Chapter 249: The Amusement Never Stops

"I see something in front," Song Yan weakly said, pointing at the rubbles in front of them.

Using the extorted tracking artifact from the Black Moon disciples, they have expertly navigated the ruins, bypassing several traps and beast waves until the artefact led them to a still somewhat intact building.

The Hall stood untouched by the surrounding rot and glowing moss.

But it had already been defiled. The heavy stone doors had already been forced open by someone.

Gu Fan and Song Yan followed by the female disciples stepped silently into the dimly lit hall, only to find a bunch of Golden Mountain Sect disciples huddled in the corner.

They were heavily injured and bleeding. But above all, they looked like someone had pulled out their soul. Absolutely terrified.

They did not even look up when Gu Fan and the others walked inside towards them.

Several massive stone pedestals held glowing jade boxes filled with premium high-tier healing pills and beautifully forged Spirit-Grade weapons, but the disciples had left them untouched.

"What happened here?" Gu Fan asked casually, walking up to them and putting his arm around one of them like they were old buddies.

The disciple flinched as he looked up at Gu Fan but did not dare move.

"We... we were ambushed by corpses," a trembling disciple explained. "We found this hall and raided a few boxes."

"They were filled with spirit stones, weapons, armours, pills..."

"We were already hurt. We did not know what they were, but senior brother said what could go wrong. This was a treasure left behind by a master for the chosen one."

"They are the pills?" Gu Fam raised an eyebrow as he looked at the disciple who was clearly shaken.

"Hmmm!" Another disciple spoke up, "They worked! Massive surge in cultivation. Healed their injuries as well."

"Why do I sense a but coming up?" Gu Fan shook his head as the two disciples narrated the story.

"It felt amazing for the some time. But just as we were about to eat those pills, our senior brothers went insane."

"They started speaking a tongue we could not understand."

"Attacked us."

"Killed one of our brother."

"And then suddenly this whole place was covered in a thick blanket of most, and they ran out into the mist," another whimpered. "They abandoned us."

Gu Fan lazily picked up a glowing jade box and inspected a pristine, highly aromatic healing pill.

The disciple closest to Gu Fan hurriedly crawled away and put some distance between them

To the naked eye the treasures were genuine, overflowing with pure high-grade Spiritual Qi that would make any greedy cultivator lose their mind.

And even Gu Fan staring at the pill up close felt a subtle thought bloom in his head.

’What an idiotic thing to say?’

’How can a pill be that dangerous?’

’I should give it a try.’

But thanks to his Eyes of the Void Shatterer, the illusion was broken quickly.

And not just the pill in his hand, but every single treasure, weapon, and pill contained am embedded demonic mark invisible to normal spiritual sense.

Gu Fan scoffed and tossed the jade box back onto the pedestal without taking anything.

"You greedy idiots." He laughed darkly and pointed at a heavily faded ancient inscription carved into the stone altar at the back of the hall.

"Those who take shall give."

He looked down at the terrified Golden Mountain disciples, a sinister, highly amused smirk stretching across his face.

"This isn’t a generous treasure vault left by a benevolent saint. This place uses genuine high-tier treasures as bait."

"Those treasures could boost your Cultivation, heal your wounds or even help you breakthrough."

"But the moment you swallow that pill or grip that sword, it marks your soul."

He pulled Song Yan closer to his chest as he delivered the truth.

"It fattens you up. Turns you into premium, highly energized nourishment for this place only to collect everything back with interest later."

The disciples stared in pure horror, realizing they had willingly swallowed tracking beacons for the monsters.

Despite the cold, logical warning, the blinding pain of a bleeding stomach wound and pure greed overwhelmed one heavily injured disciple.

He was injured by one of his senior brother and after resisting at the beginning, a voice inside his head has been messing with him.

He had been staring without blinking at a sword long before Gu Fan and the others walked in.

Finally the voice in his head won.

He ignored everything that has happened to his senior brother or what Gu Fan has just said.

He snatched the glowing longsword off a nearby pedestal, and clutched it to his chest.

