novellhall Chapter 62: The Bloodthirsty Copper Plague and Ghouls
Chapter 62: The Bloodthirsty Copper Plague and Ghouls
After all these people had disappeared, Evan leaned against the car door to review the events.
"Just like what experiential memory says."
He silently filed it in his mind.
"This guy is a complete weakling in close combat."
In that subtle move of using someone else's force against them, he keenly noticed Alcott's reaction.
The moment his fingers slid forward along Dennis's elbow, Alcott's expression changed.
He seemed to have sensed something.
but.
His physical strength was simply insufficient to support him in making the corresponding evasive maneuvers.
Just as he was about to dodge to the left, Dennis's slap landed on his face.
The fact that he was just beginning to react, yet without any physical output, had completely exposed Alcott's true condition.
Add to that the rapid swelling and redness on his tender skin after being hit, and the suppressed anger.
All of this confirms one thing.
This guy's physical strength is at most slightly higher than that of an ordinary person.
"In addition, he just used his ability to control my desire to resist."
Evan slowly sorted things out in his mind.
"Is the goal to embarrass me, or is the intention to control me directly?"
"But he only controlled himself for a moment before stopping immediately. This shows that he has some shrewdness, but not much."
"But the important thing is that he used his real skills. He wasn't just pretending."
"After all, if it weren't for the notification on my screen, I wouldn't even have realized that I had just been hit."
Thinking about this, Ivan's understanding of the monk profession reached a new level.
He originally thought that cultivators mainly controlled macro-level emotions such as the seven emotions and six desires.
Love, hate, greed, jealousy, fear—these are all emotions.
But he didn't expect it.
Even the most basic instinctive reaction of "resistance" can be silently stripped away by the cultivator's abilities.
"What if he simply eliminates my will to live..."
His back felt slightly cold.
"Wouldn't I just commit suicide on the spot?"
"If, at the most intense moment of the fight, he erases my will to resist."
"Then wouldn't I just be a fool waiting to be beheaded?"
Ivan stood by the railing at the carriage door, his fingers unconsciously tapping the brass handrail twice.
"No wonder this guy's physical strength is so weak; his methods are truly bizarre."
He mentally reviewed the details of what had just happened.
"Judging from what just happened, this guy's casting range isn't very far. There was also a clear casting animation; his eyes changed once, and his right hand made a small movement."
"The safest way to kill him is with a single, fatal blow."
"Or, just stay away from him."
He was thinking about the essence of unrestricted combat in a duel.
The most successful challenge is to cause trouble for your opponent before the fight even begins.
"Hand grenades, landmines, pistols, dump trucks."
"He doesn't have the immortality of the Bloodthirsty race."
"A person is killed, and they die."
Having roughly determined Alcott's abilities and personality, Evan finally had a clear picture and understanding of his opponent.
For the next two hours or so, Alcott wisely avoided approaching Hearst's carriage again.
But the harassers didn't stop.
After a group of wealthy young men left, a group of newspaper reporters from all walks of life arrived, eager to get inside and interview Erdin.
The newspaper reporter left, and then came the conman who impersonated a nobleman and sneaked into the VIP carriage.
The swindler is gone, but then another businessman tries to get close to him under the guise of being an "old acquaintance."
Without exception, all of these people were turned away by Ivan, who was standing at the carriage door.
"Is this what it feels like to be a vicious dog for nobles?"
He pondered this feeling in his heart.
He held his head high, looked down on everyone, and would directly rebuke anyone he didn't like.
He exuded an arrogance that had been suppressed for eighteen years.
"No wonder there are so many sycophants who get ahead in this world."
He sighed silently to himself.
"This feeling of arrogance and domineering...it's actually quite enjoyable."
The progress of the copper plague finally came to a complete halt during this period.
This whole wave has increased the progress by a full 5%.
It surged from the original 0.371% to 5.371%.
"Incense burners are wonderful things! We should look at them more and learn more about them!"
Evan's lips twitched, and he was about to continue laughing to himself...
A middle-aged man dressed in a respectable three-piece suit walked down the corridor.
The man's appearance was quite ordinary. He was of medium height and slightly tall, with regular but unremarkable features, and a pair of round glasses with thin metal frames perched on his nose.
His demeanor was reserved and gentle, and he looked like a senior partner at a long-established law firm.
His right hand was holding the hand of a little girl who looked no more than ten years old.
