Chapter 241: Sweeping Through

“Wu?” Ling whispered softly.

Wu Qingsong jolted awake from a nightmare, struggling to come back to reality. It took him a few seconds to realize that he was lying on Ling’s lap, her arms wrapped around him.

“I’m fine,” he said, shaking his head vigorously. “How long did I sleep?”

“Not even two hours,” Ling replied gently.

Not far from them, Liuli was curled up by the campfire, her tail swaying lazily in her sleep. The sight made Wu Qingsong feel a little more at ease. He tried to sit up, but Ling held his head gently in place. 

“Just rest a little longer. You’ve been awake for more than a day and night without any sleep.”

“I can still manage,” Wu Qingsong said.

But he didn’t try to force himself out of her embrace. Instead, he shifted his position slightly, making himself more comfortable.

There was a soft rustling sound nearby. Wu Qingsong turned his head and saw that it was Ling, using her powers to quickly carve the ghost tree that his undead minions had cut down earlier. She was shaping the wood into hearts.

All around them, the forest was filled with the motionless figures of undead sitting on the ground.

Of course, they didn’t need to rest, but sitting like that conserved some of the energy from their soul fragments and allowed them to respond more quickly to his commands than if they were lying down.

“Do you think I’m frightening?” Wu Qingsong finally asked after a long silence.

“Wu? Of course not,” Ling shook her head naturally. “Why would you think that?”

“I’ve killed so many people… and turned them into undead.”

“They’ve killed more people,” Ling said softly but firmly. “You’re not killing for pleasure or your own desires. That’s what makes you different from them. You’re doing it to make sure that more people can live.”

Her words made Wu Qingsong pause for a moment. Perhaps her reasoning wasn’t entirely persuasive, but the absolute trust in her voice gave him enough strength to carry on. He couldn’t help but squeeze her hand in gratitude.

“Thank you, Ling. If it weren’t for you, I really wouldn’t know what to do.”

Hearing this made Ling blush slightly. She didn’t know how to properly respond to Wu Qingsong’s words, but by the time she gathered her thoughts, he had already fallen asleep again.

Ling sighed softly. She gently adjusted his position to make him more comfortable. Then, she resumed quietly training her mental powers.

However, Wu Qingsong didn’t sleep for long this time either. In less than two hours, Daryl returned.

“I found their regimental camp and another squad’s camp! This unit seems to be securing the route to Tannar and Nugio. They’re all stationed near the main road!”

Ling was a little annoyed that Daryl had woken Wu Qingsong, but Wu quickly sat up. 

“Did you mark it on the map? Let me see.”

A few minutes later, the army of nearly two thousand undead was once again roused from their rest. They moved swiftly and silently through the forest and stealthily surrounded their target before dawn.

The invaders never anticipated facing such an attack. 

They had built a standard wooden military camp, constructed watchtowers at critical points, and stationed enough sentries. But in the darkness of the early morning, as a group of what appeared to be their own comrades silently approached, the sentries didn’t raise the alarm immediately. Instead, they only notified the duty officer.

What they didn’t expect was that before the officer could make any decisions, the approaching undead—already having closed in—suddenly launched their assault. The guards at the camp gates, completely unprepared, were cut down quickly.

The sentries barely managed to scream before the undead soldiers killed them. 

Immediately after, a horde of zombies charged from all directions into the camp. The undead soldiers pressed forward without hesitation. They stormed the barracks and stabbed the half-awake soldiers who had just been roused from their sleep, efficiently taking their lives.

The camp’s war wolves also faced an overwhelming number of undead war wolves. They had no desire to fight, only a desperate urge to break free from their restraints and flee. But the very measures taken the previous night to prevent their escape became their undoing, trapping them in a hopeless battle. Most of the war wolves were quickly killed by the undead’s sharp teeth. Only three or four lucky ones managed to break free from their restraints and flee into the wild. 

However, they were inconsequential to the overall battle and posed no threat of revealing Wu Qingsong’s secret, so they were allowed to escape.

Only a handful of the most alert soldiers managed to grab their weapons before being killed. 

However, they were forced to face enemies ten times their number—efficient, ruthless, and unafraid of death—without any armor. No matter how skilled or brave they were, against the relentless onslaught of heavily armored undead charging straight at them, all they could do was land a futile strike on the nearest undead before being overwhelmed and stabbed to death by the horde.

Within minutes, the entire camp had been overrun by the undead, and soon after, it fell into a deathly silence.

Wu Qingsong couldn’t micromanage each individual undead. He could only give a broad command–kill all the soldiers in the camp. As a result, no one was left alive.

Ling, Liuli, and Daryl watched the carnage unfold from a distance, staring at Wu Qingsong’s solitary figure. Out of concern that such a gruesome and brutal scene might affect their mental state, Wu Qingsong had strictly ordered them not to enter the camp until the battlefield was cleared.

In reality, though, the person most affected by all of this was Wu Qingsong himself.

Blood, chunks of flesh, organs, severed limbs, mangled bodies, and faces frozen in death—it was a hellish sight. 

Although Wu Qingsong kept reminding himself that these were nothing more than cold-blooded executioners, murderers with blood on their hands, the sight still made his heart churn like a rollercoaster.

He also had to constantly attract and seek out the soul fragments drifting in the air, cleanse them of all the negative emotions attached, and endure the soul-wrenching pain that came with it.

But he persevered because he knew that this was the only way to save Nina and the last of her people.

The undead dragged the corpses from the barracks, under the watchtowers, and along the walls, and laid them out in the open for him to choose from. The strongest and most intact bodies would be carefully turned into ghouls, while the rest were heaped into large magic circles that had been dug out with swords and transformed into zombies in batches.

By the time everything was finished, it was already noon. Under Wu Qingsong’s direction, the undead began moving the food from the warehouse. Led by Daryl, they hid the supplies in nearby valleys or caves.

These invaders had destroyed everything. Without food and supplies, even if the wolfpeople managed to survive the battles, they wouldn’t be able to endure the winter and the famine that followed.

“Where’s the next camp?” Wu Qingsong asked.

“About three miles away, in a valley.”

“Good.” Wu Qingsong nodded. “By tonight, we’ll have nearly three thousand undead soldiers. That’s enough to strike them from behind and force them to shift their attention this way!”