Deathly silence.
After the rule-trap of the child’s crying had been broken, the cursed village sank into a deathly hush more suffocating than at any point before. The roar from the ancestral hall, filled with venomous hatred and ecstasy, had vanished, as though that terrifying pair of resentful lovers undergoing fusion and metamorphosis, along with the awakened corpse bridegroom, had sunk into a nightmare brewing some even greater horror.
This calm before the storm was far more terrifying than the storm itself.
“Time’s up.”
An Mu’s voice broke the silence. He tossed the empty tube of the last high-concentration nutrient solution onto the ground, forcibly suppressed the taste of blood rising in his throat, and slowly straightened. Though his face was still frighteningly pale, his eyes had recovered the steadiness and sharpness of a commander.
“Check your equipment. Prepare to move out.”
Mo Fei swung the battle-axe hard, flinging off the black bloodstains clinging to its blade with a faint hum. He first glanced at Bai Yu, whose face was ashen as he leaned against the wall for support. Then he looked at Lan Ce, who was wiping down his instruments with alcohol swabs. Finally, his gaze returned to An Mu, and he nodded heavily. After that brush with death, this squad seemed to have been reforged in fire. Anger and fear had settled, leaving only a tacit understanding that required no words.
With Lan Ce’s support, Bai Yu managed to stand. The burlap map obtained from the elder’s former residence was clutched tightly in his hand. That rough piece of cloth seemed to be the only tangible thing they could grasp in this hopeless dead land that might lead them toward hope.
The four of them left the courtyard that had borne witness to regret and redemption, stepping once more into the village alleys where blood-colored fog churned.
According to the map’s directions, the so-called “path of life” was not any road in the village that people could walk on. Rather, it was a narrow gap hidden between the last row of houses and the steep cliff wall of the back mountain. Its entrance was concealed beneath a pile of long-rotted firewood and an abandoned stone mill. Without the map’s guidance, even the most meticulous search would never have discovered it.
Mo Fei walked at the front. With the back of his axe, he pushed the obstacles aside one by one. A shadowy path covered in moss and vines was exposed before them like a scar the village did not wish anyone to uncover.
A damp, chilly current of air mixed with the fishy smell of soil and the stench of a century’s decay rushed out from the depths of the path, making all four of them shiver involuntarily.
“Let’s go.” An Mu did not hesitate in the slightest and was the first to turn sideways and enter.
The path was even more oppressive than they had imagined. On their left were the mottled rear walls of the villagers’ houses, still seeping moisture. At the foot of the walls lay all manner of abandoned odds and ends—cracked water jars, rusted farming tools, stools with missing legs… These objects, once filled with the breath of daily life, now stood like silent tombstones, telling of a village’s death. On their right was the steep black mountain wall of the back mountain. The cold rock seemed to possess the touch of a living thing, constantly squeezing their space, giving rise to a claustrophobic terror of being buried alive.
They walked about a hundred meters along this seemingly endless road before An Mu raised a hand again, signaling the team to stop.
Directly ahead of him, beside the path, stood a stone tablet half the height of a person, most of it long covered in moss. The stone was crude, clearly not something erected by officials; it seemed more like something the villagers had built in secret. At the top of the tablet, a blurred name had been carved in cinnabar that had long since faded.
“Lin… Aniu…” Lan Ce shone his tactical flashlight on it and struggled to make out the writing. “It looks like a gravestone.”
“It’s a ‘Tablet of Passing On,’” Bai Yu said faintly. He looked at the stone tablet with complicated eyes. “The villagers didn’t dare defy the village’s rules. They didn’t dare build graves for their relatives who died of the plague, so they could only secretly erect a token of remembrance for them on this forgotten road, praying that they would pass on soon.”
The instant Bai Yu finished speaking, a man’s terror-filled wail abruptly rang in Mo Fei’s ear.
“…No… don’t take me… I’m not sick… it was Acai’s family… he was the first to fall ill… take him… don’t take me… I don’t want to die… ah!!”
“Who’s there?” Mo Fei’s body jolted violently, and he instantly entered combat mode, gripping his battle-axe as he swept his gaze warily around them. Yet there was nothing in their surroundings except the rolling red fog and the deathly silent walls.
