Rising from the thick reed beds, the creatures always dragged up the heavy stench of waterlogged rot. It was so pungent that Xiao Yan did not even need to heighten his senses to catch it.
Generally, water ghosts were low-tier monsters that hid during the day and hunted only at night, unless something severely provoked them.
Moreover, this specific group was different. Faded, rotting perfume sachets hung from their bodies, standing out sharply against their pale grey skin.
They let out piercing shrieks. The pitch sounded exactly like distorted children's nursery rhymes, mixed with the desperate wails of the drowning.
Beneath their skin lay nothing but a thick layer of cloudy, gelatinous fat.
Translucent webbing stretched between their fingers, and their long, hook-like nails were packed solid with foul-smelling river mud.
A row of hard, jagged fins protruded from their rotting spines.
Because of this anatomy, they were usually extremely sluggish once they left the water.
But not them.
It's not normal water ghosts; their spiritual scent smells like a mid-tier predator.
The two young children were already completely paralyzed by fear, sitting frozen in the shallows. The splashing noises they made while playing earlier had made it incredibly easy for the blind water ghosts to pinpoint their exact location.
The creatures lunged straight for them, as if they had locked onto this rare delicacy long in advance.
By the time Zheng Laosi grabbed his rusted fishing spear and charged out the door, the monsters were merely five paces away from his children.
Xiao Yan immediately pulled a thin steel needle from his pouch.
Slashing it across his own palm, he threw the fresh blood out into the empty air.
Clapping his hands together with a sharp twist, the iron talisman at his waist began to burn rapidly against his hip.
Instantly, the strange, unnatural eyeball in his right socket flared with a blinding, blood-red phosphorescence.
The Eye of Revelation——
A fierce ring of solid fire suddenly erupted across the wet mudflats, forcing the water ghosts to back away.
Trapped in a sudden, blurred, dream-like vision, his right eye watched several young girls burning alive inside those flames.
Their pure agony echoed violently inside Xiao Yan's chest.
"Cold... hungry... Mama..."
"Papa, the water is so cold... I am so hungry..."
Down by the riverbank, Zheng Laosi fought off multiple water ghosts at once, shielding his kids with his own body. Rushing to his defense, his wife gripped a branch of peach wood and a broken iron rake, standing firmly back-to-back with her husband.
The creatures that had not fled the fire were incredibly lethal. They moved with unnatural speed and sharp agility, attacking with clear, coordinated tactics.
Within seconds, the overwhelming pace left the couple completely disoriented, forcing them to expose more and more fatal openings.
His right eye still glowing a vicious red, Xiao Yan charged toward the bank.
Drawing his broken sword, he cleaved straight through a water ghost just as it turned its body to block his path.
Xiao Yan absorbed the spiritual energy that had spewed out; while this energy would enhance his own abilities, it was lethal to ordinary people.
These specific monsters all had thin red strings tied tightly around their wrists, he noticed.
The head dropped into the shallows with a heavy splash.
Its two hollow, pitch-black eye sockets, which were eaten entirely clean by river fish long ago, stared blindly up at the brutal fight continuing on the surface.
Over on Zheng Laosi's side, a water ghost thoroughly impaled by the rusted fishing spear thrashed violently.
Shrieking hoarsely, the creature deliberately forced its own body further down the wooden shaft. A sickening, wet squelch echoed as the spear tore deeper through its abdominal cavity, allowing the monster to slide forward in a desperate attempt to claw the fisherman to death.
In all his years of hunting, Xiao Yan had never encountered water ghosts with such intense, suicidal, murderous intent.
Stepping in, he brought his broken blade down hard. The heavy chop sliced diagonally from the back of the creature's neck all the way through its chest cavity, completely splitting the torso wide open.
As the hot blade tore through the creature's gelatinous fat, the resulting crackle sounded exactly like cold water hitting a pan of boiling oil.
With his spear firmly stuck inside the mutilated half of a water ghost, Zheng Laosi was now forced to face the remaining two creatures completely bare-handed.
Swinging his blade, Xiao Yan sent another swollen, grey-blue head flying. It skipped across the surface of the river exactly like a skipping stone.
Grappling with the last monster, Zheng Laosi violently wrestled it into the mud. Without a single second of hesitation, his wife brought her iron rake down hard, expertly crushing its skull.
Xiao Yan was genuinely impressed by their raw brutality.
Even seasoned grown men usually found killing water ghosts in close combat far too disgusting, specifically dreading the sickening sensation of driving a weapon through their slippery, cold blubber.
Xiao Yan cleared the battlefield, absorbing every last trace of the spiritual energy to ensure it would not harm Zheng Laosi and his wife.
Slowly, the intense fire on the mudflats died down.
Shaking the dark slime from his hands, Zheng Laosi turned and ruthlessly screamed at his children. Tears welled in his eyes as he ordered the two of them to go lie face down over a thick salt-drying log out back and wait for him.
Finished yelling, he marched off to find a thin wooden switch.
A heavy sense of unease settled over Xiao Yan. He completely understood a parent's desperate anxiety, but using a wooden stick on kids was crossing a line.
He stepped forward to intervene, but Zheng Laosi immediately waved him off.
"You saved our lives today, and I owe you everything. But stay completely out of this. Go inside, sit down, and wait for me."
"They had no idea the water ghosts would come out during the day—" Xiao Yan started, feeling deeply conflicted.
He knew full well this was someone else's family matter.
"Stay out of it," the fisherman repeated.
Grabbing Xiao Yan's arm, the wife quickly pulled him toward the door. "Please, just come inside. You cannot stop him when he gets like this."
The two kids were sobbing uncontrollably, still entirely paralyzed by the shock of the monster attack.
Standing inside the house, Xiao Yan listened.
The panicked, hyperventilating breaths coming through the thin mud wall, followed immediately by the sharp snap of Zheng Laosi breaking a wooden stick to size…
He felt familiar.
A tight knot of heartache and anger formed, dragging him back to his own childhood.
The desperate crying and begging outside grew louder.
Zheng Laosi's heavy footsteps approached.
Just like he was about to kill them.