The compass had four needles.
The two in the center appeared to be made of gold and silver, while on the left and right sides were two miniature needles, each about the length of a finger joint.
The face of the compass was also engraved with some strange symbols.
Xu Muchan had seen Yan He use a similar compass before. According to Yan He, this kind of compass could be used to measure changes in the concentration of yin energy nearby.
But this compass was somewhat different from the one Yan He used.
At the very least, Yan He’s compass did not have any similar strange symbols on it.
Not knowing what exactly it was designed to detect, Xu Muchan slipped the compass into his pocket.
Ouyang Mu seemed to glance at him from the side.
Xu Muchan turned his head, only to see Ouyang Mu talking to Chai Ming, as though that earlier glance had merely been his imagination.
Xu Muchan frowned slightly.
Although Yan He had previously said that the Ouyang family had already changed professions during Ouyang Mu’s grandfather’s generation, the only member of the family who had visited the Wei family back then, survived, and remained active until now was Ouyang Yuping.
And Ouyang Mu had happened to come to Immortal Village.
Knowing about the connection between the Wei family and Immortal Village, it was difficult not to think more deeply about it.
Xu Muchan rubbed the compass inside his pocket and lowered his eyes.
He thought that tonight, he would have to find an opportunity to take the compass into the wooden tower and test it.
If the compass reacted, perhaps he could figure out what exactly Ouyang Mu had been secretly doing that morning.
During their brief discussion about how to escape just now, he had already noticed that Jin Qingqing, Chai Ming, and the others had become increasingly anxious because the danger was approaching and they still could not find a way out.
Although they were desperately suppressing it and trying not to show it, the restlessness in the corners of their eyes and brows could not be concealed.
Ouyang Mu, on the other hand, appeared extremely calm.
For two consecutive nights, the people who had gotten into trouble had both been brought in by him, yet he did not seem frightened or anxious at all.
Xu Muchan had the feeling that Ouyang Mu did not seem to be in any hurry to leave.
With that thought, Xu Muchan once again glanced unobtrusively at Ouyang Mu.
He was discussing something with Chai Ming and the others.
Since they could not find a way out inside the village, he suggested that they go outside and take a look. Although this ghost domain was connected to Immortal Village, perhaps the exit was actually somewhere outside.
The passages in ghost domains often had no fixed pattern.
Most of the time, one could only eliminate the supernatural entity that had created the ghost domain, causing the domain to collapse before escaping.
There were also a small number of cases where various methods could be used to forcibly open a temporary passage and escape.
But the monsters that appeared at night in Immortal Village were difficult to deal with.
They could only try searching around for a weak point and see whether they could forcibly open a passage and escape.
It was a solution born of desperation.
Xu Muchan, however, was not optimistic about it.
When Jin Qingqing asked whether he wanted to go with them, Xu Muchan thought for a moment and declined.
“My brother hasn’t woken up yet. I’ll stay behind to take care of him, and I’ll look around the village some more to see if I can find anything else.”
Hearing this, the others headed toward the outskirts of the village.
Xu Muchan settled Wei Xilou beneath a tree, then took the compass from his pocket and examined it.
The needle did not move at all.
He put the compass back into his pocket and walked around the outskirts of the village.
The chicken-headed people inside the village seemed to be busy with their own tasks, but in reality, their gazes followed him constantly.
Their pale-red eyes were filled with an eerie quality.
Xu Muchan took out the dog-face mask and put it on.
Through the eyeholes of the dog-face mask, he discovered that the veins on the exposed arms of these chicken-headed people were actually dark gray.
It was as though the fluid flowing through their bodies was not blood, but some kind of black liquid…
This was something that had not appeared on the first day.
Xu Muchan immediately connected it to the Black River beneath the divine altar.
He frowned and stared directly into the eyes of one of the chicken-headed people secretly watching him.
That chicken-headed person stared at him for a moment before actually being the first to look away.
Xu Muchan’s heart stirred.
He removed the dog-face mask and looked at the chicken-headed people again.
This time, his opponent stared at him motionlessly like a doll that did not know how to blink.
It remained that way until Xu Muchan put the dog-face mask on again.
Only then did the chicken-headed person avert its gaze.
There was vaguely a trace of avoidance in its behavior, almost as if it…
feared him.
Xu Muchan bit the soft flesh on the inside of his lip.
These were all things that had never appeared before.
He could not determine whether these changes were caused by Immortal Village itself gradually changing with the passage of time, or whether they were related to his brother’s sudden loss of consciousness and the disappearance of the Black River beneath the divine altar.
It was not long before Jin Qingqing and the others, who had gone outside the village to investigate, returned.
As expected, they had found nothing.
A stifling, anxious atmosphere permeated the entire group, and no one spoke.
Yet at that moment, darkness was approaching once again.
Xu Muchan’s perception had been correct.
Nightfall was coming earlier.
And the nights would become longer and longer.
Everyone had become very practiced at scattering and hiding in nearby places. Xu Muchan also carried Wei Xilou up from beneath the tree and casually chose a house to enter.
Almost as soon as they had hidden themselves, the world switched to deep night.
But this time, Xu Muchan did not lock the skylight from the inside. After settling Wei Xilou’s body on the bed, he climbed up to the skylight and poked his head outside. After confirming that everyone had hidden themselves and that the monster had not yet appeared, he nimbly climbed out.
Wearing the dog-face mask, he carefully closed the skylight, then jumped down from the roof and quietly concealed himself in the darkness.
