Once darkness fell on the city, I could hear a loud rustling noise from the lush forested areas surrounding Houshan's city walls.
Accompanying the eerie symphony was the metallic clanging of weapons in the hands of trembling wall guards. Their eyes kept shifting to the open door of the city wall office.
They piled large odd shaped rocks with odd coloured splatter stains in stacks near the wall. Every night, they would drop those rocks on the would-be intruders attempting to scale the wall.
In the day, they would pick them up and recycle for night use.
That is the sad fate of this city. Everyone had to turn to more primitive methods than using ling qi.
Then the rustling noise stopped.
"Maybe you should leave," General Han advised me as I looked at the worried faces of my two bodyguards.
I patted him on his shoulder and walked over to the city side of the walls. Most of the city was dark, save for the far away moving lights - some torches of city guards patrolling along the alleyways.
It was bright only at the entrance where the city gates were. Soldiers were standing by with torches to reinforce the doors.
The locals had barricaded their shop-houses and buildings. Nailed planks of wood secured every shut window. Very little light escaped from their homes.
"Can those things fly?" I asked.
General Han shook his head. "They can't, but they have attempted to swarm the walls and the doors. They would take away any poor sod caught outside. The screams are horrible when they… eat them alive. Our archers have to shoot them out of mercy."
"Shoot them? What if they survive?"
"They don't. We find their corpses half eaten at the city gates in the morning. The physicians have agreed on one thing - those things ate them while they were alive. If you have seen those faces…," he paused with glazed eyes, and shuddered. "This is mercy we are showing."
The horn started its low bellow. A dreadful hum started from the forests.
"They are here. The spotter has seen them," General Han said. "Your highness, it is best that you enter the city wall office for your safety."
I shook my head. "I need to see them for myself."
"ARCHERS STANDBY," the wall commander yelled.
The archers moved forward in an instant. I followed, clueless at what to expect. Their hands were shaking. Beads of sweat were breaking out on some near me. I could hear their deep inhalation as they drew their arrows in disciplined synchronicity and positioned it with their bows down. A resignation that they might have to shoot a poor unfortunate soul caught outside the city gates.
Then it begun. The first shadowy figures moving through the trees. No reddish aura around like the mo beasts but a purplish one.
More and more were coming into view. Above the canopy, a cloud of large purplish hue was now growing.
Xuan qi? I wondered. Only xuan qi would give out a glow like that. Yet xuan qi was used by deities and Baxing in Governor Zhao's body would let me know about such an oddity.
"Have they tried fire?" I glanced at the lighted torches.
"The last time we tried that, they went straight for the city gates. There is only so much fire proofing we can…"
A shrill cry distracted us.
"FIRE." The wall commander shouted.
A volley of arrows flew towards the dark skies and curved downwards into the oncoming horde of dark humanoid bodies, stumbling and staggering in haste.
They were converging on towards the three gates. The first ones to reach begun slamming themselves against the locked gates.
"HOLD THE GATES!" General Han bellowed.
Footsteps of soldiers rushed forward, reinforcing the gates from behind.
"FIRE!"
We could feel the vibrations from the battered gates while listening to the whistling noises of the arrow volleys down into the ghastly mobs of whatever those were.
Some of the humanoid figures were climbing up on others who had fallen. One after another came in waves to forming monstrous ladders.
As they approached closer, a rancid malodour assaulted my nostrils. They smelled like decomposing corpses. I was very familiar with this noxious odour from my past life, having working in post disaster areas with mass casualties. The memory of the fetid stench from exposed and bloated corpses lying in the humid tropical weather while mass graves were dug was unforgettable.
"Zombie apocalypse…," I uttered.
These resembled the ones depicted in Earth's Hollywood - hordes of rotting lumbering corpses, of the mindless undead driven by an insatiable hunger to feast on the living.
Except the Jinshi version is real and only comes out at night.
General Han drew his sword, with both hands gripping it firm, ignoring what I had said.
"Decapitate them," I said as my hand moved to the hilt of Yoturuki on instinct.
"No use, we tried that. Their heads rejoin. We just drop stones to break their climbing formation, hack away the rest and hope to push back until the sun comes up. That's when they disappear."
Nothing like the zombies on Earth then.
"DROP THE ROCKS," Another command rang out somewhere.
The soldiers and archers heaved the heavy rocks against the wall and over to drop on these creatures. Their movements were so rehearsed like a replay. My guess was that they always did every night since the beginning of this nightmarish situation.
Cracks, thuds and crunches could be heard from the impact of the rocks. I peered down in curiosity. The zombie column had fallen down, squashing a few bodies twitching.
Then the squashed ones vaporised into a greenish gaseous form which drifted and concentrated into a thick greenish cloud.
"That's them… regenerating their bodies," General Han distracted me for a moment as he threw his sword down and begun pushing the rock up against the brick wall. Then, at the edge, he watched for a few seconds and flipped it over the edge at another column of zombies.
Another crushing sound rang out as the pyramid of creatures fell apart.
He took a deep breath, a brief respite, and pointed in the same direction again. "See for yourself."
There they were. Five snarling staggering humanoid figures staggering back to city wall to rejoin their attack wave.
"This is never going to…," I did lifted the heavy rock and threw it down. "End."
"Don't lift the rocks like that. It wastes your strength," he advised as he squat down to push another rock up.
"Wait until they are half way up and then drop it on them. Or else we will run out of rocks. Takes these things a while to regroup. In between, we rest." he stopped the rock on the edge of the wall.