Shadow of the Evil God

Did the old man also completely control the princes and princesses under his control, knowing every detail of their supposedly personal affairs? Was even their trusted confidants personally appointed by him? It was quite possible that Clefas might even feel that he held the fate of the empire in his heart, that everything he did was aimed at selecting an heir who met the requirements for the throne.

With such a righteous cause as a reason, it seems that there is nothing that cannot be done.

Cesar looked around and noticed that some of the militia groups appeared to be much more organized than Miles's evacuation group. He saw that the militia had abandoned their original camp and were moving south. Meanwhile, Brother Miles's group was still huddled together, busy crossing the woods and trenches, and busy coordinating the previously unorganized people to evacuate in an orderly manner.

This is exactly the difference in military literacy.

At this moment, a large number of sentries came running from the front, shouting that everyone was doomed, and then led even more people to flee in panic. The supervising troops seemed stunned. By the time they could organize their forces, the crowd had already fallen into complete chaos. Some drew their weapons and waved them wildly, as if they felt that evil shadows were everywhere around them. Others shouted frantically, asking everyone to look north, but the night was deep and gloomy, and looking into the distance, only a thick cloud of dust could be seen.

Except for coming down from the watchtower in a hurry

None of the fleeing soldiers could see clearly what was happening beneath the dust cloud. However, there were only a few sentry towers, each barely large enough for more than a few men, so it was impossible to have everyone go up and inspect them one by one.

At the last moment of entering the tunnel, Cesar saw the man who had previously organized the militia's orderly retreat reappear. He blended into the already chaotic crowd, shouting and spreading panic. One man juggling multiple roles, running back and forth? He was truly the epitome of a spy. Who knew what reward Clefas had promised him?

However, Cesar wasn't observing him closely; he was observing Isri. Although Cesar had already been amazed by Isri's immortality during the attack south of Sodoris, he still found it hard to believe the man's headless body could move freely. Furthermore, the headless knight had stood beside the spy organizing the militia and kicked over several soldiers from the Overseer's regiment.

Isri was clad in rugged gray-black armor. Its cropped sleeves held full-length leather gauntlets. A belt studded with iron plates wrapped around her waist, securing the long brown cloak that covered the armor. Her cloak was tattered, and its hood was pulled low, concealing not her face but a full-visor helmet embedded in her neck. The helmet had almost no gaps, so her face couldn't be seen beneath.

Because she doesn't have a head at all, the section above her neck is empty.

Cesar instinctively reached behind him and touched the head in the cloth bag on his belt. He felt Isri's lips move slightly through the cloth, and the headless body paused. A shared sense? Fortunately, her body couldn't find the head. As long as the blade embedded with the secret stone was stuck in her hair, she would be unable to find it.

He stopped thinking and quickly went into the tunnel. Then he heard the horn sounding, echoing throughout the militia line.

How unfortunate, Cesar thought, that at this critical moment, while he was playing with Isribub's head and watching from afar her headless body being forced to react, this was his first thought.

I hope he can finish exchanging intelligence with Diana as soon as possible, and hope that when he comes back, the army of zombies has not occupied this military camp and stuffed him into the rat cage.

......

When Cesar woke up from the cave in the wilderness, Diana was waiting for him. He had recently postponed his actions in the wilderness, so they had built a hidden shelter in advance, in the deepest part of a winding cave in the mountains. The stone room could barely accommodate them.

"Is everything all right?" Diana asked him. "You look anxious."

"The battle has already begun," he said, sitting down on the stone platform. "With the help of spies sent by Cleface to spread chaos, the entire front began to collapse before the battle even began. We could have held out for a few days, but now it's probably worse than not having this line of defense at all."

"To force us into a dead end..."

"The people of Cliface are not only spreading chaos, but some of them are organizing the militia to evacuate south in an orderly manner, just like Brother Miles."

There was silence.

"Are Cliface's men the leaders?" Diana asked him.

Cesar nodded. "From what I've recently observed, one of the insiders sent by Cleface clearly possesses considerable military and psychological skills, and his organizational abilities are superior to those of Brother Miles, an outsider." He added, "If Aya still wants to emulate the history of the Kasar Empire and follow her predecessor's example of accepting and training officers from commoner backgrounds, she will be surrounded by Cleface's spies. Reporting her every move would be the least of her worries. More likely, these spies would form a staff to surround her, even trying to influence her decisions and change her mind according to Cleface's will."

