CHAPTER 11: DWARFS
As soon as Haochen ventured far onto the battlefield, a sharp cry rang out in his ears.
"Help me! Help me! Somebody, please!" A young girl in her red dress was running for her life, chased by a pack of snarling, ferocious beasts. She pulled out her flexible spear and rushed right into the swarm, swinging it wildly. But one of the beasts kicked her hard, sending her crashing onto the barren field.
Now she was totally surrounded, no way out. The beasts lunged at her all at once, and she met them straight on. The air exploded with the sounds of clashes and strikes.
She was getting buried under the onslaught. Her breaths came in heavy gasps.
From the top of the dry mountain where he sat, Haochen watched it all. He wanted to jump in and help, but something didn't sit right with him.
"This girl has no aura of dead imprints at all. How's she even lasting in this poisonous wind and against all these beasts? They could tear her apart in seconds, but they've been toying with her for minutes now. There's definitely something off here." Haochen racked his brain, trying to pinpoint what felt wrong.
"Help me!" Her screams rattled him, making his thoughts scatter. He ran his hands through his hair, gripping it tight to steady himself, but those cries just echoed louder in his head.
The echoes drove him crazy. He grabbed his sword and started swinging it like a madman, brute force taking over, as if some curse had him in its grip.
He hacked forward, slicing through the endless wave of beasts. Dead imprints poured into his body at a steady rate as he fought with everything he had. His bone-piercing sword dripped with blood from the beasts dropping around him.
"Keep killing, the more the better, kill them all, hahaha!" The girl let out a wild laugh. Right then, Haochen was fully under her spell. A rush of imprints burst from his body, floating up into the air, his whole frame shaking with a violent rush of power.
Pulling on the power of heaven and earth, Haochen flicked his finger, creating four glowing seals that throbbed with destructive force.
"Merge," he shouted, and they crashed together into one solid mass seal.
"Heaven Formation Moving Palm—one strike, shatters the sky," Haochen roared, driving his palm into the seal's heart. A massive, unstoppable palm shot down from it, smashing into the beast tide and wiping out a huge chunk. But more kept surging toward him in endless numbers.
His body kept soaking up dead imprints nonstop. He could feel himself on the verge of bursting from the flood rushing in.
"No, I can't control it," Haochen muttered, fighting to hold on, but his mind was jammed with dark, whispering voices. "Kill, kill, don't let any survive." He shook his head hard, desperate to shake them off.
The girl started chanting, her hands blurring in quick, precise movements. Red threads and needles shot from her sleeve, stabbing into Haochen's joints and bones. His body went rigid, turning him into her puppet. Under her command, he swung the sickle again and again, cutting down dozens of beasts.
Blood from the fallen creatures streamed across the dry ground, not soaking in but flowing fast, snaking miles toward a tall stone sacrificial tower. The tower stood guarded by a rune-covered formation that stretched up into the clouds. Oddly, the area around it was lush with green grass, even though it's right in the middle of this battlefield.
The blood poured into the tower until it overflowed. Suddenly, the structure blazed with intense, otherworldly power, lighting up the air.
By now, Haochen's body was exhausted from the strain, and he collapsed flat on the barren earth. "Hahaha, I did it! I finally lit the great tower. My clan can rise again." The young girl laughed through tears, her true form finally showing.
She shrank down, no taller than a 34-liter water bucket. Her feet twisted backward, ankles pointing forward. Her hair gleamed pure white, like flawless jade.
"The dwarf clan! how did Haochen get tangled with those things?" Old Gu's eyes snapped open.
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The dwarf clan used to be a mighty ancient God clan, originally known as the Maha clan. They were infamous for their mind tricks and puppet mastery. Thousands of years back, they sneaked into the immortal Shura world and took it over with their control methods, turning nearly every creature there into blood puppets. But they never saw it coming, the Shura God, who had vanished years earlier, showed up out of the blue.
God Shura hit them hard, stripping away their divine powers and cursing them with a blood spell that shrank them into these twisted little forms, feet bent backward.
He banished them from the immortal world to the mortal realm. That massive battle wiped out most of the clan ages ago. Their ways were ruthless, no mercy at all.
Still, they clung to the hope of one day reviving and reclaiming their place in the immortal world.
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The old dwarf shuffled over to Haochen's limp body. She ripped the hollow bead from around his neck and tossed it aside. Then she grabbed his leg and dragged him across the barren field to the tower.
With a wave of her hand, the formation parted, and she stepped inside. A bunch of clan members hurried over, bowing low in respect.
"Clan leader," they said in unison.
"Chain him to the sacrificial tower and fire up the formation. It's time to revive the ancient Maha God clan," the old dwarf commanded.
"Yeah!" They cheered as one, the small figures hauling Haochen toward the tower.
With their blood thread techniques, crimson strands lashed out from nowhere, wrapping tight around his lifeless body and binding him to the towering structure.
They scurried around it, chanting in their strange, secret tongue. Soon enough, the whole platform erupted in godly imprint patterns, spiraling up from the tower into the sky. It drew down a massive surge of supernatural power straight from the heavens, flooding the area.