They had been trapped in this ghostly place for three days. This large hole was the only real clue they had found. After only a brief hesitation, everyone quickly reached a consensus and decided to go down and see what was there.
From above, the cave did not appear very deep. The bottom was only about two or three meters down. However, it was extremely dark, and they could barely make out what seemed to be another passage on the left side of the bottom. They had no idea where it led.
Because they were uncertain how dangerous it would be, the eight people ultimately divided into three groups.
Jin Qingqing and Chai Ming took the lead, scouting the way ahead. Ouyang Mu and the other three ordinary people stayed in the middle, while Xu Muchan carried Wei Xilou at the rear.
The three groups maintained enough distance between them that they could still see and hear one another, while also leaving enough room to dodge and react if they encountered danger.
Jin Qingqing had a military flashlight. She and Chai Ming held their flashlights up to illuminate the path ahead, feeling their way along the cave walls as they moved forward. The others followed cautiously behind them.
In the narrow cave, the only sounds were everyone’s tense, heavy breathing and their footsteps.
Xu Muchan carried Wei Xilou at the very back, his eyes fixed on the area illuminated by the flashlight beams. His brows gradually furrowed.
His eyesight was better than the others’. Yet even beyond the range illuminated by the flashlights, there was still nothing but darkness. He could not see where the passage led.
Up ahead, Jin Qingqing quietly asked Chai Ming, “How long have we been walking since we came in?”
“Ten minutes.”
That was not a good sign.
This unnaturally long passage gave no indication of where it led.
Then, from behind them, another strange sound faintly drifted over.
Xu Muchan turned his head in confusion, but saw nothing.
The sound came intermittently, like breathing, yet also like some kind of strange moaning.
Xu Muchan glanced at the people ahead. None of them turned around to look. It seemed that he was the only one who could hear it.
He could not help turning around again, searching for the source of the strange sound.
The noise grew louder.
Xu Muchan’s pupils quietly took on a crimson hue. In his dim field of vision, deformed heads were protruding from the narrow, jagged cave walls one after another.
They were the chicken-headed people.
One of them suddenly met Xu Muchan’s gaze.
After freezing for a moment, it abruptly opened its mouth and let out an extremely terrifying, shrill scream—
The scream was piercing enough to make one’s ears hurt. It drew out the other chicken-headed people still writhing and forcing their way out of the walls. They raised their heads and began screaming together.
Amid the shrill cries that nearly pierced his eardrums, the walls of the cave began to writhe like flesh as well. Countless deformed arms reached out from within, while the squirming, squeezing flesh produced the familiar sound of “gurgle, gurgle.”
It was that monster.
Xu Muchan realized what was happening and shouted at the completely unsuspecting people ahead, “Run!”
With that, he carried Wei Xilou and sprinted forward.
The sound of “gurgle, gurgle” rang out continuously, mixed with the familiar sound of rushing waves.
Xu Muchan overtook the two people beside him and glanced back. His pupils suddenly contracted—
Behind the monster, black water was surging forward as if in slow motion.
Jin Qingqing’s shout came from ahead, somewhat muffled and unclear.
“I see an exit up ahead!”
Xu Muchan looked forward and sure enough, saw a tiny point of light.
It was not the light of a flashlight.
It was sunlight.
He pressed his lips together and ran faster, carrying Wei Xilou toward the light.
But the black water seemed to be moving even faster.
Short, terrified cries came from behind him, only to abruptly disappear. They seemed to have come from the two people who had fallen behind.
Xu Muchan did not look back. He kept his eyes fixed on the light ahead and ran with all his strength.
Jin Qingqing and the others had already disappeared from sight. They should have made it outside.
But just as Xu Muchan was about to cross the exit, a thin human figure suddenly dropped upside down from the ceiling of the cave.
The figure stretched open its mouth in an eerie smile and reached toward him—
It was Ouyang Mu.
Xu Muchan had no choice but to twist sideways to dodge. In that brief instant, the black water surged up from behind, flooding the narrow passage with overwhelming force.
Xu Muchan was engulfed by the water. For a moment, he felt as though all thought had drifted away from him. He opened his eyes wide, his limbs limp as he floated and sank in the churning black water, unable to remember who he was or where he was going.
Countless voices whispered softly in his ears. Countless hands stroked his body, as though trying to drag him deeper…
His pitch-black pupils suddenly trembled, and crimson spread rapidly through them. Xu Muchan completely transformed into a ghost against his will. His long black hair drifted through the black water like water snakes.
Realizing his situation, Xu Muchan struggled desperately toward the surface, only to see an endless expanse of black waves.
The boundless black water churned around him, while the enormous pale moon overhead looked like an eyeball coldly staring down at him.
Xu Muchan floated on the surface. After a moment of confusion, he realized that the weight on his back had disappeared at some point.
Only then did he realize that Wei Xilou was gone.
At that moment, Xu Muchan even forgot about his own predicament. He plunged straight back into the black water, trying to find Wei Xilou, but the black river water had extremely poor visibility. He could not see anything.
He could only surface again, wiping his face in a panic as he looked around.
“Brother!”
“Wei Xilou!”
