The dark wooden huts were scattered irregularly, like black stones on a beach.
Faint groans could be heard from some of the huts, like the death throes of those long tormented by illness.
Lin Hui and Deng Mingchao carefully stepped into the gap between two black huts, one with his sword raised, the other holding his horizontally.
Piles of black mud mixed with miscellaneous filth were heaped in the corners. A faint stench wafted through the air—the foul odor of long-decayed protein.
The two advanced, and within seconds, they found the half-rotted, dark-brown corpse of a woman in a corner to their right.
The flesh of the woman's upper body had been mostly gnawed away by something unknown, revealing the white bones beneath her skin.
She was slumped against the corner of the wall, her eyes lifeless and purple. Slender, milky-white maggots occasionally crawled from the corners of her eyes into her nostrils.
