Chapter 66—Eleven Shadows
Chapter 66: Chapter 66—Eleven Shadows
Chapter 66—Eleven Shadows
Lei Cheng watched the city shrink beneath him as the Shadow Bizarre carried him skyward. After a stretch of flight, they descended into the slums.
’I already searched this area,’ he frowned. ’Where’s he hiding the kids?’ He extended his Life Intent carefully, without emitting any energy. ’Nothing!’
He glanced up—the Shadow Bizarre seemed to notice his gaze and glance down at him.
’It’s using its concealment ability.’ He frowned. ’No wonder it challenged me.’ He really couldn’t sense them even if he had a few more days.
The Shadow plunged, reaching the ground within a blink, sinking straight through mud and filth. Lei Cheng braced himself, ready to shield against the disgusting sludge—then paused, sensing himself wrapped in Bizarre Qi instead, protected as he passed through the muck unharmed.
Once inside, the tentacle-tongue released from his chest. He was a few meters away from the ground. He landed on both feet, then rolled forward to absorb the impact. Thud!
He slowly stood up and scrutinized his surroundings.
He was in an underground tunnel—a few square meters wide, the end stretching far beyond what his eyes could trace. Rows of children sat huddled together, their weak whimpers echoing through the tunnel. They were hugging their thighs, sitting on the floor. Many were thin, and tears dried up. Their eyes turned red; despite seemingly crying their eyes out, they lacked tears. Their voices were raspy, exhausted from shouting for hours. A few stayed silent, staring blankly at the ceiling. Some had already cried so much that they no longer had the strength to hope. Overhead, multiple floating shadow fogs clung to rock pillars supporting the ceiling.
The Shadow wasn’t simply hiding beneath the city—it had transformed the underground into its own world.
’An emergency escape route,’ he realized, recalling something his father, Lei Fang, had mentioned sternly to him when he was a child—Azure Cloud City kept hidden evacuation tunnels for the inner city, known only to city guards and top clans in case of catastrophe.
’Wait...’ He patted his clothes to get off dust, ’Why didn’t the constables ever find this?’
He caught himself. ’Of course they wouldn’t—after all, the Shadow Bizarre hadn’t kidnapped enough to hide them in a tunnel like now.’
The Shadow had adapted its methods as the number of victims increased.
He turned toward the unconscious children, a few still awake and trembling. The Shadow moved among them, tallying heads. "Indeed. None missing," it murmured, satisfied, before pulling out white paper and a brush, infusing it with Bizarre Qi until the ink glowed black.
At its gesture, more than ten floating shadows took form—each an identical round orb head with a crimson eye above a gaping crack of endless void, and a foggy body.
Lei Cheng studied each of them carefully. ’Identical. Nothing but Bizarre Intent and Bizarre Qi in any of them. Direct combat is useless—it’ll just keep reviving. I have to break its Bizarre Rule to kill it for good.’ Destroying bodies meant nothing if the Rule itself remained untouched.
He looked at the children, who began to stammer as the Shadow Bizarre locked its gaze with them. ’Every one of them, adorable as dolls.’ He clenched his fist. ’I’ll save them all.’
Many Shadows appeared before the children at once, causing them to freeze.
They began to faint. They didn’t open their mouths, as thud!thud! They landed on the floor, knocked out cold. Within a few moments, many had fainted.
"Now, now," the Shadows said in unison, waving foggy hands, "we don’t want you fainting yet." Their eerie voices—male and female intertwined—echoed through the tunnel as their large crimson eyes closed behind black eyelids, which seemed to appear out of thin air.
The Bizarre Intent stopped spreading from the Shadows. The few children stopped trembling and finally dared to raise their heads for a moment before lowering them again in a flash.
’The fear stems directly from its Bizarre Intent,’ Lei Cheng recalled the core power of Bizarre Creatures.
The Shadows pulled their tentacle-tongues and slapped the children’s cheeks gently to wake them. One by one, the children stirred awake, their cheeks still burning from the blows; their shoulders kept shaking—they were afraid to even glance at them, even though they had reduced their usage of Bizarre Intent.
Lei Cheng spotted one small girl at the back, glaring furiously at the Shadow, veins practically popping on her tiny forehead.
