I was pulled to the shore by him, my body covered in mud that seeped into my clothes. Turning to look at the King of Hell in the mire, I was shocked to see it still moving. Its back was turned to the surface, a huge hole blasted open, but there was not a trace of blood.

My severed hand pushed against the ground, and instantly, the joint felt as if it were being burned by fire, causing me to collapse. I saw the King of Hell slowly rising again.

Countless hands began to flail like spiders. One hand grabbed a stone at the edge and started to crawl towards the shore. The fat guy let go of me and used a stone to smash that hand. After a few hits, the hand shrank back, but another hand was already reaching the shore.

The fat guy supported me as we retreated towards another grenade, and we saw the King of Hell, whose waist was almost blown off, still standing up. Of course, it was clear that its waist could no longer support it; its entire body moved in a disjointed manner. After crawling onto the shore, its upper body couldn’t be supported and it fell to one side, like a rag doll.

Fortunately, it had many hands to brace itself. I saw countless powders beginning to leak from the huge gap in its armor.

“What the hell is this?” the fat guy stopped running, “It looks like some kind of machine.”

I remembered a game I played before, which featured something called a mechanism man, a wooden robot driven by a mouse, a technology from the Mo family, though it was certainly fictional. However, there were indeed legends in ancient China about such things attributed to Lu Ban.

But those were supposed to be intricately crafted wooden figures; this thing felt like a sack of sand.

Due to its waist being unable to support it, the King of Hell’s movements became very bizarre. Its lower body seemed to be uncoordinated with its upper body (later I thought, of course, whether it was a zombie or cargo, if the waist was blown to such a degree, with only a bit of skin connecting, how could it still be coordinated?). It couldn’t stand up, yet it kept trying to straighten its waist, constantly falling over, its waist twisting more severely. It seemed like it was about to tear itself apart.

The fat guy returned to where he had fallen, picked up a torch, and asked me how my hand was.

Only then did I feel the pain again; the joints in my hand had swollen to the size of a sweet potato, illustrating how focused my mind had been just moments ago.

This somewhat pleased me. The fat guy, holding the torch, slowly approached the King of Hell, pulled out the grenade, and threw it under the King of Hell.

We hid behind the stones, and once again there was an explosion. The debris flew around us, and when I got up, I saw that the King of Hell’s waist had been completely blown off. Its armor was completely destroyed, revealing its skin. I glanced at it, and both the fat guy and I were stunned.

After the armor was blown away, the upper body of the King of Hell was completely exposed. I saw its rocky head, which was a massive stone ball resembling a human head, embedded in the torso, which was a desiccated corpse covered in short black hair. A large amount of sand flowed out from the holes blasted into its body.

“Damn, someone hollowed out a zongzi,” the fat guy said. “This is a fighting corpse.”

I had indeed heard of this concept. During the time when the southern and northern factions fought across the river, there were legends of fighting corpses, but such claims were very absurd; even my grandfather didn’t believe them. Because a zongzi is an extremely uncontrollable thing, using a zongzi is like cooking with nitroglycerin; it takes a very precise control to not blow oneself up.

“This thing is artificial. The first step is to remove the head of the zongzi,” the fat man said decisively, just as the headless King of Hell turned its stone head and began to crawl towards us at an astonishing speed, even faster than when it had legs.

“I know what it means to be ridden by the King of Hell!” the fat man shouted while retreating, “Whatever you do, don’t let it catch you! It wants to use you as its lower half!!”