"That fits with Aya's guess about Cliface's character," Diana said.

"If it was indeed Clefas who approached Heanria to propose a marriage, then he must have knowingly set a trap for our princess, forcing her to make a choice."

"Is this the elder of the family who believes that the younger generation should be tempered and tested according to his arrangements... Perhaps Cliface truly treats Aya as his own granddaughter?"

"Having a family elder like this isn't a good thing." Cesar shook her hand, "Unless someone wants to be controlled by an old man for the rest of their life."

"You'll be an old fellow too, Cesar," she whispered.

"You too, Diana. Then we can see who will be Cliface. If you are Cliface, I will have to take responsibility and rescue our child."

Her cheeks actually turned slightly red.

Chapter 284: You Have to Send Someone Off for the Last Time

......

By the time Cesar emerged from the tunnel, the world was in chaos. An unrecognizable hybrid beastman spitted and wheezed at him breathlessly. Cesar lifted it up by the neck, crushed it, and tossed it aside. He then climbed the steep slope of the trench to the other side. He saw that most of the tents in the camp had been overturned, and combined with the collapsed fortifications and steep trenches, the composition looked like a filthy maze of alleyways.

Not only was he unable to recognize the road for a moment, but many militiamen were also lost in the alleys. When he looked to the west, at least a dozen people ran away from him in panic, fleeing to different places, some of them not even knowing that they were running towards the direction of the zombie army in the north.

Cesar saw three or four militiamen rush past him, but before he could utter a word, they vanished amidst the collapsed tents and winding trenches. A moment later, two more panicked militiamen ran eastward, shouting hoarsely as they fled. Columns of acrid smoke rose into the sky, dozens everywhere he looked. The wind blew the charred dust in all directions, obscuring everything. He could barely see the night sky.

He almost understood what had happened here, and he knew what was coming next. The chaos in the camp was intentional. The hybrid beastmen had set fires everywhere, overturned tents, and smashed wooden fortifications, all in an effort to further confuse the camp and disorient the people in their hasty escape. Just as Prince Tusos had treated the forest as his hunting ground, the corpse eaters had surrounded the camp, treating it as their own hunting ground.

It seems that they don't want to miss any of the fun of the hunt, especially hunting humans who are trapped in their hunting grounds and running screaming, not knowing where to escape.

No matter what, he still had to break through the hunting net in the West.

Cesar, imitating Isley's example, draped a cloak over his armor and rushed in his chosen direction. He passed between two blazing tents, then turned into a winding corridor lined with billowing smoke. He felt as if he were searching for a way out amidst a blaze that burned like a mountain. Halfway through, he encountered a group of mixed-breed beastmen tearing into a charred corpse. Upon seeing Cesar, some beastmen remained indifferent, clearly mistaking him for one of their own kind. Others leaped to their feet and rushed towards him, seemingly unable to distinguish between humans and beastmen by their scent.

As they say, even hybrid beastmen have their merits and demerits. Many defective ones haven't even fully transformed, their intelligence and combat capabilities dreadfully low. They look like cursed humans, with distorted horns and fur. They don't resemble beasts with human features, but rather humans with fragments of beasts embedded in their bodies.

He drew his greatsword, placed his left hand on the ground, and leaped abruptly with it, some ten meters away, cleaving a succession of hybrid beastmen in his path. Their upper bodies, their intestines ripped open, flew into the air, while their lower bodies, gushing with blood, continued to move forward several steps before collapsing. He lowered his sword and continued poised to pounce, ready to finish off the remaining beastmen, but the hybrids, surprisingly intelligent enough to discern a threat, had already fled.

Cesar ignored them, stopped the eager dog, and took her to the southwest. He didn't have much time to waste on the mixed beastmen. Unless they blocked his way with murderous intentions, he had no interest in fighting everywhere.

He continued southwest, feeling as though he had passed the front-line military camp he'd been staying in recently and reached a camp further back. He heard a series of screams, realizing that the camp further back wasn't just for the militia, but also for civilians accompanying the troops. The tents were denser and the crowds more crowded. Before he'd gotten far, the screams drowned out all other sounds, rising and falling in the thick smoke that obscured the sky. Beneath the screams, there were more faint cries and shouts.