’So adorable,’ he thought, lips curving despite himself. He wanted to scoop her up immediately.
The Shadow noticed her glare too, pausing to stare her down before other Shadows stepped forward and extended their black tongues. One licked a chubby boy child’s entire face with its tongue, leaving him drenched in black saliva.
"A bit fine," it reported to the note-taking Shadow, "but lacking refined sweetness."
They kept licking one by one and mentioned taste as the note-taking Shadow wrote it down. To them, terror had become something measurable rather than emotional.
The children scrambled backward on trembling limbs, several fainting outright. Even the furious little girl bolted in fear.
"Yes—this is the fear," one Shadow smiled, and they all nodded together. "Prey filled with fear tastes far better. Father’s words were never wrong." Another added, "We’ve tested it ourselves." The note-taker laughed. "We’ve eaten hundreds of children and confirmed it—the more fear, the tastier the meal. Our Bizarre Rule is perfect: seven hours to properly season them with terror. No more, no less." To the Shadows, this wasn’t cruelty. It was simply the correct way to prepare a meal.
In this gap, Lei Cheng injected Life Intent slowly by touching the kids one by one. Under his green energy, they seemed to have regained glow in their dim eyes, but stayed silent.
’So it really was telling the truth—seven hours to hide, but also to use it to its advantage.’ Lei Cheng mused, recalling the Shadow Bizarre’s words at the Bamboo Snake Gang. ’Its Bizarre Rule matches its personality exactly.’
He grinned internally and tried to stay indifferent. ’Now I know how to provoke it.’
He clapped his hands loudly, drawing every eye in the tunnel. Clap! Clap!
The girl at the back scowled, motioning a hand over her neck, indicating, ’What are you doing? They’ll kill you!’ She moved her mouth in shape, ’Idiot.’
Lei Cheng gave her a calm, reassuring smile before turning to the Shadows, pointing at himself. "You really think this is going to scare me?" If their greatest weapon was fear, then attacking their pride was the fastest way to shake them.
"What?" the note-taking Shadow hissed. Lei Cheng exhaled, running a hand through his hair.
"Ugh." The Shadows screamed in unison, cracks splitting wide across their foggy round heads, and the children pissed themselves and fainted en masse from the wave of dread.
Only the smallest girl in the end remained barely conscious, clutching her own trembling arms as though trying to stop herself from shaking. Even then, she stubbornly glared at the Shadows through tear-filled eyes.
Ten tentacle-tongues shot out, filling the tunnel, surrounding Lei Cheng entirely—one behind his skull, two hovering an inch from his eyes, one coiled loosely around his throat, others pressed against his chest and legs, close enough to crush him in an instant.
Lei Cheng mocked, shaking his head. "You know, I used to play this exact game."
The Shadows froze, retreating tongues, and tilting their heads. "Played? What do you mean, played?"
Lei Cheng sighed. "It’s hard explaining this to fools." The Shadows hissed indignantly. "Fools?"
"When I traveled with my father, we met a Bizarre Cultivator who’d mastered a technique built entirely around invoking fear. My father wanted to test my resolve with it." He smiled, gazing up at the ceiling as if reminiscing. "That old cultivator threw everything he had at me. Never once made me afraid."
The Shadows burst into laughter. "Ha! What a resolve!" And clapped their foggy hands in unison.
Clap! Clap!"Indeed—remarkable resolve."
Then their tone shifted, turning colder, sharper, the ambient eeriness deepening. "A human cultivator compared with me? The great me? A Bizarre?" Exactly as Lei Cheng expected, the comparison wounded its pride far more than any attack could have.
They all turned silent for a moment, then threw tongues on the side of Lei Cheng and yelled, "Let’s see if you can survive this."
Bang! Bang!Their tongues shattered the surrounding pillars and rock walls.
Then a black light swallowed the tunnel, which was emitted from the Shadows’ bodies. Every source of illumination vanished at once, leaving nothing but pitch darkness.
Lei Cheng felt a chill spread up his legs—and realized, with a jolt, that they had begun to freeze with cold ice. Whatever came next, the Shadows had finally stopped playing.