Linbiangui Village-Infinite Streaming Chapter 6

Deep Mountain Pus Corpse

The surroundings were eerily quiet and oppressive. After an unknown amount of time, *crunch*—the sound of dry branches and fallen leaves shattering under a shoe broke the profound silence. Chen Jin’s breathing hitched. The constant movement had caused a thin layer of sweat to bead on his forehead, and when the mountain wind swept over him, a chill extended down his scalp.

Behind a large tree, the two finally spotted the traveler lying on the ground. The location was extremely hidden; the trees were tall, the grass was overgrown, and the forest shadows flickered across the path. They could only vaguely see the figure through some gaps. If they hadn’t happened to pass by and then reviewed the video frame by frame, no one might have ever discovered him.

A damp, sticky smell of decay faintly permeated the air.

“Are you alright?” Wu Zeng called out loudly to the person twice, receiving no response. He then raised his distinctly jointed hand and used a retrieved wooden stick to push aside the dense branches and leaves. There was a rustling sound, but the person on the ground remained completely still.

“Call the police first,” Chen Jin stopped Wu Zeng, who was about to step forward.

After all, they were deep in the mountains, and neither wanted to act rashly. However, when Chen Jin pulled out his phone, the full signal they had near the Reservoir was completely gone. Even when he pressed the emergency call button, he only heard a blind tone.

“I’ll go take a look. You record for me. If anything happens, at least we’ll have proof.” Wu Zeng handed the phone to Chen Jin, then stepped forward. *Squish*—he stepped on some kind of soft creature, and the sound was deeply unsettling.

“The password is 0617.”

After the phone unlocked, Van Gogh’s *Sunflowers* popped up on the desktop.

Chen Jin curled his lip and muttered softly, “What a hero. If you trust me so much, why didn’t you tell me the payment password…”

“The payment password is the same.”

Show-off.

Wu Zeng hadn’t walked far before the grass he had just pressed down sprang back into place. As the messy grass stems slowly closed, the camera was completely blocked by the plants in front of them. Chen Jin had no choice but to follow in his footsteps, reaching out to push aside the weeds and branches, and hurrying after him. “Hey, I can’t film anymore.”

The moment they got close, the putrid stench and foul odor rushed at them, so thick it almost clung to their nasal passages, burning the inner walls painfully. Their eyes were also stinging and watering.

“Wait!” Wu Zeng suddenly turned his head and shouted sharply, holding a dry branch suspended in mid-air to block Chen Jin’s path.

So smelly…

Given Wu Zeng’s reaction and the unusual stench, Chen Jin instantly guessed the situation and stopped.

Wu Zeng poked the person’s back with the wooden stick. The disturbed body made a puffing sound of escaping gas, followed by the buzzing of green bottle flies. Chen Jin finally got a clear look at the corpse—it was a pale-faced man with tightly closed eyes. His chest and abdomen had been sliced open, filled with yellow pus. Sticky fascia was covered in dried pus, and blood had flowed onto the ground, mixing with the soil until it turned black. The intestines looked as if they had been deliberately pulled out, now cut into several segments and tossed aside. No other internal organs remained.

This horrifying sight plunged the surroundings into silence. After a long moment, Wu Zeng abruptly turned, grabbed Chen Jin’s wrist, and pulled him back. “We’re going down the mountain!”

Chen Jin said nothing, his face showing little emotion, but his heart was pounding violently in his chest.

No matter how much he tried to appear calm, he was still just a student.

Wu Zeng seemed much more composed. He even took the time to crack a joke at Chen Jin, trying to ease the tense atmosphere, though he probably couldn’t manage a smile himself.

The path down the mountain seemed much shorter, but the fallen pine needles made every step slippery, as if they were walking on ice. The two walked hand-in-hand the whole way, and Wu Zeng’s cold touch helped Chen Jin’s frantic heart calm down.

Perhaps due to familiarity with the route, or perhaps due to distraction, they quickly returned to the small Reservoir. The children were long gone, and the surroundings were quiet, as if they could hear the slow, drawn-out breathing of the plants.

