Qi Family Gang (25)

Dapeng was a little panicked. He saw his arm completely deformed, looking more like a monster parasitized by something.

It was somewhat like the fruits they had eaten in the county town, what were they called? Raspberries? Or mulberries.

Blisters, one after another, like the pulp of fruit, covered his arm.

Dapeng opened his mouth to call out to the people outside, but his throat was also filled with blisters. He found it hard to breathe, let alone make a sound.

He even felt his entire body was packed with these blisters, one by one, replacing his original flesh, blood, and organs.

The more he panicked and feared, the stronger the sensation of foreign objects inside his body became.

Dapeng even felt his vision blurring, as he seemed to see a black dot inside these egg-sized blisters.

How to describe it? Like the pupils of an eye.

Coin-sized black dots, one by one, in the center of the blisters, looked like round eyes staring back at him.

The next moment, Dapeng couldn't see.

He suddenly realized that his eyeballs had also turned into two such blisters.

They were round and bulging, embedded in his eye sockets.

“Drip.”

“Drip.”

The stilt houses were leaking, which was common. There had been minor leaks for the past two days they had been staying there.

After all, the rain had been too heavy.

But when a raindrop hit Dapeng's swollen, fruit-like body, it was like a needle piercing a balloon.

“Pop.”

With a soft bursting sound, Dapeng's body suddenly deflated.

“Splash.”

A slightly viscous liquid flowed out from under his clothes, pooling on the floor and leaving a dark stain on the bamboo slats.

Soon, all the liquid in Dapeng's body had drained out.

“Plop.”

Something slippery dropped to the ground.

The people outside remained oblivious.

...

Nan Yue and the others split up after leaving the door. Jiang Siyan wanted to follow Nan Yue, not because he didn't trust her.

Why wouldn't he trust Nan Yue? She could easily handle three of him; he was a burden in many ways.

He needed to follow Nan Yue, not the other way around.

However, the situation was urgent, and he didn't want Nan Yue to overexert herself. So, he was willing to show a little concern for the lives of people he originally didn't care about, and go look for clues.

The heavy rain hindered their communication, but their unspoken understanding meant they didn't need words.

Nan Yue headed straight for the stilt houses where she had seen villagers residing earlier.

At the time, when they discovered the horses were gone and searched for villagers, they only found the previously occupied places empty.

But later, being busy with leaving, they hadn't investigated further.

Nan Yue pushed open the door, feeling that the humidity inside was comparable to that outside.

Despite the building acting as a barrier, it was equally damp inside, accompanied by a strong fishy smell.

Many places on the floor bore dark marks. Nan Yue crouched down and noticed that these dark marks had more dust than other areas.

This indicated that these spots were indeed sticky.

At the very least, something viscous had stained them.

Ever since witnessing Zhao Laoqi's death, Nan Yue had originally thought there would be many villagers in these stilt houses who had died in the same way.

However, she found no human skin.

She turned and went downstairs, opening the large jars one by one.

This time, she saw what was inside the five large jars in the rainforest again.

Limp white bones, like snake skeletons, coiled at the bottom of the jars, submerged in a liquid of unknown composition.

This liquid, like the rainwater, should be the same substance as that in the deep pool.

These were likely the remains of deceased villagers and people who had been lured into Fish Fry Village over the years.

So where was their skin?

They had found Zhao Laoqi's skin.

Unlike Zhao Laoqi, the others hadn't died in the rainforest; Fish Fry Village should have been their final resting place.

Could they have been eaten?

Nan Yue leaned more towards this reason.

The entity in the deep pool would appear when the water level reached a certain point, consuming humans driven to madness, filled with fear and despair.

It wouldn't spare their skin, of course.

Only those who were too fragile would mature early, before the deep pool monster even appeared.

Nan Yue was momentarily stunned by the word that suddenly surfaced in her mind.

They seemed to be transforming into some kind of mature form.

Once their fear and despair peaked, they would mature, becoming suitable food.

Zhao Laoqi was an example of someone who matured early and was then eaten.

However, the deep pool monster hadn't been able to emerge yet, so it needed other methods to consume its matured delicacies.

It couldn't simply open its mouth and eat them.

They needed to avoid maturing.

Suddenly, Nan Yue felt something behind her; it was an extremely strong sixth sense, actually a keen awareness of subtle environmental changes trained through rigorous training and near-death experiences.

As she turned, her silver blade was already unsheathed, glinting with cold light.

This pollution world was rather peculiar; the deep pool monster was an irresistible entity until they could find the King’s Coin to suppress it.

Therefore, they should try to use things inherent to the pollution world itself to fight back.

Especially Nan Yue, if they truly managed to find the King’s Coin and suppress the deep pool monster, the pollution she would then absorb would be immense.

She would need enough physical strength to support such a massive undertaking.

The terrifying monster did not appear behind her; she gripped her silver blade tightly, looking at what was in front of her.

Behind her appeared the long-vanished, mysterious villager wrapped in white cloth from Fish Fry Village.

The last time anyone saw them was Dapeng, who had gone out to relieve himself at night; that villager had revealed a huge, black-hole-like mouth but hadn't attacked him.

This had always been a point of confusion for Nan Yue.

“You...”

There it was again, that familiar feeling.

In the first-floor space of the stilt house, isolated by the heavy rain, there was only Nan Yue and this mysterious villager.

She again felt that strange sense of familiarity.

Nan Yue observed the figure before her. She couldn't discern its gender, or even if it was truly human; it was thin and frail, like a sheet of paper.

At the time, they had thought the village conditions were poor, making all the villagers so thin. But now, up close, she realized a normal person shouldn't be that thin.

This person's profile was probably only half a palm's width thick.

But why did Nan Yue still feel it was familiar...?

Nan Yue's gaze lingered on the only exposed part of its body.

Its eyes.

To be precise, these weren't eyes; only two eyeballs protruded from the white cloth. Now that she was closer, she realized they looked more like two...

Blisters?

The small black orbs in the center, like pupils, didn't change with the light. Instead, they seemed to... breathe.

A slight pulsation.

When the Qi Family Gang arrived at dusk, the light was poor, so they hadn't clearly seen that these were not human eyes at all.