Nightmare Apostle

Chapter 838: Chapter 618: Lonely Tomb_3

The mysterious phenomena related to where the Ancestor hid were expected, yet even after Nalan Shuo had checked the first two areas of the four, he found no so-called abnormalities.

With limited time, he had to rule out as many threatening areas as possible and thus, he came to the southeastern corner of the courtyard, where a sparse grove stood with about dozens of trees. From outside of the grove looking in, shadows loomed vaguely.

Holding his breath, Nalan Shuo’s eyes grew dark with intrigue; he had a feeling thatthe Ancestor was most probably hidden here, and the danger of this place was quite apparent.

He could not leave threats lying here; his task was to clear the way for those who follow. With this thought, Nalan Shuo held his breath and stepped into the gloomy grove.

Although the trees were not large, their branches and leaves were thick enough to obscure the moonlight, leaving almost only the lantern in his hand for illumination.

The grove felt ominously cold, a sign of eeriness completely different from the temperature outside, Nalan Shuo speculated this could be considered an anomaly as well.

At the deepest part of the grove, alongside the courtyard wall, he found several unattended solitary graves. To say they were unattended wasn’t quite right because each grave was marked by a tombstone, it’s just that the inscriptions had been worn unclear due to years of neglect.

The grove wasn’t large, and Nalan Shuo cautiously circled the solitary graves without finding anything unusual. His brows furrowed as he walked out, and it wasn’t until this moment that he realized the grove had changed — it had become much larger, with endless bizarrely twisted trees, and no matter how he walked, he couldn’t reach the end.

Ghost Hitting the Wall.

But the trapped Nalan Shuo was far from panicking at this moment; there was even a hint of relief in his eyes, encountering Ghost Hitting the Wall suggested the Ancestor was nearby and confirmed his previous guess was correct — the issue lay here.

He suddenly turned back, and indeed, not far behind were those solitary graves, as if during this time he had been stepping in place.

Alright, now he was 80% sure that the problem lay with these graves, and the Ancestor might well be hidden inside one of them.

But this made things troublesome, as he had not brought tools for grave digging, and he was pressed for time. Once the candle in the lantern burned out, he would end up just like those servants who disappeared before, concealed by the Ghost, unreachable by anyone.

And now, there was less than one-third of the candle left; moreover, he estimated that the next individual was about to set off — that Lou Huixiang.

He didn’t rashly approach the solitary graves; instead, Nalan Shuo kept himself moving, circling the graves at a distance within the grove. He was observing from different angles, certain that there had to be a flaw in the grave hiding the Ancestor.

Suddenly, Nalan Shuo halted in his tracks and his pupils involuntarily constricted — he witnessed a bizarre scene. Just now, those several graves... seemed to have changed.

But what exactly had changed, he couldn’t pinpoint it in the moment. Utilizing the faint light, he counted the graves one by one, finally discovering the issue; there were originally only six solitary graves, and now, inexplicably, a seventh had appeared.

This seventh solitary grave’s tombstone was placed at the end, the farthest from Nalan Shuo, nearly at the limit of his visual range, leaving only a vague shadow behind. But Nalan Shuo was certain that it was a grave. freewebnoveℓ.com

And it had never appeared before.

He had found the source, but instinctively, Nalan Shuo sensed unease. He didn’t act hastily, the powder he had — a mix of bone and incense ash — was scarce, enough only for two tosses, and though there was little candle left, there was still time.

Leaning against the crooked tree in front of him, Nalan Shuo quickly discovered the anomaly after observation. Looking from the left side of the tree, there were only six graves, but from the right side, there were seven; he tried twice in succession, and each time it was the same.

But if he changed positions, the seventh grave was invisible, suggesting that his current location was akin to an Array Eye in Feng Shui, and that he wasn’t a master like Xiang Fengchen, specializing in the art of Feng Shui and Evil Techniques, the remaining time wouldn’t suffice for further inquiry.

Sometimes, decisive action is also a manifestation of experience and courage. Pretending he hadn’t noticed anything, Nalan Shuo deliberately circled around making some ambiguous movements. Then, gradually, he approached the area where he remembered the seventh desiccated grave to be, suddenly turned, and with a lightning-fast motion threw the handful of bone ash in his right hand, and in the next second, as if hindered by something in mid-air, a decrepit and sinister apparition that seemed like a corpse appeared right before him.