Chapter 34: Chapter 34: Four-sided Age Fire Lamp
As the fog gathered, the demon remaining in Chen Family Village revealed its true form.
It was a spread-out human skin, or rather, a mass of fog supporting the human skin.
The human skin within the fog appeared pale blue, fully stretched out, and delicate like a piece of soft ice with an eerie beauty.
There was a neat cut on the chest of the human skin, with a streak of bright red resentment on the edges.
Wu Chang initially thought it was the resentment of the murdered villagers, but after observing, he discovered that the source of this resentment was the Fog Demon itself.
In the vision of resentment, the Fog Demon was once human.
The night it launched the attack, the village chief of Chen Family Village made the decision for the four annual trade fairs, and the entire village was immersed in the joy of celebration.
As a human, the Fog Demon climbed the tower carrying two jars of tampered wine, pouring a drink for each villager on watch.
Once the villagers on the tower were all taken out, he pulled out a brass short knife and stabbed it fiercely into his chest, vertically splitting his skin open.
The flesh and blood within him turned into fog that gushed out from the chest wound, forming the fog that enveloped Chen Family Village.
The peeled-off human skin "stood" on the tower, watching the massacre of Chen Family Village, and finally, the human part of his will slowly dissipated, turning into bright red resentment.
"Though I have avenged my great hatred, I lament the escape of the bandit chief; I cannot behead him, eat his flesh while he’s alive, and thus cannot rest in peace."
[Find the bandit chief Chen Peng, behead him to console countless souls.]
After seeing the resentment of the Fog Demon, Wu Chang roughly guessed what had happened.
As a human, the Fog Demon had a blood feud with the bandits of Chen Family Village. To seek revenge, it infiltrated the village, even resorting to becoming a demon by sacrificing itself if necessary.
A ruthless person indeed.
Unfortunately, the resentment had already appeared on the human skin, indicating the complete death of the Fog Demon’s human part.
Otherwise, negotiation could have prevented the fight.
With only basic instincts left, the Fog Demon had completely lost control and could not communicate.
The fog supported the human skin, altering its form to express its emotions by twisting the facial skin.
The trembling face expressed an emotion called anger.
The howling wind carried the voice of the Fog Demon.
"Intruders, die!"
With that said, a cold wind surged from behind the human skin, stirring up the surrounding snow and thickening the fog covering the village.
By reviewing the resentment of the deceased in Chen Family Village, Wu Chang had already understood the Fog Demon’s abilities.
As recorded in the traders’ resentment scenes, the thick fog obscuring vision and the cold wind numbing perception were merely to weaken human senses and create a state of unease.
The Illusion Technique was the Fog Demon’s killer move.
Among the demons attacking Chen Family Village, the Fog Demon was not the strongest, but nearly a third of the village died from its Illusion Technique.
Once dragged into the illusion by the icy fog, one would see the most terrifying scenes of their life.
The villagers driven mad by the illusion would either end their lives, like the trader, or go completely insane, venting their fears through indiscriminate attacks.
As a target of the Fog Demon, surrounded by thick fog, even with Wu Chang’s high willpower and protection of the Soul Cleansing Banner, faint hallucinations began appearing before his eyes.
In just a few minutes, the scenes before him evolved from being ridden on the face by the "hanged ghost" at three years old to stepping on a stray dog’s tail and being chased through the streets at four years old.
These were his forgotten psychological shadows.
Just the few childhood fragments he remembered were not enough to harm him, but they showed that the Fog Demon’s abilities could affect him.
Dragging on too long might lead to disaster, and he couldn’t just sit around waiting.
According to the information he gathered from the resentment, there were two ways to avoid being affected by the Illusion Technique.
One was self-harm, using pain to stimulate the senses and prevent being dragged into the illusion.
The second was fire, which could disperse the icy fog. Without the fog as a medium, the Fog Demon’s abilities would be significantly weakened.
However, there was more than one demon attacking Chen Family Village. Whether self-harming or gathering people to protect a fire, they would become targets for other demons.
Or be crushed by the Mountain Demon or hooked by the mountain ghost and left bleeding on an iron hook.
But now that Wu Chang was one-on-one with the Fog Demon, these two methods could be considered.
He thought for a moment, deciding against self-harm.
The main quest of the dungeon was still ongoing, and the dungeon boss had not yet appeared, while Liu Wei and others from Huai Valley Village were eyeing him eagerly.
Recklessly allowing himself to enter a weakened state was not wise.
So what he needed to do now was to find a source of fire.
Chen Family Village just so happened to have a suitable fire source, which the villagers’ resentment mentioned its location, the shrine on the mountaintop.
Wu Chang raised the Silver Dawn, pulled the trigger, and a silver bullet carrying flames flew toward the mountaintop. The path cut by the bullet instantly dispelled the fog, revealing a passage.
The residual heat in the air made the fog slow to close, and taking advantage of this opportunity, Wu Chang ran toward the mountaintop.
While running, he felt immensely grateful for his previous decision to balance his stats.
With power, agility, and endurance fully developed, running up a mountain in one go was no problem.
He ran all the way into the shrine on the mountaintop, using a key he retrieved from a corpse to open the ancestral treasury of Chen Family Village.
As soon as the door opened, a chill rushed at him.
Inside the treasury, he saw the village chief, Chen Peng, prostrated on the ground in a kneeling position.
Chen Peng’s arms extended forward, elbows resting on the ground, palms clapped together at the base, and ten fingers opened like a lotus, holding a red palace lantern.
The lantern was square-shaped, entirely red, with no intricate designs on its surface, just a series of fire whirl patterns embroidered with golden thread.
Wu Chang picked up the palace lantern, and corresponding information appeared before him.
"Item Name: Four-sided Age Fire Lamp."
"Item Type: Dungeon Items"
"Artifact Level: C."
"Item Skills: Illuminating Void."
"Skill Description: When the Four-sided Age Fire Lamp is lit, it can command earthly fire, illuminate evil, ward off plague, and repel demons and monsters."
"Item Skills: Age Fire."
"Skill Description: When lit during the activation of the removal of age array in Huai Valley Village, it can ignite the Age Fire that protects the human world. As long as the Age Fire burns, life does not cease. During Age Fire’s burning period, it can slow down the user’s life drain and create immunity to most conventional deaths."
"Note: The Four-sided Age Fire Lamp can convert injected energy or demon bodies into lamp oil. The burn speed of the lamp oil varies with usage intensity. Current lamp oil burn time: 0 seconds."
Wu Chang read it twice to make sure he wasn’t seeing things.
Goodness, immunity to death while Age Fire burns! This is practically a god-like support skill.
If it could remove the requirements for being used with the removal of age festival and the restriction of only being immune to most conventional deaths, even an S-Level artifact wouldn’t compare to it.
Unfortunately, it cannot be done.
At this moment, the lamp’s flames were extinguished and had completely lost its warmth.
Along with it, Chen Peng had also lost warmth.
Wu Chang turned over Chen Peng’s body and found his complexion was deathly pale, eyes bulging nearly out of their sockets, with black blood seeping from the seven orifices, lifeless.
Although the Fog Demon couldn’t see Chen Peng die with its own eyes, Chen Peng still perished under the Fog Demon’s capabilities.
After reflection, Wu Chang looked at the extinguished palace lantern, furrowing his brow slightly.
He had the lamp, but where would he find the lamp oil?