Chapter 98: The Headless Ghost, the Man in the Sand
What the hell is that!
Its body was like a cheetah’s or a leopard’s, covered in lifelike, eye-shaped spots, yet it had three toes like an eagle’s talons, thick and viciously sharp, and a scorpion’s tail, a full meter long...
By every law of biology, such a creature had to stand at the very top of the carnivorous food chain.
But there was one point that was utterly impossible to reconcile with biology.
It had no head.
Well, if it had no head, was it still alive?
Was it some kind of headless ghost?
When those ferocious headless fiends surged in from all directions, densely packed and black as a tide, even many of those battle-hardened mercenaries felt their legs go weak.
A blur!
One suddenly lunged out, pouncing on a man from behind and slamming him to the ground. The others immediately opened fire, and the gunshots erupted all at once!
The remaining headless fiends launched their attack as well!
Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!
Shadows kept slicing into the space between Drifting Arrow and the others, and in the blink of an eye their defensive ring was thrown into chaos.
The main reason was that they had come too abruptly, too fast!
“Shit!” Flower Demon held a pistol in her left hand and a short blade in her right.
In that instant, when Drifting Arrow’s gaze swept over the scene, she happened to see the woman half-turn in midair, shooting one headless fiend clean through the body with a single round, while with the other hand she drove the short blade ruthlessly into its lower back.
But she quickly realized how difficult these creatures were.
“Damn it, without a head, they’re hard to kill! Their recovery is terrifying...”
A short blade in the lower back, a bullet through the waist and abdomen—none of it did more than make the headless fiend stagger for a moment before it lunged back at her...
Because they had been taken prisoner, Palace Nine and Drifting Arrow had been kept under the crowd’s watch to prevent escape, and this had spared them from the initial crisis. Palace Nine even had the leisure to make a joke while watching the slaughter ahead.
“Well, there is one advantage. At least with no head, they can’t eat...”
The moment she said that, she saw that beneath the headless fiend’s tail—well, around its rear—two tendrils, as thick as little fingers, shot out with a whiplike snap and wrapped around a man’s neck. The sharp tips pierced his throat with a sickening burst.
The man’s veins bulged instantly, the color draining from his face in an instant...
“Damn it, it sucks blood!”
Bullets slammed into that headless fiend, and its body did flash aside. The tendrils tore free from the neck, and in a few afterimages it evaded the incoming fire...
And within only a few minutes, ten people had their necks pierced and their blood drained, as if even the blood from their brains had been sucked dry. They died on the spot.
“Its head is in the back...”
“Hit it from behind!”
“Just hit it from behind!”
Drifting Arrow had never imagined that the animal kingdom could contain such a filthy, depraved thing, and such a dangerous one at that. They were cunning as ghosts, and even under such a storm of bullets, not a single one went down... Only a few, riddled with too many holes and bled too much, had slowed.
A strike from behind was certainly the most lethal, aimed straight at the equivalent of their “brain,” but the problem was that they never presented that rear to you. Getting to it was far too difficult unless others cooperated, and even then it was a nightmare.
“Run!”
Flower Demon immediately moved to retreat...
And then, at last, one headless fiend found the two women beneath the tree.
The instant it pounced...
Drifting Arrow and Palace Nine sprang up from the ground at the same time!
The ropes behind them dropped away...
The two figures shot forward like arrows, rushing toward the weapons that had been confiscated from them. The man had no time to care about their weapons now, and they snatched them back in a flash. Behind them, the headless fiend was already in pursuit.
They turned at once, both hands taking up the tusk-like dagger and the curved blade.
The blades flashed from front to back, one sweeping left, one sweeping right, both on the same level.
A vicious slash!
Blood sprayed in a crimson burst, and the severed body split into upper and lower halves, which flopped wetly against the tree.
“Beautiful!” Although her two prisoners had broken free of their bonds, Flower Demon did not look angry at all. Instead, she praised them warmly.
“The two of you, work together, or you won’t escape anyway...”
“Nonsense!”
With a glance from Flower Demon, several of her people had already produced two hand grenades...
Drifting Arrow sighed. The people attracted to this ancient tomb were truly something else.
The way they used prohibited military explosives so lavishly was outrageous. Who knew how much they had brought?
She guessed that Palace Nine’s treasure map must have marked the value of the treasures within; otherwise these people would never have been so desperate to come here.
Boom! Boom!
The grenades exploded in an instant!
Amid the blast, the whole group fled like mad!
-----
While running, Drifting Arrow and Palace Nine kept an eye on staying close to each other. What made them annoyed was that Flower Demon, that shrewd woman, stayed very close to them as well, as if she had latched onto them for good.
“That damn woman won’t leave us alone. I really want to kill her,” Palace Nine muttered over and over.
“Mm. Go ahead,” Drifting Arrow replied.
“...”
And so Palace Nine really stopped talking.
After a moment, Drifting Arrow added, “It’s not actually hard to shake them off. But are you sure you really want to do that?”
In truth, the two of them were far stronger than the others. Aside from Flower Demon, the rest could be shaken off with ease, and Flower Demon was not stupid enough to chase them alone.
So shaking them off would not be difficult.