However, after waiting in the darkness for a long time, he heard no familiar “gurgle, gurgle” sounds from the direction of the wooden tower.
The entire village was deathly silent.
The moon overhead was enormous and perfectly round, hanging unusually close to the ground and creating an almost unreal atmosphere.
It was just like that moon he had once seen rising from among the branches along the Black River.
Xu Muchan frowned and thought for a moment before cautiously approaching the wooden tower.
The wooden tower was completely silent, without the slightest sound.
Xu Muchan peered inside.
The altar was empty.
Nothing was there.
The deep well and the Black River water that had appeared last night were nowhere to be seen either.
Xu Muchan looked around in confusion.
Then a faint, rustling sound came from his pocket.
He reached into his pocket and felt the compass he had asked Ouyang Mu for.
At this moment, all four needles on the compass were spinning wildly. Because they were turning so violently, the metal needles made faint clicking sounds.
Xu Muchan carefully observed their movements and discovered that the constantly spinning needles were gradually pointing in the same direction—
behind the wooden tower.
As far as he remembered, there was a snowy forest behind the wooden tower.
Xu Muchan left the tower and followed the direction indicated by the compass toward the forest.
At night, the snowy forest was an almost unreal silver-white.
The excessively bright moonlight spilled across the snow-covered branches, reflecting a hazy, dreamlike glow.
The deep chill floated within that halo of light, as though he had stepped into another world.
The snowy forest was enormous, and there were no conventional paths through it.
Xu Muchan followed the compass through the forest.
Every tree here seemed to look exactly the same, with only the tiniest differences between them. Combined with the monotonous silver-white landscape, it was incredibly easy to lose one’s sense of direction.
After walking for a while, Xu Muchan frowned and stopped.
He had clearly memorized the scenery along the way and was certain that he had not been walking in circles.
And yet he had an overwhelmingly strong feeling that he was going around in circles.
The inexplicable sensation made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
Instinctively, his body moved first, and he quickly retreated several steps to the side.
Almost the instant he moved away, the ground where he had been standing began to tremble.
It was as though something were passing beneath the earth, pushing the ground upward into a long ridge.
The entire snowy forest trembled with it.
Branches shook, leaves and twigs rubbed against one another, producing a rustling sound.
Xu Muchan cautiously observed the moving ground.
He discovered that the raised section was only a little over a meter wide, but it continued stretching in both directions, with neither its beginning nor its end visible.
Xu Muchan glanced at the compass in his hand, then followed the raised ground forward.
The farther he went, the more violently the ground heaved.
The snow-covered trees trembled and let out low, mournful sounds, like the cries of some living creature.
At the end of those mournful sounds, Xu Muchan saw the chicken-headed people kneeling in a clearing in the forest.
More precisely—
the corpses of the chicken-headed people.
They remained in the positions they had held at the moment of death, forming a circle in the clearing.
Their unnaturally long arms, now stripped of their feathers, were linked together behind them.
Their cloudy, lifeless pale-red eyes were filled with intense hatred.
The trembling of the ground originated beneath their bodies.
It was like some kind of ritual.
Something in Xu Muchan’s mind was gently plucked.
His gaze shifted from the corpses of the chicken-headed people to the heaving ground.
The ground here was rising violently.
The snow-covered earth had split open like skin sliced apart by a sharp blade, and something resembling blood could faintly be seen seeping from within.
The blood was black.
It was the Black River.
Xu Muchan suddenly understood.
After discovering that their ascension to immortality had merely been a scam and witnessing the tragic deaths of their own kind, the chicken-headed people had been driven into a desperate corner.
So they had used their own bodies to summon the Black River.
Just like the unjustly dead people of Huangshi Town and the girls who had died unjustly in Leigong Village.
But for some reason, this time it was not the tide that devoured everything and carried it all away.
Xu Muchan cautiously approached.
Using his foot, he pushed aside the cracked soil and saw black liquid flowing slowly underneath.
The black liquid moved like a snake, its source and destination both unknown.
The compass needle in Xu Muchan’s hand began spinning violently.
The movement was so intense that the compass itself trembled slightly.
Its violent reaction and the direction of the needle clearly revealed its purpose—
this compass was actually meant to locate the Black River.
But something still didn’t make sense.
The Black River appeared extremely randomly.
Xu Muchan himself had only encountered it three or four times, while no one from the Black River Research Institute had ever directly encountered the Black River.
Those who had faced it directly had never returned.
To humans, the Black River was anything but a safe or friendly term.
What was Ouyang Mu looking for the Black River for?
Xu Muchan pondered for a moment before correcting his conclusion.
Ouyang Mu was looking for a tributary of the Black River.
A tributary of the Black River.
Xu Muchan still remembered what his brother had told him.
The first ancestor of the Wei family had once created a secret technique of his own and imprisoned a tributary of the Black River beneath the Wei family’s ancestral home.
Later, during the generation of Grandfather Wei, the Wei family was threatened by the Five Plague Gods and faced destruction.
Coincidentally, Wei Xilou was born at that time.
So the Wei family took a desperate gamble.
They fed diluted Black River water to Wei Xilou, hoping to help him ascend to immortality and replace the Five Plague Gods.
Later, someone witnessed everything and wanted to imitate Wei Xilou’s ascension.
And if someone wanted to imitate the Wei family’s method of ascending to immortality, things like the Ascension Tower were merely superficial formalities.
The truly important elements were the Black River tributary—
and an existing deity that could be devoured.