The little girl wore a red plaid woven skirt, and her jet-black hair was combed into two neat braids, with white ribbons tied to the ends of the braids.
Her face was round and chubby, her skin was fair, and her eyes were big and bright.
It looks like the kind of adorable child any mother would want to reach out and touch.
Five meters behind them, at the door of the carriage, stood two other people.
A young mother, wearing a beige wool coat, gently puts her arm around a boy who looks about eight or nine years old.
The mother and child stood there quietly, their eyes lowered, seemingly making way for the passengers behind them, while subtly blocking other bystanders from getting closer.
As Evan looked at the "family of four," his pupils dilated almost imperceptibly for a moment.
"Not human" family.
All four members of the family were present.
"Sir."
The middle-aged man stopped two steps away from Ivan, revealing a gentle and impeccable smile.
His voice was steady and gentlemanly, with the tone typical of well-educated people of this era.
"My daughter is a devoted admirer of Miss Hearst. May I ask that she be allowed to come in and meet her?"
He looked down at the little girl beside him.
The little girl raised her head and looked timidly at Evan, her big eyes filled with pure longing.
Ivan remained unfazed.
"no."
The middle-aged man's smile remained unchanged.
But he took a small step forward.
His right hand reached out with a speed so fast it was almost imperceptible in slow motion, and grabbed Evan's left wrist.
The force of that hand was outrageously strong.
If it were an ordinary person, just that pinch would cause them to scream uncontrollably.
"I'm sorry then."
The middle-aged man's voice remained gentle.
But his eyes, which were originally gentle behind his glasses, suddenly became deep and profound.
The color of his pupils darkened from light brown to an almost black hue, like the color of sewage settling at the bottom of a well.
next moment.
His fingernails suddenly extended outward at a speed that defied the laws of physics, the tips becoming long, hard, and exhibiting a purplish-black, oily sheen.
The five purplish-black claws pierced directly into the flesh of Evan's exposed wrist.
You have been injected with corpse poison.
You have been infected with putrefactive fungi.
You have been infected with a bone marrow parasite.
Three status indicators appear on the panel.
"It's okay, you're just taking a nap."
"You'll be back to normal in an hour."
The middle-aged man's voice remained gentle.
"Corpse poison?"
Ivan's mind raced.
"I wonder if it can be reversed."
Just as he was pondering...
The copper plague struck first and went berserk.
[Copper Plague has consumed the corpse poison! Progress +2%.]
[Copper plague has devoured putrefactive fungi! Progress +1.5%.]
[The copper plague has devoured the corpses of the bone marrow parasites! Progress +1.2%.]
Ivan paused for half a second.
"Huh? How did the parasite turn into a corpse?"
"Oh... he must have died from my blood poison."
As the copper plague kept spawning devouring notifications like a godlike streak, the memories of the old hunter in his ear surfaced at the same time.
The sound came from beside the fire.
"Ghouls. Humanoid monsters that live in groups."
"Its physique is about three times that of a normal person. It is a scavenging monster that can reproduce on its own and can also be transformed from ordinary people."
"Skilled in close combat, with sharp teeth and claws. Its claws carry a large amount of tomb virus, so be careful not to get scratched."
"Their core ability is shapeshifting. They can mimic any normal human they have ever seen, including appearance, voice, and habitual movements."
"Aside from worldly scams and espionage, the supernatural is not very dangerous."
"Many ghouls have even become accustomed to the way of life in human society, giving them a unique advantage in dealing with corpses."
"They usually only abduct ordinary people and turn them into new ghouls when their population faces a survival crisis."
The old hunter's whispers hadn't stopped.
Ivan has already made a move.
He completely ignored the five sharp claws piercing his wrist, and with a flick of his wrist, his left hand precisely gripped the middle-aged man's wrist.
The burst of power from his 5.4 physique instantly immobilized that wrist.
Leverage resources.
work hard.
Ivan pulled sharply.
The middle-aged man's seemingly stable body was pulled up from the spot by this force.
With a quick turn, the two had moved from inside the carriage to the connecting area outside the carriage door. A cold wind, carrying the smell of coal smoke from the platform, hit them in the face.
Ivan pressed the claw against the brass railing between the carriages, then stood in front of him, looking down at him.
"Everyone is a two-faced freak."
A bright smile slowly spread across his lips.
"What are you pretending to be so profound for, Mr. Ghoul?"