Cthulhu Gonfalon Chapter 8

Another day had passed by. In the morning, when the first rays of the sunlight shone down the earth, those strange vines, which were as thick as a child's wrist, suddenly shook. The leaves rapidly withered, then fell down. In just a moment, the paddy fields around the village were all covered in falling leaves.

Along with the leaves falling, the green color of the vines started to change colors as well, turned into a glowing golden one, which was as if it had constantly been absorbing sunlight for a long time. Just looking at these golden vines had also made people feel a little warm in their hearts.

After shouting for joy, the villagers began to harvest the vines. They brought the vines about one-palm high away from the ground then cut them, then cut again into sections, each of which was about one-arm long. On the cut surfaces of the vines, golden and white powders fell out. Many of the villagers would eat that vine, which was split in half. This must be their main food.

However, Sui Xiong noticed that the children didn't eat those cut vines. This made him self-assume that these vines' tastes were really bad --- children were the purest, even if a wild fruit was eighty percent sour and twenty percent sweet, they would happily pick it up to eat. Since they had no interests in these vines, therefore it definitely tasted plain.

Harvesting vines was obviously hard work. These loggers' foreheads were covered in sweat. Meanwhile, children and women hurriedly collected the withered leaves, used stones to grind them into a golden gray juice then put them into many buckets which were transported to the stone house one by one for some unknown purpose.

There were a lot of vines around the village. The harvest job lasted for three days. When they had one last line of the vines left, the villagers stopped harvesting and started doing other tasks.

They gathered children and elders who lacked of fighting capabilities , and gave them clothes that were soaked in the golden gray juices. Those elders and children then gathered in front of the solid stone house. In front of them was the same statue from on top of the stone house roof. There were several buckets of flour paste besides them, which nobody knew what they were used for.

A group of young adults, including men and women, were all busy eating and drinking. This time, they didn't eat the kind of food they usually ate, which was some kind of flour paste that was cooked from the crushed powder of the vines, but dried chicken meat from the stone house. It seemed like these chicken meats tasted horrible. All of them frowned while eating. But they were trying to eat as much as they could, maybe because it could enhance their strengths.

"It seems like that battle is right in front of my nose." Sui Xiong secretly nodded his head lightly. He thought really carefully about the time when he displayed his formidable yet friendly-looking giant beast appearance, he would need to suppress his powers a little bit, which was better than freaking out the villagers by his too-powerful appearance.

The force compression was really simple and he just needed to reduce the size of his muscles a little bit to lower the efficiency of the releasing power. He also didn't worry that he might possibly be in danger. Having been in this Black Forest for such a long time, he had never encountered any so-called dangerous toys. Let alone, his most powerful trick was not his mighty body but the ice magic. With this ice magic as a hidden card, even his body, which was getting weaker, wouldn't have any impacts on him.

After he was done preparing everything, the sky started to darken as well.

The villagers then used the wooden fence to lock the main gate. Other villagers, who looked particularly strong, were holding weapons in their hands, waiting beside the main gate. Other healthy villagers, who were in charge of observing, climbed up on the houses. In the village, around the fence, there was a bonfire at every few steps. It seemed that there was one villager guarding next to each bonfire.

The burning fire shone brightly on its surroundings, bringing warm and safe feelings.

As the night deepened, the Black Forest became more dangerous. To a Night Watchman, a burning flame was compulsory.

When the moon rose, Sui Xiong could feel a strange energy emanating while hiding deep inside the forest.

On the ground near the village, the chaotic and dense dark power was condensing. Although whenever the night had started, the dark power would condense in the black forest, such a powerful dark power like this was the first time he had ever seen it.

In this black dense forest, condensing dark power would make the remains under the ground turn into the skeletons. So, what about the power of the dark power?

The answer would be soon revealed. He could clearly feel countless skeletons, which were being formed underground, would break the ground to come up at any time.

"So strange.... why are there so many skeletons like this underneath the ground? Where are these skeletons from? How come I hadn't discovered this before...."

Sui Xiong doubtedly talked to himself. On the contrary, he didn't worry that these skeletons would become a threat to him. But there was one thing he still couldn't understand.

Perhaps, can these remains be able to move in the ground?

This world is really bizarre!

After a while, the skeletons had finished condensing, and slowly floated to the ground. This completely went against the principles of physics as well. Soil was not water, skeletons were not fish. How could they directly swim into the soil?

While thinking, Sui Xiong attentively looked to see how the situation went.

