Free Web NovelChapter 244: Chapter 48: Mystery of the Mountain Village
The pages continued to turn amidst the white fog.
"This thing ought to be some kind of fallen evil creature from a time before the tower era, a time when there were no demons in this world... but it doesn’t seem to be of that time,"
Clearly, the entire family had never seen this creature before, yet everyone knew it came from the lake. It was strange indeed, with dense hair growing all over its black skin.
Many things inside the village related to the sightings of some evil creature had continuously emerged in the white fog pages.
Each segment of the content was not very long, only consisting of a small piece.
"Only by killing that unclean thing can we prevent the spread of death, we must fight back. The death toll is increasing, more and more every day. The entire village is beginning to be shrouded in the smell of paper ash... People are seeing it more and more. Burying the dead, cursing the land,"
"You deserve to die! The more you do, the more the entire village suffers from misfortune. Since this unclean thing came, I saw it... Its whole body is pitch-black, with very long hair, and it’s coming fast. I never thought it would come this quickly in a single day, I knew one day it would come to me. A paper person can only resist such bad luck, you need to prepare enough paper people, I will tell God Granny. Cursing rituals,"
"You can only avoid death if you have a dead person, they also think so. People in the Feng family are getting anxious, too. They have all died on the second day of seeing it, and before that, everyone who saw that unclean thing also died. The Feng family is a large household, it’s not suitable,"
Flipping to another page, after finishing one, in the white fog. It felt like a diary, the content seemed to be a chronicle of daily life in the white fog.
"Since even the Zhao family and the Zhu family, who’ve both seen that unclean thing, are getting married today, it doesn’t seem like we need to do anything special... just use a celebration to drive it away, the big family has no other way, they’ve only known of it,"
The white fog began to be read once more.
Though the dates had already become blurry and unrecognizable, one could barely identify the characters left within the white fog.
Next to the dates were recorded taboo events, and on the surface of the dates were written the various fortunes and misfortunes. Looking at the white fog, it seemed like the old yellow calendar was genuine.
The last thing that appeared in the white fog was a ruined version of something remarkably similar to an old yellow calendar.
It was as if they had never existed before, but as soon as the iron chest returned, right after the black mist had all turned to smoke, they writhed ceaselessly, in an instant, as if the hair had emerged from the iron chest just then.
It was like countless worms, the hair fluttering down to the ground, wriggling endlessly. He didn’t hesitate and drew his cyan bronze axe immediately, and began to hack at these hairs with an incredibly fast speed.
In this moment, a foul resentment gushed forth from the iron chest, and it began to erupt with fury from within.
White fog had pried open the iron chest.
"... I haven’t encountered any living since God Granny’s demise,"
"In this village, there are still paper people houses, mortuaries, wedding halls; it seems like they want to attract my attention to these various events,"
If these hairs, sprouting like weeds, submerged the entire village... White fog didn’t know what the final scene would look like, if he stayed there stuck as if ensnared.
"... It seems like these hairs will only grow denser. Every thread uncovered leads to another... and all the threads related to the scenes lie hidden within several key spots,"
He had a rough understanding of some things, though he hadn’t quite grasped the situation. The information was still as cryptic as ever.
]Every time you retrieve a piece of crucial information, you’ll come one step closer to your ultimate choice within this reiterative street game. Though you could remain endlessly within these repeating streets, every game has its time limits.[
A pile of various items had fallen onto the white fog, among the contents within the storage room.
Finally, White Fog had reached the storage room.
White Fog had not expended more than ten minutes per room, thanks to Erleipu’s guidance, and it was not a great deal of effort.
He still hadn’t found anything useful. After that, he went through the kitchen, the firewood room, and the toilet.
White Fog had searched around but hadn’t really found anything valuable. The first room was a guest room.
He then began to search the other three rooms along the perimeter of the courtyard.
Looking up at the night-colored clouds with his enhanced vision, White Fog had a feeling of an impending heavy storm.
