh, the Pure Yang aura erupted by the cinnabar exploded inside the monsters' bodies.

"Aargh-roar!"

The Toxic Pool Corpse Melters let out shrill screams as rotting flesh flew everywhere.

The heavy firepower of The Ninth Bureau was indeed fierce, yet the healing ability of these monsters was even more despair-inducing.

The half-shoulder that had just been blown off was nourished by the surrounding dense Yin energy, and with the rolling toxic mud, it re-condensed and formed again at a speed visible to the naked eye.

"They are absorbing the Yin energy of the earth vein to repair their bodies! Physical attacks cannot kill them!"

Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan fired several shots in succession, her expression turning iron-blue.

At this critical juncture, a faint light flickered across Lin Ye's retina, and the system prompt crispily popped up in his mind.

"Ding! "My Lord, Please Behave Yourself" System prompt: Detected that the host has encountered the Yinshan Sect's outer guard post [Toxic Pool Corpse Melters]. A perfect combination of Resident Evil and metaphysical sorcery, please have the host finalize a countermeasure to defeat the enemy within three minutes, demonstrating the prestige of Taoist orthodoxy!"

Above the light screen, three options were clearly listed:

[Option A: Inadequate Firepower Phobia — Shout out loud "Captain Chu, hold on", hide behind cover yourself, and quietly wait for The Ninth Bureau to empty their bullets. Reward: Coward's Medal.]

[Consequence: The corpse melters' poisonous blood will corrode the entire The Ninth Bureau team, you will lose a powerful outer covering firepower, and Leng Yue will feel extreme disappointment at your cowardice.]

[Option B: Release the dog, yandere dispatch — Pat Frost Star's little head and command "Dinner is served". Let the Nether Corpse King tear these toxic creatures apart alive.]

[Reward: A set of Lolita little dresses.]

[Consequence: Frost Star swallowing excessive chemical waste will lead to severe gastrointestinal protest. The little girl will strike for the next three days and demand that you provide double the Yang energy compensation.]

[Option C: Three Talents Lock Malignancy, Thunder Fire Purges Evil — Let the officials witness what true dimensional reduction strikes are! Using Pure Yang True Blood supplemented with the [Three Yang Subtle Fire Talisman], deploy the Three Talents Formation to lock down the source of Yin energy, and instantly incinerate these few toxic creatures into ashes.]

[Reward: Husband points +300, acquire the limited-time title "Fire-Control True Monarch".]

As soon as the options came out, Lin Ye made an immediate decision in his heart.

This kind of toxic creature must never be touched by Frost Star; those pools full of heavy metal chemical waste liquids—if they ruined the stomach of this delicate little Corpse King, the one who would feel heartbroken in the end would still be himself.