“It’s an auditory hallucination! Guard your mind!” An Mu immediately barked in a low voice. “It’s the resentment lingering on the tablet! It’s affecting our spirits!”
Mo Fei clenched his teeth and forced the voice out of his mind, but his expression became exceptionally ugly. That kind of humanity, betraying one another for a chance to survive before death, was more frightening and infuriating than any monster.
They could only continue onward.
However, this “path of life” was more like a “road of passing on.” Every few dozen meters, an identical stone tablet would appear, each carved with a different name, representing one desperate soul after another who had died in that plague.
And every time they passed a tablet, they would hear a passage of the dead person’s final “last words.”
“…My child… my child… let me see him one more time… just once…” This was the frail plea of a young mother, sounding beside An Mu’s ear. As the captain, he bore the lives of everyone on his shoulders. This lament of family affection and helplessness in the face of fate struck his nerves, already taut with responsibility, like a heavy hammer.
“Why? We clearly made the sacrifice… why won’t the mountain god spare us… why wasn’t it that outsider Lin Sheng who died…” An old man’s vicious curse echoed in Lan Ce’s ears. He could only force himself to treat these as meaningless streams of data, but the emotional contamination carried by that resentment still sent bursts of stabbing pain through his high-speed mind.
These voices, these final words filled with fear, remorse, selfishness, malice, and unwillingness, constantly eroded their wills.
“This road is a river paved from the despair of departed souls.” Bai Yu’s voice sounded through the mental link, carrying an extraordinary calm, but his teammates could all feel that he was bearing a burden heavier than all of theirs combined. “We are like people walking along the riverbed. Every step stirs up silt that has settled for a hundred years. Don’t listen. Don’t think. Focus all your attention on me. Follow my breathing. Follow my heartbeat. Follow me and keep moving forward.”
Because he had drunk that cup of “resentment wine,” what Bai Yu heard was not scattered fragments. In his world, the laments and curses of hundreds and thousands of departed souls were weaving together into a grand requiem. It was an extreme torment, but it also allowed him to clearly “see” the strength and flow of every strand of resentment on this road.
He began leading the three of them forward along a route that seemed completely without pattern. Sometimes, he would have them hold their breath and pass quickly before a certain stone tablet. At other times, he would stop in a place that appeared peaceful and wait for some invisible tide of resentment to recede.
They were like a group of small boats struggling through a storm-tossed sea, following a lighthouse on the verge of collapse. At any moment, they could be overturned by a massive wave and doomed beyond redemption.
Just as they passed a stone tablet carved with “Lin Li-shi,” Bai Yu’s steps suddenly halted.
“What is it?” An Mu immediately became alert.
“The resentment here is a little off.” Bai Yu’s brows furrowed tightly. Amid those resentments filled with ordinary human desires and emotions, he caught an extremely faint trace of malice.
That malice did not belong to humanity. It was cold, indifferent, bearing a lofty attitude like something observing ants from above. It was like a drop of ink falling into clear water, silently contaminating this resentment that belonged to “Lin Li-shi.”
“…My son… listen to your mother… hand over that foreign vixen… Lord Mountain God will bless you… you’ll be fine… Mother is doing this for your own good…”
Within the woman’s loving words of persuasion was a trace of will that did not belong to her, one even she herself had not noticed.
“It’s the ‘mountain god.’” Bai Yu’s gaze turned cold. “It wasn’t merely an onlooker. From the very beginning, it was secretly pushing everything along. It planted the seed of ‘sacrifice’ in the villagers’ hearts, then quietly waited for it to bloom and bear fruit.”
This discovery made an even deeper chill rise in all four of their hearts. What they were resisting was a devil that had spent an entire century laying out its scheme, using human hearts as the chessboard and despair as food.
They spoke no more, simply following Bai Yu in silence as they struggled along this “path of life” that led to hell.
No one knew how long had passed. Just as all of their minds were about to be crushed by that endless wailing and resentment, the road ahead finally changed.
The narrow path suddenly opened up. They walked out of that suffocating crevice and arrived at an open space at the end of the village. Here, they had already reached the foot of the back mountain.
And in the center of this open space stood the last stone tablet on this road—and also the largest.
The entire tablet was pitch-black. Its material was different from all those before it, as though it had been carved from a single piece of charred wood struck by lightning. No name was carved upon it.