But at this moment, despite the dark clouds being thickly clustered, with no special precautions, it’s obvious that there were no stars in the sky above.
... After his conversation with God Granny, only the nearing of this event had been on White Fog’s mind, and the surrounding hair seemed to thicken, the mist growing more oppressive.
When White Fog had returned, all of them were neatly stacked in their original positions, as if the paper people had meticulously put the ritual items back the moment White Fog left. It was quite a coincidence, returning to the room where paper people were making offerings.
All White Fog knew was that these paper people were there to make offerings; he hadn’t discovered anything else and left the paper people’s house.
Paper people’s house. Wedding house. Funeral house.
"...Look, she’s not coming in, let alone taking a look, so don’t ask for too much."
God Granny’s face was blank; she hadn’t said anything, let alone make any sense, just hopping and jumping away like before, disappearing into the white mist that couldn’t be brushed aside any longer.
"What’s this, a water ghost? Isn’t there something terrifying in the north shore of the lake?"
He still couldn’t get through the white fog to piece together some of the situation.
Without bringing any new information, this chattering spirit, God Granny, was definitely not unworthy of her name.
"...Pestilence has come...the plague has come...Only by suppressing it in the middle of the lake can we avoid the deaths it brings, otherwise..."
"What choice?"
"Cough cough cough cough... To make a choice... You just have to walk in, walk in... Outsiders... cannot leave, cannot get out."
God Granny said, shaking her head.
White Mist had a guess in her heart.
Why then, do those eyes that offer information about anomalies of different levels not show whether these things were evil entities?
Could these things live for seven hundred years if they were human-like?
In the fog, White Mist’s eyes hadn’t revealed any abnormal entities, and similarly, those paper figures could move around without any such information.
God Granny’s voice was very old, "...leave, escape..."
God Granny stopped in her tracks, without beads in her eye sockets, following the White Mist’s voice, gazing into the mist.
"Please, how can one leave this village? I’m lost, God Granny,"
White Mist felt that God Granny should possess the key to leaving this place; upon meeting God Granny for the third loop, his first instinct was to begin anew.
White Mist decided to begin searching for details.
This place was not a scientific area of study, but clearly, this world before White Mist was one where scientific evidence existed.
Ghost hitting the wall.
He was himself, only a step away from madness.
...it should be concealed just this once.
He had come to retrieve information about this region, the perfect grotesque inversion—Startling Fright. This one time, he should probably use the same method to strike back.
He, who had been a novice at the noble academy, could manipulate these memories to his advantage since Town of Army Guard would turn one after the other mad.
Although he didn’t have the ability like White Mist to acquire everything with his eyes, he could still sense and have knowledge of the worst fears or the most sinister evils, harboring a method of his own.
His need for information about this region outweighed the need for concealment, no matter how bizarre they acted.
If only one glance from Jing could sense the lingering resentment attaching to their bodies, she would be affected by it.
These three so-called living people were neither truly human nor evil, and not even evil entities.
There was only a couple bowing to each other at the temple and one God Granny without eyes in her sockets; just three living persons in the whole scene.
He quickly realized that this place was a time loop scene; no matter how one left, they would return to the original place.
"...Is it only under a certain special state that we become unable to sense or perceive the existence of the other side? Could it be that invaders who enter are not the same... that they look different?"
Jing wasn’t flustered, and she could still use the grotesque inversion to perform as a seemingly human entity.
Could it be his imagination, Jing and Divine Lake were nowhere to be seen; this was a troubling query.
Since Jing planned to directly plunder Divine Lake here and then take possession of his body after going back through Reincarnation, the area would become infinitely more troublesome than finding that kind of guardian who would strike down and kill invaders after a battle.
This kind of area was the most troublesome, much more so than the battlefields with defenders a hundred or a thousand times more annoying.
Erleipu did not possess Jing, but Jing had the rich experience of living outside the tower.
These things were not evil entities; they were certain mysterious rules.