Brother Miles suddenly led a large group of civilians who had accompanied the army out of the burning ruins. There were vendors, miners, clerks, temple attendants, crying children, and women with heavy bodies, all without a father or husband by their side. It was hard to believe that anyone was still having children at this point, but for the militiamen and even officers who were unable to do anything, cuddling with women at night—whether they were their wives or prostitutes they knew well—was precisely their only entertainment.

Everyone was fleeing after everyone else. Fortunately, Brother Miles's men managed to maintain order, preventing them from fleeing in other directions. From this situation, it seemed that Cliface's men had already taken a detour and fled far away with their well-organized militia. The people in the accompanying camp naturally chose to ignore them. The monk had not yet realized the seriousness of the situation and was organizing everyone he met along the way to follow him south.

Seeing Cesar, several people screamed in fear, clearly filled with fear of anything out of shape. However, most ignored him, either unable to think straight or figuring out that even if he looked strange, he wouldn't be able to kill everyone. As long as they ran faster than the others, they could survive.

Cesar and his dog stopped for a short while, and most of the people in the military camp had already evacuated. Those left behind were naturally the elderly, the weak, and the disabled. The elderly Brother Miles was organizing his believers and temple priests to help some people catch up with the majority.

But in the end, there were still some people who could not keep up. Some were wounded soldiers who could not even walk, or people who relied on trucks to move smoothly. Many of them were already sitting on the ground, as if they wanted to die.

The monk dragged the cart out of the trench, and regardless of the bumpy road, he called a group of strong men to carry the people on board. While whipping the donkeys that kept braying, they forcibly tied ropes to the animals and asked them to pull the people on the cart forward to catch up with the team.

Cesar gradually realized that Brother Miles had made many preparations, but his preparations were different from those of Cliface. The latter was to lead a group of militia on a rapid march south, while the former was preparing a way to take as many people as possible to escape south.

He heard the swarming howling and knew the beastmen were approaching. He saw some wounded soldiers who had just loaded onto carts throw themselves to the ground, clutching their farm tools and waving away the outstretched hands of others. It was clear that some of them no longer wanted to endure the torture or escape, and were determined to offer a final resistance right there.

Cesar gestured to Miles from a distance. "Tie these men up and take them away, Brother," he called to him from a distance. "You don't have much time."

Just as he finished speaking, it was Ajiehe's voice that rang in his ears: "You can't get far like this, Cesar."

"You have to see people off for the last time," he said.

Chapter 285: Who eats whom first?

......

The blood-like firelight shone on his face.

The rotten flesh struggled to stand up, using his claws to hold onto the spikes on the flesh puppet's head, and finally managed to support himself with his two dog legs. When he looked out from the forest of spikes, he could see the strange pattern on the flesh puppet's back.

It was a rat-man with a head covered in compound eyes. However, the rats were reluctant to admit they were rats, and neither was their leader. Next to the rat-man was his current supporter, the nameless beast-man shaman who always wore a tree-canopy mask.

The rat-man who called himself the Corpse Eater leaned over to Rotten Meat, carefully examining his appearance. He was dressed in black robes, resembling a human mage. He had always worn similar robes when he wasn't Rotten Meat.

"Your playthings are quite ingenious," the corpse-eater said to the shaman.

"I'd like to say yes," the nameless shaman agreed, "but I'm afraid praising his performance might cost him his life."

The corpse eater smiled, but it looked more like a giant rat baring its teeth. "Of course I know, Shaman. You told me the same thing back then. You told me that the pain we endure now is atonement for our future reckless behavior. You even told me to accumulate more pain so that I can be more reckless in the future. But is this true?" He said, moving closer to the rotten flesh. "Don't you want to accumulate more of this pain, little thing?"

Carrion held his face tight and said nothing, but his pathetic wild dog body betrayed his fear. His drooping tail was completely uncontrolled by his will.

"That's not necessary," the shaman denied. "He needs to recuperate for a while before he accumulates more pain."

