Chapter 205: A Mole! |
Most of the villagers seemed quite simple, judging from their conversations. Or maybe they went numb with despair and have given up on complex thoughts, like NPCs in an RPG.
It took her less than ten minutes to converse happily with another villager, and she got all the information she needed as if she herself were a native villager.
Turns out that the old man, Ze Mengrao, had a bad reputation in the village. Whenever he was mentioned, the villagers would sneer in hatred.
The same villagers remain complicit.
If I hadn’t burnt that old man to ashes, I would’ve lifted up his coffin and bludgeoned all of them.
She soon learned a couple of swear words in their native language, and the sound of musical instruments stopped for a moment. The deformed Old Lady stood up and whispered to the priests behind her before a cacophony of wails could be heard.
The villagers suddenly became inexplicably excited as they cheered.
She looked around blankly, not sure what was going on, until she heard, “Dinner is ready!”
The Old Ladies finished their meal, so now it was the villagers’ turn.
With the sound of a bell, the villagers scrambled towards each stall near the centre.
She merely watched as the villagers fought over food like wild beasts.
Mixed into the crowd, even through their masks, she could feel the ferocity on their faces, as if their amiable selves were but a façade.
Just as the old man said, everyone here is deformed in some way, and only newborn babies can be saved.
But where are they?
There weren’t any young villagers, or children, for that matter, and even the villagers were being hush-hush over it.
All she could think of were the dark wooden boxes carried in by the priests, but…
There was no way to get close to those boxes, so she could only wait for an opportunity.
The scene currently was like a zombie apocalypse movie, and vaguely, she could understand why the Night Division exists.
All though they seem wildly inefficient, their existence has indeed prevented hellish scenes like these from happening in the outside world.
And maybe, if I become an official member, I can try to change the world.
For almost five minutes, she watched as the villagers devoured their food until the villager she talked with rubbed his belly and came to her side.
“Why haven’t you eaten?”Did somebody steal your food? Tell me, and I’ll deal with them!”
Her “cousin triple removed” waved his unusually thick arm and patted himself on the chest.
“Uh, no! I’ll go eat right away.”
“Wait!” her ‘cousin’ said. “You don’t have a bowl! I’ll lend you mine.”
He thrust a bowl into her hands and looking into the bowl, it was stained with an unknown mucus.
She smiled at him and reluctantly followed the crowd towards a stall.
“Gu Qianqian, saving the world is not about eating dinner.”
“I’m just taking a small bite!”
“That thing is probably poisonous!” the system warned. “You are not a villager here! If you take a bite, I don’t think I can call the ambulance from outside!”
“Even just a sip of the soup?”
Meanwhile, a group of priests hurried from outside the village and went straight to the Old Ladies. They knelt down and said something to them in a panic.
“Sacrifices… contaminated…”
The next moment, the deformed Old Lady stood up and let out a scream that deafened the ears.
Lu Yibei felt that she was completely pushed to the front by the surging crowd.
The priest was like a chef from hell, looking at her with strange eyes. The priest eyed her up and down, and seeing that she had not handed her bowl over, he began to babble words—simple, frightening, simple—but she could understand it very well.
“There is a mole! Stop the ceremony!”
In an instant, a filthy atmosphere spread to every crevice of the village, and the sticky humidity spread through the crowd like a snake.
Her hands trembled violently, and her head felt numb as she tried to figure out what went wrong.
The music stopped, and the light of the scarlet lanterns illuminated the panicked faces of the villagers, and it was silent.
The sky became gloomy, with faint thunder booming within the clouds, and heavy rain poured down in an instant, sticky and painful upon her skin.
Under the cover of the rain, black shadows flew out from the deformed Old Lady as they swam through the crowd.
The lanterns began to flicker, and she felt a burning pain in her eyes. She could clearly see the black shadows that swam every time the scarlet light flashed on them.
Vague human shadows with a head like a snake.
Like hounds, they swam past each villager, only stopping to circle around a certain villager before flying to their next target.
The villagers who were touched would immediately convulse and fall to the floor, their eyes staring blankly into the air.
The temperature continued to drop, and she could hear whispers in her ears like insects pestering her.
“She deserves it.”
“Not pious enough.”
In a place like this, surrounded by imminent dangers, she couldn’t blame them. She would be fearful, too.
She was still unable to calm down, and the words of praise in her mind were intermittent. Seeing the shadows approaching her, she gritted her teeth and opened her red lips, reciting a spell in a low voice.
“Golden palace; jade houses; iron walls…”
With each word, she could feel that her psychic energy was being drained out, but the spell was like a greedy beast, delving deep into her body to lap up all the energy within her body.
But why did my dad look fine when he cast it? It’s unfair!
She continued to chant as she felt herself losing consciousness. At this moment, a very familiar shout came from not far away, interrupting her chants.
“Don’t get any closer! Or I’ll smash your head in!”
…
Oh, Gu Qianqian.
Unexpectedly, she appeared before she had the time to find her, but thankfully…
The shadowy figures stopped their pursuit, screaming as they rushed towards Gu Qianqian instead.