"I don’t care! I need the power to survive!"

Instantly his cultivation surged.

The glowing longsword poured pure, refined energy straight into his meridians. His Spirit Realm aura exploded outward in a spiral of light.

The deep cut scross his chest sealed.

Strength flooded every limb until he felt invincible.

"Hahahahaha! This is it! this is what I was born for!" He threw his head back and laughed maniacally, already tasting the revenge he would take on the senior brothers who had abandoned him, "THIS STRENGTH! I CAN TASTE IT ALREADY."

Dark purple veins erupted beneath the skin of his forearm where his fingers locked around the hilt.

They moved like living worms, racing upward along the very pathways the sword was flooding with power.

The veins thickened, bulging and pulsing with corrupted demonic qi, blackening the flesh around them as they climbed.

Across his shoulder. Over his chest. Up the side of his neck in thick, rope-like cords that writhed visibly under the skin.

When the first vein reached the corner of his left eye, the laughter cut off.

A wet, sickening crack tore through the hall as his spine arched backward at an angle no living body could survive.

Flesh split open along his back with a loud squelch.

Black-purple blood sprayed across the stone floor.

His limbs elongated in a series of sharp pops, joints reforming into denser, wrong shapes.

The skin of his face stretched tight, then tore at the corners of his mouth as his jaw unhinged far past human limits.

Both his eyes flooded completely black, then ruptured outward into glowing crimson pits that leaked the same dark ichor.

In the space of a single heartbeat the greedy young cultivator collapsed inward and reformed into something much more taller, stronger and hidious. Something like an overpowered Demonic Corpse.

The glowing longsword was still clenched in its clawed hand as the thing threw back its ruined head and shrieked at its former brothers.

Gu Fan just smirked lazily. He pulled Song Yan against his chest and took a slow step backward toward the heavy stone exit doors.

Simultaneously the outer array of the Treasure Hall activated.

At the same moment the heavy stone walls of the outer array hall cracked open with a deafening rumble. A massive pack of elite rotting undead hounds poured into the chamber, hollow eyes burning with intense purple fire as they answered the dungeon’s automated dinner bell.

The newly mutated Golden Mountain disciple did not hesitate. All traces of his former humanity vanished.

He turned his massive razor-sharp claws on his own terrified, heavily injured sect brothers... but first, something wet and broken tore its way out of his throat.

A deep, layered, gurgling voice that sounded like two throats speaking at once... One human, one something far older and hungrier that scraped out of him. Thick black blood continuously seeped from the corners of his mouth and from the cracks in his newly blackened skin, dripping onto the stone floor with soft, wet plip... plip... sounds.

"Brothers..." the voice rumbled, hoarse and dripping, each syllable stretched and distorted like meat being pulled apart, "You look... so soft. So full of warm blood. Come closer. Let me... taste you... Won’t you let your brother have a bite?"

The surviving disciples froze in pure horror as the mutated thing that used to be their Senior Brother tilted its head at an unnatural angle, black blood running freely down its chin, and took the first heavy step toward them.

"Brot... Brother, what are you doing?!" one of the surviving disciples screamed, desperately crawling backward across the polished stone floor, "Snap out of it! We are brothers... Reemember...."

But before he could reach out to his brother’s soul... The mutated monster ignored the plea and swiped its claws, tearing the boy’s head clean off his shoulders in a massive fountain of hot blood.

The second disciple barely had time to scramble to his feet before the Demonic Corpse turned on him.

He raised both arms in a frantic attempt to block, but the clawed hand punched straight through his chest.

Ribs shattered, and the disciple’s eyes went wide as the monster lifted him clean off the ground, black blood and viscera pouring from the gaping hole in his torso.

With a casual twist of its wrist, the Demonic Corpse tossed the body aside like discarded meat.

While the last of the Golden Mountain survivors were reduced to bloody shreds in mere seconds, Gu Fan simply stood near the heavy stone exit doors with his arms crossed over his broad chest, watching the slaughter with a broad smile on his face.

"The amusement never stops!"