MJWCATFPITWOC Chapter 15
by VolareShen Yucheng walked towards the sound, wondering what Mo Yifeng had discovered.
But the moment he took a step, he paused, a strange sense of disharmony creeping up his back.
“Yucheng, Junior Brother?” Mo Yifeng’s voice came from inside the house again.
Despite noticing the abnormality, the voice in Shen Yucheng’s ears became eerie, the tone laced with other people’s voices, overlapping.
Shen Yucheng’s whole body broke out in goosebumps, staring at the dark entrance of the wooden house, his intuition telling him that it wasn’t Mo Yifeng inside.
After they entered the village, they searched the entire place and didn’t find a single living person. What was inside was probably not human, but why would it use Mo Yifeng’s voice to lure him?
His doubts deepened. The voice inside seemed to realize that Shen Yucheng had stopped outside, and the calling tone gradually became unstable. The strange intonation that Shen Yucheng had noticed earlier was now exposed: “Yu… cheng, Senior…”
Accompanied by a rustling sound, Shen Yucheng stared unblinkingly at the entrance.
“Yucheng, Brother, what’s wrong?” At this moment, Mo Yifeng’s voice sounded again, but it came from the opposite direction, the tone being his usual one.
Shen Yucheng didn’t want to admit it, but he did breathe a sigh of relief when he heard this voice, feeling a sense of reassurance for no reason.
“Why are you standing at the door?” Mo Yifeng ran from the end of the crossroads, pointing to the left: “I searched the houses over there, and there’s no one there either.”
Shen Yucheng didn’t respond. He swallowed his saliva and walked straight into the wooden house in front of him. Mo Yifeng didn’t know what was happening, but Shen Yucheng’s imposing manner made him unconsciously follow.
As expected, the house was empty, with only fine dust floating in the air, an old wooden bed and furniture, and the musty smell of age.
Shen Yucheng looked around and discovered an interesting detail. In the center of the room, on a square wooden table, were several small teacups, surrounded by four dilapidated wooden chairs. However, the chairs were not facing the table but were all turned to one side.
As if there was some kind of attraction in that direction, everyone faced it together.
Shen Yucheng followed the line of sight, and his pupils shrank. The chairs were facing a fire pit stove.
“It’s the same here,” Mo Yifeng said, following him in. “I was just about to say that all the houses on the left side were like this.”
All the houses had something in common: there was always an item—a stove, chairs, or slippers on the ground—that faced a certain direction. In one house, there were bloodstains on the ground leading to the stove.
Mo Yifeng went forward to investigate, but the stove only contained thick ashes and charred wood fragments.
It was as if the people in the houses had been inexplicably sucked into the stove, all the furniture remaining as it was in the moment before their disappearance.
“Remember Yan Quanye on Han Ji Peak back then,” Mo Yifeng pondered. “His village one day, all the villagers uncontrollably jumped into the fire pit and burned to death. Do you think this scene might be related, like this is the aftermath?”
In fact, when all the doubts pointed to the stove, Shen Yucheng also thought of Yan Quanye’s incident. If it was true, the ground they were standing on at that moment was once a burial ground.
If Shen Yucheng had entered the house as the strange voice had wanted, would he still exist in this world?
Thinking of this, the two returned to the entrance of the village, where Li Juemu also returned to meet up. “There really isn’t a single person here. Do you know what I saw in the house just now?”
But before he could finish, Li Juemu found the answer in their expressions. His excited emotions were like a flame extinguished by cold water, and he awkwardly lowered his hands. “Really? You all saw it too. Then why don’t we—”
Shen Yucheng interrupted, his intuition telling him that this place was full of doubts: the air filled with white mist, the empty houses, the villagers who had disappeared out of thin air, and the problematic stoves. Before finding Yan Quanye, the Earthbound Spirit, he and Mo Yifeng agreed to leave first. Asking about the relevant matters in the outer city was better than staying here.
The three walked towards the entrance they had come from, but someone asked as soon as they took a step, “Where did we come in from?”
They were at the central crossroads of Jitan Village, which they had reached after using the Mist-Breaking Powder outside.
“We should have entered a barrier. The creator of the barrier is highly skilled, silently pulling us in,” Mo Yifeng realized that there was no exit from this village, and it wasn’t as simple as an illusion. “No wonder even Master was once trapped.”
Barriers were advanced spells, a higher level than ordinary illusions or bewilderment techniques. Those caught in the spell didn’t know when they entered the barrier. They could only leave by unlocking the secret that the creator of the barrier had set up to protect. All other shortcuts were useless.
“The difficulty lies in that you might enter a barrier anywhere, and the information to break the barrier can only be found by exploring within the barrier. One wrong move, and you’ll be trapped inside for life.” Shen Yucheng listened to Mo Yifeng’s description of the barrier as if it was on the verge of collapse, but a smile appeared on his face that didn’t match his expression.
He was done for. He was so excited.
.
The daylight gradually faded, and twilight quietly eroded the remaining light, completely occupying the sky. The mist in the village merged into the night, forming an invisible barrier. The branches swayed in the breeze, resembling ghosts in eerie legends, beckoning at midnight to devour living beings.
As night fell, the roads became blurred, and everything in the barrier could be fatal. They chose a relatively normal-looking wooden house to hide in, waiting for the dawn to arrive. The village was very bizarre after nightfall. Shen Yucheng felt that if he stood outside, his soul would definitely dissipate within ten seconds.
