I Forged the Myth of the Ancient Overlords
Chapter 105 - 105 104. Its foggy_1

Chapter 105: 104. It’s foggy_1 Chapter 105: 104. It’s foggy_1 Before answering Lu Ban’s question, Red Leaf sensed something more important.

“It’s getting foggy.”

A faint mist began to rise from those corpses.

The mist looked no different from mountain haze, but intuition told Lu Ban that it was very dangerous.

After all, it was highly suspicious why the bodies of these people, dead for a month, had still not decomposed.

According to his limited biological knowledge, after death, microorganisms within the body should start decomposing it. A corpse left in the wild for a month, in such a damp environment, would have decayed beyond recognition if not treated with preservatives.

Yet these corpses were perfectly intact.

Lu Ban could only think that all the microorganisms within these corpses, as well as those in the air, had died.

So, what could accomplish this?

The mist started to spread, drifting with the wind toward Lu Ban and Red Leaf.

“Time to skedaddle.”

Lu Ban immediately grabbed Red Leaf’s wrist and dragged her to run outside.

But outside the shrine, a dense fog seemed to engulf them as well.

“Try not to breathe in this fog, cough cough.”

Red Leaf coughed and covered her mouth with her sleeve.

She and Lu Ban exchanged glances. Seeing the pristine, white mist about to envelop the downhill road, they charged towards it.

On the move, Lu Ban also scooped some of the fog into a bottle and quickly capped it.

The two entered the fog.

Unlike normal fog, this one didn’t feel moist. When it hit their faces, it felt like a sandstorm, with a noticeable gritty texture.

Even with his mouth and nose covered, Lu Ban still inhaled some of the fog. He immediately felt a burning sensation in his throat and lungs. The tiny particles in the air combined with his alveoli, blocking his oxygen uptake channels. Instead, the fog flowed into his bloodstream, inducing even more mutation.

Lu Ban’s eyes turned bloodshot, as if about to spill blood. He glanced at Red Leaf. The Shrine Maiden’s eyes were equally red and her scleras were filled with blood vessels. However, a faint glow emanated from her, seemingly forming a barrier that blocked the fog’s intrusion.

“Is this ‘Technique’?”

The supernatural system of this world seemed to be centered around the shrine maiden’s prayers and Techniques, including enchantments. Lu Ban and Red Leaf emerged from the fog, managing to return to the mountain trail lined with torii gates in a very ragged condition.

The fog still lingered at the mountain’s peak, like a wild beast. Lu Ban even saw the fog heaving as if breathing. Soon, most of the fog quickly gathered and then disappeared.

The glow disappeared from Red Leaf’s body. She coughed for a while, spitting out several mouthfuls of dark blood, then turned to see that Lu Ban had collapsed on the ground.

“Cough cough cough, cough cough cough…”

Lu Ban kept coughing, the sound as if tearing his throat apart. The persistent and severe coughing was enough to cause the muscles in his back to cramp. He curled up into a ball, and as Red Leaf approached, she saw that Lu Ban’s eyes, nose, mouth, and ears were all oozing black blood.

“Corrosion… it’s the corruption of Pollution…”

Red Leaf had not expected that He Island Shrine had completely fallen, and even the Shrine Maiden in charge had perished. This meant that the Shrine Executive Officer of Song Island was completely paralyzed. Without their protection, the common people on the Island would have no strength to counter the Pollution’s influence from the sea.

No, perhaps she should have realized this. When she saw that mass of flesh and blood monsters charging down the streets, Red Leaf should have understood that the Island had undergone changes beyond imagination. Initially, the laxity of the dispatched Shrine Executive Officers made her drop her guard. After all, as a Shrine Maiden of He Island Shrine, Red Leaf clearly knew how difficult it would be to control a shrine on an island.

She could never have imagined that her pride, He Island Shrine, would be so easily defeated by that currently unknown formidable presence.

But now was not the time to debate faith. Red Leaf reached out her hand, preparing to use a purification Technique to treat Lu Ban. Just then, his cough transformed into vomiting. He bent over and vomited a clump of dark, filthy substance.

It was palm-sized, appalling, and caused Red Leaf’s eyelids to twitch.

If the corrosion had progressed to this extent, then Lu Ban’s life was likely…

She looked closely, trying to discern what sort of internal organ was involved when she discovered that the filthy substance was a clump of grass.

It was like a wad of grass that a cow had eaten and then regurgitated, that sticky, revolting thing was really a ball of grass.

Lu Ban vomited up a second clump, then a third, continuing until he had expelled the tenth ball. Coughing and vomiting, the severe shaking of his body finally began to calm.

Red Leaf saw that Lu Ban’s arms were pierced by thorns, and his body was overtaken by vines similar to ivy, with several twigs hanging like saliva from the corners of his mouth.

“… Why are you backing away?”

When Lu Ban saw the shrine maiden stepping back several paces and adopting a defensive posture, he asked.

“Are you alright?”

Red Leaf asked with a grave voice, watching Lu Ban with a guarded look.

This condition had far surpassed simple corrosion; he was now indistinguishable from those humanoid monsters that had undergone severe pollution and mutation… If this continued, he might well become a true abomination.

Red Leaf had seen her own parents, the villagers she knew, and friends she was close with begging her in agony to kill them when they turned into monsters due to the pollution and corrosion of that filth. After becoming a shrine maiden, she also witnessed people who once led normal lives with their own dreams fall prey to natural disasters and transform into monsters devoid of sanity.

At the sight of Lu Ban’s current state, Red Leaf’s heart might have stirred, but she immediately suppressed the feeling.

“No problem, it’s just a pity there’s no sun right now, otherwise I could recover faster.”

As he spoke, Lu Ban pulled the twigs out of his mouth one by one. The twigs were long, as though they were reversing up from his stomach, mixed with gastric fluid and black tainted blood.

“Don’t worry, I’m just a common person. These help me digest,” he explained earnestly. “You know, like how chickens eat stones to help grind their feed, and turtles eat stones to digest. It’s the same principle.”

“…You call this ‘common’?”

Red Leaf glanced at the twigs on the ground that still writhed like worms.

“By the way… are you alright?”

Lu Ban, as if recalling something, then turned to one side.

This made Red Leaf take half a step back because there was no one beside Lu Ban!

“Who are you talking to?”

Red Leaf immediately asked.

“My air friend. Doesn’t everyone on He Dao have air friends?”

Lu Ban countered.

“…Who told you that?”

Red Leaf broke out in a cold sweat on her forehead. She carefully chose her words and looked toward the emptiness beside Lu Ban. Only by focusing her spirit with the power of a shrine maiden could she glimpse that void entity.

It was the outline of a person, standing next to Lu Ban, seemingly uninterested in the maiden’s presence and just lingering there.

“Air friends… on He Dao are considered a kind of spiritual pollution that exists in ghost stories. They usually originate from a deceased twin in a pair of twins or a lingering attachment left behind after a close friend passes away. Their very existence is a form of pollution!!!”

Red Leaf saw that the outline beside Lu Ban suddenly began to change.

It seemed to turn its head towards Red Leaf and then, it grinned.

That mouth, it split open from one shoulder, across the chest and abdomen, ending at the other shoulder.

It had noticed Red Leaf!