Chapter Ninety-nine: The Underground World of the Kuiba Clan

That water monkey carried me to a tree and then hurled me viciously onto some hard ground. It turned its head to check whether I was alive or dead, and the whole motion looked as terrifying as a blue demon.

I let out a couple of casual groans and rolled over in front of it to show I was still alive, but I clearly caught the look of shock in the water monkey's eyes, as if it couldn't believe I hadn't drowned after being in the water for so long.

"Damn it, you piece of shit, why did you dump me here? Where the hell is this?" I grumbled in confusion at the muscular water monkey, not knowing whether it could even understand me.

"Awu! Awuwuwu!"~

The water monkey answered with some gibberish I couldn't make head or tail of, and I had no idea what its "awu" was supposed to mean, but judging by its facial expression, it didn't look friendly.

At that moment, I sat up from the ground and activated my luminous corpse-demon eyes. My hand accidentally brushed against something very hard. I picked it up and looked—holy shit, I nearly jumped out of my skin. It was a human skull. When I cast my gaze across this little patch of dry land, no more than two hundred square feet, I discovered it was just like an unmarked mass grave, with bleaching white bones sticking halfway out of the earth and human-shaped skeletons scattered everywhere. The most striking thing was that nearly all of these skeletons were clad in ancient armor.

It dawned on me that in some ancient era, water monkeys must have run rampant here, and these warriors had been sent to exterminate the troublemaking beasts.

Looking at the ground, strewn with the skulls of water monkeys alongside the skeletons of human warriors and corroded bronze swords, I was baffled. Surely this creature didn't drag me all the way here just to show me a bunch of bones?

"Jili wakaka, Brother!~"

Just as I was puzzling over it, a strange, aged voice echoed from the hollow of a banyan tree so huge that even twenty people with arms linked couldn't have encircled it.

The water monkey that had brought me here heard the ethereal voice, and its body, strong as the Hulk, actually bent low, offering a deep bow to the unknown presence inside the tree hollow. That genuinely startled me.

This only made me more convinced that in this world, many unknown civilizations coexisted right alongside human civilization—even these seemingly lowly water monkeys knew how to bow.

After finishing its bow, the water monkey simply left me there, dove into the water, and vanished without a trace, leaving only a splash behind.

Just then a movie came to mind, and I realized I was just like one of those sacrificial offerings in the film, dumped before the lair of some monstrous beast.

Hearing the gloomy voice from inside the hollow, I decided to test whether it could understand me.

"Hey, how are you? Who are you?"~

Even though I thought my approach was idiotic, I figured whatever was in that hollow had to be more intelligent than the water monkey from before, so it couldn't hurt to try.

"Brother!"~

Again that ethereal voice. I couldn't figure out why it insisted on speaking that foreign name. Could whatever was in there be an alien creature from overseas? Even if it was, why would it be here? For a moment my head was flooded with chaotic questions.

I decided to enter the hollow to find out what was inside, and curiosity only cemented that decision. But the moment my foot crossed the threshold, I regretted it.

From the outside, I hadn't noticed anything unusual; it was just rather dark inside. But no sooner had I stepped in than my foot found nothing but air, and my whole body was sucked into the hollow, plunging down into the depths like falling through time and space, the fierce wind around me stinging my face raw.

I felt like I'd been falling for minutes without hitting the bottom, and a thought surfaced in my mind: "Shit, this isn't the road to hell, is it?"

...

"Splash!"~

Following the sound of water, I saw a blaze of light. This place was just like human society—neon lights and bustling streets—the only difference being that every creature here was a water monkey.

Who would have thought that these creatures, seemingly lowly and sometimes deadly in their pranks, actually possessed a civilization and a history of their own? This underground was a major city of water monkeys. Looking closely at the architecture, I estimated around tens of thousands of water monkeys lived here.

The underground water was freezing cold. By the time I crawled ashore, I discovered that a whole squad had already been waiting for me.

At the head of them stood an old water monkey holding a dark metallic scepter, wearing a golden crown. It had a white beard just like a human's.

"Hahaha, the surface troops have sent us food again! Great King, please do us the honor of tasting this human from the world above!"~ one water monkey beside the crowned one said to the king.

Holy shit, these things had a death wish. Just because they could speak human language, they thought they were hot stuff? They actually regarded me as food—this was an enormous insult to the corpse-demon race. I'm the Corpse King, so what can a pack of lowly water monkeys do to me?

When the king heard what the water monkey beside him said, he slammed his scepter hard into the stone floor beneath him. It all looked so casual, so effortless, as if the stone were made of bread.

Then the old king, opening his mouth full of jagged teeth and lashing his long tail, swaggered toward me, while the other water monkeys all chanted: "Brother! Brother!! Brother!!!" as if Brother were their god.

Watching that old bastard close in to less than ten feet, I couldn't take it anymore. I had to get out of here. So I channeled my supernatural power into both arms and lashed out fiercely at the old thing. I was going to cut a bloody path through this place.

The old king hadn't expected me to fight back. People brought here before were probably all unconscious or dead by now. Someone like me, who would still resist, must have been a rare exception. Even if someone survived, I imagined they'd be so terrified they'd become a lamb waiting for slaughter, which was why these water monkeys had no guard against anyone thrown down here.

"CLANG!"~

My horizontal slash struck the old water monkey's arm. If it hadn't been for the strange golden armor protecting his limbs, I was confident I could have chopped that arm clean off.

That one strike forced him back dozens of yards before he stumbled and toppled to the ground.

"Despicable human! You dared to wound the king of us Kuiba! We'll kill him!" one Kuiba shouted, and thunderous roars rose from the underground.

"Kill!" "Kill!" "Kill!"~

It never occurred to me that these water monkeys, the very ones who haunted Eastern folklore, were the descendants of the Kuiba race.

I remembered someone telling me that the Kuiba race had vanished without a trace since their defeat in the inter-dimensional war three thousand years ago. Some said the three-headed Celestial Legion led by the Elf Queen had wiped them out; others said they had fled the other dimension entirely and gone to the East of Asia.

But judging by the look of things now, I had stirred up a hornet's nest. There were about thirty Kuiba here, each clutching a golden bronze sword that gleamed with an eerie radiance, advancing upon me with the archaic steps of an ancient assault.

...

(An ancient race, the Kuiba, makes an unexpected appearance—but who would have thought they were the water ghosts, or water monkeys, long whispered about in ancient Chinese folklore? So, after three thousand years, has their power grown? And what exactly are they guarding? Why did they build a city underground—to breed their kind, or to prepare for a future assault on the other dimension? For more excitement, stay tuned for the next chapter.)