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墨書 Inktalez
At that moment, it seemed as if the dark clouds had temporarily dispersed, revealing a dim moonlight. By the faint glow of the moon, I noticed a white object on the table beside me, which looked like a candle.
I picked it up and discovered an old box of matches next to the candle, unsure if they were still usable. After trying to strike a few, I finally managed to light one.
The instant the flame flickered to life, a terrified face appeared before me, causing me to gasp in shock and nearly swing Jiang Ling at that face in a fit of panic.
"Just a corpse. Haven't you seen one before? What's there to be afraid of?" Void Spirit scoffed from within me.
I ignored him and steadied my nerves, using the match in my hand to ignite the half-burned white candle. It was then that I realized the corpse with the terrified expression was sitting on a wooden chair by the table. Its skin was rotting like mud, with numerous red sprouts breaking through its face; even its eyes and mouth were sprouting vivid red branches, adorned with dripping crimson flowers. The sight was utterly gruesome.
Its clothes were long decayed, indicating it had been dead for quite some time. I sighed at the sight of the corpse before me, but my immediate priority was to help Haoyang find an antidote. So, I cautiously circled around the dead body, holding my candle high as I searched the room.
As I delved deeper into the straw hut, I discovered that besides the first corpse I had seen, there were three other bodies lying in the bedroom of the house, one of which appeared to be a child no older than a few years.
"This damned Blood Farmer is truly heartless, not even sparing children..." Anger surged within me as I yearned to find that Blood Farmer and tear him apart.
Void Spirit heard my words and instead of being enraged, he calmly replied, "Everyone dies eventually; better to ascend early than suffer for decades."
"Nonsense! If that's your view, then living is completely meaningless! What about your life before? Now that you're dead, you think living has no meaning? What kind of logic is that?" I was infuriated by Void Spirit's words and felt even more agitated.
"What does it matter if you argue with me? Whether one lives or dies doesn't depend on me. The meaning of existence is determined solely by what each person does," Void Spirit said coldly and flatly. From his tone, I sensed no emotion; for a fleeting moment, I felt a chill in my heart.
"Forget it; I'm too tired to argue with you. I have important matters to attend to..." With that, I disregarded Void Spirit and continued searching the room.
After searching for quite some time, I found nothing of value in the room—only some decayed and moldy everyday items and furniture, with no relevant clues whatsoever.
After that, I searched several nearby houses in succession, but without exception, I found no clues at all. Just as I began to feel disheartened, worried that my earlier strike had destroyed all possible leads, I suddenly discovered some traces in one of the houses.
This house looked no different from the others on the outside, with its simple and rustic furniture, windows and doors covered in cobwebs, and everyday items that were moldy and decayed. However, strangely enough, there were no corpses to be found inside this house, yet the air was thick with a stronger stench of death than in the other houses.
"How odd... There’s a smell of decay, but why can’t I find any bodies... Hey, Void Spirit, can you sense anything?"
"The Vengeful Spirit has long dissipated; this cursed place doesn’t even have a soul. How could I possibly sense anything?" Void Spirit replied dismissively, its tone devoid of any emotional fluctuation.
"Forget it; I’ll have to rely on myself in times like this..." I muttered to myself. Just then, I stepped on something underfoot and suddenly sank down, falling completely through.
With a loud thud, I landed heavily on the ground, instantly creating an echo around me, suggesting that I was in a relatively open space.
"What is this place..." I quickly scrambled to my feet. The candle I had been holding had fallen beside me, but fortunately, it had not gone out.
I reached down to pick up the candle and was about to turn around when a horrifying face suddenly appeared in the candlelight, just to my left and only half an arm's length away.
"Who!" I screamed instinctively swinging my Jiang Ling. In an instant, with a swift motion, I heard a thud as if something had been severed and dropped to the ground.
I hurriedly held my Jiang Ling and raised the candle while stepping back several paces. Once I steadied myself, I realized that there were actually a dozen corpses piled up around me; what I had just severed was merely one of their heads.
"How strange..." My heart racing, I carefully examined the bodies sprawled haphazardly on the ground and felt that something was off.
"They have no vegetation on them..." Void Spirit impatiently reminded me.
Hearing him say that, I took a closer look and indeed found that there were no traces of the red plants on those corpses; they seemed not to have been infected.
This left me even more puzzled. If these people had not been infected, why had they collectively died here? Had they been trapped and perished while trying to avoid those plants?
As I pondered this, I furrowed my brow and cautiously held the candle up to search the surroundings. This was a square basement, only two meters high and about nine or ten meters wide, with some crude wooden tables and furniture resembling beds scattered around. On one dusty table, I discovered a yellowed notebook.
Seeing the notebook, I placed the candle down on the table and picked up the tattered book. Since it was not bound but merely stacked with grass paper, as soon as I lifted it, the pages scattered across the table.
By candlelight, I noticed that the loose sheets were covered in strange drawings made with charcoal, resembling the idle doodles of a child.
As I flipped through it in confusion, I suddenly realized that the drawings became increasingly bizarre as I turned the pages, and some of them began to feature words at the bottom.
The writing was very childish, confirming it was indeed created by a young hand. One page read, "I really want to eat something, I really want to eat something; my stomach keeps growling..." It seemed likely that these people had hidden in this basement for a long time and ultimately succumbed to death due to food shortages.
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