There was no way out!
The more this happened, the calmer Fang Ming’s heart became. His gaze continuously swept between the heads, searching for an opening, but unfortunately, An Bo’s technique was too skilled. He had no way to dodge.
"Got it!"
Since he couldn't dodge, he might as well use An Bo's attack to disengage from the battlefield. His mission was to destroy the runes and the accumulation pool, not to get entangled with An Bo here.
An Bo’s attack arrived in the blink of an eye.
Fang Ming found the right angle and met one of the heads’ attacks with his right arm.
"Bang!" Fang Ming’s body recoiled rapidly, borrowing the force. However, the tentacles on his right arm were also smashed into a bloody mess.
"Hiss... This is too brutal."
Fang Ming rolled on the ground a few times, dissipating most of the impact. He clutched his tentacles and cried out in pain. A large portion of the scales on them had shattered.
However, the good news was that with this blow, Fang Ming and An Bo had created a distance of at least dozens of meters. Fang Ming seized the opportunity to draw out his resentful energy staff and thrust it into a nearby corpse.
"Boom!"
A roar sounded, and another rune was destroyed.
"Escape!" Fang Ming detonated the corpse and turned to flee without a moment's hesitation.
An Bo roared and chased after him, the distance between them rapidly closing.
Fang Ming glanced back at An Bo, cursing inwardly, "Damn it, his strength has been modified to be too strong, and his speed far surpasses mine."
Fang Ming knew that simply running away was useless. An Bo would catch up soon. However, he noticed a favorable situation – An Bo in this state was irrational and would only attack his target ferociously. This meant he could still use the force of An Bo’s attacks to move between the various corpses!
But…
"I don't know how many more attacks my body can withstand," Fang Ming said with a wry smile. An Bo was already approaching from behind, the sound of breaking air echoing as two heads launched an attack at Fang Ming.
Fang Ming timed it perfectly and once again used his right arm tentacles to block An Bo's attack, borrowing the force to reach the next corpse.
"Boom!" Another one was detonated.
Looking at his increasingly injured tentacles, Fang Ming ignored the pain and continued to run towards the next corpse.
An Bo caught up again. They continued like this, a chase and evasion. Once An Bo caught up, Fang Ming would find a way to injure himself and use the force to widen the distance between them.
It was fortunate that An Bo, despite having many heads, wasn't very effective, or Fang Ming would have been taken down long ago.
Fang Ming clutched his chest and scanned the surroundings. More than half of the graveyard remained intact. He chuckled wryly, "Why is there still so much?"
"I don't think I can hold on much longer. I hope the female corpse can escape from the Ancient Huai Fiend."
His injuries were very serious now. His right arm tentacles had already broken, leaving only half, and they were smashed into a pulp. There were several circular dents on his back, all from An Bo's attacks. His internal organs were also severely damaged, and one of his ribs had even pierced through his chest, exposing a white, jagged bone.
"Crack, crack…"
Here it comes again!
Fang Ming, dragging his heavily injured body, continued to flee. But his speed now was far inferior to An Bo's. In just a few breaths, he was caught up again!
"Swish! Swish! Swish!" The sound of breaking air echoed. This time, three heads attacked simultaneously!
Fang Ming tried to repeat his tactic and quickly raised his right arm to block. But he forgot that his right arm was already broken in half. This time, his prediction of the attack was off.
"Squelch!" A head pierced through his abdomen. Half of An Bo's head burrowed into Fang Ming's soft stomach!
Fang Ming's eyes widened, and he slowly looked down. An intense pain shot from his abdomen to his brain.
"Scram!" Fang Ming clenched his left fist and slammed it towards the back of the head. An Bo's other heads, seeing the attack, quickly withdrew the head attacking Fang Ming to avoid his blow.
"Caw, caw…" An Bo's heads shrieked and frantically licked the head that had attacked Fang Ming. That head was covered in a large amount of blood, and they were fighting over it.
Fang Ming, meanwhile, clutched his wound in pain. A wound the size of a bowl was already fatal to a human. But for Fang Ming, who was now a fiend, it wouldn't kill him immediately. Yet, death was only a matter of time. Such a severe injury…
The resentful energy within his body was surging towards the wound, trying to repair it.
"Spit." The head that had attacked Fang Ming suddenly spat something out onto the ground. Another head, smelling the blood, quickly leaned over.
A tattered photograph.
The head licked the blood clean and, by chance, saw the person in the photo. It then froze in a daze.
The other heads also gathered around to look.
"Mo Min…"
"What?" Fang Ming heard An Bo speak and suddenly looked up at him.
He saw An Bo's four heads gathered silently around Bai Mo Min's memorial portrait. Their originally ferocious and bloody expressions had become calm.
"An Bo… You… you've regained your senses?" Fang Ming asked with surprise.
One head turned to look at Fang Ming, with an apologetic expression. "I've recovered some, but there's another consciousness within me resisting. I can't hold on for much longer."
"I apologize for causing you so much damage. You're here to destroy the runes, aren't you? If you go north, you'll see a large tomb. That's the central node of the runes. Destroying it will paralyze the runes in the graveyard."
"My current physical condition doesn't allow me to help you with anything. I'm truly sorry." An Bo looked at the photo again and spoke with a plea, "This village has done too many evil deeds. I don't expect you to spare the villagers, but I still hope you can save Bai Mu Village."
"Goodbye, traveler. I'm going to reunite with Mo Min."
With that, the four heads bit each other's necks. With a unified crackling of bones, An Bo's massive body crashed to the ground.
He used suicide to atone for his mistakes and to mark the end of his and Bai Mo Min's lives. From now on, no one except Fang Ming would ever mention this father and son.
