Free Web NovelThe downpour intensified, and the sky grew darker, as if in just a few breaths, twilight had turned into deep night.
Darkness accompanied the heavy rain, making it hard to breathe. The clean mud-brick walls of the village showed traces of sharp claws scratching, knives and shovels hacking, and dark red stains.
A woman's intuition is very accurate.
Lu Yibei didn't know if she counted as a woman now, but her intuition told her that something very terrifying and bloody had happened in this village.
The sounds of various classical ritual instruments echoed continuously in the empty, desolate village, making it feel as if she were on a street holding a grand celebration for some festival.
But she couldn't see a single person.
In the midst of dead silence, a door was pushed open somewhere. In the distance, out of sight, a man's hoarse voice called out.
He seemed to be calling a name, trying to awaken something.
“Creak—creak—!”
Accompanied by soft, sobbing sounds, the thatched doors of the low village houses were pushed open. The muddy path echoed with stealthy footsteps, and blood-red lanterns, as if carried by someone, floated out of the houses.
Those blood-colored lanterns floating on the desolate village paths gathered together, like a slowly flowing scarlet river, surging towards the dark and eerie mountain forest outside the desolate village.
Although she didn't see any bloody scenes, the bizarre sight before her made Lu Yibei's heart pound with fear.
She found a gap between two mud-brick houses to hide in, holding her breath and quietly observing the red lanterns floating like ghosts.
The lanterns emitted an unsettling red light, but the source of the red light within the lanterns was invisible. The scarlet light projected onto the mud-brick walls on both sides of the path, casting strange shadows.
Those shadows.
Some were wearing armor, holding strange-shaped objects high, their postures tall and straight, uniform and orderly. Although they had legs no different from ordinary people, they gave the illusion of moving with tails like snakes.
Some had hunched and deformed figures, carrying goods. The heavy goods bent their backs, forcing them to crawl forward on all fours.
There were also some very small shadows, wearing strange masks almost as tall as they were, being pulled and dragged forward by shackles.
Seeing those small shadows, Lu Yibei was startled. The contents of the bamboo slip translated by Ju Meng immediately came to her mind, and she suddenly understood that those small shadows should be the young boys and girls offered as sacrifices to the gods.
They looked like they were holding a grand procession for some kind of ritual. The destination of the procession should be in the mountain forest outside the desolate village. Lu Yibei thought.
She watched the lanterns with trepidation, as if they were completely unaware of her presence, floating past her. Time flowed slowly, as if it had solidified.
She didn't know how long had passed, but she finally saw a person at the end of the “procession”.
That person was Lu Xu, who Professor Ma said had gone missing.
He was wearing a tattered and messy patient gown, like a soulless puppet. His body was slightly bent backward, but his head was lowered, looking as if it were hanging from his shoulders. There was a large wound on his chest, and something within it was glowing faintly.
Lu Yibei focused her gaze on the source of the faint light and was slightly taken aback.
Between the hideous wound, a small part of a blood-red lantern was exposed, stained with some rotten and blackened flesh.
Lu Yibei stared at Lu Xu, and her eyes suddenly felt a strong burning pain. Immediately after, she saw the scene of Lu Xu's death.
...
In that dimly lit hospital room, filled with the faint smell of disinfectant, he sat alone on the bed, his head tilted, staring blankly at the wall in front of him.
Suddenly, his body convulsed, and he bent backward into an arc. He struggled desperately, twisting his limbs with force, but no matter how he resisted, he couldn't escape his predicament. His body gradually weakened, and his flesh slowly shriveled.
Thin blood-colored lines like small snakes swam beneath his skin, emitting eerie hissing sounds. The sounds didn't resemble insects or the wind; they sounded full of life.
“Ah—!”
Lu Xu suddenly let out a painful wail. A streak of crimson spread across his chest, like a blood-red dahlia blooming on his chest.
Immediately after, with a soft sound of flesh tearing, Lu Xu's wail stopped abruptly, and the entire room fell into silence. Accompanied by sounds of teeth chewing and colliding, something tore open his chest cavity and grew out. His chest bulged high, emitting a scarlet light.
...
The scene of Lu Xu's death before her eyes gradually faded, and her vision gradually became clear. Lu Yibei was horrified, and all the hairs on her body stood on end.
A lantern grew inside his body?
By the time Lu Yibei recovered from her shock, the “procession” had gone far. She poked half her head out of the gap in the mud-brick house and looked in the direction the “procession” had left, still able to see Lu Xu's stumbling back.
“......”
“Hoo—!” After a moment of thought, Lu Yibei slowly exhaled a turbid breath, walked out from her hiding place, and stepped forward to follow.
Staying put wasn't a solution, and the illusion wouldn't simply disappear like this.
It was better to follow behind those strange lanterns, at least she wouldn't have to worry about being suddenly attacked by other unknown things. Lu Yibei thought, looking up in the direction the “procession” was heading.
In the distance, the majestic and towering mountain range, like a dark black river, undulated and flowed among the swirling clouds, like some kind of wriggling giant beast...
...
Friendly reminder: The Website is about to be revised, which may cause loss of reading progress. Please save your book shelf and reading record in time (screenshot recommended). We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause!
