Salted Fish Zombie

Chapter 44.1: Manman (17)

June 15, 2023 by Wyrd

The night in the Fairy Tale Town was composed of three colors.

The moonlight was a desolate white; the darkness was thick black, and the mist surrounding the monster children was a deep gray.

The dense mist slowly approached the castle, and a chilling and tender voice of children could be heard intermittently from within the mist.

As they got closer to the castle, white, deformed children started to emerge.

Some of them appeared to be intact and normal, while others had various incomplete and deformed features.

They were entirely white, with a greasy yellowish liquid covering their bodies, and their sparse hair, lacking melanin, was clumped together.

They sang songs, sometimes softly, sometimes heavily, and expressionlessly appeared one by one, increasing in numbers, converging on the castle from all directions.

Zhu Shuangshuang stood on the balcony of room 404.

The balconies of rooms 401, 403, 405, and 407 faced the garden, while the balconies of the rooms opposite faced the back of the castle.

She stood there, watching the monster children slowly approaching behind the castle.

Ji Mingrui stood on the balcony of the opposite room 403.

The doors of the two rooms were wide open, allowing them to communicate at any time.

“Boss Ji, be prepared,” Zhu Shuangshuang’s voice came from room 404, forcefully suppressing the trembling inside with a calm and loud tone.

“Roger,” Ji Mingrui said, then he shouted loudly to Meng Jiang at the garden gate, “Meng Jiang! Be prepared!”

Meng Jiang: “Ready! Standing by!”

Players on the fifth and sixth floors were all watching them.

“What are they preparing to do as the monster children are about to arrive?”

“They are probably preparing to ignite the fuse at the best possible moment.”

Their guess was correct.

Zhu Shuangshuang watched the first group of monster children appearing at the designated location and said to Ji Mingrui, “Ignite it!”

Ji Mingrui immediately shouted to Meng Jiang, “Ignite!”

Meng Jiang, who had already prepared, immediately lit the vine on both sides of the iron gate and then flew back to the castle.

The flames burned along the vines on both sides, gradually surrounding the castle.

Zhu Shuangshuang stood on the 404 balcony and saw the flames on both sides converging as the monster children approached, feeling relieved.

They had conducted several burning tests during the day.

Ji Mingrui experimented several times, recording the speed and duration of the flames burning on the vines.

He also measured the perimeter of the castle using a proportional method, calculating the distance and ignition time for the approaching monster children.

Meng Jiang ran up and asked to room 404, “How is it? Did it hold up?”

Zhu Shuangshuang nodded and loudly said to the boys in three different positions, “It held up! No problems.”

Meng Jiang let out a sigh of relief, wiped the sweat off his forehead, and ran to the arched window to look outside.

Tonight, there were no dense vines on the arched window, not even a wind-blocking glass, leaving the monster children beneath the castle completely unimpeded.

They felt extremely unsafe.

Sui Sui in the corridor was trembling with fear, on the verge of crying.

But they had no other choice.

It had to be this way.

The flames on the vines blocked the steps of the monster children, who angrily stomped and roared outside the fire ring.

“Why are the flames so high? They’re almost as tall as the monster children.”

“It might be because of these magical vines.”

“But even if it’s higher than we imagined, couldn’t the monster children get angry enough to jump over?”

“At this height, they should be able to jump over during an eruption.”

“Huh? How did the monster children disappear? They just left?”

“They didn’t leave. They moved towards the castle gate! The castle gate is not surrounded by a fire line!”

Players on the fifth and sixth floors rushed to the front empty room terrace, which had arched windows and faced the castle, to observe.

Sure enough, all the monster children had moved to the front of the castle and started climbing towards the iron gate.

“What is the fourth floor up to? I was just thinking they might use fire to block the monster children, but then I realized they forgot to surround the area outside the gate.”

“They really forgot? It’s normal for one person to forget, but all four of them forgot such a serious oversight?”

“Hey, do you think it’s possible that they didn’t use the fire line to block the monster children at all, but instead to lure them all to the front?”

Several players were taken aback.

Perhaps due to the vines, the flames were much higher than they had imagined.

They were almost as high as some of the smallest monster children.

The current monster children couldn’t rush through the flames, but they all knew that as the anger of the monster children increased, their strength would also increase. When they became extremely angry, this level of flames might not be able to stop them.

This was a matter of life and death, where they had to take a desperate gamble and not take reckless risks.

If it were them, they wouldn’t dare to rely solely on this fire line for protection.

“Why did they lead the monster children to the front? Trying to hold the fort against all odds? Isn’t that ridiculous?”

“So many monster children, how is that possible? There must be tens of thousands of monster children, and yet they still have such strength even after becoming irritable.”

“Unless they planted bombs in the garden, but that would only be about causing a fire in the kitchen. They wouldn’t be able to produce bombs with such great power, right?”

“We don’t need to consider that method. The low-power ones would be useless against the monster children, and the high-power ones would cause damage to the castle and harm the mother’s body.”

