Chapter 416: The Green Sea Ruins (Part 9)

Only then did the dogkin react, but the wounded one’s carotid artery had already been completely torn open. There was no way to stop the bleeding.

A few minutes later, he was gone for good.

The dogkin let out furious roars. That young wolfman had acted unremarkably throughout the journey, barely on par with most trained young mercenaries. None of them had expected him to pull something like this. Two of the dogkin grabbed weapons and tried to give chase, but Charlotte stopped them.

“Whatever that was, it wasn’t Maylen,” Wu Qingsong told them.

There had been two souls inside that body. The first, Maylen’s, had shattered almost instantly under his mental attack. In that very moment, a second soul, hidden within the body all along, immediately surfaced and counterattacked with vicious force.

Because Wu Qingsong had been afraid of turning Maylen into a mindless husk, he had deliberately restrained his psychic force. As a result, he suffered a serious backlash. If he weren’t unkillable, that strike could’ve done lasting damage to his mind.

Charlotte’s face was pale as a ghost—partly because she had lost a subordinate, but even more so because of the deception she’d fallen victim to. She had always considered herself a master manipulator, yet this sudden failure dealt a huge blow to her pride.

“What was that thing?” she demanded, nearly losing her composure.

“A powerful soul has been attached to him, hiding itself extremely well,” Wu Qingsong said.

The Crimson Overlord?

That was his first thought. But if it really were the Crimson Overlord, the outcome would likely have been much worse.

“How did you find him?” he asked Charlotte immediately.

If the enemy had deliberately targeted him, then this situation wasn’t simple at all.

Charlotte carefully recalled the process of contacting Maylen’s family. It hadn’t seemed strange at the time, but now that she thought about it, things had gone too smoothly. Everything had unfolded just as they’d hoped.

It was like wanting to climb a platform, and then someone just happened to walk by carrying a ladder.

“Has Dark Moon worked with them before?”

“We’ve only ever fenced stolen goods,” Charlotte admitted bitterly. “Someone in our organization once bought a lot of rare items from Maylen’s grandfather, so when we did the background check, we thought he was someone we could cautiously trust.”

The biggest mistake, of course, had been hers. She’d been too confident in her own abilities, so she had trusted them too easily.

After all, in her worldview, ordinary beastkin like them shouldn’t have been capable of lying to her.

“Were the items they bought from him like these?” Wu Qingsong asked, picking up one of the finely wrapped artifacts Maylen had collected earlier.

But Charlotte couldn’t answer. She hadn’t investigated that deeply.

Wu Qingsong glanced around at the forest swaying in the wind, as if it had come alive again.

Where had the soul inside Maylen taken him? Had it escaped? Or was it still hiding nearby, watching them, waiting to strike again?

“I just hope this wasn’t an attack aimed specifically at us. I hope we simply walked into a trap that was already set. If it was targeting us, things are going to get much worse,” Wu Qingsong said. “We need to move camp to a more open area, where we have better visibility.”

The deeper ruins were still dangerous, but compared to the threat Maylen had posed, they were no longer the top concern.

The well near the forest’s edge could no longer be used, as its safety was uncertain. Fortunately, while looking for a new campsite, they discovered a pit full of rainwater. It was murky and smelled awful, but the fact that aquatic plants were growing there meant it likely wasn’t highly toxic.

They carefully filtered and boiled the water. Wu Qingsong drank the first sip. After ten minutes passed without issue, another dogkin tried a small amount. Half an hour later, with no side effects, the others finally drank their fill.

“I need to use that corpse,” Wu Qingsong said quietly to Charlotte. “I mean no disrespect to the dead, but we need the combat power right now.”

Charlotte glanced at the dogkin, whose expressions were uneasy and grim. Then she nodded.

“I’ll convince them.”

Wu Qingsong quickly carved a heart inscribed with runes from wood found in the ruins, inserted it into the chest of the deceased to replace his real heart, then drew power from a soul stone, and tore off a sliver of his own soul. He injected both into the corpse.

The dead man soon rose.

There was some disturbance among the dogkin, but thanks to Charlotte’s prior persuasion, they ultimately accepted it.

Wu Qingsong directed the undead to scout the nearby forest. But the forest rejected it fiercely. As it moved, vines constantly reached out, seemingly trying to grab and tear it to pieces. This made Wu Qingsong abandon the idea of having it search for Maylen. Instead, he ordered it to search the ruins for suspicious clues.

Watching a fallen comrade be killed, then turned into an undead servant, took a massive psychological toll on the dogkin. Wu Qingsong didn’t push them to accept it. He simply gave the undead orders to gather firewood and keep watch.

That eased the tension slightly. But even so, no one could sleep that night.

***

“I don’t think this was aimed at us,” Wu Qingsong concluded after a night of reflection.

Their main enemies were the elves, followed by the insectoids. Dark Moon might have competitors in the underworld, but it was extremely unlikely those people would go to such lengths.

If the elves had discovered their identities, they would’ve struck directly. There would’ve been no need for such underhanded schemes.

As for the insectoids, their methods were indeed more secretive. But if this had been the work of the Crimson or Flame Overlords, Maylen would’ve shown much more hostility toward him specifically.

He reviewed every detail of their journey since leaving the capital. Maylen hadn’t targeted him once. He had played his part perfectly, acting like a greedy, success-hungry, but ultimately shallow young man. There had been no signs of deception. Nothing to make them doubt him.

If his identity hadn’t been exposed, what would he have done next?

“There’s definitely something in these ruins that he wants us to find,” Wu Qingsong said. “From now on, you all need to be extremely careful.”