"Everyone, stay close to ." Wu Zhengwu drew his knife, a broad-back hunting knife exuding a dark gleam, clearly no ordinary blade.
Having previously cleaved through an evil cultivator wearing a mask that even Yang Xiao’s bullets failed to kill, Yang Xiao knew this knife was his Resentful Eye.
After walking for another 10 minutes, just as everyone began to grow restless, an anomaly appeared ahead. Wu Zhengwu made a hand signal. He slowly approached with his knife drawn, while Wu Zhe guarded the rear. It seed that the agency had strict internal training; the cooperation among the three of them, including Beibei, was exceptionally tacit.
But as they drew closer, they were stunned. They saw a chopped up corpse on the ground covered by a tattered piece of clothing, and on the wall opposite, sobody had carved symbols of unclear aning with a sharp tool.
This was exactly where they had killed the masked evil cultivator earlier, and yet they had sohow circled back to the sa spot!
However, the entire way had been straight; they had not made any turns.
"Ghost Hitting the Wall." Beibei blurted out instinctively.
It was an obvious situation: they were trapped by the enemy, who was only waiting until they were exhausted to finish them off. The outco could only be death.
With a premonition, Yang Xiao pulled out his cell phone, and sure enough, the signal bar was empty. Wu Zhe carried a specialized signal transmitter which also had stopped working at this mont.
"I know a way to get out of ’Ghost Hitting the Wall,’" Wu Zhe spoke up. "One of us stays to watch the path ahead while the rest close their eyes, walk backward, then turn around, and keep walking straight until we hit a wall, and that’s how we’ll get out."
Beibei imdiately vetoed the idea. "No way, your trick might work against a normal Ghost Hitting the Wall, but not this ti. Believe it or not, the mont you dare to walk with your eyes closed, the guy hiding in the dark will slaughter us all, and the first to go will be the one left watching the path."
Then Wu Zhe and Wu Zhengwu both looked at Yang Xiao with a pleading gaze, hoping that he would find a way out with his Ghost Lantern, but Beibei intercepted on his behalf. "This road is too long. If we keep the lantern lit, we might drain him before we even find the exit."
Yang Xiao was touched inwardly; this was what it ant to be comrades. But things weren’t as dire as Beibei had described. He could sustain the use of the Ghost Lantern for at least five minutes, which should be enough to find the exit. However, doing so would completely drain his spiritual power, and if they encountered an evil cultivator afterward, he would be powerless to fight, nothing but a lamb to the slaughter.
Wu Zhengwu was silent for a mont before speaking in a hoarse voice, "Let’s do it this way: I’ll go first and try to find the anomalies on this path, then Captain Yang can take action."
"You have a thod?" Yang Xiao couldn’t help but be surprised.
"Let’s try," Wu Zhengwu responded, instructing the others to follow behind him, not too close but not too far away. He held the knife in his left hand, blade slanted downwards, tip against the wall, leaving a clear scratch as he proceeded.
It seed effortless at first, but after two minutes, Wu Zhengwu’s forehead was drenched in sweat, and his knife-wielding hand began to tremble slightly. Clearly, this thod wasn’t simple and was severely draining Wu Zhengwu’s physical and spiritual power.
Soon, Wu Zhengwu ca to a halt, exclaiming, "Found it!"
Upon hearing this, the three others imdiately gathered around. Wu Zhengwu, gasping for air, pointed at the wall with the tip of his knife. The wall looked ordinary, aged like the rest they had passed, with no evident difference. But upon closer inspection, Yang Xiao finally noticed sothing peculiar; the scratch marks from the knife had disappeared right at that spot—Wu Zhengwu’s knife couldn’t leave any marks on this particular wall!
"Let’s not rush into it," Wu Zhe cautioned Yang Xiao to wait a while. At least until Wu Zhengwu had taken a breather. After all, they would likely need to fight soon, and they couldn’t do without Wu Zhengwu’s main combat strength.
But Wu Zhengwu clearly lacked the patience. His person, Sun Qiya, was missing. Approximately a minute later, Wu Zhengwu asked Yang Xiao to take action.