“So what exactly are they trying to do?”

No one knew.

Monster children had been gradually crawling in through the iron gate.

The monster children from the other three sides have gathered in the front, so from this perspective, there were even more of them, densely packed to the point of inducing fear in claustrophobic individuals.

The monster children in the garden have piled up to more than one layer. The ones in the front entered first, and the ones behind continued climbing forward, stepping on the previous group.

They stacked layer upon layer, directly reaching the height of the second floor.

“Growl, growl, growl...“

Under the moonlight, the garden was filled with countless densely packed, pale little monsters, eagerly stretching their arms upward.

A pale yellow, thick fluid slid down their hands and arms, becoming greasy and slippery. The bottommost monster children found it even more difficult to squeeze up.

Moreover, there were still monster children climbing up from behind, adding to the weight.

The topmost layer of monster children had already climbed up to the third floor and was about to reach the fourth floor.

“What are they planning to do? All the monster children are coming up, yet they show no reaction at all!”

“With so many violent monster children, it’s impossible to drive them out. They must have given up.”

“Who said they were planning to drive the monster children to the front for disposal? I think they were just too nervous and forgot to block the front with fire. They simply gave up altogether!”

Why wouldn’t they give up?

Had you ever seen a tidal wave of children?

Well, here it was.

The monster children piled up like a tidal wave. They were as small as bubbles, but so densely packed that they could form a sea.

Who could resist them, especially now that they were all five or six years old children, with their physical strength and abilities correspondingly limited.

A six-year-old child might not even be able to defeat a single violent monster child.

Zhu Shuangshuang took one last look from the 404 balcony.

When faced with something they inherently fear, it was instinctive for humans to avoid it, and it’s not just them.

No one knew if the flames on the vines could stop the monster children, but what’s certain was that with an alternative entrance, they could be diverted.

All the monster children behind the castle went around to the front, and there was no more mist appearing behind.

Zhu Shuangshuang emerged from room 404 and looked at Meng Jiang in front of the arched window.

Meng Jiang nodded at him and said, “All the ones on the right went to the front.”

Ji Mingrui also came out from room 403.

They all looked towards Room 405.

During the planning in the afternoon, Ning Su told them, “Lead the monster children to the front of the castle. In the garden and on the walls, I can handle over 90% of the monster children. The rest is up to you.“

He said, “I am powerless against the remaining ones. I can indeed unleash my power, but my physical stamina is weak, especially since I transformed into a six-year-old. My stamina is greatly limited, and I can only manage that one attack.“

What else could the three of them say? If Ning Su could control about 90% of the monster children alone, and they couldn’t handle the remaining 10%, they would be too ashamed to face Ning Su.

They believed in Ning Su’s words.

But in reality, they didn’t know how Ning Su would control so many monster children.

The monster children at the very front had climbed up to the fourth floor. One by one, their pale white hands slapped against the bottommost flowers of the lily plant on the fourth floor and continued climbing rapidly upwards.

Below the fourth floor, the wide castle walls were densely covered with more than one layer of monster children.

Looking down from above, countless upturned heads of white monster children formed a thick layer, like a sheet of white cloth plastered on the castle.

“They’ve really given up!”

“Quick, close the windows! The monster children are climbing up!”

Players on the fifth and sixth floors hurriedly tried to seal the windows, afraid of being affected by the monster children.

And it was at this moment that they witnessed an extremely shocking scene.

A large crescent moon hung over the top of a massive castle.

This luxurious castle had multiple floors, each exceeding five meters in height, with six or seven grand suites on each floor.

Compared to this castle, a boy of about five or six years old was too small.

He was as tiny as a thumb-sized figure.

The little figure grasped a lily vine on room 405’s balcony and somersaulted downward.

He gradually pulled the dense vines that covered even the sixth floor.

Wearing a loose white shirt, the boy flipped in mid-air, appearing like a reversed grain of rice under the moonlight.

He held onto the swaying vine as he descended, and the chilly night breeze lifted his soft hair, causing his oversized shirt to billow and making his figure appear even smaller.

Behind him, the lily vines grew wider as it trailed along the floors—sixth, fifth, fourth, third...

The strange vines that densely clung to the castle walls were peeled away layer by layer, as if removing a layer of skin from the castle. It revealed a colossal web that gradually expanded in the sky, covering the garden.

The monster children, who had been climbing up the vine, now tumbled down with a clattering sound.

Accompanied by each falling monster children, there were immature little skull heads hidden by the wisteria vines on the castle walls.

They all fell in unison.

The garden was covered in a thick layer of monster children, and numerous other monster children were descending from the vines. Finally, they were all crushed beneath the enormous network woven by the lily vines, which rumbled down.

Boom—

The ground seemed to tremble.

The lily vines covered the entire garden, surging beyond and extending several meters outside.

Countless monster children roared and wailed beneath the vines, struggling desperately but in vain.

Exhausting his last bit of strength, as the wisteria web was about to touch the ground, Ning Su flipped and jumped onto it.