When these skeletons landed on the ground, the roots of those vines radiated faint golden light, forming a protection shield to block those skeletons.

This protection shield could not stand for a long time either. The highly concentrated dark power flooded in really quickly from everywhere. They were eliminating each other. At most, for about one hour, the golden protection shield had been completely eroded by the dark power. Those vine roots were entirely withered, and had turned into black sawdust.

"No wonder the villagers saved the last line of the vine. It seems like this is also used for defense." Sui Xiong nodded his head silently, "It is not surprising for a tribe living in the Black Forest, they have soon prepared for this."

When thinking till here, he couldn't help but worry a little bit.

If the villagers could easily crush down their enemies like this, wouldn't he be easily fished up as well?

If he didn't approach the villagers at the right time, then it would be pretty troublesome for him.

However, Sui Xiong quickly discovered that his worry was useless. The condensing dark power was getting thicker and thicker around the villagers. The skeletons from under the ground showed up more and more. As time passed by, the number of them was already up to thousands upon thousands. Judging from this terrorizing number, no matter how perfect this village's defense could be this village would soon definitely face a fierce battle.

Then the chance for him to make an appearance would come really soon.

Thousands upon thousands, this was such a miraculous phrase.

When it appeared in the book, even a kid wouldn't find it special. However, when it became reality, showing up in front of their faces, even a superb warrior couldn't help but be frightened as well.

If following this huge number was the word 'Enemy', then it would simply get the people into a desperate situation.

The highly concentrated thick dark power was constantly condensing, eroding a thick circle of vines, which formed into a protection shield. Although the complete vine formation of the protection shield could be stronger than the ones from the roots, when facing the nonstop rolling endless dark powers in the entire Black Forest, they would quickly be defeated and turned into black sawdust.

Even the time that they could prolong would be shorter than those of the roots.

Maybe this was the reason why the villagers had left behind one line of the vine. The speed of the dark power condensation would eventually become faster and faster. Saving many vines wouldn't help them persist any longer. If all the vines in the field were not harvested, this was simply a waste of food.

For those who were not well-off, this kind of waste was not acceptable.

Although the result of losing this battle was the death of more than half of the village's population, being short of food in this eccentric black and dense forest would obviously be equaled to death. It was still death anyway. But the death that did not resulted from hunger seemed to be a little more satisfying.

If there were only two choices, the majority of people would choose to be like a hero, eating till full then fighting, rather than dying in coldness and hunger when they were still living in desperation and suffering until their very last breath.

The ancestors had a saying, 'The people have no fear of death, why threaten them with it?'. When people were made to choose between starving to death and fighting to death, the violent threat would have lost the effects on them. If keep going, this would produce an adverse effect.

This thing was not different regardless of the world.

Due to the fact that Sui Xiong had let his imagination run wild, Sui Xiong had been distracted for a while. After recovering his mind, he discovered that the battle had already started.

Countless skeletons were like black tides, flooding towards the village and covering the entire village. They constantly hit on the wooden fence around the village as if they wanted to break it apart. Although the powers that they had hit on the wooden fence each time was not significant, through accumulating over time, the entire fence's collapse was indeed just a matter of time.

The villagers were continually using the fire to attack these skeletons. The attack powers from the fire itself were almost pointless because the skeletons were in fact made up from the fire. Once the flame had touched the skeletons, they would be a little bit charred in return. If they couldn't avoid it, then their bodies would slightly shake, then the color of their bodies would gradually fade away.

As if due to the sunlight, the effects had become much worse.

If looking closely, one would find the remains which had already been stacked up really high on the ground around the fence. The color of the remains was of a light ash-gray, which meant the power that turned them into skeletons had dissipated. At least for this time being, they couldn't turn into some kind of abominable form that could scare the people out of their wits.

From the number of these skeletons, it turned out that the villagers' fighting method was still effective. But when Sui Xiong looked around the battlefield, he still couldn't help but feel pessimistic about the villagers' fate.

The number of the skeletons actually didn't seem to reduce at all.

He used his spirit sensing to observe the situation that was happening underground. He then discovered that the skeletons were growing nonstop, emerging nonstop. Under the support of the extremely endless highly concentrated thick dark power, their numbers were constantly growing. Their number was so big that all the lands here hardly had enough space for all of them to stand on.

The number that the villagers had to confront was not "thousands upon thousands of enemies", but "thousands upon thousands, then simultaneously added up to the word many more enemies."

In a clearer way, the enemies they were fighting were countless. They basically didn't have any possibilities of winning this battle.

Chapter end