Since entering the house, Li Juemu had been crouching by the window, his eyes darting around as he peeked outside. Shen Yucheng told him not to look if he was afraid, lest he get startled and scare him too.
Mo Yifeng was dedicated to discovering the secrets of this house, even turning out the trousers of someone’s husband.
Time passed minute by minute. Mortals could spend the long night by sleeping, but these cultivators, after achieving the state of Bigu (grain avoidance), didn’t need to eat, and could even forgo sleeping.
Another hour passed. The floor of the house was covered with trousers, and Li Juemu had changed from crouching to lying down, lying on the wooden bed a few meters away from the window, squinting his old eyes to see with difficulty. They didn’t think there was anything wrong with themselves, but rather felt that time was the problem.
Otherwise, why would they be so constipated?
Suddenly, a “smack”—the sound of a hand bone hitting a metal object—echoed in the quiet wooden house. This was undoubtedly the best alarm clock, raising the word “danger” in everyone’s minds. Shen Yucheng suddenly looked at the window, but he couldn’t see anything except the heavy night. But the knocking seemed to want to let them know its existence, continuously making noise.
“Smack!” A louder impact sounded. Mo Yifeng had been trapped in the house for a long time, and the curiosity in his heart was almost driving him crazy, but he had to stay in the small house. At this moment, this sound became a breakthrough for his desires, and also a horn to awaken the beast. Mo Yifeng suddenly pushed open the window. The sound was the same as before, meaning that someone was indeed knocking on their window.
But the three of them had carefully observed the sky outside and couldn’t have missed any details.
Li Juemu’s face turned green: “Shen, Brother, Mo, Brother…”
His trembling finger pointed to several dark palm prints that had appeared on the window. The black color disappeared along the edge of the window. No one could laugh because that thing might have already climbed in along the window.
“Ah, ah, ah—”
The alarm in Shen Yucheng’s heart sounded loudly, thinking that Li Juemu had finally collapsed and screamed, but Li Juemu’s eyes were white as he sat blankly on the bed, not making a single sound.
Then what was this sound?
Looking around the entire house, there wasn’t a shadow as the three of them thought. It couldn’t really be a ghost.
The next moment, Shen Yucheng thought of a hypothesis. If there really were ghosts, then there wouldn’t be just one. Perhaps in the corners they couldn’t see, they were being watched by a group of surging wandering souls.
Inside the wooden house, various furniture and objects began to be bumped, as if countless people were walking around them.
Shen Yucheng’s face was ugly. He took the pale-faced Li Juemu out of the wooden house. It was no longer safe here. He glanced at Mo Yifeng, his heart stopping in anger. That madman was actually standing in the center of the room where the sound was the loudest, enjoying the noise caused by the unknown objects around him.
After observing for a while and confirming that these things didn’t actually harm them, Shen Yucheng left the two of them in the house, and when the sky began to glow with the light of dawn, he searched the village for other useful clues.
Thick fog filled the early morning. Shen Yucheng took two steps, and suddenly his head felt heavy and his feet felt light. The houses and wooden poles in front of him shook with afterimages, and there was a buzzing in his ears. Finally, his eyes went black, and he fell to the ground.
At the same time, Mo Yifeng, who had been smiling with wide eyes in the wooden house, suddenly rolled his eyes back and fell heavily to the ground like a big winter melon. The sound in the house stopped for a moment, then continued.
Li Juemu’s eyes were blank and unfocused: “”
.
“Fang’er! Come and help! Your third sister is possessed again!”
“The youngest of the Ding Yuan family too! Come quickly!”
Before Shen Yucheng opened his eyes, he heard a group of noisy and chaotic shouts, accompanied by the sound of leather shoes running on the gravel road. People seemed to be running towards one place. Then, a scream as the footsteps stopped, echoing in his ears and piercing through the thick fog in the village to reach Shen Yucheng’s eyes.
“Fang’er! What are you still standing there for! Hurry up and pull your third sister back!”
Shen Yucheng stood in front of the house, able to see the scene inside clearly. The stove at the end of the hall was crowded with people, their expressions anxious as they pulled at something. What was that?
He subconsciously tiptoed, and suddenly a sense of disharmony ran through his body. Was he really this short?
An aunt in the crowd stretched out her neck, her face flushed red, and shouted at the door, “Fang’er!”
Shen Yucheng was certain that she was calling him, from the beginning.
He looked around blankly. Outside was the familiar wooden crossroads, the rows of wooden houses, and the dry firewood. There was no mistake, this was Jitan Village. The only difference was these people.
How did the village suddenly have these people after he fainted?
At this time, the sound of pulling, rescuing, and shouting in the stove room suddenly stopped. He realized that the wooden house was eerily quiet. Something seemed to have happened in the center of the crowd.
He had just moved his foot a step. “Yucheng, Brother!” A mature female voice in the crowd called out Shen Yucheng’s name.
Shen Yucheng’s confused head suddenly cleared up. It was clearly a pleasant female voice with a hint of sexiness, but why did he hear a hint of masculinity?
The silent crowd was ended by several muffled sounds of fists hitting flesh. The crowd rioted again. Shen Yucheng could only see a slender, muscular calf stabbing out like a needle from the cracks in the human wall. At the same time, the female voice said, “Yucheng, Brother—where are you!”
Shen Yucheng: “…” Starting today, he was Fang’er.