As soon as they rounded the bend, they were back at the main Reservoir. The people who had been performing the sacrifice there had also dispersed. The area around the Reservoir was planted with pine trees, likely cultivated deliberately, growing lush and handsome. However, a few meters ahead, the pine trees were all withered and struggling, their branches twisted into dark green claw-like bones. The soil near the roots looked like its balance had been disrupted by something, shimmering with an eerie rainbow sheen in the sunlight.

As they approached, the stench of decay wafted up, making them want to avoid it immediately.

Chen Jin’s Adam’s apple involuntarily bobbed twice. He glanced at the mud nearby and saw two tire tracks, about a palm’s width, winding across the ground. The marks were fresh, looking like the tracks left by someone pushing a small cart or roller.

Chen Jin pulled out his phone. The signal had returned, but strangely, the full bars were useless, failing to stir up even a ripple. When he turned on data to use the map, he couldn’t even find the police station—in such a large village, the map showed no police station location, the Guesthouse wasn’t connected to the public security network, there was no police station visible on the main road, and there were never any signs indicating police jurisdiction on the streets.

Today wasn’t the local market day, and there were few people on the entire street. The two walked back without finding anyone they could talk to.

This wasn’t normal… Chen Jin frowned.

Passing the small station again, the two looked inside simultaneously. The entire station was deserted. Even the two ticket booths with their mottled exterior walls had their doors and windows tightly shut. The glass of the ticket window was covered in years of dust, and cobwebs had formed moldy nets in the corners, looking nothing like a place where tickets were sold.

“Grandpa, when does the ticket office at this station open?” Wu Zeng turned and asked the grandpa at the auto repair shop across from the station.

“I… I haven’t seen anyone working there. That bus doesn’t run every day either. We don’t know when it opens,” the grandpa stood awkwardly beside a half-disassembled motorcycle, his hands covered in grease.

“Excuse me, Grandpa, do you know where the police station is? I lost my ID card,” Chen Jin’s knuckles rested on the lock screen button, the black screen reflecting his tense jawline.

“Don’t ask me, I don’t know…” The grandpa repeatedly wiped his hands on his apron, trying several times to pick up the wrench on the ground but failing to grip it. His panicked expression suggested he was nervous about something.

Wu Zeng leaned against the station gate, silently staring at the grandpa. The old man felt intimidated and waved his hand irritably, shooing them away. “Go on, go on, don’t block my doorway!”

“Since we came, we must figure things out before we leave.” This sentence haunted Chen Jin like a ghost, and he couldn’t help but let his mind wander—he must be possessed.

“Let’s check over there,” Chen Jin pointed toward the road leading into the village. Without a bus, they couldn’t stay here forever. They could just walk out; Mengle Village was only a few dozen kilometers from the town.

“Sounds good.”

Neither of them brought up calling the police again, nor did they mention the male corpse to any locals. This unspoken understanding increased Chen Jin’s trust in Wu Zeng.

“Do you think we might be caught in a ghost wall?” Wu Zeng walked beside Chen Jin with relaxed steps, voicing an unpleasant suspicion in a joking tone.

Chen Jin didn’t want to joke about the supernatural, so he chose to ignore Wu Zeng’s comment.

Soon, the two reached the end of the village. Although the winding concrete road continued outside, the villagers’ self-built houses ended here. Ahead was the boundary between the fields and the residential area. The village boundary stone stood before them, and the previously smooth concrete road became patchy and pitted at this point.

Beside the road was a low, red-brick, tiled-roof house that looked somewhat dilapidated. In front of the house was only an elderly woman wearing a red jacket embroidered with the character for ‘fortune’. Her eyes were mostly obscured by drooping skin, making it hard to tell their original size. Her mottled face resembled the cracked mud in the courtyard. She was hunched over in a small deck chair, watching the two of them motionless, as if too weary to even bother concealing her scrutinizing gaze.

Chen Jin only glanced at the strange old woman out of the corner of his eye and didn’t linger. The two quickly reached the boundary stone.

