novelraw Chapter 296: The Corrupted Madonna
Chapter 296: The Corrupted Madonna
Before long, the convoy reached the outer blockade of Delacroix County town, and the lively southern daylight seemed to be cut off by an invisible barrier.
In its place was a dim yellow sky, heavy with the oppressive weight that comes before a storm.
In the air, the “eerie green miasma” described in the report was even denser and more acrid than Lin Jie had imagined.
It was not like ordinary fog that drifted and dispersed, but a viscous, living gelatinous substance, pressing down heavily over this dead land.
Every breath felt like inhaling a poisonous mixture of swamp rot, decaying aquatic plants, and some unknown chemical reagent.
The blockade had been set up by the Louisiana National Guard.
Armed soldiers wore gas masks soaked in disinfectant, their faces full of tension and fear.
They had erected a fragile line of defense of barbed wire and barricades in front of the only bridge leading to the county town.
After the Baroness produced a “special pass” from the governor’s office granting highest authority, Lin Jie and the other two transferred to a waiting rivercraft better suited for narrow waterways.
It was an extreme, heavily modified military flat-bottom sternwheeler.Its hull was riveted with thick steel plates, with improvised added armor on key areas.
A powerful, specially silenced steam engine drove the giant sternwheel.
At the bow, a rapid-fire six-barrel rotary machine gun was even mounted, invented by Dr. Richard Gatling.
This iron monster, as if driven out of some mad scientist’s workshop, would be their only mobile fortress in the rotting estuary.
“Good hunting to you… gentlemen.” Isabella stood on the dock and gave them an elegant Creole curtsey.
With the low roar of the steam engine, the flatboat slowly pulled away from the dock and, following the fetid Delacroix River, steamed into the death zone shrouded in green miasma.
The last vestiges of the civilized world were quickly left behind.
The atmosphere on board grew oppressively tense.
Brewer stood at the prow, holding a high-powered military telescope, vigilantly scanning the riverbanks.
The once-vibrant emerald mangroves had withered into putrid yellow.
Countless black roots rose from the murky water, encrusted with globs of green mucous algae.
Large numbers of bloated, scale-shedding dead fish floated on the water.
Occasionally a gigantic crocodile corpse could be seen, its shell covered in bulbous, multicolored fungal growths.
The world’s palette had been reduced to corruption’s sickly yellow-green and death’s gray-black.
White Ghost sat at the stern motionless, inscrutable.
Lin Jie spread the intelligence map provided by the Baroness across a table in the cabin.
“Our first target is here.”
His finger landed on a bend in the river marked “St. Jacob’s Church.”
“According to Isabella’s intel,” he explained the operation plan to Brewer and White Ghost, “the source of this disaster, that Kingdom-class UMA, does not uniformly permeate this area. Instead, it maintains this rotten domain’s stability through several ‘spiritual nodes’ it has contaminated.”
“These three landmarks already emitted weak spiritual responses before the catastrophe. That made them the easiest to be corrupted by the UMA’s power, turning them into its ‘signal amplifiers.’”
“Our primary mission is to locate and purify these three nodes. On one hand, we can weaken the UMA’s power to create an advantage for the final fight, and on the other…”
A glint flashed in Lin Jie’s eyes, “…by triangulating the exact positions of these three points, we might be able to reverse-calculate the creature’s true lair.”
This was a typical “Lin Jie” plan.
Clip the wings first, then strike straight at the heart.
Brewer nodded after the briefing, indicating he understood.
The flatboat sailed along the river for about an hour.
Finally, a white wooden Gothic community church with an old spire appeared on the foggy riverbank.
“There it is.” Brewer set down his telescope, his voice low.
He pulled out a Spencer M1882 pump-action shotgun from his back.
The weapon had been heavily modified; the walnut stock and forearm had been replaced with unknown beast bone.
Ancient Hebrew biblical prayers were branded into the bones.
The barrel was tightly wrapped in layers of leather reinforcing straps, said to be a relic of a martyred Texas Ranger.
Brewer took from the straps a series of alchemically blessed 12-gauge “purification” shells.
Each brass shell’s base bore a finely inscribed cross rune.
Click.
He smoothly loaded the first round into the tubular magazine.
With a crisp chambering sound, the legendary lawman from Texas readied to make this corrupted land hear the gospel again.
Just as their flatboat was about to touch shore—
“Moo—!!!”
A pained bellow suddenly erupted from the mangroves on the bank!
The earth itself trembled!
Several monstrous beasts the size of a wagon, covered in rotted flesh and green pustules, charged out of the trees!
Their target was the iron vessel steaming toward the shore and full of living human scent!
“Damn… so they’re these things.” Brewer watched the charging behemoths and cursed under his breath.
“Stumblers.”
