The instant An Mu took the icy talisman tablet, the air in the entire ancestral hall courtyard seemed to be sucked dry.
The smiles on the faces of the hundreds of paper-figure guests became savage and twisted at the same moment, at a speed visible to the naked eye. The festive curves drawn in cinnabar now looked as if they were being torn apart to either side by invisible hands, splitting open to an inhuman angle and revealing the dense, razor-sharp teeth painted inside with ink lines. In the depths of their hollow eye sockets, two pinpricks of ghostly green flame ignited, filled with undisguised, nauseating hunger and malice.
“Crack… crack-pop… crack-pop-pop…”
A dense, teeth-aching series of sounds, like countless pieces of rotten wood being forcibly snapped, came from all directions. All the paper-figure guests began to rise slowly from their seats in an extremely stiff posture that defied the structure of joints. Their necks twisted, their limbs swung, and every movement was filled with the eerie quality of marionettes. They had only one target—An Mu, who held the “Death-Substitution Talisman.”
An invisible mental pressure, vast enough to crush mountains, squeezed in from all sides like the pressure of the deep sea, locking firmly onto An Mu. He felt as if his soul had been seized by countless icy hands covered in corpse mud, desperately trying to drag him into an endless abyss.
“Prepare for battle!” An Mu’s voice exploded through the mental link like a clap of thunder. Bracing himself against the immense pressure, he bent his legs slightly and steadied himself. “My target is the portrait in the main hall! Mo Fei, Lan Ce, carve me… a path!”
“I’ve been waiting long enough!!”
Mo Fei’s roar erupted like a volcano suppressed to its limit! He no longer held back the fury and grief in his heart over avenging his comrade. In an instant, those emotions turned into the purest fuel, igniting all the blood in his body. A scorching wave of air burst outward with him at the center, dispersing some of the surrounding stench of rot.
“For Xiao Zhao!”
With a deafening bellow, his burly body shot forward like a cannonball, charging fiercely toward the nearest table of paper figures! The two high-frequency battle axes in his hands hummed beneath the ghostly green light, drawing two lethal silver arcs.
“Pfft—!”
The two paper figures at the front did not even have time to react before they were cut in half at the waist by the axes. Yet what sprayed from the torn bodies of the paper figures was not scraps of paper, but great gushes of filth mixed with black mucus and rotten straw! Countless pitch-black corpse beetles the size of fingernails shrieked as they surged out from the wounds, like two black waterfalls, instantly covering the ground.
“A pile of filth-hiding trash!” There was not the slightest fear in Mo Fei’s eyes, only an ever-hotter fury. He stomped down hard, and the powerful force cracked the flagstone floor beneath him into a spiderweb pattern. This was the power bestowed upon Mo Fei by his nightmare.
For a time, paper scraps flew with black blood, and severed limbs shared one hue with rotten flesh. Those seemingly fragile paper figures had become extraordinarily tough under the support of resentment. Their paper skin was like cowhide soaked through with corpse oil; ordinary blades would find it hard to injure them at all. But before Mo Fei’s high-frequency battle axes, into which he poured all his strength and anger, they were still as vulnerable as rotten wood.
However, there were far too many paper figures. Fearless of death, they surged forward one after another like a black tide, rushing madly from all directions toward Mo Fei, the unshakable reef standing in their path. Their methods of attack were also extremely strange. Some extended long, disproportionate arms made from bamboo strips and paper pulp, attempting to coil around Mo Fei’s neck; others opened their painted mouths and spat out black saliva carrying intense corrosive properties.
“Mo Fei, left rear, three o’clock direction, three of them! Watch their nails—corpse poison!” Lan Ce’s calm voice sounded through the link. He did not rush forward; instead, he swiftly took a silvery-white spherical device covered in complex patterns from his tactical backpack.
“‘Nightingale’ high-frequency sonic disruptor, activate!”
“Buzz—”
An invisible sound wave spread out in an instant. The sound was not a loud noise humans could hear, but a kind of high-frequency resonance that directly affected the structure of the mind and resentment. Every paper figure swept by the sound wave showed a clear instant of delay and confusion in its movements. Their cores formed of resentment seemed to have suffered a heavy blow, and even their ghostly green soul flames dimmed somewhat.
“Beautifully done, Four-Eyes!” Seizing this opening, Mo Fei roared and swung an axe backhanded, chopping the three paper figures attempting a sneak attack into burning scraps that scattered through the air.
