Chapter 30: Zombies and Monsters

Chapter 30: Zombies and Monsters

001 Corpse Bugs (The sketch of corpse bugs is attached below.)

Corpse bugs are insects with shells. They feel very similar to a combination between a diving beetle and a water centipede, but the difference between corpse bugs and diving beetles is that corpse bugs front feet are particularly sharp and powerful. They are also larger, fond of darkness, and afraid of light.

Corpse bugs are very fast and amphibious, feeding on carrion corpses and small creatures that have strayed into the water. They often accumulate around floating corpses, gather in piles, and prey on each other.

I have been attacked by this kind of bug before, and feel that they are unlikely to pose a threat to animals with thick skin, such as rhinos bathing in water. They are, however, a threat to humans because they have the instinct to attack weak parts such as the abdomen. If people cant get to the shore in time, the corpse bugs will pierce their abdomen and cause massive bleeding and death.

Corpse bugs mostly appear in the depths of mountains, rivers, canals, or swamps, and also appear in large numbers during floods or mudslides.

002 Blood Zombie (The sketch of a blood zombie is attached below.)

There are legends of blood zombies in many places, but blood zombie tombs actually refer to tombs that have a protective layer underground. For example, when ancient tombs with fire roofs, acid roofs, or cinnabar roofs are hit with a Luoyang shovel, something red will appear. This is especially true when the shovels hit acid roofs. The red soil would look like blood, but its because the soil contains a lot of cinnabar.

If ancient tombs have these kinds of structures, that means that the specifications are very high. As a result, others will form the idea that blood zombie tombs are full of treasures.

As to why they would think there would be blood zombies in blood zombie tombs on the one hand, it might be hearsay; on the other hand, cinnabar is an object used for exorcism. If cinnabar is used in the soil layer of ancient tombs, that means people definitely did it in the hopes of trapping certain things in the ancient tomb. So, if tombs are sealed with cinnabar, there must be something strange with the corpses in them. In fact, the color of blood zombies isnt a bloody red like the name implies. Instead, they are more of a garnet purple.

003 Green-Eyed Fox Corpse (The sketch of the green-eyed fox corpse is below.)

The ancient corpse was so creepy and terrifying that it was practically indescribable. A human looking like a bald fox definitely wasnt something as basic as a deformity. I couldnt imagine what this ancient corpse looked like before it had decayed and dried out.

Fatty said that this happened because it was possessed, but based on a large number of verified theories, it was more likely to be a rare deformity. If we classified it, it would probably be a cerebellar disorder.

There were developmental deformities that could make people's faces extremely long, and it was also possible that the use of splints from an early age deformed his head and face, just like the ancient Incan and Egyptian civilizations used to do.

This was a man-made mythological phenomenon, and I believed that any enemy on the battlefield would be frightened when seeing such a monster.

The main function of the mask was to symbolize the gods, so at least some part of King Lushang believed in the fox totem. In history, it seemed that only one branch of the Tibetans also worshiped foxes, which I found very fascinating.

(The sketches of masks and various animal totems are attached below.)

004 Nine-Headed Snake Cypress (The sketch of the Nine-Headed Snake Cypress is attached below.)

I couldnt find any information about this plant. There was some unconventional information about trees or other large plants that could digest animal tissues, and the scientific name for them was: CARNIVOROUS TREES.

In foreign legends, trees that were similar to the nine-headed snake cypress were called octopus trees. They could entangle their prey before killing and digesting it, and this kind of tree was often called devil tree by the locals.

Eventually, German explorers wrote in their investigation journals that the way this tree attacked animals originated from its instinct to spread seeds, just like how cocklebur stuck to animals fur. This particular kind of tree entangled and killed everything close to it.

I believed that if such trees really existed, they might be nine-headed snake cypresses. It was possible that the ecological characteristics of this tree made it so that it killed animals and then used the rotting carcasses to attract insects to spread its seeds. Because of this, corpse bugs were attracted by the corpses on the trees and gathered around the snake cypress.

There were actually many Bian Que, because that was what all the famous doctors were called in the Spring and Autumn Period. The real Bian Que was a mythological character from the Xuanyuan era that belonged to the same line as the Yellow Emperor. Based on this, I highly suspected that the Bian Que who looked like a human-faced bird was the same kind of creature as Jiutian Xuann.

It was difficult not to make associations like this since there were many records of human-faced birds in Chinese mythology.

If we look at it from a realistic viewpoint, I feel like maybe theres an ancient civilization that we havent discovered yet. Maybe people from that time domesticated and trained this kind of owl with a humans face and birds body, and the owls played very important roles in wars and transportation.

Moreover, this kind of owl might have appeared frequently in tribal wars, and may have transported a large amount of intelligence and medicine, making other tribes mistakenly think that it was a kind of god.

This mysterious ancient civilization was obviously very low-key, or its mystical character led to all the remaining materials about it in the world being destroyed. The few remaining traces of these owls were at the giant bronze door under Changbai Mountain. They went extinct after the civilization had vanished, leaving only a few survivors underground to guard the last traces of their masters.

It sounded far-fetched, but I figured it made sense. Furthermore, using owls to spread information had me thinking of the image of witches in Europe during the Middle Ages. Every witch there had an owl as a pet. This was a bit fun. Was it the magical world of Hogwarts behind the huge bronze door?

008 Thousand-handed Guanyin Zombie (The sketch of the Thousand-Hand Guanyin Zombie is attached below.)

This is a zombie that gives people a lot of thoughts, and its not only because of its many weird hands that make it look like a spider.

I have no idea if this is a rare deformity or some kind of disease, but the hands looked very flexible and powerful, so the deformity at least didnt affect their quality of life.

Of course, I couldnt imagine what it would be like to control so many hands, but obviously, if you lived on a ridge or cliff, this deformity would make things like fishing in the water easier.

Could it be some kind of evolutionary result or man-made choice? For example, in King Wannus clan, maybe ones status was determined by the number of hands they had.

People with only two hands were considered relatively inferior, and as the number of hands increasedand the degree of deformity became more serious the status of those people would become higher and higher. Therefore, people in the clan hoped that their children could marry people with more hands. Those people who had more hands had higher status, so that meant they had more wives and concubines.

It was just like those African tribes whose indigenous people worshiped albinism. Albinos received the same treatment as gods in the tribe. They strove to make albinos intermarry and obtain a god with completely white skin. As a result, when these indigenous people saw white people appear at that time, it was as if they were seeing gods. They immediately gave in and hardly dared to resist.

(The sketch of a thousand-hand giant fighting with the Mongolian army is attached below.)

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TN Notes:

(1) In Chinese mythology, Jiutian Xuann is the goddess of war, sex, and longevity. Wiki link

(2) Kalavika is a fantastical immortal creature in Buddhism, with a human head and a bird's torso, with long flowing tail. Wiki link

(3) According to legend, Bian Que the earliest known Chinese physician. Wiki link

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BIG BIG BIG shout-out to Tiffany for working her ass off to get you this giant chapter. And kudos to my fabulous self for finding all those pictures lol. I'm sorry the quality varies so much, but I did the best I could. I think I found all of them, so hopefully none are missing (but we'll never know unless someone actually has the illustrated copy mwahahaha)