Huacheng Institute of Technology, Special Text Content Research Lab, Seminar Room.
Professor Ma watched Lu Yibei take out the original bamboo slip and slowly unfold it. He waited quietly beside her, but soon he noticed that something was wrong with Lu Yibei.
She held the bamboo slip in her hands, her head slightly lowered, as if looking at the content on the bamboo slip, but her eyes were numb and blank, as if she had turned into a statue the moment she unfolded the bamboo slip.
Seeing this, Professor Ma felt a sense of unease. He stood up several times, wanting to wake Lu Yibei, but felt it was inappropriate and sat back down in his chair.
Standing up, sitting down, standing up... Professor Ma observed Lu Yibei restlessly for a while, and then he heard a soft sound in the seminar room. The air also became hot without him realizing it.
“Sizzle—sizzle—!”
The soft sounds sounded like water dripping onto a red-hot iron plate.
Professor Ma searched for the source of the sound for a while, and his gaze fell on Lu Yibei. He was startled for a moment, and then he saw a wisp of smoke floating from Lu Yibei's body.
Seeing Lu Yibei in that state, looking like she was practicing internal martial arts from a martial arts film of the last century, Professor Ma was astonished, and a strange thought popped into his mind.
If I touch her now, will she suffer qi deviation or something? Professor Ma thought.
...
Lu Yibei followed the floating blood-red lanterns, maintaining a distance that allowed her to turn and run at any time. The sound of musical instruments faintly echoed from the deep mountain forest ahead.
Walking forward, she soon entered the mountain forest.
Heavy rain poured down, and the mountain forest was filled with a vast expanse of white mist.
Unlike the desolate village down the mountain, as soon as she entered the forest, Lu Yibei saw stone slabs laid on the ground.
The dark green stone slabs, cut symmetrically and neatly, didn't look like objects that could have been made by ancient people.
At least not by the martial artists and children who were ordered by the king to search for the gods.
Perhaps because of the perennial damp and coldness, the stone slabs were covered with moss.
The moss was not the common green or dark green, but a grayish-black color.
It looked like the fur of some animal, or fungus growing on rotten and spoiled food. Stepping on it was slippery and sticky, making one feel nauseated.
Beside the winding stone slab path, weeds grew everywhere, a desolate scene of abandonment. The farther she went, the denser and more luxuriant the vegetation became, extending endlessly beneath her feet, leading her into the fragmented mountains.
Under the dim light of the sky, walking into the depths of the vast labyrinth formed by primitive trees, it seemed as if she had left the known world and entered an unknown 迷境.
The ancient silence she had never experienced before made Lu Yibe feel inexplicably lost and anxious.
In this suffocatingly oppressive atmosphere, Lu Yibei walked for an unknown amount of time. The man with the hoarse voice shouted again, and the sound of musical instruments that had been faintly echoing from ahead stopped abruptly.
The entire jungle fell into dead silence. It was as if, apart from the 雜亂 growing vegetation, there was no other life in this vast mountain forest.
Lu Yibei raised her head and looked ahead. At some point, the blood-colored lanterns had disappeared from sight, moving away from her.
Seeing this, a sense of inexplicable panic surged in her heart, and she quickened her pace forward. After only a few steps, she stepped into the air and fell out.
The stone slab steps that had been winding upwards suddenly plunged downwards at some point, without any transition.
Lu Yibei fell onto the stone slabs covered with slippery moss and couldn't keep her balance at all. She was like a person caught in a swift current, sliding all the way down. In a panic, she reached out to grab the vegetation on both sides, but it was useless.
The dense forest that was rapidly receding in her peripheral vision twisted, like the eerie figures twisting their limbs in frenzy.
It was as if she was being pulled by some force, or as if someone had deliberately polished the stone path smooth and planted slippery moss on it.
Lu Yibei's speed of sliding down became faster and faster. In a panic, she broke countless weeds by the roadside, but she couldn't slow down her speed at all.
Gradually, the mist parted, and soon a huge deep pit came into her view. The stone path also stopped abruptly at the edge of the deep pit.
The blood-red lanterns floated at the edge of the deep pit, swaying, praying. The air was filled with the simultaneous, meaningless whispers of thousands of people.
It was a sinkhole formed by the collapse of a karst cave, looking from afar like a black ulcer on the earth.
The dark, claustrophobic, sunken space gave a strange illusion, as if as her gaze went deeper, the familiar world with light was moving away, entering a nest buried with endless secrets.
Seeing herself getting closer and closer to the edge of the sinkhole, Lu Yibei's face gradually turned pale, but her speed of sliding forward didn't decrease at all. She cried out inwardly, 'Not good.' freēwebnovel.com
It's over, I'm going to fall in! Lu Yibei thought. The bottomless sinkhole gave her an indescribable sense of repulsion, as if there was something detestable below.
I have to do something!
That's right, the description! I don't know if the description originating from within my body will work in the illusion, but in this situation, I can only try!
“There is Zhong Mountain, a woman wearing Qingyi...”
Lu Yibei silently recited a few sentences in her heart, and suddenly her ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ body became hot. Her long hair, covered in mud and stains behind her, instantly turned crimson...
(Today I'm a bit stuck on writing, so there might only be one update. Please forgive me!)