“Don’t call me Four-Eyes!” Lan Ce calmly shot back while rapidly reporting new data. “Captain, a gap has appeared in the paper figures’ formation. The optimal breakthrough route has been marked on the tactical map on your retina! Estimated breakthrough window: 4.7 seconds!”
An Mu had already been waiting for this moment. The instant Lan Ce finished speaking, he moved.
His figure was like an arrow loosed from the string, without a single unnecessary motion. Following the narrow passage Lan Ce had marked—one that Mo Fei had cleared with blood and fire—he sprinted madly toward the main hall of the ancestral hall. The “Death-Substitution Talisman” in his hand had now become scorching hot, as if he were gripping a branding iron. Wave after wave of cold, vicious curse power was frantically corroding upward along his arm.
Yet just as he was about to break out of the encirclement, another change occurred!
The paper figures that had seemingly been disrupted by the sound waves suddenly stopped their siege of Mo Fei in perfect unison. Their twisted heads turned once more toward An Mu, and they opened their mouths, releasing a silent shriek that could nevertheless shake the soul!
“Not good! It’s a rule countermeasure! Their target has always been you!” Bai Yu’s urgent voice rang in An Mu’s mind.
Along with that soundless shriek, the blood-red carpet beneath An Mu’s feet suddenly “came alive”! Countless pale arms formed from viscous blood shot out of the carpet like ghostly hands from hell, grabbing for An Mu’s ankles!
An Mu was in midair, with no way to evade!
“Heh… such a boring trick.”
At this critical moment, Hei Yan’s low murmur, carrying a trace of laziness and disdain, sounded deep within Bai Yu’s consciousness. An icy, elegant dark power filled with supreme authority spread quietly along Bai Yu’s will.
A barely perceptible flash of crimson passed through the depths of Bai Yu’s pupils. He did not move. His gaze merely pierced through the chaotic battlefield and locked precisely onto the white lanterns hanging beneath the eaves of the ancestral hall, radiating ghostly green light.
“These lanterns are the ‘rule nodes’ controlling those blood-colored arms. And what manipulates those nodes are higher-level ‘strings,’” Bai Yu said quickly through the mental link. “Hei Yan, absorb them.”
“As you wish, my… work of art.” Hei Yan’s voice was filled with delight.
The next second, An Mu felt his vision blur. The blood-colored arms about to grab him suddenly collapsed in unison as if all their strength had been drained away, turning back into pools of viscous liquid that melted into the carpet. In midair, the white lanterns serving as nodes went out simultaneously without warning.
An Mu did not hesitate in the slightest. Seizing this fleeting opportunity, he stamped his toes heavily against the ground and accelerated again, like a cheetah, successfully rushing into the main hall of the ancestral hall!
He was less than ten meters from the enormous portrait of the bride!
“Now!”
An Mu gathered all the strength in his body into his right arm. The muscles of his arm bulged, veins standing out violently. He raised the scorching “Death-Substitution Talisman” high and aimed it at the face hidden beneath the red veil in the portrait. Then, with all his might, he hurled it fiercely forward!
“Take it… back!!”
The small wooden talisman tablet traced a black trajectory through the air, one tinged with ominous red light. Like a vengeful meteor, it shot with perfect precision toward the brow of the bride in the painting!
“Buzz—!”
The instant the talisman tablet touched the portrait, there was no sound of physical collision. In its place came a high-pitched hum sharp enough to pierce eardrums!
The entire blood-red portrait seemed to come alive at that moment!
The dark, sunken background in the painting, like dried bloodstains, began to churn and boil violently, like a seething blood pool. As for the bride beneath the red veil, her body began to tremble violently. One black crack after another spread rapidly across the entire painting with the talisman tablet at the center.
“Ah—!!!”
A shrill scream unlike any human voice, filled with endless agony and resentment, suddenly erupted from the mouth of the “bride” substitute who had been sitting motionless at the host’s table! She jerked her head up. Although she was still covered by the red veil, everyone felt a pure, undisguised malice stab toward An Mu like a tangible spike of ice.
Her body began to convulse and melt violently. The bright red wedding dress smoked with billows of black vapor as if it had been splashed with concentrated sulfuric acid, sticking to and fusing with her flesh. Her form twisted and elongated continuously, as if something far more terrifying were struggling to break free from that human shell.
The curse was being forcibly transferred!
“Boom!”
The huge portrait in the main hall of the ancestral hall could no longer endure the power of the “Death-Substitution Curse” and burst into flames! The fire was not the normal orange-red of flame, but an eerie, ghastly green like will-o’-the-wisps. The green fire madly licked at the canvas, and the outline of the bride in the painting twisted and struggled within the flames, as if enduring boundless suffering in purgatory.
