Versatile Mage (Web Novel)
chapter-527

Translated by XephiZ

Edited by Aelryinth

Prior to this, Zhang Xiaohou never thought nightfall would be so dreadful. As the sun slowly set on the horizon, the remaining peace in his heart was dissipating at the same rate/ A great fear loomed over the vast land...

"It's...it's dark again," someone among the group had to say. Everyone felt their legs weakening for a second, as if countless filthy claws had suddenly grabbed onto them.

"Let's hope that we were just unlucky last time, finding ourselves close to a burial pit," murmured Shi Shaoju.

"Brace yourselves; I don't want us to be ambushed again like last time," warned Qin Hu.

The mountains in the south were very tall, like a giant black dragon lying across the land on their left, covering a distance of a few kilometers...

The group departed straight to the west. The sun was like the hour hand of a clock, serving as a timer. Its brilliance was red, like the color of blood, scattered across the mountains in the distance, and on the black soil the group was stepping on.

Darkness had already filled the place behind them, as if there was no turning back from this point onward. The smell of rotting flesh and the dead lingered in the air.

The group still remembered when they first set foot onto this land, they were still joking around and laughing, not treating the Undead seriously. However, none of them were speaking along the way now. Their footsteps felt heavier, and their hearts began to race all of a sudden.

"Will the trick that the chief told us actually work?" Wang Tong asked uneasily.

The chief had told the group that the Undead did not rely on their vision to track their prey. Some of the zombies' heads were completely smashed, leaving them with no eyes. However, they could capture the scent of any living thing...

The Undead had extremely bad vision, especially the low-grade ones, but whenever something alive walked past, every Undead within a few hundred meters would be attracted. It was because they were able to capture the scent of the living.

Places filled with the Undead lingered with a deathly aura. Even their breath held the scent of death.

The breath blown out by a living thing was alive. Science said the majority of it consisted of carbon dioxide.

The Undead had bad vision and average hearing, yet due to the scent of death, they could easily smell any living thing within a few hundred meters. The scent of something alive was like a plate of delicacies to them. They could smell it from a great distance away...

The Undead were always starving, and a living thing always needed to breathe. As a result, the Undead nearby would simply follow the 'pleasant aroma' to their next meal.

The only way to avoid the Undead was to deal with the problem of breathing.

Servant-class Undead lacked intelligence, hence as long as a human concealed their breathing or slightly modified it, it was difficult for the Undead to locate them.

As for the Warrior-level Undead, their senses of smell and hearing were a lot stronger, with average vision. Therefore, if they stumbled into a Warrior-level creature, not only would they have to deal with their breathing, they had to be extremely still, too...

"This thing looks just like garlic. I wonder how bad it's going to taste," said one of the soldiers, Bi Lu.

"It's turning dark. Eat it, one each!" ordered Captain Qin Hu.

The group followed the captain's order. They quickly took out something with a shape similar to garlic, but pitch-black in color, out from their bags.

The thing was called Ash Garlic, one of the few crops that would grow in the Land of the Undead.

Its taste was a lot worse than garlic. Once they ate it, the breath they exhaled was extremely foul. However, the locals carried a few with them at all times, as a safety precaution...

Once they ate the Ash Garlic, their breath would turn foul, strong enough to cover their scent. The Undead would simply mistake them as their own kind who forgot to brush their teeth at night, and would not chase after them.

In ancient times, there was a saying that garlic was able to keep devils away. It was most likely because the devils would not want to get close to you after smelling the garlic...

As soon as night fell, everyone ate an Ash Garlic each, and immediately came the sound of retching.

"F**k, it's worse than eating poop!"

"You sound like you've tried poop before."

"It's disgusting… allow me to puke for a while."

Everyone was a soldier in the group, who had eaten all kinds of things when surviving in the wild, yet they all still felt like vomiting after eating the Ash Garlic, showing how bad it tasted!

"Hang in there, if you don't want to die..."

"Captain, please don't face me when you talk."

"Shh, quiet!"

Shi Shaoju suddenly urged the group with an alert look.

Everyone immediately paled and held their breaths.

The ground began to loosen up, like someone trying to crawl out from their grave. They could clearly hear the sound of something knocking on a coffin.

Everyone glanced at one another, before staring at the ground under their feet.

Suddenly, a head covered in worms poked out from the soil!

Its hair was dry, and only half of the scalp remained, exposing a shiny skull, an eerie sight...

The head appeared right beside a Battlemaga, Xiao Jing, her face as pale as a sheet of paper. She subconsciously wanted to draw a Star Pattern to blast the disgusting head away, yet Shi Shaoju quickly grabbed her and stopped her from doing so.

Shi Shaoju had made a wise choice, as a few other heads with half-exposed skulls crawled out from the ground...

In just a few minutes, more zombies rose up from the soil. They were enjoying the 'darkbath' and breathing the dead air. If their eyes looked slightly more alive, they could be mistaken as a pack of creatures coming out to enjoy some fresh air!

The group of eight turned into statues. They could feel their hearts pounding, like they would pop out at any second.

Two zombies had crawled out of the ground close to Zhang Xiaohou, right in front of and behind Wang Tong...

Zhang Xiaohou was so close that he could see the empty hole at the back of the zombie's skull. It was obvious that the person had died when his brain was punctured by something sharp.

He did not dare to move, nor breathe.

However, it was impossible for anyone to not breathe. Even if he could hold his breath for a minute, he would simply die from suffocating if he held it any longer.

Finally, Zhang Xiaohou reached his limit. He started to exhale some air through his nose...

As soon as he exhaled, the zombie in front of him turned around instantly. Its bloodshot eyes were staring right at Zhang Xiaohou, and it raised the rusted saber it was holding, too!

Zhang Xiaohou's heart skipped a beat!

The two zombies were not enough to pose any threat to him. A simple Wind Disc would blast them into the sky...

The problem was, there were at least a hundred zombies around them. If he attacked, the zombies would simply sense the energy from his Magic, and completely surround them!

Zhang Xiaohou did not dare to move, but he was already at his limit. He had no idea if the Ash Garlic was working effectively. No one could possibly stay calm under the circumstances; surrounded by the Undead, the filthy creatures could easily strip them to the bones in seconds!