Chapter 14 Madness-Blooded Monster

"Huh? Finally decided to contact me?"

Having waited for a long time, Feng Xue saw that the Shadow Monarch had actually taken the initiative to reach out to him, and could not help but grin. He could finally get down to business.

He was still waiting to extract gene fragments from the blood of those grandmasters and supreme grandmasters to brew potions that would strengthen himself.

He cast a lingering look at the village where he had lived for a while. Such a peaceful and cozy life was about to become a thing of the past once again!

Without saying goodbye, he left the place directly.

To the people of the village, he was merely a passerby who had rented a house here to live for a short while. Without him, other people's lives would simply go on without the slightest impact.

Feng Xue himself had no idea what kind of impact his departure would bring.

To the people of this world, rising with the sun and resting at sunset was just ordinary routine.

Ordinary households could simply not afford candles or kerosene lamps, so after nightfall, they could only turn in early—at most embracing their wives and striving hard to create offspring.

Therefore, while the village was completely silent, the thunderous sound of hooves abruptly shattered all this peace.

"Woof, woof, woof—"

Soon, the barking of dogs rose and fell across the village, all of them startled awake, followed by the villagers, who one after another got up.

Although many of them had just awakened from their dreams and had no idea what was happening.

Before long, the village was woven with a chorus of commotion and weeping, accompanied by the wild laughter of men.

The butterfly of fate flapped its wings. Due to someone's scheme, defeated cavalry had arrived here, venting all the gloomy frustration of their defeat upon the villagers of this ordinary settlement.

Although there were able-bodied men in the village, how could they—armed only with hoes and sickles—possibly match the elite cavalry of the grasslands?

In a very short time, the men and the elderly in the village were slaughtered, and the women with any trace of looks all became tools for venting their bestial desires.

Amidst these people, a small child holding a crystal vial seemed utterly insignificant.

A grassland cavalryman killed the child with a single slash of his blade, snatched the crystal vial, shoved it into his tunic, and lunged toward a helpless woman with a ferocious grin plastered across his face.

In the struggle, the woman struck the soldier's chest with a pillow and was struck down by the enraged soldier. What the soldier failed to notice was that the crystal vial inside his tunic had shattered, and the little trinket contained within had begun to revive.

"@～????!"

He cursed loudly, shouting words in the grassland tongue that others could not understand, and then began searching for his next target.

Yet the next moment, he noticed something abnormal. He frantically clawed at the clothes over his chest, digging and scratching at his own flesh, refusing to stop even when his chest became bloody and mangled.

His expression grew increasingly unsightly, his features twisted, veins bulging, and his breathing turning labored.

At this point, he stopped scratching his chest and instead clutched his neck, gasping for air.

"Hoo, hoo, hoo—"

A low, animalistic growle emitted from his throat, no longer sounding human at all.

"Ugh—"

Suddenly, with a muffled groan, his eyes widened furiously, his eyeballs abruptly bulging until only the whites showed, surrounded by a web of bloodshot veins.

The soldier slowly hunched over, his posture bending as a tail covered in bone spurs and barbs gradually extended from his tailbone. He crouched halfway on the ground, shifting from bipedal walking to a crawling state.

The ten fingers of his hands also began to slowly transform, his finger joints growing thicker and much more slender. With a light spring, he scurried effortlessly along the wall like a gecko.

Just at that moment, another soldier ran in. Filled with anticipation, he saw the slaughtered mother and child, deemed it bad luck, and turned to leave with a string of curses.

Right then, a tail dangled down from the threshold. Resembling a scorpion's tail, it twitched slightly before suddenly snapping taut and piercing straight through the soldier's crown.

"Ugh—"

Pierced abruptly through the crown, the soldier's body convulsed unnaturally, yet supported by the tail, his body refused to fall.

He jerked like someone dancing under the influence of alcohol, his limbs twitching out of control.

And that tail glowed in the darkness with an eerie, dark red hue—a color that seemed to be flowing, as if drawing something out from the soldier's body.

A moment later, the tail withdrew from the top of the soldier's head. The soldier's body collapsed, while the monster pounced out from the dwelling to seek its next target.

Meanwhile, the fallen soldier began to sway and stand back up.

His complexion took on an unnatural, grayish pallor, and his entire frame appeared a size bulkier than before, his height having surged noticeably.

"Crack, crack!"

He rotated his neck, glanced at the corpses of the mother and child, and then walked mechanically and rigidly out of the doorway.