In only a few seconds, the portrait was burned to flying ash.
Yet when the flames dispersed, what was revealed behind the portrait was not the mottled mud wall everyone had expected.
It was a stretch of… bottomless… nothingness that could not be described in any known language.
An irregular, enormous hole had appeared in the wall, as if it had been gnawed out by some gigantic beast. The edge of the hole was not still, but slowly and rhythmically writhing, like the breathing wound of some immense creature. From within the opening, no light could be seen at all—only a pure darkness that could devour everything.
But when the four of them focused their gazes upon it, their reason and cognition were completely overturned at that moment.
At the end of that darkness, they “saw” it.
It was not any scene they could comprehend. It was a… city. A colossal city with no visible end, built from countless twisted, pale tissues of flesh and blood that still pulsed faintly. The towering buildings that rose into the clouds were supported by massive, ghastly white bones covered in bulging veins; what flowed through the streets was a viscous, dark-purple unknown liquid; and the “windows” of the buildings were holes covered in mucous membranes, opening and closing without end.
And above this city of flesh, there was no sun or moon, no stars. In their place were hundreds of millions of enormous eyeballs of varying sizes and colors! They hovered silently in the gray, chaotic firmament. Some had vertical pupils like reptiles; some were composed of countless tiny compound eyes; some did not even have pupils, only a turbid milky whiteness.
They did not blink. They had no emotion at all. They simply watched coldly from on high, watching the writhing city beneath them, and watching… Bai Yu and the others, the four living beings as insignificant as dust, peering in from the mouth of the “hole.”
A “wind” that did not belong to this world, nor to any known Evil Nightmare—cold to the extreme and mingled with the scent of ozone and interstellar dust—blew out from the opening, lightly brushing across the faces of the four.
In that instant, they felt as if their souls were about to be frozen and crushed.
“This… what… is this…” For the first time, Lan Ce’s voice stuttered. The screen of the detector on his wrist no longer showed static, but a piercing blood-red color representing “unable to analyze.”
Mo Fei had already forgotten the battle. He stared blankly at the opening, and the battle axes in his hands nearly slipped free. It was a fear born from the most primal instinct of life when faced with an incomprehensible existence of a higher dimension.
An Mu’s pupils also contracted to their limit. His battle-hardened heart, solid as bedrock, was in that moment swept by towering waves.
All the paper figures and corpse beetles also turned to nothingness at that moment.
Luoshui Village… this rules anomaly rooted in folk customs and resentment… was not independent at all! It was merely… merely a tiny “window” projected into reality from this terrifying “world.” Or rather, an “observation room”!
That so-called “Mountain God” was not some rural spirit at all! It might very well be an extension of the will of this city of flesh, a higher-level… existence that toyed with them in the palm of its hand!
“Heh heh… heh heh heh heh… So that’s how it is…”
Hei Yan’s whisper sounded in Bai Yu’s mind, but this time, its voice no longer held its usual elegance and composure. In their place was an unprecedented mixture of excitement, greed, and a trace of… wariness even it itself had not noticed.
“A ‘feeding ground’… A ‘garden’ fenced off and raised in captivity to observe how ‘fear’ ferments, how it matures. And that ‘Mountain God’ is nothing more than a self-important ‘gardener.’ How… grand a design. I’m beginning… to take an interest in the ‘master’ of this place.”
“Roar—!!!!”
Just as everyone was utterly shocked by the scene before them, a roar filled with endless resentment and agony jolted them awake from their daze!
It was the “bride” substitute!
After the “Death-Substitution Curse” had been transferred onto the portrait, she had not vanished. Having lost the restraints of the curse, the resentment she had suppressed for who knew how long as a “sacrifice” erupted completely at this moment!
Her body had completely melted and was no longer human-shaped. Puddles of viscous flesh mixed with fragments of the wedding dress writhed and gathered on the ground like living sludge. In the end, they formed a three-meter-tall aggregation of resentment with no fixed shape, composed of countless painfully twisted human faces and waving pale arms!
At its center, a huge face with only a mouth suddenly opened wide, releasing a sonic impact that could tear the air apart!
“Not good! The curse core has been destroyed—she’s out of control!” An Mu made a decisive call and roared, “Everyone, prepare to enga—!”
Before he could finish speaking, from within that “mouth of the abyss,” a pair of enormous eyeballs closest to them, like two blood-red moons, slowly, slowly turned.
Its “gaze” fell upon them.