Chen Jin’s raised right leg hadn’t even landed when the old woman’s shriveled body sprang up. Her hunched back curved like a bow, and she shot out of the deck chair like an arrow, passing directly through the boundary stone.

The next second, the charging old woman suddenly exploded into a burst of flesh-colored fireworks. In the booming blood mist, bones and flesh rained down like stardust. The gruesome scene stretched out before Chen Jin, and his entire skull was filled with the lingering ringing of the explosion. He found himself unable to think.

In front of the low house by the road, a sticky mass of flesh appeared out of thin air. After several tumbles and boils, a brand new old woman in a red jacket reformed like a clay figure. Her expression was calm and gentle, as if nothing had happened, but her cloudy eyes remained tightly fixed on the two of them.

The fragments of the human body were still on the ground; the scene just now was not an illusion—this was a newly generated old woman.

This bizarre and grotesque sight left them unsure whether to be afraid or shocked.

“Insane…” Wu Zeng rushed forward, his shoe crushing the bloody remains on the ground. “Might as well just die… Wait for me here!”

The old woman in the deck chair attacked again, her cracked cloth shoes stepping toward them. But this time, Wu Zeng was faster, crossing the boundary first. The next second, Chen Jin felt a powerful impact that violently pushed him backward. He plunged into boundless darkness, unable to grasp anything, only feeling dull pain all over his body.

In the bathhouse stall, the steaming water vapor gathered into white mist under the dim yellow light.

*Plop*—a drop of water landed on Chen Jin’s brow. He snapped his eyes open, finding himself curled up in the corner of the bathhouse, behind a pile of trash. Chen Jin pressed his palm tightly against his chest; the dull pain from the earlier explosion still gripped his heart like a phantom.

“Looks like we’ll have to shower together from now on to be safe.” Wu Zeng’s voice suddenly came from behind him, carrying a somewhat nonsensical chuckle.

Chen Jin turned his head, his pupils contracting sharply. The Wu Zeng in front of him had mud and—bloodstains—on his trouser legs. It was the old woman’s corpse.

None of it was a dream. His hairs instantly stood on end.

“You’re quite brave,” Chen Jin’s lips moved, and it took him a moment to utter the words.

“Got to try, right? We can’t stay in this damned place forever.” Wu Zeng changed the subject. “But if I’m stuck with you, I suppose it’s not a problem.”

Chen Jin ignored him, turning on the showerhead to rinse his shoe soles, wondering if any residue remained.

The fact that the old woman reappeared in the deck chair after exploding could only mean two things: either it was a mere illusion and nothing to fear, or crossing the boundary gave people a chance to… refresh and respawn.

Based on Wu Zeng’s practical experience, the probability of body-explosion refreshing was higher, as the dull pain just now was certainly real.

“Since that old woman can explode and regenerate, how could I not try it?” Wu Zeng looked satisfied, as if he had gotten his money’s worth. He suddenly leaned close to Chen Jin, excited. “Hey, why is it that when I crossed alone, both of us refreshed together? Does that mean we are highly compatible?”

“Since rushing out brings us back here, whatever is trapping us in the village doesn’t want our lives, or at least can’t take them directly. So, why go to the trouble of setting up that whole scene at the boundary? Besides wanting to discourage us from escaping, there must be another reason…” Chen Jin said thoughtfully. He took two steps back, increasing the distance between himself and Wu Zeng.

“Maybe if we want to leave, we have to blow ourselves up first?” Wu Zeng’s eyes curved into a smile, his face pleasant to look at, but his frequent dark jokes made Chen Jin feel uneasy.

Anyone who has watched horror movies knows that sometimes the most dangerous ghost is hidden right beside you.

Wu Zeng had been clinging to him since they got off the bus, remaining unnaturally calm about the raw pork blood feast, the deep mountain pus corpse, and the old woman’s body explosion. He seemed to know something but was always cryptic, saying vague things and constantly throwing out morbid theories. This was not a good sign.

“Let’s go back.” Chen Jin suppressed the suspicion and unease in his heart, trying to make his expression look completely normal. He shifted his gaze away from Wu Zeng and was the first to push open the bathhouse door and step out.