The corpse-eater shook its sharp claw at the rotting flesh, as if it were a human wagging its index finger. "Do you hear that, child? More pain awaits you. Don't think that wagging your tail like a stray dog ​​begging for food is suffering. That's just your sense of disparity at work. You must understand now that you have a special purpose to the being you lean on."

"Our tribes weren't exactly friendly in the last era," the nameless shaman suddenly said, "at least not while I still had my own tribe."

The Corpse Eater also shook his claws at the nameless shaman, "There's something you don't know, shaman. I never said I was born from the blood of the ancestor."

"Now that you mention it, I do remember seeing a human lost in the northern forests many years ago. I saw him enter the territory of the corpse eaters. But I remember that person wasn't a hero, just a bureaucrat under investigation for dereliction of duty. Unwilling to stand trial, he actually gave up his human identity."

"I can tell you without shame that it was indeed me. Although I had my reasons at the time, there's no need to explain. You just need to know that I held a series of official positions in my own territory. Why not? Since it's my power to appoint officials, it's also my power to appoint myself. I was the law officer, the financial officer, the torturer, the inspector, everyone, and more."

"Then on the Corpse Eaters' side..."

"I am also a combination of many identities, just like in the human world. No leader in the past has been as dedicated as I am."

"The leaders of the Corpse Eaters clan have their own heritage. How can you possibly take on the responsibility of being a leader?"

"You mean gaining knowledge of the dead through necrophilia? I've participated in that, too, but you haven't seen our rituals."

"No, no," the shaman stared at the bloodshot-eyed rat, "You don't look like a beastman transformed from a human."

"I am," the Corpse Eater said methodically. "Of course, I'm not either. As a seeker of knowledge, especially someone like me who used to be a torturer, living so close to the forests of the northern empire, I've learned some northern skills. Corpse eating isn't just the province of beastmen; it can be expanded into a skill equally suited to humans. Our pursuit is pure, and we're more selective in our choice of corpses. I'll carefully carve out the tissue that contains human memories, savoring them from the very beginning while they're still moving."

"That doesn't explain your pure aura."

"Yes, because I haven't finished. As a cannibal, the greatest realization is that eating and being eaten are mutual. I gradually realized that the knowledge I sought could not be acquired by continuing to eat humans, because the limitations of humans determine the limitations of their knowledge. Even if I eat that limited knowledge, it would not improve me in the slightest. After I devoured everyone in our group, I made a decision - it was time for me to be eaten."

Carrion felt that this guy was much crazier than the Beastman when he was still a human.

The leader of the corpse eaters shook his demonic rat head slightly, looking more like he was nagging at some invisible entity than speaking to them. "Since eating and being eaten are mutual," the blood-eyed rat said, "then whoever has greater knowledge and memory prevails is naturally a mutual matter as well. If I'm not eaten, I must dedicate everything I have to the will of my eater. What do you say, shaman?"

"You are indeed an incredible existence, Bloodbone. You are the only Corpse Eater leader in this era who wants to talk to me."

"I talk to everything!" Xue Guxu clenched his hands and claws.

He caught a beam of blood-red fire in mid-air. The red light struggled and twisted in his hand, looking like a mad beast.

"Look at this light, shaman," the rat-head said. "It is like our thoughts. Does light vanish without fire? Does thought fade without soul? No, of course not. Thought, formless, is like this light. Light doesn't need fire to occupy space to fill the world, and thought doesn't need soul to occupy a body to fill the soul of my eater. Have you ever considered that the light, which seems to nourish everything, might also feed on everything? My eater nourishes itself with my thoughts, and perhaps my thoughts will feed on my eater?"

Rotten Meat felt that the rat was indeed too crazy. He was crazy when he was still a human. After he died, the rats that ate him were infected with his mind and turned him into a madman.

"I'd love to engage in philosophical conversation with you, but we're on the battlefield, Blood and Bone," said the nameless shaman.

"This is exactly the most important point," Bloodbone nodded. "We claim to possess wisdom, to control our own thoughts, but is it possible that it is actually our thoughts that nurture us? Thoughts nurture our souls, but are they actually treating us as food and resources? The established order is only a narrow interpretation. If we think about it from another perspective, is the purpose of trees growing to throw themselves into the blazing fire? Is the purpose of living beings to reproduce and thrive in order to throw themselves into the flames of thought like trees, to be trapped and burned? Living beings claim to possess thoughts, to control thoughts, and to be nourished by thoughts. Isn't this like the wheat in the field claiming to control the farmer who sows the seeds, because the farmer has been constantly loosening the soil and fertilizing the wheat, but in the end, they will all die under the sickle?"