He walked extremely slowly, every movement closely resembling that of a robot.

"??#&..."

In the night, other grassland soldiers spotted him and called out loudly, asking about his haul.

Yet the one who had moments ago moved with mechanical stiffness suddenly became swift-footed, bounding with great speed directly toward his former comrade.

The grassland soldier thought nothing of it. They frequently used embraces to signal friendship, and he merely assumed his comrade was sharing the joy of his harvest.

He opened his arms, anticipating a solid hug.

"Roar—"

To his surprise, his "good comrade" let out a beast-like roar from its throat, lunged forward, clamped its jaws onto his neck, and began tearing into him with frenzied biting.

"Ah—"

A miserable scream pierced the sky, but amidst the chorus of screams echoing across the village, the others merely sighed at the cruelty of their peers and went back to what they were doing.

The soldier struggled and screamed frantically, but having transformed into a monster, his former comrade possessed immense strength, holding him in a death grip that made escape impossible.

Gradually, his screams grew fainter and fainter until they were no longer audible.

Half of his neck had been bitten into a bloody mess, yet when discarded to the side, it crooked its neck, swayed to its feet, and began wandering aimlessly through the village.

At the slightest sound, they would rapidly rush toward the source, then pounce and tear into any living creature they encountered.

Because they were former comrades, many let down their guard completely, and once cornered at close range, their strength was no match for the binding grasp.

Deep in the shadows, the progenitor continued to produce more perfect hosts of the Mad Blood.

Anyone whose brain matter was sucked out and injected with the primordial poison would be assimilated into a perfect host of the Mad Blood monster, while those merely bitten became subordinate hosts.

The only difference between the two was that the perfect host could continuously evolve and grow increasingly powerful, whereas the strength of a subordinate host was largely fixed, with no way to evolve independently unless the progenitor upgraded.

The most terrifying aspect of these Mad Blood monsters was their infectivity. Whether it was the progenitor, a perfect host, or a subordinate host, anyone wounded by them would be infected with the primordial poison, and without an antidote, would be assimilated into a perfect host.

This was also the most terrifying thing about Feng Xue: if he wished, he could use such biochemical methods to destroy world after world.

Previously, upon his death, he had used his infectivity to drag the entire world down to the grave with him.

Yet this time, heaven is his witness, he had never once intended to destroy this world. Simply because he had been touched by that little child, he had wished to preserve that shred of innocence and protect him, and thus subconsciously handed over the most formidable thing in his possession—the primordial poison of the Mad Blood.

With his skewed train of thought, he still did not understand what giving such a thing to a little child would mean.

Furthermore, what he could never have imagined was that shortly after his departure, the village was plundered by a band of defeated soldiers, and the primordial poison of the Mad Blood was thus unleashed.

Had he been present, he would have personally slaughtered all the soldiers and left no opportunity for the primordial poison to spread. But now everything was already too late; the poison began to spread, and the trajectory of this world gradually began to change.

The slaughter in the village continued, only the targets had changed—the soldiers and surviving villagers were now hunted down by the Mad Blood monsters.

Any living person was the prey of the Mad Blood monsters.

The very meaning of their existence was a craving for the living.

Amidst the endless slaughter, both the progenitor and the perfect hosts grew increasingly powerful, driving matters toward an uncontrollable direction.

The primitive consciousness of the progenitor began to direct all Mad Blood monsters to hoard food in preparation for the fission of its offspring.

The progenitor could split to create offspring, but doing so would consume massive amounts of flesh and blood, requiring sufficient food to be stockpiled beforehand.

Right now, the village was littered with fresh corpses, eliminating any need for deliberate hunting. They only needed to gather all the corpses together to provide the progenitor with flesh to consume.

Thus, the Mad Blood monsters transported corpse after corpse into a residential house, and the progenitor entered within to consume flesh and blood and spawn offspring.

Soon, smaller-sized offspring began to emerge, growing rapidly after consuming flesh and blood to assume the likeness of the progenitor. However, while these offspring matched the progenitor in appearance and strength, they lacked the ability to split again—meaning the progenitor was unique, and its status could not be usurped.

Yet this was only natural; if the spawned offspring could also split and multiply infinitely, such creatures would simply be far too terrifying.

Even as things stood now, they were already terrifying in the extreme.

Because a mere handful of soldiers and ordinary villagers had already spawned such horrifying monsters, what would happen next?