The question was: why shake them off at all?
Palace Nine immediately raised an eyebrow. They could use this group’s strength to help explore the palace.
That was not impossible. In fact, it was a very good plan...
“Fine! We’ll do it that way!”
“Hm?”
“If it were usual times, apart from brute force, I’ve always been no match for that flower spirit when it comes to schemes and tricks.”
“And now?”
“You’ve got you!”
The young woman smiled with complete innocence and kindness.
Drifting Arrow: “...”
So you’re praising me for being good at schemes and plots?
Should I thank you for the compliment?
-----
At last, the group escaped the forest and reached the yellow sands outside. No one cared whether the ground was dirty anymore; they collapsed onto it one after another.
Most of them were exhausted like dogs. Flower Demon’s second most capable subordinate was not one of the burly men, but a tall, thin woman with short hair.
At first, Drifting Arrow had thought she was a man, but later this woman brought them food, and only then did she realize the person was female.
Her name was Deep Guide.
Deep Guide’s stamina was second only to Flower Demon’s. By now she still had enough strength left to count the losses, and after a quick tally her expression darkened a little as she turned to Flower Demon.
“Boss, we lost twenty people.”
“Just tell me how many are left.”
“Twenty-five.”
Flower Demon nodded, told Deep Guide to deal with the wounded on the spot with the others, and then, face set hard, walked over to Drifting Arrow and the others.
Palace Nine felt that this woman meant trouble, so she instinctively stepped in front of Drifting Arrow. “What do you want? Take it out on me if you have any complaints...”
Flower Demon gave her a sidelong glance. “And if I want to lay hands on someone?”
She twirled her gun.
Damn it, so what if you have a gun! I have one too, just not on me right now...
Palace Nine immediately sat back down obediently.
Drifting Arrow looked at her quietly. “Actually, you didn’t need to come out.”
Why bother?
Palace Nine’s face twisted in embarrassment.
Flower Demon was clearly very interested in Drifting Arrow and asked, “Drifting Arrow, right?”
“Mm.”
“You’re very capable.”
Drifting Arrow raised her eyes and studied her intent.
“Leave Palace Nine, that idiot, and come with me.”
Damn it! Palace Nine was just about to speak when Drifting Arrow said, “No need. It’s more comfortable living with foolish people.”
Palace Nine rolled her eyes.
Although Flower Demon believed there was no wall she could not dig through, she also knew how to judge people. She understood that some walls could not be forced open, or the result might be a pit instead of an opening. More importantly, she was not familiar with Drifting Arrow yet. Only after she understood her fully would she be able to find a weakness and make her move.
Since Palace Nine was already harboring the intention of using Flower Demon, she remained quite cooperative. For a time, the two sides got along fairly well.
And in this vast sea of sand, the place they were heading for was the palace beyond the oasis.
--------
Flower Demon’s group did not even know where the palace was.
Why?
Because they had entered the forest by another route, unlike Drifting Arrow and the others, who had dropped in from the sky.
So before they had even begun to use the treasure map, Palace Nine and Drifting Arrow already possessed enough leverage to cooperate with Flower Demon.
At the very least, they had seen the full outline of the palace from above, and they knew roughly where it was.
Across the endless yellow sands, the group trudged forward with great difficulty. Palace Nine occasionally pointed out the direction, and occasionally made things difficult for Flower Demon...
Drifting Arrow was not restricted in her movements, but Deep Guide kept following her nearby without a word.
“You don’t have to keep following me like this. If I wanted to leave, none of you could stop me,” Drifting Arrow said, glancing toward her.
“Is that so? You can try.”
Deep Guide was a proud, icy girl. She obeyed only Flower Demon, and her loyalty was absolute. To put it in Palace Nine’s words, the girl’s body and heart had both been stolen by Flower Demon...
In truth, Deep Guide had long been jealous of Flower Demon’s repeated favor toward Drifting Arrow, so her reply was rather unfriendly.
Drifting Arrow paused, her eyes narrowing.
Deep Guide tensed as well...
A flash!
Drifting Arrow’s tusk-like dagger left her waist with a sharp ring of steel. Deep Guide had just begun to raise her gun...
Clang!
The blade struck the incoming projectile, and a crisp, piercing note rang out.
“Deep Guide!” Flower Demon called out, only to see that what had struck Drifting Arrow was not a bullet, but an arrow.
An arrow?
Where had a bow come from?
“Watch out!”
From beneath the sand, yellow dunes suddenly surged upward, and a group of naked men appeared, clad only in short fur trousers, savage and ancient as if from a barbaric age, each holding an old-fashioned bow. They loosed arrow after arrow.
The shots were fast, incredibly fast!
In the blink of an eye, three people had their heads pierced.
Flower Demon fired at one of them.
That man seemed to sense the attack and raised his bow as well, drawing and releasing in one smooth motion...
The arrow flew, and its path was astonishingly parallel to the bullet.
The bullet’s nose met the arrow’s tip.
In truth, no ordinary person’s eyesight could possibly be sharp enough to follow that collision. Drifting Arrow could not either. She and the others could only see the bullet and the arrow collide in a single instant.
...
The keen arrowhead split the bullet clean in two!