The thoughts in this guy's words are like a plague with substance.

"You speak well, Bloodbone," the shaman nodded. "And how does it relate to this war—or rather, to your hunt?"

"The fire of great ideas needs more firewood." Blood and Bones grinned. "The First One, the First Born, whatever it is, the great idea cannot be completed without it. Either I dedicate my flesh, blood, soul, and thoughts to it, or it dedicates its flesh, blood, soul, and thoughts to me. In either case, the burning firewood will make the light shine brighter."

Rotten Flesh suddenly realized that Navuzog was the most normal beastman he had ever seen. No wonder the nameless shaman had summoned Navuzog back to reality first. Of course, Bloodbone must be the craziest he had ever seen.

Having said that, Mouse Head finally couldn't help but laugh out loud, like a child who had just discovered a strange mystery and was ecstatic about it.

Rotten Meat felt a fleeting vision of something, more vivid than he could imagine. He saw a middle-aged man of imperial nobility with long silver-white hair, a handsome and refined figure, his eyes devoid of any evil. Then, the middle-aged man was replaced by a girl of fifteen or sixteen, who looked quite similar to him, also with short silver-white hair and a calm demeanor. Perhaps she was a relative, perhaps even his daughter. Then Rotten Meat saw a boy around thirteen, pale and unusually frail.

Father, daughter, son, who ate whom first, who ate whom later, and whose thoughts polluted whom? The rotting flesh couldn't tell. This man and his existence were too evil. He thought he had seen enough evil, but compared to twisted flesh and blood, perhaps thoughts and spirits were even more terrifying.

"Are you hunting the human with the Progenitor?" the shaman asked it.

"No, he voluntarily accepted our hunt," Xuegu said. His voice was eerily calm, not joyful. "We need to send a portion of our tribe to pursue him. The siege was too long and arduous. We need more vulnerable settlements and more fresh blood to replenish our fatigue. Moreover, according to our shaman, the ancestral spirit within him is incomplete; in other words, half of it has been split off. If we can force him to a dead end, there's hope that he'll return the split ancestral spirit to himself."

"You want to unite the fragmented soul?" the nameless shaman asked. "Have you considered its destructive nature, its appetite for both the knowable and the unknowable, the real and the unreal, capable of destroying both? I believe the original ancestor's fragmentation is the correct path. If it were to unite, it's hard to say what it would create."

Chapter 286: The Lair of the Corpse Eaters

......

Cesar struggled at the bottom of the trench, lifting the corpses and raising himself. His limbs felt numb, as if he were drunk. The stench of decaying blood overwhelmed everything. As he struggled to his feet, the shattered remains piled like a mountain of animal organs in a slaughterhouse. With a flick of his arm, they collapsed and scattered everywhere.

Just a moment ago, the waterfalls sprayed out by a large number of flesh and blood puppets tore everything apart, not only crushing the fleeing people and the hybrids who had no time to dodge, but also filling the trench with a huge flow of blood.

Considering that the corpse eaters have arrived at the hunting grounds riding on flesh puppets, the group of people rescued by Brother Miles may be the last group to be saved.

The gore spewed forth by the puppets formed a foul pool, surging endlessly in the trench. Crowded corpses bobbed in the viscous water, even the most intact remains a distorted head. Limbs, scattered organs, and severed limbs piled up in layers, dozens, hundreds, piled together, washed away by the blood. Five heads tumbled from the pile beside him, like rocks rolling down a hillside, plunging into the viscous pool of blood with a few thuds.

The roar of the flesh puppets still buzzed in his ears, like thunder, like the sound of city defense artillery beside him. Even if he managed to avoid it, the aftermath would make him unable to move, and every sense was strongly impacted.

Cesar found the dog, pulled her out of the river of blood, and threw the sickly creature onto his back. Then he tore off Isri's head and bit it in his mouth, feeling the invisible assassin's blade swaying gently at his neck, like a dark void.

