CH 122

The torrential rain intensified, and the sky dimmed violently. In just a few steps, that deserted village was shrouded in an eerie darkness.

The darkness seemed to illuminate once-forgotten etchings on the village walls—claws, slashes, and dark red stains.

A woman’s intuition is accurate. Lu Yibei didn’t know if she were to consider herself a woman, but her intuition told her that something terrible had happened in this village.

The hazy, distant sounds of various classical instruments strummed in the dark village. One may think a celebration is happening beyond the endless village, but all that there was to see was pitch darkness.

In the dead silence, the door of someone’s house was pushed open, and a man’s hoarse voice rang out from a distant place.

He seemed to be calling out a certain name, attempting to awaken it.

Thatched doors opened one after another, and countless footsteps stomped on the rainy, muddy path. Scarlet lanterns lit up beyond the doors, and they floated out of their respective huts.

The lanterns soon met with each other and, like a river of blood, hovered towards the dark and desolate forest outside the village.

Hiding behind several crates, she couldn’t help but shiver at the scene that had just happened.

The scarlet light was disturbing—something else, not fire, illuminated the lanterns. The shadows they cast on one another contorted and wriggled with life.

Some shadows wore armour, holding strange tools in their hands. Their legs stomped and marched with precision; some legs were crooked and deformed, looking as if they were carrying a heavy load, forcing them onto their knees.

Some shadows were eerily short, and a ceremonial mask could be made out of them. Strangely enough, these figures were shackled.

The realisation washed over Yibei in an instant; these were the child sacrifices.

And this must be the grand procession for some kind of ceremony, and their destination must be somewhere outside this village.

A scarlet lantern drifted past her, but it moved as if it didn’t see her.

However, she could recognise a figure among the crowd of scarlet lanterns.

Lu Xu.

He was wearing a shabby hospital gown, like a puppet who had lost his soul. His body was slightly arched back, but his head was lowered. His head hung on his shoulders, and a large hole was carved into his chest. Within that hole, something shimmered.

Squinting her eyes, and with the lantern’s aid, she could see the contents within his wound.

Rotten, blackened pieces of flesh.

Her eyes stabbed into themselves, and the scene before her morphed into a pristine hospital ward.

In the dimly lit ward, filled with the faint smell of disinfectant, he sat alone in his bed as he stared into the wall.

Suddenly, his body convulsed, and his whole body was forcibly bent backwards. He struggled and writhed his limbs vigorously, but no matter how he resisted, he couldn’t get rid of that strange control over him. With a final breath, he closed his eyes.

His blood vessels hissed like snakes, and they hissed with new life.

“Ack!”

Lu Xu let out a painful cry, and bright red spread on his chest like a scarlet flower blooming out of him.

The soft sound of flesh being torn apart was beautiful, and his cacophonous wailing stopped. Something chewed and tore out of his chest, and the glowing scarlet emerged from his body.

The scene gradually faded away, and she found herself back in the village.

She was terrified—a lantern grew and clawed out of his body!

She soon realised the scarlet parade was long gone, but she could still see Lu Xu’s staggering figure lagging behind the crowd.

I have to follow them, she thought. ‘Nothing bad will happen in my dream anyway.’

Hopping behind them in great strides, she could see the titanic mountains in the distance. The darkness was like a river, undulating and flowing among the misty heavens.

Huacheng University.

Professor Ma could tell that something was wrong with Lu Yibei.

He was holding the bamboo scrolls in both hands, staring intently at their contents. However, his eyes seemed dull, as if he had turned into a living statue.

He paced back and forth in the lab, wanting to wake him up but feeling that it was better to leave him alone.

He stood up and sat down repeatedly, and suddenly he noticed that the air in the lab was noticeably warmer.

Psst!

It sounded like water droplets falling on a hot pan.

He relentlessly searched for the source of the sound, and his eyes fell on Lu Yibei.

Wisps of smoke were generated from his body.

I can’t wake him up, Professor Ma thought, sitting back down on his chair.

Lu Yibei trailed after the scarlet lanterns, keeping a safe distance. The sound of musical instruments playing was getting clearer and clearer as they entered the deep forest.

The rain was pouring on top of them, and everything was covered with a faint layer of white mist.

She noticed that they were now walking on top of stone slabs, cut symmetrically and neatly. Not something the ancients would make.

At least not by someone born of royalty.

A thin layer of moss covered the stone slabs, but instead of a lively green, it was a dull grey-black.

Like fur on a dark animal or fungus on rotten food.

The winding stone road was overgrown with weeds, and it became denser and lusher the further they went into the forest labyrinth.

Surrounded by primitive trees and dense mist, it was as if you were leaving the known world to enter a new dimension.

An ancient silence washed over her; she walked and walked until a hoarse voice shouted, and the musical instruments stopped their music.

The forest fell into a dead silence, and the scarlet lanterns vanished from sight.

She hurriedly turned her head front-to-back, but she didn’t know where the parade was. An inexplicable sense of panic washed over her, and she quickened her pace on the stone slabs, only to fall forward.

The stone slabs suddenly took a downward turn with no warning.

She slipped on the moss-covered slabs as if she were being sucked into a vortex. She slid all the way down.

Out of the corner of the eye, the dense forest distorts, like furtive figures writhing their limbs in ecstasy.

She continued to fall into the gaping maw of darkness, and she thought that she would’ve hit the floor by now.

Stretching her arms out to grab at the weeds did nothing to slow her down.

Gradually, the fog cleared the further she slid, and a huge, endless, and evil pit broke into her field of vision.

The stone road stopped abruptly at the edge of the pit.

The scarlet lanterns danced on the edge of the pit, shaking, crying, and praying, and hundreds of figures floated by the pit, whispering in a meaningless language.

Something told her that an ancient evil lurked within the pit—a primal secret waiting to be unearthed.

Her face paled as her tiny body got closer and closer to the edge of the pit, and nothing she did could slow her down.

‘No! I can’t die like this!’ she yelled out inwardly. “There’s a mountain! And there is a woman.”

Yelling out the few words with vigour, her body became hot, and her long, mud-ridden hair flashed with a violent crimson.