He wasn’t supposed to linger too long in the red zone, but he didn’t anticipate seeing those bits of paper people upon his arrival in this part of the land, which is why he shouted so loudly.
"Captain Bai? Team Valley?"
...
...
Lost in this segment of the area, the same expression blanketed every face; these three were not rude giants, but rather, gracious hosts, thanking Reincarnation.
Liu Hu, however, couldn’t help but break down mentally as this area began to collapse.
Everyone was supposed to follow the rules, especially in these fragmented end days.
But the rules here in the Outsider’s Tower world were twisted, even more dangerous and evil than falling – although Liu Hu was not yet aware of it.
If he couldn’t escape from here, this place would be destroyed, and all he wanted was to escape... Unbeknownst to him, the lake was infested with strange and malevolent creatures. freēwēbnovel.com
He didn’t really know the village outside of the Divine Lake either, where everything was bizarrely named, alien to the whole scene, especially for Liu Hu.
For at that moment, Liu Hu was a child kicked in the stomach by a bride, where the bride’s head covering was not lifted by Liu Hu, but blown away by the wind.
That was why he couldn’t understand this layer of the message.
But Liu Hu didn’t have to do this; all he had to do to escape from this area was to lift the red head covering of the bride.
They were oblivious, even though it was clearly raining heavily.
They kept repeating their actions rigidly, as if they were two dummies; this was because the entire hall had no guests, only a couple bowing to the altar as husband and wife.
This arrangement seemed quite festive compared to that other house dedicated to funerary matters, which seemed dimmer and more ominous.
He kept running nonstop, having rushed over to the red house after hearing the sound of an earth-shattering prayer from within.
Including Liu Hu.
The whole village seemed like it was about to be swallowed up, with endless hair that never stopped growing; no matter how much Liu Hu pulled or tore at it, it just kept growing more and more.
There was inherently no evil entity in this place... but he considered everything he encountered as an evil entity.
God Granny managed to blockade Liu Hu with a screen from behind, sending chills down his spine.
A bloody, blurry head was hopping about the ground, seemingly aimlessly, as if looking for something; this disembodied head was bouncing haphazardly, not far from his previous path.
Though Liu Hu was being hunted by a formidable brute, he found it quite shocking, and it was more than enough to scare him... but he was in the midst of experiencing a looping scene.
God Granny had crushed his brain into a bag, and he was being stitched back together slowly.
Black hairs burst from the slit throat of the paper person, like puppet strings, tangling together with other such hairs; these strings were akin to marionettes connecting to Liu Hu’s shattered body.
But it was no use; he wanted to reach his companion with a loud shout, but couldn’t.
With every brutal yank, Liu Hu was completely destroyed, and that paper person’s head only emerged along a specific stretch of God Granny’s path, as Liu Hu began to frantically pull on the endless hair.
The Outsider Tower.
...
...
Considering the white fog, one might guess that what lay beyond was a deeper layer of the domain, which now seemed even more crimson.
She could bring about death and disaster with any creature she faced in the lake; the villagers were all paying her respects.
Where did she go in the end? The other side must be crimson then.
There was a fear that Captain Bai would be eternally stuck in this area if they could not get to the root source of the distortion of this place, and if they couldn’t manage to obtain any message from themselves.
He realized that Captain Bai and himself were trapped in some kind of looping scene. Determined, he decided to move even deeper into the world.
White fog slowly approached the material for coffins, within a dead silent yard.
The usual indistinct shades of black and white filled the courtyard, where a plain wooden coffin sat squarely in the center, adorned with mourning paraphernalia and surrounded by a ring of withered flowers.
Finally, he had to make the unavoidable choice to step into the white manor, shrouded in a blinding fog.
One choice led to an even further distorted scene as he entered this place, another one lay beyond reach, inviting him to make a decision.
This area would soon be swallowed whole by the engulfing white mist, leaving not much time before the arrival of the imminent tempest, as the downpour grow wilder, and the hair seemed to sprout uncontrollably.
