"The fish you ate, are they okay?" Guan Anyan wrote on the paper.
Li Ang paused for a moment. The Ink Silk Clone had no digestive functions; the fish soup remained unchanged inside its abdominal cavity, with no anomalies for the time being.
He stepped over to the window. Looking through the gap, he could faintly see the village streets were deserted. Fog was drifting from the mountains, gradually covering the entire Qi Shui Village.
The village was eerily silent, without even the sound of chickens crowing or dogs barking. It was a deathly stillness.
"I don’t know where the others are."
Li Ang withdrew his gaze. Their group had brought enough dried food for several days and talismans to condense moisture from the air; they could survive in the wilderness for a while.
The only concern was the danger lurking in the surrounding environment.
"Let’s make plans after dawn."
He shook his head and wrote on the paper, "You rest first. I’ll keep watch tonight."
Guan Anyan nodded, took out Warning Talismans, and stuck them in every corner of the room. Then she lay down on the bed, half asleep with her eyes closed.
Li Ang sat at the table, pondering the scenes he had just witnessed.
A village that should have vanished three hundred years ago, the stiff and numb villagers, a couple claiming to suffer from somnambulism, the black fish that cried, and most crucially, the missing Chu Haoman...
The room fell silent.
Desperate, helpless wails.
Lake water, algae, fishing nets, knife wounds...
A chaos of illusions swirled through her mind. Guan Anyan jolted awake from a nightmare, her eyes wide open, staring at the bedroom ceiling.
That was not surprising; her Spiritual Sense was much stronger than that of ordinary people, naturally able to see things that were abnormal, that shouldn’t exist.
This ’gift’ had caused her to be discriminated against and bullied within her family, but it had also caught the attention of Lu Li Academy, allowing her to study there and learn to use her talents.
The content of the nightmare should be related to Qi Shui Village. But I still couldn’t see clearly where Teacher and Senior Brother are.
Guan Anyan thought silently. Just as she was about to sit up from the bed, she shockingly discovered she couldn’t move her body.
It was as if her will and body had been forcibly separated. She could hear her own heartbeat and feel her own breathing, but she couldn’t move even a single finger.
She wasn’t a Telekinesis Master and could not use her mind to exert force; she could only move her eyeballs—the only part of her she could control—to observe her surroundings.
The talismans in the room were intact, the door had not been pried open, and the cultivator named Lu Fei was still sitting at the table, his face covered with a thick scarf, facing the slowly burning candle.
Just like any ordinary rural home in the Pre-Sui Period, Zhuo Wenbai’s house lacked oil lamps for lighting, having only crude candles.
After burning for some time, the white candle had gradually shortened, wax dripped down its sides, pooling at the base. The flame began to flicker and visibly weaken.
Guan Anyan lay in bed, frantically recalling everything that had happened since the anomaly began. She hadn’t breathed in the fog directly, hadn’t eaten any food from the village, and the water she drank was all she had brought with her.
It didn’t seem like poisoning.
As she thought and remembered, she heard her own heartbeat growing increasingly intense, and...
The sound of an old wooden plank being stepped on came from downstairs, gradually moving upwards.
The regular noise of the wooden planks ascended the stairs, unhurried, causing Guan Anyan to subconsciously think of the ancestral house she had visited as a child, which was also full of old, creaky wooden planks.
A series of heavy footsteps sounded in the corridor outside, slow and steady, approaching from afar.
Finally, they stopped outside the door.
Guan Anyan turned her eyes, struggling to look towards the bedroom door.
Who? This content belongs to NoveI★Fire.net
She had watched Zhuo Wenbai and his wife put numerous locks on the house’s front door and tightly close all windows; outsiders should not be able to enter.
Could it be their somnambulism acting up, causing them to subconsciously come to the second floor?
Guan Anyan stared at the inside of the bedroom door, at the heavy, solid wooden bolt latched horizontally. This type of bolt meant the door could only be opened from the inside.
But at this moment, that bolt could offer not even a hint of false security.
The knocking went unanswered.
After a moment, rustling noises came through the wooden door.
A flat, white thing, like a bent and elongated strip of paper, slipped through the narrow door gap.
An almost paper-thin, elongated finger slowly rose, bent, and curled around the entire door bolt, hooking it.
Then, the finger lifted the bolt.
The door bolt scraped against the door, slowly rising, until it finally slid out of its catch and clattered to the floor.
The bedroom door opened.
The gust of wind from the opening door blew into the room, causing the already faint candle on the table to finally extinguish completely.
In the instant the light disappeared, Guan Anyan saw clearly what was outside the door.
It was indeed Zhuo Wenbai and his wife. They stood outside in white clothes, their entire faces drooping like melting wax, hanging from their skulls, so distorted that their features seemed to be on their necks, smiling into the room.
A bone-chilling coldness swept over Guan Anyan.
In the pitch-black environment, the heavy footsteps sounded again.
The footsteps crossed the threshold, stepping into the room. The talismans Guan Anyan had pinned her hopes on remained silent; not a single one activated.