His anxious cries echoed endlessly across the water, but Wei Xilou remained nowhere to be seen.
Xu Muchan clenched his teeth and fought desperately against the pull of the river, swimming forward aimlessly.
Then a cold hand suddenly closed around his ankle.
A heavy body settled over his back.
Xu Muchan instinctively tried to turn his head, but two hands firmly held his cheeks in place.
The person behind him would not let him turn around.
But that cold, eerie presence was incredibly familiar.
It was his brother.
His emotions swung wildly from despair to relief. Xu Muchan’s eyes grew hot, and even his voice trembled faintly.
“Wei Xilou, is that you?”
The person behind him did not answer, but something cold brushed past the edge of his ear.
The hands holding his cheeks reached forward and covered Xu Muchan’s eyes.
A familiar voice sounded inside his mind.
Wei Xilou said, “Close your eyes. Don’t move.”
Xu Muchan obediently stopped moving and closed his eyes.
The cold, eerie presence completely enveloped him.
Wei Xilou was holding him and sinking straight downward.
The intense sensation of weightlessness instinctively made Xu Muchan reach out for something. But before he could move, his arms were restrained even more firmly.
As the sensation of falling accelerated, Xu Muchan felt as though he were sitting on a drop tower, plunging straight down.
When the drop tower reached the bottom, it felt as though his entire body had broken through some kind of barrier.
He jolted violently, and intense light pressed against his eyelids.
The cold presence behind him began to fade.
Xu Muchan unconsciously murmured, “Brother…”
“Ah-Chan…” The voice seemed to be about to say something else, but it grew fainter and fainter.
Xu Muchan abruptly opened his eyes, squinting against the harsh light.
Jin Qingqing, Chai Ming, and the others had gathered around him, looking at him with concern.
“You’re awake?”
Xu Muchan’s gaze swept over each of them. It paused briefly on Ouyang Mu standing behind them before moving away.
Only then did he look beneath himself.
He was lying on the altar of the ruined temple.
And Wei Xilou was nowhere to be seen.
“What happened in the cave? Chai Ming and I were in front. We only heard you tell us to run. We didn’t see anything else.”
“Where’s your brother?”
Xu Muchan pushed himself upright. He pinched the bridge of his nose and said in a muffled voice, “The monster from the village caught up with us. The two people who fell behind me, and… my brother, didn’t make it out.”
Jin Qingqing was silent for a moment.
“I’m sorry.”
Xu Muchan said nothing. He looked past Jin Qingqing and Chai Ming, fixing his eyes directly on Ouyang Mu.
“Just before I got out, a paper man blocked my path. You were behind it.”
Ouyang Mu looked bewildered and innocent.
“What paper man?”
Jin Qingqing and Chai Ming looked at the two of them in confusion, their brows furrowing.
“What happened?”
Xu Muchan explained what he had encountered in the cave.
Jin Qingqing could not help looking at Ouyang Mu as well.
“Could this be a misunderstanding? You two have no grudge against each other… And Mr. Ouyang is just an ordinary person. He doesn’t know how to do any of this… Are you sure that paper man looked exactly like Mr. Ouyang? And are you sure the paper man wasn’t a hallucination?”
Xu Muchan pressed his lips together, seemingly swayed by her words. His expression became hesitant.
“I’m not sure.”
Ouyang Mu relaxed slightly.
“It might have been a hallucination. That cave was incredibly strange. We were in there for so long; it wouldn’t be surprising if we started hallucinating.”
Xu Muchan forced a smile.
“That’s true.”
He held out his hand to Ouyang Mu.
“Sorry. I was too tense.”
Ouyang Mu graciously shook his hand.
“It’s fine. I understand.”
“Since we’re out, let’s head back and report what happened first. I checked the time, and it’s already been two days since we arrived here. I don’t know what’s happening in the city now,” Chai Ming said.
As he spoke, Jin Qingqing’s phone suddenly rang.
She answered it. A moment later, she hung up, her expression solemn.
“Something happened. The institute wants us to rest in the city, then return to headquarters immediately.”
On the way back to the city, Jin Qingqing finally told them what had been said on the phone.
The chaos in the city had already been brought under control, and the authorities were trying to calm the public.
But the real reason the institute was so urgently recalling everyone was that the corpses of the bird-headed people that had originally been stored in the hospital morgue had suddenly turned into black water.
The water flooded the entire morgue and even swept away the staff who had been on duty there.
And that was only the beginning.
Just as everyone was scrambling to figure out what was happening, the newly developed tide-prediction system at the institute’s headquarters suddenly began issuing warnings on a massive scale.
“Sister He said the warning covers the entire country. More than fifty tide locations, large and small, have appeared. The larger ones cover an entire city, while even the smaller ones are large enough to cover an entire village… We still don’t know whether the system is malfunctioning or whether there really will be this many tides…”
If the prediction was accurate, this unprecedentedly massive tide would be enough to swallow half the country.
Even as a mere possibility, the thought was horrifying.
Jin Qingqing swallowed with difficulty before continuing.
“Until we can confirm that the prediction is wrong, everyone has to return to headquarters and remain on standby, ready to provide support at any of the tide locations at any time…”