Yang Xiao took a deep breath, clutched at the air, and the paper lantern materialized in his hand. As the ghastly green fla lit up, the scene before everyone’s eyes was so shocking that it sent tremors through all present. The wall had changed into a stone wall, built with blocks of greenish square bricks that conveyed a sense of years weathered by ti, much like the walls of a mausoleum.
In the middle of the mausoleum wall, there was also a vermilion door, tightly closed. From the gaps, strange sounds could be occasionally heard, resembling... resembling soone laughing.
Wu Zhengwu imdiately swung his broad-back hunting knife and cleaved the door open. Yang Xiao hadn’t expected the seemingly sturdy door to be as flimsy as paper and it shattered instantly. At the sa ti, the green stone wall in front of them began to twist and, the next second, vanished completely.
The missing children’s playground finally erged, hidden behind this wall. At this mont, the playground was bustling with activity. About twenty children, seemingly oblivious to Yang Xiao and his colleagues, continued to frolic and play on various pieces of equipnt—seesaws, a bubble pool, even a man-made sandy beach—ringing with the peals of their silver bell-like laughter, which, heard too many tis, grew increasingly foreign and headache-inducing.
In the corner, the carousel spun, its ups and downs lonely with a single rider.
"Qi Ya!" Beibei exclaid in shock.
At that mont, Sun Qiya was dressed like a bride just married, sitting properly on the undulating carousel with her hands folded in front of her, motionless. A red bridal veil topped her head, and in combination with the children’s eerie laughter, it was utterly chilling.
Beibei was the first to rush over and before she even reached out to pull the person down from the carousel, a gunshot sounded from behind—very close. Yang Xiao fired several shots at Sun Qiya, but eerily, although the bullets passed through her body, not a single drop of blood spilled, and the thuds sounded as if hitting rotten wood.
"Look at her hands!" Yang Xiao shouted loudly.
It was then that Beibei noticed the body’s hands, folded on the chest, were withered as if gnawed chicken claws. This was not a living person, but a mummy!
Wu Zhengwu, trembling, lifted the red bridal veil from the mummy’s head with the tip of his knife. The next second, a familiar yet distorted and parched face was revealed before them all.
Beibei’s tears fell imdiately—Sun Qiya was a good friend of hers, and Captain Wu’s eyes reddened in an instant.
"Stay calm! Don’t panic!" Wu Zhe reminded.
At this mont, all the children in the amusent park stopped what they were doing and turned to look at them. Their previously innocent smiles had vanished, replaced by strange expressions. Over twenty children wore the exact sa smile, even the angle of their eyes and the curve of their lips were identical, creating a scene too eerie for those not present to understand.
"Be careful!"
Wu Zhe pushed Yang Xiao away, and in that instant, a skinny silhouette dropped from above, almost landing on Yang Xiao’s head—a boy in a cartoon shirt with the sa bizarre smile. When the boy fell to the ground and struggled, he flipped over and started crawling towards them on hands and knees.
Yang Xiao and his colleagues turned and ran imdiately because, from the dark ceiling above, several shadows lood. The children, spider-like, hung from the ceiling, moving swiftly.
The other children in the amusent park, as if witnessing an amusing spectacle, opened their mouths wide, clapped their hands, and swayed their bodies, stepping forward in a rhythm that was indescribable, heading towards them, while singing a nursery rhy in unison.
"Fish call, cats leap, Granny Hong orders you not to peep, babies cry, babies shout, cut out your tongues, Granny Hong laughs out loud."
It was at this ti that Yang Xiao and his companions noticed that these children had no tongues in their wide-open mouths, yet the nursery rhy they sang was so uniform.
As the sound of the nursery rhy grew louder, Yang Xiao and the others’ minds grew more chaotic, as if a ss of disorderly images had been forcefully stuffed into their heads. Beibei stumbled as she ran, crashing into a wall and collapsing to the ground, and the rustling sound of pursuit closed in overhead.
User Comments
0 comments from readers