Volume One: The Infernal Lord’s World Chapter 74: The Sealed City of Crow’s Nest

This time, Chen Gu was truly unsettled.

If it weren’t for the icy white mist and the undead army lurking within, he would have believed that Crow’s Nest City had been infuriated by his presence. Yet, as the undead emerged, Chen Gu realized that the city had not been angered, but rather awakened—and it was the city itself that had drawn the undead near.

Though he had no idea what within Crow’s Nest City could attract the attention of the dead, one thing was certain: at this moment, the city and the undead outside were locked in enmity.

The instant he steered into the city’s area of sinister rain, his carriage came under attack from the falling drops.

“Go underground,” Chen Gu ordered, his voice decisive, and directed the carriage toward the heart of where Crow’s Nest City once stood.

Beneath the earth, the vine-drawn carriage slowed, but the passage was far safer. The raindrops above, each laced with a different power, lost much of their potency once they struck the ground. Thanks to recent fortifications, the carriage had weathered the rain’s corrosive assault with little real damage. Its pace beneath the soil remained steady.

After a few minutes underground, Chen Gu noticed a marked change: the earth, once yellow-brown, had become pitch black, and more and more corpses appeared entombed in the soil. Clearly, he had entered the marshlands.

Hurriedly, he slipped the Breath of the Elves onto his index finger. He had no certain way to prove he was the Elven Queen—this, for now, was all he could do.

With the ring in place, he extended his hand out the carriage window. Instantly, the Breath of the Elves flashed with a glimmer of white light. To his astonishment, the corpses along his path parted, rolling aside to clear the way.

At first, Chen Gu wondered if all the corpses had transformed into undead. But closer inspection revealed this was not the case—they were being shoved aside by the power of the swamp’s muck. It seemed Crow’s Nest City had acknowledged the Breath of the Elves, and was guiding him inward.

Despite this, Chen Gu did not let his guard down. He quickly withdrew his hand and maintained a careful watch on his surroundings.

It was then that he glimpsed the enormous serpent sphere described earlier by the Corpse-eating Vine. Only upon seeing it with his own eyes did he realize the description had been woefully inadequate. This was no mere sphere of snakes; it was a vast subterranean city.

The serpent sphere before him must have had a diameter of at least ten to fifteen kilometers. From his vantage point, he could only see one edge of it. The surface was studded with countless snake heads, all in shades of red, blue, or green—no other colors to be found.

As Chen Gu’s vine carriage approached, the serpent sphere reluctantly shifted aside, opening a path. Passing close to these enormous snakes, he noticed a difference from any ordinary serpent: each body bore three heads, one of each color.

He recalled the elven map’s notes on Crow’s Nest City and suddenly recognized their nature. “Hydras?” he murmured.

At the sound of his voice, all the snake heads swiveled toward him, their lantern-like eyes fixed intently on his figure. For a moment, Chen Gu was startled, but then he calmly waved at the hydras.

The vine carriage continued, seemingly unaffected. As he moved along the hydras’ corridor, he noticed that the scales composing the serpent sphere gradually shifted from red, blue, and green to a uniform black. The snakes themselves grew noticeably larger.

Chen Gu knew he was nearing the city’s heart. He opened the window again and extended his hand. The Breath of the Elves flashed once more, and before him appeared Crow’s Nest City, heavily protected by a tangle of vines.

Unlike Silverpine Vale, which was nestled underground, Crow’s Nest City sprawled across an expansive area; in fact, the city was once this very rotting marsh. Their method of sealing the city had been unique: they dismantled every building, packed them tightly together, and entrusted the hydras to guard the bundle as it sank beneath the swamp.

Only in this way could the city remain hidden from the undead. The city’s original defenders, apart from the hydras who fused into this massive serpent sphere, had all become corpses immersed in the swamp’s mire.

The hydras had slumbered here for years, impossible to awaken by any means.

The undead in the white mist, on the other hand, were an army bent on seizing Crow’s Nest City. Long ago, these undead had discovered the multitude of corpses soaking in the marsh, and saw a perfect foundation upon which to build their own necropolis.

Foremost among them was a particularly intelligent undead leader; the white mist was his conjured battle standard, a rallying point for his army. Yet, on his previous attempts to invade Crow’s Nest Marsh, he was thwarted by swarms of bloodthirsty mosquitoes above and burrowing beasts below, forced to retreat before even reaching the hydras’ domain.

For years, that undead leader had prowled the marsh’s outskirts, awaiting another chance. Now, stirred by strange happenings within the swamp, he launched another assault. To counter the mosquitoes’ draining attacks, he brought only skeletons and ghosts immune to blood loss, leaving behind his more formidable zombie and vampire troops.

He was determined—this time, he would claim Crow’s Nest Marsh and raise his own city upon it.

Unaware of all this, Chen Gu gazed at the densely packed, compressed buildings before him. Unlike the airy elven lodges or the stately Romanesque stone houses of the Holy City, Crow’s Nest’s architecture resembled a kind of shantytown. Whether from lack of resources or by necessity, many of the buildings were constructed from the most ramshackle materials; compressed together, they seemed quite small.

For instance, the bundle of wooden fences before him—had it not been labeled, Chen Gu would never have guessed it was once a barracks for training petrified lizards. The tavern, a vital structure, now appeared as a heap of blackened thatch and empty barrels, the latter containing only a few wooden cups.

Among the jumble, Chen Gu quickly spotted a towering tree with a vast hollow at its base, glowing with a gentle light. This was the city’s council hall—the only building left uncompressed.

Without hesitation, Chen Gu dismounted, raised the Breath of the Elves, and stepped into the hollow of the great tree.