Fang Ming stared blankly at An Bo's corpse, a thousand words stuck in his throat, unable to speak.
Seeing the old man die before his eyes left him with an empty, suffocating feeling.
"I…" Fang Ming choked for a long time, unable to speak.
"I will avenge you!"
He never expected that the memorial portrait of Bai Mo Min, which he had kept in his arms, would save him in the end. Nor did he expect that his greatest enemy would turn out to be An Bo.
"Damn fiend!" Fang Ming cursed, two lines of tears involuntarily streaming down his face. He clutched his wound and shakily stood up, shuffling north step by step.
All of this was caused by that Ancient Huai Fiend!
…
On the other side, the battle between the Ancient Huai Fiend and the female corpse had reached its climax. Both sides had abandoned defense, trading blows and injuries, vying to see who had stronger regeneration and higher vitality!
"Boom boom boom…" Water pythons, formed from well water, struck the treant, pushing it back several steps. Large patches of its leaves were stripped away.
"Ha!" The treant crossed its arms, blocking the subsequent water python attacks, while simultaneously summoning a large area of vines to encircle the female corpse in the air. The female corpse dodged the pursuing vines while attacking.
"Split!" The treant suddenly transformed into a mass of roots, then reassembled, instantly becoming four smaller treants to surround and attack the female corpse. It realized that the female corpse's agility and regenerative abilities were too strong, making it difficult for it to inflict effective fatal damage.
Thus, it chose to disperse its power to block the female corpse's movement.
"You think this will catch me?" the female corpse sneered, preparing to concentrate its attack on one of the treants. When the Ancient Huai Fiend split, its power would also be greatly reduced. How could it possibly block her attack?
"Break!" The female corpse, carrying a large amount of well water, charged towards one of the treants.
The other treants sneered upon seeing this. This woman had fallen into their trap!
Since they couldn't hit the female corpse directly, the Ancient Huai Fiend chose to lure her in. This was its usual strategy, always effective.
"Boom—!" All of the female corpse's attacks hit the target. The treant's entire body instantly shattered into vines, with broken branches and leaves scattering everywhere.
Just as she thought she could successfully escape the treant encirclement, the scattered vines rapidly coalesced into a ball with lightning speed. The female corpse, who had let down her guard, couldn't dodge in time and was instantly entangled and trapped by the vines.
The Ancient Huai Fiend rejoiced upon seeing this. The other treants reformed into vines, crawling like ten thousand giant snakes onto the vine ball that encased the female corpse, further strengthening and enlarging the ball. Soon, the female corpse's figure was completely buried within the vines, and there was no sign of her.
"Today, I will devour you directly!" the Ancient Huai Fiend said cruelly.
Inside the vine ball, countless vines tightly bound the female corpse, while also piercing into her body to suppress her abilities. With the wriggling of the vines, her resentful energy was slowly absorbed.
"Damn it!" The female corpse struggled in vain, sighed, and regretfully looked at her stomach. She shouldn't have returned to fight the old locust tree. Without destroying the accumulation pool, the old locust tree was essentially invincible.
"Based on the rate at which my internal resentful energy is draining, it will probably take half a month for the old locust tree to completely devour me." The female corpse was pessimistic. She no longer hoped that Fang Ming could destroy the accumulation pool. After all, with Fang Ming's abilities, any subordinate of the Ancient Huai Fiend could easily defeat him.
"Boom—"
Suddenly, a thunderous roar that echoed throughout Bai Mu Village erupted. A terrifying shockwave swept from the southwest, turning everything in its path into ruins.
The grand ancestral hall, all the villagers' houses, and even the square were razed three feet deep and completely destroyed. Even the villagers who had become fiends suffered countless casualties in this shockwave.
The massive vine ball formed by the Ancient Huai Fiend directly met this shockwave. Large patches of vines on its surface were torn apart, and even the numerous roots hidden underground were exposed. Its main body, left in the ancestral hall, was forcefully pushed over!
"Ah—!" The Ancient Huai Fiend screamed. This unknown attack had severely wounded it! When it urgently mobilized the resentful energy in the accumulation pool for repair, it discovered that the accumulation pool was… gone!
"My accumulation pool! Who is it? Who is it?" the Ancient Huai Fiend went mad.
"Hmph! Who else could it be?" the female corpse's cold laugh echoed from the broken vine ball.
"Open!" A force erupted violently within the vine ball. The severely wounded Ancient Huai Fiend no longer had the strength to restrain the female corpse. Instead, it was caught off guard as the female corpse broke free!
"Boom—" Broken vines scattered everywhere, writhing on the ground like a gecko losing its tail, desperately trying to burrow underground to escape.
The female corpse, now seeing daylight, hovered in mid-air, indifferently watching the broken vines struggling on the ground. The Ancient Huai Fiend was no longer a threat!
"Die!"
The female corpse pointed a finger, and the murky well water surged. In a moment, the entire battlefield was submerged. Within the water, countless broken vines writhed in pain, like snakes falling into sulfuric acid, but their struggles were futile.
"It's over…" the female corpse's gaze shifted to the ruined Bai Mu Village. Her lifelong resentment had ended today.
The plot of Bai Mu Village is almost over. The next chapter will reveal the true truth of Bai Mu Village, and some plot holes will be filled (I don't know if I missed any. If you notice any, please mention them at the end of this chapter, and they will all be filled in the next. All the plot points I've introduced will have resolutions, but I'm afraid of missing something). To be honest, I didn't expect Bai Mu Village to take up so much space. It's already eleven thousand words. I originally thought this was just the prologue. It seems this book will end around 1.2 million words, so you can read with confidence.
Finally, please vote!