Before long, he could feel the Corpse Eater Shamans sweeping across the trench with their third vision. Their penetrating gazes were like beams of light shot from a silver mirror, but because of the interference of the Ritual Stone, they passed directly over him, leaving him unable to perceive them at all.

Cesar breathed a sigh of relief, then bent down and continued westward along the trench that had turned into a pool of blood. On the way, he passed a narrow tunnel and saw a row of flesh puppets in the gap above his head. Their festering bellies crawled on the ground like giant maggots, leaving behind trails of sticky blood and dripping filthy plasma into the tunnel.

Through the gaping holes in their abdomens, he saw a large number of bloated, rotten human faces huddled together in their cavities. Some were terrified, some mournful, some bewildered, some faces twisted as if torn apart, and some even had their lips moving, emitting an incomprehensible buzzing sound. Their wide-open mouths and wide-open eyes spoke of their frantic emotions.

It seemed the flesh puppets didn't chew or digest, simply cramming their victims into a ball, squeezing them so tightly that their limbs were twisted and their bones were misaligned, rendering them unable to move at all. As for when they would die, it all depended on how long they could hold on.

At some point, Cesar heard a rumbling sound. It started as a barely audible hum, then gradually grew closer, like an earthquake. He didn't dare dwell on it, continuing westward along the trenches and tunnels, feeling the mighty rumblings sometimes distant, sometimes near, sometimes even right beside him. He pressed forward, his back to the sound, until both its source and he gradually receded, lost in the roaring of more flesh puppets crawling across the ground.

He walked for a while and felt that he could hardly hear the roar of the flesh puppets. Then he crawled out of a tunnel, holding on to the trench and looking out.

That's a nest.

Flesh puppets filled his field of vision, crawling across the burning earth. From afar, they resembled a massive swarm of maggots, surrounding the corpse-eaters' nest like a mountain of garbage. The closer he got to their nest, the more numerous the flesh puppets became. Each one crawling in front of the nest was tied to a massive rope, extending from its muscular upper body to the back, tied to the nest nearly a hundred meters behind it.

The ropes hummed like hundreds of strings, dragging the rat's nest that looked like a hill forward, leaving behind a mess of rotten flesh and blood, and emitting a foul odor that even Cesar could smell.

The structure of this nest was truly incredible, as if straining its immense bulk upward with all its might, completely disregarding its structural integrity. The twisted towers rose from the ground, poking abruptly from their tortoise-shell-like base, reaching skyward. From a distance, they resembled severed human fingers growing from the holes of a hornet's nest. The holes were so densely packed, and so were the severed fingers. It was beyond grotesque.

The lair consisted of more than just the usual human building materials. Cesar could see flesh clinging to the stone and wood like outer walls and blood vessels, supporting the corpse-eaters' towers as they climbed layer upon layer in a manner that defied mechanics and structural principles. As the flesh puppets dragged the corpse-eaters' lair forward, many of the towers at the edges, lacking support, swayed and trembled. Several of the twisted towers were particularly unstable, eventually collapsing on the bumpy road, crashing down in a shower of shattered rock and scattered clouds of dust.

The most conspicuous tower in the center spewed blood mist, like a venomous fang, like a scorpion's stinger, like a living being's most intimidating and lethal organ. The corpse-eater's lair was a kind of even larger flesh puppet. The tower towered majestically, terrifyingly high. From Cesar's perspective, it seemed to be tearing the sky apart. Its outer walls were covered with veins like blood vessels, like a network of pipes. Numerous blood sacs of unknown purpose clinging to it, giving it a bumpy appearance, like human skin covered in lumps and pustules.

Wherever the tower passed, the entire sky above was polluted. The night sky was originally pure and flawless, but the blood mist surged and spread into layers of clouds, obscuring the sky, blocking the white moon, and casting a deep dark red over the entire burning camp.

Cesar felt they were more aptly described as smog than clouds. Thick and foul, they felt almost like a waterfall spewed from flesh puppets, though one was bloody water, the other bloody mist. Perhaps they were transformed from the foul blood spewed out by countless flesh puppets. Ashes filled the air, and the stench of the charred dead wafted in. Compared to the people stuffed into the flesh puppets to die, the victims consumed by the flames seemed surprisingly less pitiful.