Chapter 325: Shaman (Part 2)

Wu Qingsong didn’t know how many times he had been trampled. By the time he regained consciousness, the herd had already torn through the camp. He was left face-down, embedded in the muddy ground.

He couldn’t even rely on his own strength to escape from this predicament. Instead, he scattered fragments of his soul chaotically into the surroundings, finally managing to awaken a corpse that clawed him out of the earth.

Fortunately, the area was already in complete chaos. It was unlikely that anyone had seen what had just happened.

Nina was still locked in combat with several beastmen. However, her opponents were no longer the tigerman or the boarman from before. Standing in her path now were a towering tauren and a wolfman.

Xeila remained under the control of the old badgerman, and her situation looked increasingly dire.

At this moment, Wu Qingsong had no time to worry about the side effects of using the undead.

He reanimated the relatively intact corpses around him with all the speed he could muster, commanding them to pick up the fallen bows and arrows. He ordered them to spread out and launch a continuous assault on the old badgerman while he used the cover of the night to creep stealthily toward the enemy’s position.

The old badgerman’s power should already be waning. 

Wu Qingsong could see his face under the flicker of lightning. He had deeper wrinkles than when they first met and a sickly flush on his cheeks as if he could collapse at any moment. Yet, he still effortlessly deflected every arrow the undead loosed at him.

He reached out toward a panic-stricken bearman, halting the beastman’s frantic escape. Just like the others before him, the bearman’s body swelled, glowing with a pale blue light, and charged at the undead with ferocious power.

Wu Qingsong crept closer with utmost caution. Xeila should still be struggling against the old badger-man’s control, which was siphoning off most of his power and attention.

At that moment, Nina cleaved through the tauren blocking her path with a powerful slash. The golden glow enveloping the beast flickered briefly in mid-air. By the time its body crashed to the ground, it had shrunk back to normal size, lying in a drained and weakened heap.

The old badgerman immediately shifted his palm toward another beastman, but Wu Qingsong seized the opening. Bursting from his cover, he charged forward with his sword aimed straight at his enemy.

He was almost upon the old badgerman when the enemy suddenly muttered an incantation. A transparent wave of force erupted from his body, flinging Wu Qingsong backward in a rough tumble.

But that brief delay was enough. Nina, having just felled the wolfman, seized her chance and dashed toward the badgerman, blade raised high.

Wu Qingsong poured every ounce of his spiritual power forward in a desperate, all-out strike against the old badgerman’s mind. It was like smashing his soul against an impregnable fortress. The backlash of pain was excruciating, but his assault disrupted the enemy’s control for a split second.

In that instant, Nina’s full-powered sword strike crashed into the transparent barrier surrounding the old badgerman, releasing a deafening hum.

The badgerman’s face twisted in agony. Nina’s attack drained the last reserves of his strength. He could no longer maintain the lightning cage restraining Xeila. The electric prison shattered with a final, blinding flash.

Xeila, freed at last, appeared behind the old badgerman in a blur. Without hesitation, she plunged her dagger forward.

The barrier, weakened by Nina’s devastating blow, collapsed under Xeila’s strike. A heartbeat later, the dagger in Xeila’s left hand pierced straight through the old badgerman’s neck, nearly severing his head entirely.

“You… you vile…” 

The old badger-man’s voice rasped out, his body refusing to fall. His trembling hand reached toward Wu Qingsong, as though to unleash a final curse. 

But Xeila gave her blade a sharp twist. His head, barely clinging on, was severed completely.

“Master Bold!” a bearman roared in anguish from nearby.

Xeila’s form vanished and reappeared behind him in a blink. The bearman, sensing the threat, lunged forward to evade, but Xeila’s dagger still sank deep into his back. He hit the ground with a pained scream.

“Charge! Charge!”

Wu Qingsong commanded the herds of undead to renew their assault. Xeila struck at the bearman again, but at that moment, the faint aura of light around her abruptly vanished. Her speed and strength faltered, and she barely avoided the bearman’s retaliatory strike.

Wu Qingsong hastily flung a shard of his soul power at the bearman, but before it could even land, Nina’s sword already flashed through the air—cleanly severing the beastman’s head.

“Ling!” Wu Qingsong called out urgently, but his voice barely carried through the din of the battlefield.

It was Nina’s silver moonlight aura that drew Ling’s attention. The airship descended swiftly.

Wu Qingsong caught Xeila and secured a rope around her waist. Then, without wasting a second, he rushed to the old badgerman’s corpse and tied it to another line.

Grabbing onto their respective ropes, he and Nina signaled Ling to hoist them all up.

Below them, the undead bisons and moose charged again. Despite the beastfolk warriors’ desperate spear formations, which skewered dozens of the undead beasts, the monstrous, one-ton bodies barreled through the lines without slowing. The impact crushed the front ranks in a bloody collision.

Before the next wave of fighters could fill the gap, the entire undead herd broke through the defensive line, storming into the beastmen’s camp and unleashing devastation.

“We’re leaving,” Wu Qingsong, his voice weary.

The battle with the powerful shaman had drained him to the core. He no longer had the strength—or the will—to command the battle.

Nina gave a silent nod. The cables reeled them up until they finally reached the airship’s cabin.

“Alice, check on Xeila,” Wu Qingsong ordered.

“She’s all right, just… a little burned out,” Alice said, channeling a soft pulse of holy light into Xeila’s body. Her pale complexion regained a healthier hue.

But Wu Qingsong noticed something strange—the expressions on the beastkin girls’ faces. He froze, then realized it almost simultaneously with Xeila.

Her face veil.

The lightning from the battle had burned it away. For the first time, her face was completely exposed before them.

Xeila instinctively reached for something—anything—to cover herself. But in the confined space of the airship, there was nowhere to hide. She gave up and turned her back to everyone, facing the front of the cabin.

“Meow~ Xeila-sis, you’re… you’re so pretty!” Liuli blurted out, unable to hold back.

Ram glanced at Wu Qingsong instinctively. He could only shake his head with a sigh.

‘Seriously, guys? We’re still hovering over a battlefield! What’s going through your heads right now?’

“Wu?” Only Ling kept her eyes on him—calm, unchanged, as always.

“Let’s head back,” Wu Qingsong said. “I’ve got a feeling the war might be over.”