Without turning, he quickly explained to Lin Jie and White Ghost, “The department’s earlier recon teams ran into these. From the intel, they are primary-stage mutations of local marsh buffalo infected by the plague.”
He spoke fast.
“Don’t be fooled by their rotting looks!”
Brewer’s warning sharpened, “Their flesh may be decayed, but under the skin the bones and muscles have hardened again due to the plague. They’re tougher than normal rhino hide! Small-caliber rounds do about as much as an itch to them!”
“Their vision is completely degraded, but their hearing and smell are magnified dozens of times, extremely sensitive to sound and the scent of living things! So stash your useless flashy moves!”
As he spoke he half-kneeled at the bow, expertly bracing his shotgun on the ship’s armored rail.
“Their only weak point is the skull!”
Brewer narrowed his eyes to dangerous slits and targeted the largest mutant buffalo at the front, “That’s where the plague strain and its neural center combine! Blast their heads open with large-caliber purification rounds!”
Before he finished, he had already pulled the trigger decisively.
Bang!!!
The thunderous shot shattered the river’s silence.
Brewer’s shotgun erupted flame in his hands!
The purification slug, empowered with holy water and mithril powder, traced an irregular silver arc through the air and smashed into the lead Stumbler’s head.
The creature’s skull instantly exploded!
Green pus and torn flesh sprayed everywhere!
Yet the massive body surged forward by inertia another dozen meters before collapsing and slashing up a furious spray of mud.
Dead with one shot!
The former Texas Ranger displayed terrifying marksmanship.
The remaining Stumblers roared even more frenziedly, and under Brewer’s torrential point fire they recklessly lunged into the cold water, trying to use their bulk to capsize the flatboat.
“Damn! These things don’t feel pain!” Brewer swore; his precise shooting could continuously shred their bodies but not immediately halt their charge.
“White Ghost.”
Lin Jie spoke the name.
The previously silent man at the stern moved.
A brief, phantom-like afterimage remained where he had been, and in the next second White Ghost appeared at the gunwale’s edge!
He extended his cold prosthetic limb, “Void.”
The brass gear at the prosthetic joint suddenly began to spin frantically counterclockwise!
As the gears turned, an unsettling ripple spread across the arm’s surface!
Its color shifted from white to a translucent gray.
White Ghost plunged the transformed arm into the river.
One Stumbler that had reached the boat froze mid-stride.
Two seconds later, its paddling limbs went limp and it sank to the bottom.
There were no wounds on its body.
But beneath its rotted flesh, the aberrant heart that had functioned as its life center was gone.
With Brewer’s overwhelming frontal firepower and White Ghost’s eerie lethal strikes in perfect coordination, the first wave of the living corpse attack was utterly eliminated in under two minutes.
Lin Jie watched everything unfold and gained a brand-new appreciation for the abilities of his two temporary companions.
He began to understand why Isabella had called them his “scabbard” and “hilt.”
...
After clearing the shore threat, the three quickly entered the ancient church filled with the stench of decay.
Inside, the church was a mess.
Pews were overturned, the floor layered with thick dust and bird droppings.
A nauseating rot permeated the air.
The source of that stench lay at the altar in the deepest part of the church.
As the three approached the altar they immediately felt a strong corrosive spiritual pressure pushing toward them.
The life-sized statue of the Virgin Mary on the altar presented an extremely bizarre and horrifying sight.
Its surface was covered in writhing green mycelial threads.
Its beautiful glass eyes continuously oozed a viscous green fluid like pus, emitting a foul odor.
“This is it.” Lin Jie was absolutely certain, “The first node.”
“Blow it to pieces with explosives?” Brewer suggested; his disgust was genuine.
“No.” Lin Jie vetoed immediately, “It has already become a spiritual bomb. Direct destruction could trigger an unpredictable energy backlash, maybe instantly spreading the corruptive force here and causing secondary contamination.”
“We must ‘depressurize’ first, then ‘dismantle.’”
Lin Jie took from his backpack a set of simple alchemical tools and several silver plates inscribed with “purify” and “conduct” runes.
“Brewer, guard the door. White Ghost, help me place these three silver plates at the statue’s left, right, and directly behind it.”
“We need to construct a temporary ‘triple conduction formation’ to slowly channel the corrupt spiritual accumulation inside out into the air.”
Brewer and White Ghost immediately followed his instructions.
This was a delicate and dangerous task.
They had to ensure the plates’ positions and distances relative to the statue were exact down to the smallest margin.
Any tiny mistake could cause the formation to fail, or even prematurely detonate the spiritual bomb.
With the three working in tacit coordination, the simple formation—nevertheless containing deep alchemical principles—was nearly complete.
White Ghost carefully placed the last silver plate directly behind the statue.
Suddenly, a warning voice came through from outside the church’s stained glass window.
“Drop your things, lowly ones.”
“This trophy belongs to the Iron Cross.”