There was only one clear handprint, now turned dark brown—bloodstains left behind by someone unknown.
The instant they saw that handprint, the hundreds and thousands of departed souls’ laments and curses that had lingered beside their ears abruptly ceased.
The entire world once again fell into deathly silence.
But this time, within that silence brewed a hatred more terrifying than at any previous moment.
“Not good!” An Mu was the first to react, roaring, “Mental defenses! Maximum power!”
But it was already too late.
A torrent of hatred beyond description erupted from the stone tablet marked with the bloody handprint like the waters of the Nine Nether River bursting through a dam, viciously scouring the souls of the four of them!
That was not the resentment of any one person. It was the rejection and obliteration of these four “intruders” by this cursed land and this twisted space itself!
Mo Fei let out a muffled groan of pain. He felt as though his brain had been pierced at the same time by ten thousand red-hot steel needles. Sparks burst before his eyes, and even the hand gripping his battle-axe began to disobey him.
Lan Ce’s detector screen exploded in an instant with a string of garbled code and sparks. Then, with a snap, it went completely black. Clutching his head, he collapsed to his knees in pain, blood slowly seeping through the gaps between his fingers.
An Mu managed to keep himself from falling, but his face was already as pale as gold paper. His body swayed unsteadily, as though in the next second he would be completely washed away by this torrent of resentment.
Bai Yu’s condition was the most wretched. He already had the deepest connection to the resentment in this space, and now this torrent of hatred had almost taken him as its sole outlet. He felt the countless cracks in the porcelain of his soul being forcibly torn open. It was a sensation of “disintegration” more painful than death.
“…Is it… over…” His consciousness began to blur.
At this critical moment.
“Hmph. A swarm of ignorant ants dares to harm my ‘collection’ in front of me?”
Hei Yan’s cold and arrogant voice, for the first time, carried undisguised anger. A dark power far older, more chaotic, and more terrifying than the bridegroom’s resentment erupted from the depths of Bai Yu’s soul!
In an instant, Bai Yu’s eyes were replaced by darkness burning with scarlet flames. He slowly raised his head and stared directly at the stone tablet radiating endless hatred, the corners of his mouth curving into an elegant and cruel smile that belonged to Hei Yan.
He extended one finger and pointed at the stone tablet from the air.
“Go.”
A syllable, concise and simple yet seeming to contain the supreme authority of the universe, left his mouth.
“Boom!!!”
The torrent of hatred, powerful enough to wash away everything, came into contact with that syllable. In that instant, like a mouse encountering its king, it let out a shrill wail and actually rolled back at a speed even faster than when it had come, shrinking back into that stone tablet!
The bloody handprint on the tablet disappeared rapidly as though scorched by fierce flames. The entire stone tablet gave off a series of overburdened cracks, its surface splitting open with countless fine fissures.
The crisis was forcibly brought to a halt in a way none of them had expected.
The scarlet in Bai Yu’s eyes quickly receded. His body went limp, and he collapsed completely to the ground, losing consciousness. That move from Hei Yan had nearly drained all the power in his body.
Several seconds passed before An Mu, Mo Fei, and Lan Ce recovered from that extreme impact and shock. They looked at the unconscious Bai Yu, then at the stone tablet that had already lost all spirituality, and waves surged in their hearts like a storm-tossed sea.
Once again, it had been Hei Yan inside Bai Yu who saved all their lives.
An Mu quickly stepped forward, helped Bai Yu up, and swiftly injected him with a powerful stabilizer. Then he stood, his gaze passing over the shattered stone tablet and looking ahead.
They had reached the end of the “road of passing on.”
Before them lay a sinister, deathly silent black forest. A rugged mountain path covered in dead leaves and white bones wound upward, vanishing into the depths of a fog that seemed almost ready to drip blood.
The malice in the air belonging to the “mountain god” shrouded the entire mountain forest like an invisible net, waiting for them to throw themselves into it.
The sacrificial cave was there.
“We’re here.” An Mu’s voice was hoarse, yet filled with unshakable resolve.
He carried the unconscious Bai Yu on his back, then gave Mo Fei and Lan Ce, both equally exhausted behind him, the final order.
“Move. Let’s go meet… this ‘mountain god’ who enjoys watching the show.”