Chapter 138 This Mysterious Faction Is Too Terrifying

The undead killed the cannibals and dragged the corpses away at top speed, bringing them back to the Vulcan Base.

These cannibals could still be squeezed for plenty of blood to revive more of the undead.

The entire process unfolded under the watchful eyes of the myna bird.

Standing on the small hill, Su Miao could see roughly what was happening.

She could not help feeling a creeping sense of fear; aside from the fact that their bodies were dead, these undead were no different from living people.

They possessed consciousness, employed strategies, faked being corpses to lure cannibals into traps, exhibited extremely high combat prowess, and loved hunting living humans. It was terrifying.

Yet, for some reason, Su Miao’s hand trembled in fright, and she cast an Undead Resurrection spell upon the Vulcan Base.

Unlike the Undead Revivals she had cast in the past, this was an upgraded version she had researched and refined over this period.

Simply put, she had turned the Undead Resurrection magic into a sustained-status effect. All the undead within a designated area would awaken, though newly dead corpses would not be converted into the undead.

Once the duration ended, the undead would revert to their previous state.

This wave of resurrection would likely keep the undead active for three to five days.

"Oh, it's already this late."

Su Miao checked the time and decided to head home first.

If too many undead crawled out later, she was worried she would be too frightened to look at them.

With these undead keeping the cannibals company, she believed the cannibals would pay no attention to her side for a long time to come.

Night was falling, and these cannibals surely wouldn't dare move about after dark; even ability users might not survive the nighttime cold.

Whatever issues remained, she would come back to check on them tomorrow.

Besides, she was getting a little hungry.

If she started a fire and cooked here, it would be bad if she were discovered by the cannibals.

Su Miao returned home.

Down below, the undead carrying the corpses walked a few paces before suddenly feeling a strange power welling up within their bodies.

They paused briefly, saying in hoarse voices, "Your Highness has arrived!"

Inside the Vulcan Base, by the blood pool.

The Undead Queen abruptly opened her eyes and dropped to one knee. "Thank you, Your Highness!"

At the same time, the dormant undead within the Vulcan Base awoke one after another. Those who had missed out on bathing in blood last time headed toward the blood pool, while those who had already bathed in it began waiting for orders.

Yet, after waiting for a long time, neither the Undead Queen nor the ordinary undead received any instructions at all.

This defied all logic.

"Queen, what should we do?"

After waiting for a long time, a powerful undead looked toward their queen.

Standing by the blood pool, the Queen was somewhat bewildered. Their Highness had awakened them without giving any commands?

"Continue with our plan! Let us grow stronger so we can better execute Your Highness's orders!"

The Undead Queen looked at the undead before her and spoke.

She had noticed that after the Witch Highness used her magic on them, the dormant undead could wake up, weak undead could grow strong, strong undead could become even stronger, some powerful undead who previously could not speak regained their voices, and even their thought processes became more active.

At the same time, they grew much thirstier for blood.

Was this the true reason the Witch Highness had awakened them?

Before the Witch Highness awakened them, the Undead Queen had already received news: a large group of humans had come from the north, and they seemed to be known as cannibals.

Cannibals...

This term suddenly brought a flood of memories rushing into her mind.

She saw a group of ragged people suddenly breaking into a blazing room, killing numerous people, splattering blood across the rooms, and then devouring the flesh...

Feelings of resentment and fury boiled within her soul.

"Is this what it felt like to be alive?"

The Undead Queen gazed at the blood pool before her.

These recovered fragments of memory gave her a clear objective: slaughter all the cannibals.

...

In the cannibal camp, a small cluster of people were making stew with the large green vegetables brought back by the search party.

They had originally wanted to hide it, but too many people found out, directly triggering a frantic scramble across the camp that ultimately turned into a communal pot of boiled greens and white meat.

After finishing the vegetable and meat soup, the cannibals fell peacefully asleep in their ice huts.

Because it was mealtime, many people had been entirely focused on the meat in the pots before them.

By the time someone noticed that this particular area had suddenly grown dead silent, the tragedy had already occurred.

At first, neighboring cannibals were overjoyed to find dead companions, thinking they would have another hearty meal.

However, once they discovered corpse after corpse bleeding from all seven orifices inside the ice huts, they realized something was terribly wrong.

It was worth noting that the cannibal squad leader who had discovered the large green vegetables was also among the corpses.

Fearing that reporting the greens would mean losing his share, he had decided to eat them first before making a report, only to find that after finishing his meal, he no longer had any opportunity to report at all.

