Chapter 157: 154 Stepping into the Abyss

A living person was slowly transforming into the flesh and blood tissue of a Giant Corpse, and that was not enough; in front of the Giant Corpse, countless fallen fresh corpses were queuing up, waiting for the result of being transformed.

Li Duojin and Chen Xiaolin knew they had walked into the tiger's den, stepping into the domain of an unknown existence, but they did not immediately flee in panic, because they still retained their reason and remembered they had no way back; returning the way they came would only mean facing that nearly ninety-degree vertical slope.

Chen Xiaolin felt despair; she did not know how to escape alive in such an environment, and the only thing she seemed able to do was struggle, though she did not know if it would be of any use. She looked at Li Duojin, but there was no reliance in her eyes.

"There is a way out there." Li Duojin stretched out his finger, pointing toward the direction the front of the Giant Corpse was facing; at the end of it existed a dark, boundless cave that led to who knows where. "It's just that I don't know if it's an exit or a dead end."

As he spoke, Li Duojin looked at Chen Xiaolin and said, "We'll have to treat a dead horse as a living one; there's no other better way. We can only try it, right?"

Chen Xiaolin nodded, not holding any expectations for this, but she was willing to go crazy once with Li Duojin.

The two did not know if the Giant Corpse, which seemed to be relying on instinct to repair its flesh, still possessed consciousness or could see them, but they had rashly run in front of it, just like ignorant white rabbits wandering in front of a hungry wild wolf, placing themselves in danger.

Li Duojin pulled Chen Xiaolin forward and whispered, "Follow me closely."

Under Chen Xiaolin's terrified gaze, Li Duojin actually led her into the crowd of corpses on both sides. He used one hand to push aside those skeletal remains that had died in a meditative posture, opening a gap to create a path, and led Chen Xiaolin through the bodies. He did not forget to remind Chen Xiaolin not to touch any remains other than the ones he had touched.

Chen Xiaolin harbored doubts, but she also knew that Li Duojin possessed a pair of supernatural eyes that could see things ordinary people could not.

Without a doubt, the meditative corpses filling the stone cave possessed extremely sinister Abnormal factors; Wang Kuishan might have died under this Abnormal factor. But assuming there were "harmless" individuals among these corpses—whether the corpses had failed to transform into Abnormal things, or their Abnormal abilities had faded over time like expired goods—in short, Li Duojin saw those "ordinary" corpses and thus figured out a route that could bypass the Giant Corpse in the center of the stone cave.

Chen Xiaolin followed nervously behind Li Duojin, walking in the space between the corpses, which was actually quite spacious, yet she felt it was more dangerous than walking on a single-plank bridge or a high-altitude tightrope, her nerves taut.

But there were no mishaps; as time passed, Chen Xiaolin slowly relaxed her mind a little and began to be able to use a rational gaze to roughly observe the appearance of those remains.

The remains distributed around the Giant Corpse, if she was not mistaken, were likely normal humans in their lifetimes. Their bones had not undergone the deformed hyperplasia like the Giant Corpse, but eerily, Chen Xiaolin could actually perceive the final emotion they felt in their lifetimes from those skull faces—fear.

If that Giant Corpse had once been an existence that the owners of these corpses believed in while alive, then this emotion of fear was intriguing.

Intense fear almost overwhelmed the reverence in the believers' hearts; could this still be considered faith?

While her mind was wandering, Chen Xiaolin bumped into Li Duojin's solid back. She kept her lips tightly shut, trying not to make a sound, and covered her head, looking at Li Duojin's handsome profile in confusion, not knowing why he had suddenly stopped.

Following Li Duojin's gaze, Chen Xiaolin saw that Li Duojin was looking with a trace of sorrow at a corpse facing them.

Chen Xiaolin was sluggish for two seconds, then shocked, because she realized that the row of corpses Li Duojin was looking at had originally all been facing away from them, but at this moment, one corpse had turned to face them at some unknown time.

When she thought about this point, the fear was infinitely magnified. Her heart trembled, her whole body shook, and she stiffly looked around, only to discover that almost all the corpses had turned their bodies in unison to face the two of them. Although almost none of them had fully raised their heads, their half-exposed skull faces already presented a morbid ferocity.

Whoosh—

A gale whistled into the cave, the strong wind scraping their faces, forcing them to be unable to open their eyes. The sound of the wind was like rage, as if a sleeping Dream Demon had let out a groan of awakening.

Chen Xiaolin and Li Duojin looked up and saw that the Giant Corpse, which was eroding and transforming Wang Kuishan's body, had also turned to face them at some unknown time. Where Wang Kuishan's head served as the heart of the corpse, Wang Kuishan's dead head revealed an eerie smile as it swelled and pulsed.

Li Duojin gritted his teeth and kicked at a corpse in front of him, wanting to knock it over, and then immediately pulled Chen Xiaolin to run wildly, escaping the "line of sight" of these remains.

But after the kick, Li Duojin felt as if he had kicked an iron plate. The kicked skeleton did not move at all and suddenly began to tremble. As if one stone had stirred up a thousand waves, the other corpses in the stone cave that were as steady as Mount Tai and motionless also began to tremble. The friction and collision between the bones made eerie, wonderful sounds, combining into a strange movement.

The more pleasant the sound, the more deadly it was. Li Duojin pulled Chen Xiaolin to continue running forward, and the surrounding skeletons also seemed like tracking ghosts, one after another suddenly lighting up with a dark green ghostly glow, chasing after Li Duojin and Chen Xiaolin's footsteps.

The stimulation of the race against death was too intense; Chen Xiaolin's brain went numb, and strong cold air poured into her lungs, like swallowing tens of thousands of needles, fiercely stabbing her fragile lungs.

At the critical moment, Li Duojin found a skeleton that had not turned around, which meant this skeleton might not have such strong Abnormal power like the others. So he kicked out again, knocked the skeleton over, and then pulled the gasping Chen Xiaolin to run crazily toward the cave entrance that was right before their eyes.

Overly tense emotions left neither of them with any other thoughts to beg or pray for heaven's blessing, hoping the cave entrance in front of them could lead to a path of life; they only knew this was the only way out of the stone cave, and they had no other choice.

The two did not dare to look back, but Chen Xiaolin heard the running sound of some heavy creature, the heavy, muffled thuds of footsteps, and the friction and collision sounds made by bones in motion. The sound was intense and rapidly approaching; they could almost imagine a group of ferocious-faced skeletons, led by a Giant Corpse, constantly chasing them, shortening the distance between them.

Rushing into the cave entrance, Chen Xiaolin and Li Duojin both had a sense of pleasure like a sprinter crossing the finish line and a feeling of relief, but these emotions vanished the moment their footsteps stepped into empty air.

No one could have guessed that the exit of the cave was actually a fault cliff; in the blink of an eye, the two, unable to struggle, fell into the dark abyss.