Qi Family Gang (3)

The group's gaze converged on those pitch-black vats.

"Are you saying the vats are alive, or the things inside them?"

Chi Yu was somewhat puzzled. To her, the vats looked like ordinary large ones used for brewing liquor. If the things inside were alive, it was impossible for there to have been no movement or need for food over the past five days.

"It is hard to describe."

Zhu Xi Ning hesitated. "The feeling the contents give me is changing. Regardless of what is inside, it is undoubtedly dangerous. You can think of it as me seeing a mass of thick fog, but this fog rises and falls like a breath."

"That usually indicates the subject is a living being."

Zhu Xi Ning glanced at the horse drivers around them. "I just went in for a closer look. It seems I am the only one who can observe them at close range. These are no ordinary vats."

"There are runes densely packed all over them."

"They look like suppression runes, but I do not feel any effect from them."

For instance, Zhu Xi Ning could see a faint golden light on Headman Qi's horse bridle and the Bagua mirror on his forehead, proving those two items actually had some exorcism effect.

However, the runes on the vats did not give her that impression.

Were they useless? Were they merely decorative?

With five vats being so strange, Zhu Xi Ning could not help but overthink it.

"I touched the vats. There was nothing unusual. They are very heavy, and tapping the surface yielded no response."

To survive five days without eating, the things inside could not be animals or people.

If they were insects or something similar, they would have reacted to the sound.

"The situation is unclear, so we cannot open the vats to check. We can only play it by ear."

This was their first time without system prompts, relying entirely on their own exploration, so Nan Yue had to be cautious.

Zhu Xi Ning nodded. She knew the stakes, but those vats truly gave her a very bad feeling.

She felt they were extremely dangerous.

That night, the Qi Family Gang rested where they were. Realgar powder was scattered around the area, and the horse drivers took turns keeping watch. Nan Yue was assigned to the first half of the night. She sat by the campfire, eyeing the large vats.

Chi Yu and Yin Qian sat opposite her, as they were all assigned to the same group.

Yin Qian surreptitiously glanced at Jiang Siyan next to Nan Yue. He remembered this man was scheduled for the second half of the night, but he had swapped with someone else.

Yin Qian and Jiang Siyan had known each other back at the Scavenger Training Academy and were on decent terms then. However, after Zhou Yang's death, Jiang Siyan's personality had changed drastically. Aside from He Jiu Chen, whom he might exchange a few words with, he had cut contact with everyone else.

Now, he seemed to have changed even more.

Nan Yue held a withered branch, poking at the campfire every now and then, when her movements suddenly paused.

The air at the top of the burning campfire distorted slightly. Initially, this was a normal high-temperature phenomenon, but then... the flames turned green.

The others naturally noticed the issue as well. Before they could do anything, Nan Yue heard an indescribable noise.

"Thump."

"Thump."

"Thump."

It sounded like something jumping.

But upon closer listening, it did not seem that way.

Because the sound carried a watery quality, more like something jumping into water.

Nan Yue immediately looked at the five vats. They were surrounded by several horse drivers who were looking around for the source of the sound.

It seemed the sound was not coming from inside the vats.

Nan Yue stood up. The forest here was dense, and the woods outside the campfire's reach were lush and dark, hiding whatever might be there.

Accompanying that strange thumping was a viscous, watery sound.

It was like the squelching of shoes stepping into a puddle on a rainy day.

This noise woke the sleeping Headman Qi.

He listened intently for a moment, then got up and patted his horse.

The lead horse let out a snort and stomped its hooves irritably, but it calmed down significantly once Headman Qi woke up.

Headman Qi led the horse in a circle around the perimeter.

His actions were very strange. He stood with his back to the forest, facing his horse, but his eyes were closed, and his mouth seemed to be chanting something silently.

As the lead horse completed its circuit, that strange noise disappeared.

However, as they passed by Nan Yue, she seemed to see a white shadow flash across the Bagua mirror on the lead horse's forehead.

Something was nearby...

But they could not see it; only the Bagua mirror could reflect it.

Zhu Xi Ning had also woken up and walked over to Nan Yue's side.

"There is no danger for now. It seems that horse's role is even greater than we thought."

Zhu Xi Ning had previously seen the faint golden light on the horse bridle, proving it could ward off evil. Now it seemed it could also intimidate those unknown entities.

Seeing that all was peaceful, everyone went back to rest. Headman Qi patted his horse's head and closed his eyes again.

Judging by their reactions, this was not considered an accident. Traveling the world for years, they had seen many eerie things; everyone treated this as a mere interlude.

Nan Yue finished her watch for the first half of the night and rested during the second half. The night passed peacefully.

In the morning, conditions were limited. The horse drivers generally used nearby water sources or their own carried water to wash up.

Some of the rougher men did not wash at all.

Most of the female horse drivers still washed. They were in the jungle, and water was not scarce. They poured handfuls of water from sheepskin bags to wipe their faces.

Nan Yue followed suit. Jiang Siyan poured a handful of water into Nan Yue's palms from the side. Just as Nan Yue leaned in, she froze.

Jiang Siyan immediately noticed something was wrong. He shifted his body slightly to shield her from the rest of the horse gang.

"What is it?"

Nan Yue remained silent for a moment before splashing the water onto her face.

In the instant she had leaned in, the reflection on the water's surface was not her.

Or rather, it was not just her.

There was another thing, its face pressed tightly against hers, squeezed into a distorted shape.

The water's surface was not a mirror, but Nan Yue remembered that person's dark, cavernous mouth, which was nearly half the size of its face. The entire elongated, distorted face was only half as wide as a normal human's, and it had appeared on the water's surface simultaneously with Nan Yue's.

What was that thing?

Forget knowing who it was; it was hard to even tell if it was human.

It looked remarkably like a skeleton...

But Nan Yue only saw it for a split second. The face vanished almost instantly, so fast it felt like a hallucination.

"It is nothing."

A pollution world only became gradually dangerous in the later stages. Everything in the beginning was either a hint or a means to drain mental stability.

She really had not expected the weirdness of this world to come so quickly.

Usually, it would only start on the second day...

"Move out!"

With a loud shout from Headman Qi, the horse drivers gave a cry of response. They reloaded the carts carrying the five large vats and drove the horses away.

Nan Yue flipped herself onto her horse and followed behind Manager Wu. The long horse train spread out, heading deep into the forest following the map on the beggar's robe.

Jiang Yuhao was right behind Chi Yu. The two of them were in the rear of the group. He climbed onto his horse, swaying slightly, and happened to look back.

At the spot where the horse gang had just camped stood a distorted, white figure.