Choice one or two.
["Are you still out there, or hiding inside, my pitiable little thing? Let’s see if you can find the door and the key when the time comes, and you’ll sink deeper into the world’s layers. Lie down, lift the lid of the coffin, both sides of anything can have two natures—you know that we know everything,"]
While he had to take care of the funeral affairs for the residence, there was no immediate choice to be made.
A glance shot out of his eye, filled with the expectation of managing the joyous affairs for the white manor.
["Once you manage to find the door and the key, you can easily leave this place. Lift the cover of the new bride’s red headgear and approach this red-hued manor. Make your own choice, for it’s time to play this game once you’ve gathered enough data,"]
After being subjected to Erleipu’s test of his anticipatory skills, the white manor had to arrange a wedding celebration, juxtaposed with another manor organizing a funeral.
The ultimate secret of this scene lay between these two manors. Captain Bai stood in the pouring rain, looking at the two houses not far apart from each other.
Once again, the rain turned into a deluge, the cloudy skies densifying; even the weather had been clear when it all began.
The hair had grown so thick it could almost block the entire room; those paper figures in that room might as well have been stuffed at this point.
This phenomenon occurred once again after consulting God Granny, with the hair on the ground becoming increasingly dense, spiraling out of the iron chest.
White fog suddenly felt the presence of a test in front of him, a choice laid out for his immediate picking.
The hair on the ground seemed to snake out, ready to trip any passerby at any moment. fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓
The celebratory music’s shrill and discordant notes played on endlessly, filling the empty circuitous street.
When White Fog returned to the street once more, greeted by the rainwater, he was not frightened.
This scene was indeed terrifying, a pile of hair that would be revealed upon closer inspection. One glance at the black mass moving behind them was enough to block every window and door, the hair having grown dense and thick.
With an expression of detached indifference, he peered into the large drops of rain as he found paper figures already taking shelter inside the houses.
The rain poured as if it would flood the village, a sparse clattering in the downpour.
Even from inside the house, White Fog could still hear the sudden onset of the torrential rain beginning to fall from the sky.
What would the villagers ultimately do?
They still endured the curse, attempting every possible thing to avoid misfortune, but the villagers had tried everything.
White Fog remained composed, his expressions starting out very peaceful. Perhaps this was innate aggression or a strong resentment when the iron chest was opened.
It seemed the villagers had made some sort of determined resolution to confront that sinister black creature.
["All we want is to continue living quietly here; generations of our family have lived in Army Guard Town. Why won’t Divine Lake let us go? Is it because of the many offerings we bring to the lake every year, the numerous animals we sacrifice? What have we done wrong?"]
It was purely a frightful accusation against the curse, and there were only people from this village who feared death and curses. In the end, there wasn’t a single extra day in their history.
The pages of their history were a string of horrible events—just a few years within the village’s lifespan.
It was a plague, or perhaps the black beast was essentially a god of death, because they had been unable to stop that erratic creature.
Every villager’s face carried fear even at the time when two charred corpses were dug up; a fire disaster took the lives of an old couple... but the little child from the God Granny’s household was fortunate to escape harm. Although Hu’s household did not burn down on the second day, the child from Hu’s household was terrified by that ghastly smile.
But the whole matter had not concluded. The little child from Hu’s household was continuously left faint from shock, unsettled by that sinister grin.
When he woke from a faint daze after drinking a bowl of godly water and was taken to God Granny’s house because he was inconsolable from the fright, it was that hideous face he had faced last—it was the grotesque image that little Hu’s child saw before waking up.
Inside the storeroom of his own house in South Village, little Hu’s child saw a black-haired monster during a certain ritual of planting and praying for blessings.
On the second day, the elderly couple died without a sound, some sort of curse echoing whisper-like.
The chilling screams of people were emitted by the black creature. In North Village, there was a household where a black creature had emerged, having been seen by passersby during a certain renovation work.