"267 people died of poisoning. What on earth is going on?"

He Chao arrived.

Fury was etched across his face.

He had repeatedly warned and instructed everyone not to eat any corpses near the Vulcan Base, yet people still ate them?

Aside from eating flesh, how else could so many people have died?

"Who brought back those poisonous corpses?"

He Chao was furious.

These bastards were all a bunch of pigs; it wasn't as if they weren't being fed, yet they deliberately sought their own deaths.

"Gather all these poisonous corpses and dig a trench to bury them."

He Chao ordered the ability users among the cannibals to handle the burial.

If ordinary cannibals were assigned the task, in the event some idiot kept a piece of a corpse, another massive wave of people would die.

Having disposed of the bodies, He Chao began searching for the source of the poison.

His first check was of the leftover food in the large pots, all of which contained deadly poison.

Ten minutes later, he found the source of the poisoning: the leftover green vegetables in the pot.

"Greens..."

"How could there be greens? Where did they get greens?"

A stifled wave of rage with nowhere to vent welled up inside He Chao's chest.

They had issued orders forbidding the consumption of corpses near the Vulcan Base, but they hadn't forbidden the consumption of vegetables near the Vulcan Base...

Yet, in such a blizzard and extreme cold, how could there possibly be green vegetables?

In this bitter freezing weather, fresh greens were worth their weight in gold. Who on earth would poison them?

Before long, he found some leftover greens and summoned an injured cannibal, ordering him to eat the raw vegetables.

Three minutes later, the man who ate the greens bled from all seven orifices and died.

"Dispose of everything else."

He Chao looked at the corpses on the ground and shifted his gaze into the distance.

It was hard to believe this wasn't the handiwork of the mysterious faction that had wiped out the Vulcan Base.

He immediately arranged for men to clear away the leftover greens and large pots in the camp, and based on clues provided by nearby survivors, he traced the origin of the vegetables.

He Chao led his men to the patch of poisonous greens.

Every single vegetable here grew to about eighty centimeters in height, weighing several dozen pounds each, and looked remarkably appetizing.

Yet who would have thought these were the poisonous greens that had killed two to three hundred people?

Perhaps the timing of their arrival was fortuitous.

He Chao spotted a plump, large gray rabbit approaching the vegetables, taking a few hearty bites out of a large leaf.

In less than a minute, the plump gray rabbit wobbled unsteadily and dropped dead beside the vegetable patch.

"Extremely poisonous!"

"They really are poisonous. This is utterly unhinged."

"What kind of vicious monster spreads lethal poison on green vegetables? Are they trying to poison anyone who discovers this patch?"

The accompanying cannibals chimed in one after another, condemning the perpetrators of such a deed.

"Look, there's a sign over there."

Someone spotted a sign hanging from a mutated tree. It read: *Vegetables are highly poisonous. Do not eat.*

Upon seeing the sign, the expressions of everyone present turned remarkably complex.

He Chao adjusted his glasses and took a deep breath.

This warning sign confirmed beyond a doubt that the mysterious faction which destroyed the Vulcan Base had set its sights on the cannibals.

Furthermore, judging by the lethal toxicity of these greens, he even deduced the exact method this mysterious faction had used to annihilate the Vulcan Base in such a short span of time.

It was through these poisonous vegetables.

They had poisoned the Vulcan Base, and the base failed to notice in time; by the time they realized something was wrong, it was already too late.

To use green vegetables as poison in such blizzard conditions—what an extravagantly wealthy mysterious faction this was!

"Utterly vicious."

He Chao prepared to head back.

At that moment, someone hurried over to report, "Leader, we found a large number of mutated trees over there."

"Trees?"

He Chao said, "Let's go take a look. Leave two men to stand guard here; send someone later to clear out all these poisonous greens."

Upon arriving near the belt of mutated trees—which stretched for two to three kilometers—He Chao took a deep breath.

It wasn't as though he had never seen mutated trees before.

However, he had never seen a row growing in such neat and orderly fashion.

Unless they were the mobile type of mutated trees migrating and were forced to plant their roots after encountering something along the way, but even migrating mutant trees would never halt in such a formation during a group migration.

Thus, there was only one logical explanation.

These mutated trees were connected to the mysterious faction that destroyed the Vulcan Base.

Just how terrifying was the mysterious faction lurking here?

However, in such extreme freezing weather, most mutated trees would be frozen solid and rendered immobile.

This was precisely why the cannibals could safely enter the forest to log timber despite large-scale migrations.

The situation with the mutated trees before him should be much the same.

