Chapter 180: Headworm
After a final sweep around without discovering any other exits, Zhang Qian didn’t dare to delay and dashed toward the main entrance not far away.
If he waited any longer, whether the stone brick path collapsed from being gnawed or he was targeted by those invisible monsters, neither would be a good outcome.
However, the distance to the door wasn’t far to begin with; in merely a few seconds, Zhang Qian was already standing in front of the main entrance.
The smooth door surface showed no traces of time, with not a speck of dust or scratch visible on it.
Placing one hand on the door and gently pressing, Zhang Qian then discovered that the feeling transmitted from this main entrance was very heavy, almost not like wood but more like two massive stones.
The force applied by his hand gradually increased, yet that side of the main entrance remained completely still, as if it wasn’t a door but just a wall with carvings.
Clearly, this door also required supernatural power to open.
There were no handles or the like on the door, so Zhang Qian could only lean against the door, planning to use true qi to forcibly blast it open.
“I suggest you hurry up a bit.” The mannequin couldn’t help but remind him.
The rustling sounds behind were gradually becoming denser; more and more unknown existences were awakening in the darkness.
Even if they were still focusing their attention on the stone bricks now, it wouldn’t be long before they gnawed those stone bricks clean, and then the mannequin and Zhang Qian would be the ones in trouble.
Seeing that the main entrance had only just opened a barely noticeable gap, Zhang Qian decisively flung the mannequin to the ground. “Then you go stall them for a bit.”
Opening this door required a heavy supernatural quota; even Zhang Qian, after diverting part of his strength to suppress the mannequin, wasn’t quite qualified.
But now that he had abandoned the mannequin, with both hands pressing against the main entrance at the same time, the speed of opening it was indeed more than twice as fast.
“Don’t!” The mannequin cried out and rolled onto the stone brick.
Suddenly, all those rustling sounds paused for a moment.
This silence didn’t reassure the mannequin at all; it felt like a freshly baked hot steamed bun surrounded by vagrants starved for seventy or eighty years, all eyeing it covetously.
With no time to think, the mannequin frantically scraped at the ground with its limbs to get back to Zhang Qian’s side. “Even if you can’t spare a hand to carry me, that’s fine; throwing me away after using me is just too heartless.”
“Go play on the side.” Zhang Qian was too lazy to even look at it and casually kicked the mannequin aside with one foot.
The mannequin was about to get angry when a round thing appeared before its eyes.
“Use this eyeball first; let’s get out of here before anything else.” Zhang Qian said without turning his head.
The situation was special now; it was time for the mannequin to contribute some effort.
Relying solely on the mannequin’s own supernatural power probably wouldn’t last long; giving it an eyeball could help it hold out a bit longer.
Moreover, the eyeball required eye contact to launch an attack; even if the mannequin wanted to use it to sneak attack Zhang Qian, it would be countered by the ghost mask attack pattern and couldn’t succeed.
“Cackle, you’ve finally come around.” The mannequin let out two strange cries, picked up the eyeball without wiping it, and brutally shoved it into its own eye socket.
The original eye was forcibly squeezed into the empty skull; now the mannequin had one ghostly white eye and one pitch black eye, giving off an inexplicable eerie feeling.
Zhang Qian not far away witnessed the entire process and couldn’t help but feel a bit envious of this ability.
No preconditions at all, directly forcibly using a fierce ghost’s supernatural power—such an ability was really too cheating.
If he could leave the ghost ship, maybe he could invite the mannequin over to play at home.
No other meaning, just to explore the mysteries of alchemy together.
The mannequin with the ghost eye installed no longer fearfully shrank toward Zhang Qian; instead, it lay on the ground, letting that eerie eye scan around.
The pinprick-sized pitch black pupil sometimes expanded and sometimes shrank; although there were no other movements, it was certain that many things had already fallen under such an attack.
Clearly, the things in the garbage room, in terms of terror level alone, were completely no match for the ghost eye; under the ghost eye attack, they could only persist for an instant.
But the number of these things was truly terrifying; the ghost eye’s pupil flashed on and off like sending Morse code without stopping, with the attack frequency not only not slowing but actually gradually increasing.
Although the mannequin couldn’t see what the things in the space were, based on the ghost eye’s line of sight, it could also judge their approximate positions.
The distance between those positional creatures and it was shortening; when they landed, the ghost eye’s line of sight was still fixed ten meters away, but now that distance had halved.
In other words, in less than a minute, the ghost eye’s defensive line would collapse.
Fortunately, Zhang Qian was done over there.
“Let’s go!” Zhang Qian scooped up the mannequin in one grab.
As soon as he let go, the already opened main entrance surprisingly showed signs of closing again, but the gap left was enough for them to pass through.
Squeezing sideways through the gap, with no time to observe the situation inside, Zhang Qian casually flung the mannequin down and turned to press against the main entrance.
“Bang—”
The main entrance slammed shut, yet in the darkness, something still rushed out.
A chilling wind brushed past, bypassing Zhang Qian in front and heading straight for the mannequin on the ground.
“You really think I’m easy to bully?” The mannequin lay on the ground too lazy to move.
The right eye just flashed once, and the attack was already accomplished.
With a slap, some invisible thing fell onto the floor in front of them.
After a moment, as if the supernatural power inside its body had been dispersed by the mannequin, that thing’s appearance slowly manifested.
“This is a… what the heck?” Zhang Qian momentarily couldn’t find words to describe the bizarre creature on the ground.
Unlike any fierce ghost he’d seen before, this thing’s shape was exceptionally strange.
The long, cylindrical body was nearly a meter long, about as thick as a wrist, with no limbs, completely composed of segmented, angular bones.
At the front end of the slender body was an extremely protrusive human head, which was at least four or five times thicker than the body—no one knew where this body got the strength to drag such a head along in flight.
The entire creature looked like a head connected to a spine, but this spine had no ribs, and there was no blood or flesh visible.
It might have rotted away already, or perhaps the bone-scraping technique was highly skilled.
Listening closely, there were no movements from behind the door; this guy’s kin had probably given up chasing the two of them.
“Crack—”
After a crisp sound, the snow-white spine detached from the head.
Attracted by Zhang Qian’s action, the mannequin asked curiously, “What are you going to do with that thing?”
“Just try it; no harm in taking it since it’s free.” Zhang Qian indifferently gripped the spine in his hand.
The connections between the bones didn’t break because of this; they fit tightly together, somewhat like a whip.
Swinging it casually, he couldn’t help but nod. “The feel is actually pretty good; should have killed a couple more earlier.”
