Poison City

Before Marcus was thrown back by this clash, he whipped his left leg upwards and landed a full force kick on the woman’s right armpit. Another metal clashing sound exploded, and she was pushed back from her lunge attack.

When Marcus fell back grunting in pain, Keryn took his place and charged at the boney woman with only half a body. While the woman was recovering from Marcus’ attack, a flurry of Keryn’s claw attacks and hand chops landed on her face, her neck, her shoulder and her chest. These strikes were sharp as they were swift, and infused with Keryn’s sharp Qi. These strikes left quite a few marks on the woman’s body, tearing off flesh and cutting into bones. This was some kind of Praying Mantis style, but Marcus just could not name it right now. From the sharpness and swiftness of its performance, no doubt it was one of the better styles and Keryn was quite skilled in it.

Keryn leapt back with both her arms trembling - it appeared that she was also ambushed by the same kind of chilling energy seeping from this rotten woman. The skin on her arms turned pale, and there were dark veins slowly crawling over them.

“Kevin! Try to figure the door out!” Marcus pushed his Qi and jumped from the floor, with his Qi concentrated on his hands and arms once again.

“My eyes! My eyes! Give me back my eyes!” Keryn’s strikes led the rotten woman to shift to the wall behind her, right across from the three humans. When Marcus charged over, charged right back with her arms extended forward.

There were no strategic maneuvers or techniques of any kind from the rotten woman. All she did was try to grab anyone with her boney fingers and hands. But the sheer amount of grim and cold energy surrounding her and almost solidified around her arms and fingers was enough to incapacitate any normal human. Even with Marcus’ Qi, he still barely squeezed the energy out of his body.

“Stay dead!” Marcus roared. The Qi from his meridians was flowing at a rate and capacity that far exceeded any time it had before. So much so that Marcus could feel the pressure on his meridians, muscles and even bones. This pressure needed a release, and right now the only choice Marcus had was to unleash it against this rotten woman.

Marcus swung his left hand from low to high, unleashing a bright orange claw mark in the air. The density of Qi in this claw mark and the temperature of it was so high, that it ignited the air and caused a string of explosions as it glided through the air.

But it did not hit the target, instead it struck the wall behind the rotten woman and peeled off a few major layers of the wooden wall. After but one mere moment she disappeared once again in a puff of black mist, and shifted her position to just beside Marcus’ left shoulder.

“Boom!” Marcus’ left elbow struck the rotten woman in the face, his Qi exploding right on her nostrils and between her eyes. And at the same time, her fingers dug into Marcus’ chest and back. Her palms and fingers slid through his body and flesh from the impact of the elbow strike that sent her flying backwards.

Numbness, paralysis and streams of debilitating toxic cold penetrated Marcus’ defense and seemingly tried to target his brain, his heart and his abdomen. Marcus just expended a large amount of his Qi, if he did not focus on himself and his meridians to push the energy back, he had no doubt in his mind his life would be in danger. Yet, if he just sat down and tried to move his Qi, Kevin and Keryn would no doubt be in danger.

“Bang bang bang!” Keryn fired three shots using her gun, the bullets just went straight through the rotten woman as if nothing happened. Almost immediately, she had both her hands on the grip and tried to infuse her Qi into the bullets through the body and meat of the gun. She opened fire once again, the bullets chipped off a few fragments of the rotten woman’s neck and shoulders. She was aiming at the woman’s face, now showing signs of cracking from Marcus’ elbow strike full of Qi and fury. 

The last two bullets of her clip struck true, as one of them went into the right eye socket of the rotten woman’s skull, and the other landed right on the crack that ran across her face, connected to the holes that were once behind her nostrils.

The rotten woman let out a high pitched eardrum-piercing scream, then disappeared where she was in another puff of black mist once again. She did not reappear right away. Instead, her cries started coming off every corner of the house: “My eyes… give me back my eyes!”

Marcus turned to Kevin, just in time to see him biting the tips of his middle and index fingers. After seeing blood dripping from his fingers, Kevin tapped the two talismans and left two bloody fingerprints on there. This seemed to have some sort of effect, because smoke started coming off from the backs of the talismans. Some sort of vibration occured in the house and everything started shaking.

“My eyes! My eyes!” The woman’s moan resounded in the house. Marcus, Kevin and Keryn gathered together, with their backs facing each other’s in a triangle formation. Whatever was ignited behind the talismans seemed to be burning away some of the dimness and chilliness in the house as well.

“Good thinking, Keryn.” Marcus was still sitting on the ground, trying to push the cold energy out of his meridians and body: “Here, take my gun. I can’t move while I recover my Qi.”

Keryn raised her eyebrows, then took Marcus’ gun from his holster hanging on Marcus’ waist. She could feel that Marcus was really not able to move right now, and that he was indeed trying to recover from the attack trade he just did with the rotten woman.

“Kevin, how long does it take?” Keryn held two guns in her hands and looked around: “I don’t think these small guns are gonna do much.”

“Just a few more minutes!” Kevin wiped his forehead, also looking around, his fingers kept bleeding, but he kept them pressed against the talismans. The effects of these talismans seemed to be consuming his blood and energy as well.

The living room seemed to have become brighter and brighter, and gradually it became obvious that there were some kind of light gray and almost completely transparent or invisible particles in the air. And it was only until just now that they started to get repelled.

“Give me my eyes! Give me back my eyes!” The rotten woman’s voices became more desperate and more violent: “My eyes! Give them back!”

With another desperate high pitched and yet throaty scream, the rotten woman appeared in the space still filled with the dim particles right above Kevin’s head. Her boney arms and hands thrust downward, in an attempt to grab Kevin.

Keryn turned to the rotten woman almost the exact moment she appeared and opened fire on this foul spirit. Bullets infused with Keryn’s Qi rained on the rotten body. Curiously, the part of the woman exposed in the brighter part of the room seemed to break much easier than the parts that had dim particles - the woman’s left forearm was completely broken just by a single bullet, yet her right arm and shoulder took at least two shots each and they barely cracked. And within but a few seconds, all the bullets from the two clips were all gone. There were more cracks and broken parts on the rotten woman’s body, enough to hinder and stall her attacks, but just not enough to completely stop her.

“Ah!” Kevin groaned in pain as the woman’s right hand grabbed him by the left shoulder. But before she could do anything else, her right wrist was caught firmly by Marcus.

“Come down here!” Marcus roared once again and pulled the arm down with all his might. The rotten woman did not get a chance to even escape before she was dragged and tossed on the corner of the floor, almost completely exposed to the light.

The foul and vengeful spirit screamed, while Keryn, Kevin and Marcus yelled almost at the same time. Marcus’ left palm struck the rotten women right at the top of her head, Keryn’s hand chop slashed her right chest and created a fist size hole on her rib cage, and Kevin’s face and hands turned pale, as more of his blood was consumed by the talismans.

The rotten woman’s cracked face was barely healed, and with an additional heavy chop from Marcus, her entire head crumbled into pieces; Keryn’s fingers pierced through her now much more fragile rib cage, the thin Qi edges on her fingertips cut into some kind of soft yet freezing object, which then upon impact pushed her fingers away but leaked and sagged like a punctured balloon.

The rotten woman let out her final scream, and a devastating dizziness hit all three humans at the same time.