Still, out of an abundance of caution, he decided to have someone test them first.

"You two, go cut down a tree."

He Chao pointed at two men in his team. "Watch your safety."

Both cannibals were physically robust. They exchanged glances, hoisted their axes, and swaggered toward the belt of mutated trees ahead.

Before the blizzard and extreme cold, chopping trees would make them shiver, but chopping trees now couldn't be easier.

For their leader to tell them to be careful was simply looking down on them.

After walking thirty-odd steps, the two men arrived beneath a mutated tree, patted the trunk, and gestured to He Chao to show that these mutated trees, capable of surviving the severe blizzard, posed no problem at all.

"Idiots!"

He Chao’s face twisted as he shouted at the top of his lungs.

?

The two men felt a bit puzzled. Why was the leader suddenly cursing at them for no good reason?

Weren't they just cutting a tree down?

Something felt amiss.

They saw the people standing near their leader changing expressions, appearing to shout something at them, but why couldn't they hear it anymore?

From the perspective of the crowd of cannibals, the two men had approached the mutated tree and patted its trunk, appearing to show off.

In the very next second, however, the branches of the mutated tree whipped downward.

In a flash, the two men's heads were severed from their bodies.

Frightening tree roots burst from the snow, piercing the corpses and tearing them limb from limb in the blink of an eye, dragging all the remains beneath the snow.

The entire process took a little over ten seconds. After those ten seconds, aside from a few fragments of clothing and some blood on the snow indicating two people had once been there, absolutely nothing else remained.

"Leader, aren't all these mutated trees frozen solid under the extreme cold?"

An older cannibal elder asked.

He Chao adjusted his glasses and said, "Let's go back."

How was he supposed to explain this? It was his first time seeing such ferocious mutated trees. Truly, they lived up to being mutant trees capable of thriving in this bitter blizzard.

He had no idea how many preparations this mysterious faction had made here; he had to report this intelligence to King Daxishi as quickly as possible.

However, shortly after returning to camp, He Chao received new information.

"Brother Chao, a good number of our men have gone missing near the Vulcan Base."

The person who came forward was He Chao's deputy, Li Wei.

He Chao halted his steps. "What on earth is going on?"

Li Wei reported, "Our men went near the ruins of the Vulcan Base to investigate the deaths of leaders Liu Long and Fu Junxiang. Everything was normal at first, until someone screamed. I urgently dispatched reinforcement troops, but all we found was a pool of blood and missing men."

"I suspect there are some ferocious mutant animals near the Vulcan Base, or perhaps the mysterious faction that destroyed the base has made a move."

"Or it could be mutated monsters."

He Chao’s expression tightened as he asked, "Are there any further clues?"

Li Wei pondered for a moment. "Some people vaguely heard the phrase 'corpse resurrection,' though the specific details remain unverified."

Corpse resurrection?

He Chao looked in the direction of the Vulcan Base and nudged his glasses upward.

Complications were piling up by the minute.

By tomorrow, the pursuing forces from the Four Seas Base would arrive as well.

If their rear was ambushed at this time by the mysterious faction that had already shown hostility, the situation would become extremely perilous.

"Pull all our men back and establish a defensive line facing the Vulcan Base."

He Chao issued his orders immediately.

"Yes, leader," Li Wei acknowledged.

Watching his subordinate depart, He Chao walked toward King Daxishi’s ice hut.

Almost simultaneously, he noticed the myna bird soaring through the sky.

This myna bird was growing increasingly brazen, actually daring to fly directly over the cannibal camp.

However, considering how annoyingly slippery this bird was, coupled with King Daxishi's standing orders, He Chao chose to ignore it and walked straight into the ice hut.

"King Daxishi, a few developments have arisen around the camp..."

He Chao recounted the crises currently facing the cannibal camp one by one.

King Daxishi, drinking wine and eating meat, replied, "Tighten management. Make those cannon fodder hold out for a few more days. Proceed with everything else according to plan; wipe out the Four Seas Base first."

"Understood, King Daxishi," He Chao said.

The cannibals intended to draw back their defensive lines and avoid trouble for the time being.

However, the undead awakened within the Vulcan Base felt differently.

Seeing that no cannibals were actively approaching and unable to find any living prey to hunt, they simply marched straight out of the camp and, under the command of the Undead Queen, closed in on the cannibals.

Night had fallen, and the temperature grew increasingly bitter.

The living feared such extreme cold, but they were undead; they harbored no fear for such biting chill.

"Blood! We need more blood!"