Faint Spark

The puppet monsters crashed from two directions like an overwhelming tide, their twisted faces churning within the mass.

Seeing that the three had not yet reacted, the leading youth urgently added, "What are you still standing there for? Follow us!"

With that, he led the few people beside him toward the interior of the alley. The three exchanged glances and nodded. Before the monsters could reach them, they all dove into the alley and vanished into the darkness.

Without a word, the three followed the youths as they fumbled through the darkness. They turned into an inconspicuous small path, and the eerie laughter and piercing shrieks behind them gradually faded away.

The small path wound forward, leading directly into the depths of the forest. Under the cover of heavy trees, their vision slowly opened up.

A well was hidden deep in the forest. Looking down from the wellhead, it was pitch black. The well appeared to be over ten meters deep, with no bottom in sight.

Judging by the moss-covered and cracked stone bricks piled around the wellhead, it was clear that the well was quite old.

After signaling to the group behind them with their eyes, the youths stepped forward and slid down the well rope, quickly disappearing from their sight.

The three did not hesitate either and jumped directly down from the wellhead. The ten-meter drop passed in an instant. With their physical constitutions, falling from such a height would not cause them any injury.

After reaching the bottom of the well, the surroundings were dark and chaotic. Xu Xiaoyou looked up and saw a waning moon hanging in the night sky through the circular wellhead, casting a large patch of pale moonlight down.

The space beneath the well was vast, much larger than it appeared from above. The water accumulated at the bottom just reached everyone's calves. With every step, the clear sound of splashing water echoed around them.

A bone-chilling cold swept over them as if trying to seep into their very marrow. Xu Xiaoyou's hand brushed against the stone bricks of the well wall.

She felt the texture of ice shards beneath her fingers.

As their eyes slowly adjusted, they discovered a secret passage directly facing them. The entrance to the passage was also built with stone bricks. The scent of damp earth and mold blew out from the depths of the passage along with the chill.

"Follow us,"

The leading youth said. He held an old-fashioned windproof lighter and walked forward, the flickering flame illuminating the scene inside the secret passage.

Since the lighter could be lit, it meant the passage was ventilated and the internal space was open enough. Xu Xiaoyou thought this as she followed the group's pace.

"We don't even know what happened. Those people just went crazy, turning into monsters,"

One of the youths in the team said. No one responded to him. The events of tonight had been too sudden for them; many of those monsters were familiar faces they had known in the past.

For a moment, a heavy atmosphere spread through the secret passage.

The underground passage grew deeper and deeper. Xu Xiaoyou thought that most settlements on the snow plains had these kinds of secret passages.

They were usually disguised as wellheads or hidden beneath cellar covers. When disaster struck, the survivors would hide inside to preserve the sparks of life.

In this world, ordinary people were merely pitiful creatures living in despair and helplessness. All they could do was struggle through pain and sorrow until tomorrow or the next accident arrived.

No one spoke, and no one mentioned the conflict from earlier that day. The leading youth's right arm was held at his side by a makeshift brace made of coarse cloth and wooden strips, making movement difficult. The injury Xu Xiaoyou had given him during the day was not light.

Ultimately, they were just a group of hot-blooded young men, though more mature than their peers in the city, their minds tempered by more hardship.

Bloody past experiences had planted a seed in their young hearts. The innocent deaths of their loved ones had forced them to accept the malice of this world early on. They also knew early on that people must always pay for their mistakes,

And that an individual's strength is limited.

In the face of the bizarre and the madness, people could only huddle together for warmth to ensure the continuation of the spark.

Soon, they arrived at the end of the secret passage. After the leading youth pushed open the passage door, the interior of the room came into view.

There were quite a few survivors in the room, their figures illuminated by the flickering old tungsten filament lamp overhead.

They all bore injuries to some extent, their faces covered in dirt and exhaustion. Some had not yet escaped the terror of before, incessantly murmuring something as if they had lost their minds.

Seeing the newcomers appear, the people in the room cast uneasy glances toward them.

"Wait until dawn, then we'll leave together," the youth said. "Those monsters can't find this place for now."

"There probably aren't any more survivors."

As soon as these words were spoken, the atmosphere in the room grew even heavier.

Xu Xiaoyou watched the youth walk to a corner and crouch down to comfort a girl who was crying helplessly because she had lost her mother.

Lin Sheng, as usual, held his decapitating blade in his arms and leaned against the wall to rest with his eyes closed. The aura of blood surrounding him made the people in the room avoid him and look away.

A few groans drew their attention. On a hospital bed, an injured person spoke incoherently, "Water... water..."

Tang Xin stepped forward and peeled back the yellowed, dirty bandages on the man. The startling wound was swollen, ulcerated, and oozing pus; it was clearly severely infected. If left alone, he would definitely not live until morning.

The girl let out a soft sigh. Her hand brushed over the wound, and a subtle, gentle flow of water slowly trickled from her palm, seeping into the injured man's body and silently nourishing the wound.

To a casual observer, the patient's condition seemed unchanged. The wound was still shocking, red, and infected, but the pain on his face visibly eased as he gradually drifted into a peaceful sleep.

Tang Xin clearly saw the man's cracked lips move slightly, squeezing out a "thank you."

She gently shook her head and turned to leave. In the eyes of the people in the room, the girl had done nothing; she merely seemed to have comforted the injured man for a moment.

Tang Xin knew that directly revealing her healing abilities in this situation might bring unnecessary trouble.

Although no change was visible now, she had controlled the infection. That subtle stream of water would slowly heal the patient's body. By the time the external wound showed signs of healing, she and Xu Xiaoyou would already have left this place.

When she returned to the blonde girl's side, the latter seemed to be deep in thought.

Xu Xiaoyou looked around, her mind racing with thoughts.

Before she and Tang Xin had gone to the stilt house and met Lin Sheng, she had searched the entire settlement and found nothing suspicious. However, she was certain that the puppeteer was hiding in the settlement at this very moment. A thought occurred to her.

The information provided by Chen San mentioned that the puppeteer had no fixed appearance. Long ago, when he was the Iron Hand in Chichutian, he often appeared at major events with various faces. It was easy to judge that the opponent had disguise-related abilities.

Could that puppeteer be in this room, disguised as one of these survivors?

With this thought, she scrutinized all the survivors in the room. There were twenty-three people in total. Excluding the group of youths and their own group of three, sixteen people remained.

Three injured patients lay in the simple infirmary. Two soot-faced young girls were responsible for taking care of the wounded. It seemed they had some medical knowledge, knowing how to distinguish medicines and perform basic disinfection and bandaging. Xu Xiaoyou was reminded of the barefoot doctors in the villages of her childhood.

The two girls' attention was entirely on the patients. The other two patients were out of danger after their wounds were briefly treated, but the severely infected man left them unsure of where to begin.

In such a medical environment with crude equipment and poor hygiene, patients with that level of infection were often left to the whims of fate.

Her gaze then swept over a tall, thin girl leaning against the wall nearby. The girl wore grey clothing that concealed her form, and a ragged, old long scarf covered half her face, making it difficult to discern her expression.

This girl seemed to be a drifter passing through, referred to by the locals as a hyena. Such people had no fixed residence and wandered between the various settlements of the snow plains, surviving by bartering goods or selling information.