Huo Fuyu took two steps back and collapsed to the ground, spitting out a mouthful of blood before his head lolled to the side and he lost consciousness.
Nan Yue bristled; she didn't know what was in Ga Ya's memories that could cause even someone like Huo Fuyu such severe trauma.
Zhu Xi Ning pointed to the mask in Ga Ya's hand. "Should we take this with us?"
Nan Yue hesitated for a moment. "We'll wait until Huo Fuyu wakes up."
Shang Xi spoke up of her own accord. "I'll stay here and watch him."
Her expression was still poor because of what happened last night, so staying behind was for the best.
Nan Yue led the others on a circuit through the village, but not a soul was in sight. The absolute silence of the village gave off a sense of absurdity.
Corn was still laid out to dry at the doorsteps, and there were even unwashed clothes inside the houses.
But everyone had left.
Nan Yue even had the feeling that the villagers had simply vanished.
Gu Xiang Kai collected all the straw raincoats he could find, while Wen Xiang Yuan carried a water jar, going house to house to collect the water from the drainage channels.
Zhu Xi Ning and Nan Yue went to the ancestral hall; this was their first time visiting in the morning.
Under the sunlight, the giant ant stone statue at the entrance seemed somehow different.
"A-Nan, this statue..."
Nan Yue looked up. The statue was so large she couldn't even see the ant's upper body. Staring at it for too long created a strange sensation.
"What's wrong?"
Zhu Xi Ning frowned and kept looking up. "I feel like..."
Zhu Xi Ning took two steps forward and placed her palm on the stone statue. Before Nan Yue could stop her, she had already touched it and pulled her hand back.
"How strange. I think I just had a hallucination."
What Nan Yue worried about most were the words Ga Ya had said to Zhu Xi Ning during this mission.
Hearing her say this now, Nan Yue's heart leapt into her throat.
"What did you see!"
Zhu Xi Ning's brow didn't relax. She looked at Nan Yue, her eyes filled with a rare, confused dread.
"I seemed to see... that it wasn't an ant stone statue... but countless human bodies twisted and merged together."
Nan Yue looked up again at this statue. They had been eating the welcome banquet in front of it since the moment they arrived at Antswamp Village, and no matter how she looked, she couldn't reconcile it with what Zhu Xi Ning described.
Zhu Xi Ning murmured, "I seemed to hear the screams, cries, and groans of countless people in pain..."
Nan Yue grabbed Zhu Xi Ning's wrist, and a faint black mist crawled up.
Zhu Xi Ning shuddered like a startled animal, instinctively wanting to flee before she even realized what was happening.
"Don't even think about it."
Before Zhu Xi Ning could feel the heart-piercing pain and fear, Nan Yue withdrew the mist.
"Let's go."
The stone doors of the ancestral hall were shut, and no mechanism was visible. Those massive stone doors weren't something they could open on their own.
Nan Yue and the others had no way of knowing the situation of the villagers and the other scavengers inside the ancestral hall.
"A-Nan, I have a very bad premonition."
Zhu Xi Ning frowned. "That mask, the one in Ga Ya's hand, is very important."
She looked at Nan Yue. "I can feel that it might be able to save our lives, but for some reason, it's also very dangerous."
This village was full of oddities everywhere. Even on the final day of the mission, they still didn't know what they were facing.
Nan Yue rarely felt her hands and feet go cold. She clenched her fists, an intense feeling of irritability surfacing in her heart for the first time.
"...Let's go burn the ant nest."
Zhu Xi Ning's eyes widened. "Burn the ant nest?"
"Yes."
When Nan Yue and the others crossed the river and arrived at the ant nest, it was as quiet as ever, without even the sound of insects.
Ant-red Flowers bloomed everywhere. If they weren't in a mission, it would truly be considered a unique landscape.
Nan Yue took the water jar Wen Xiang Yuan was carrying and lit a torch.
"Wait for me down here."
She climbed to the top of the ant nest at her fastest speed. That dense hissing sound began to appear in her ears again.
She ignored it, her body swathed in black mist. Intense pain instantly suppressed that eerie sensation.
As if she couldn't feel the physical pain that felt like being cut by knives and burned by fire, her hand remained perfectly steady as she poured the entire jar of water into the hole.
Then she let go, and the torch fell inside.
Boom!
Flames shot up into the sky. They were right; this fishy-smelling water was made of the same material as the fuel in the oil lamps and lanterns—it was an accelerant.
Screee!
The sounds of massive scratching and sharp, insect-like shrieks filled everyone's ears. Blood instantly leaked from Wen Xiang Yuan's ears.
Nan Yue turned and ran. The group scrambled to escape, not stopping until they reached the riverbank, where the high-pitched, piercing noise finally faded.
Huff, huff.
They splashed river water on their faces before they could compose themselves. Nan Yue looked at Wen Xiang Yuan.
Wen Xiang Yuan had the weakest constitution among them. "Are you okay?"
Wen Xiang Yuan's eyes were bright, and she seemed somewhat excited.
"I'm fine!"
"That was so intense!"
Nan Yue: "..."
"Let's go back and see if Huo Fuyu has woken up."
If Nan Yue hadn't guessed wrong, the things in the ant nest were likely only injured; it was impossible for the threat to disappear just like that.
When Nan Yue returned, Huo Fuyu still hadn't woken up. It was already noon, so the group found some leftover wild vegetables to eat.
The villagers used to eat some steamed buns and wild game, but as the sacrificial rite approached, they all started eating the roots of those wild vegetables.
They might have to run for their lives tonight, so regardless of whether there was an issue with the food, they had to maintain their strength.
In the afternoon, the sky turned a murky yellow, as if a sandstorm was about to arrive.
However, it wasn't dry; instead, it became even more stiflingly humid. The sky looked lower, as if one could touch it just by standing on their tiptoes.
That chaotic, orange sky... for some reason, it felt like it would have the texture of a viscous semi-liquid if one reached out to touch it.
There was still drinking water in their stone house. With nowhere else to go, they drank their fill, but their anxiety only grew.
This feeling of being unable to do anything, like waiting for their death date to arrive, was a first.
Just before the sacrificial rite was about to begin, Huo Fuyu woke up.
He was panting heavily, his eyes full of terror, and he looked like he had just been fished out of water because of his sweat.
Gu Xiang Kai helped him up, letting him lean against him. Nan Yue gave him some water, and only then did Huo Fuyu manage to recover his strength.
He organized his thoughts and immediately dropped a bombshell.
"The villagers aren't human."
Nan Yue was somewhat surprised. Could it be that all of their perceptions were wrong?
Huo Fuyu rubbed his brow, his head exploding with pain.
"The villagers themselves don't know it."
"This village is cursed; it has never been let go."
Huo Fuyu had seen many fragments in Ga Ya's memories. Many of them didn't happen in this current era; he suspected that the spirit medium had probably lived for a very, very long time.
Or rather, these memories had existed for a long time.
A hundred years ago, a famine had nearly wiped out this isolated village.
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