Chapter 276: Opening the Eye Aperture

Expanding gray, vertical red—that is the eye of a toad-frog.

Messy black, vast shadows—that is the mysterious Ancient Underwater Palace.

An unknown horn sound, a heavy and chilling whisper—that is the music welcoming Fang Mu!

All the bizarre, hideous, and grotesque figures "joyfully" sent him toward the dark and deep abyss of slumber, the depths of the Dark Sleeping Palace, the dwelling where the Toad God sleeps soundly.

After crossing the air sac enveloping the palace, Fang Mu regained his ability to breathe, and under the escort and urging of a group of frogmen, he arrived at the dwelling of the palace's master.

Fang Mu was silent, his calves trembling as he groped his way into the towering dark brown gate ahead.

"Why did I suddenly come here? Am I dreaming?" Fang Mu felt that after he had seemingly faced death with equanimity, he had lost some memories. No... he lost memories every day, but this time the strange feeling of memory loss was even more pronounced.

Boom!

The gate behind him suddenly slammed shut. Fang Mu turned his head abruptly, only to see the light pouring into the gate slowly being pinched off before his eyes. He wanted to reach out and grab it, but felt how weak and powerless his life was.

Fang Mu could only hang his head and continue forward. He could not see his own appearance, but he could imagine how pale his complexion was; the loss of composure caused by fear was fully exposed to the eyes of the great giant in that darkness.

Perhaps his eyes had adapted to the darkness, or perhaps under the influence of some unknown factor, he had undergone a physiological mutation; in any case, he gradually began to see the scene in the darkness clearly.

It was not entirely dark here; there was still a faint light, a shallow purple light struggling to die ahead, projecting onto the silhouette of some giant.

The silhouette of that giant became clearer the closer he walked, the range illuminated by the purple light increased, and the appearance of the giant in the darkness became more and more distinct.

It was a black giant sleeping soundly, its whole body covered in long black hair, pot-bellied, crouching and hideous. Although it was still sleeping soundly, its breathing rising and falling in a steady rhythm, it still unconsciously radiated a terrifying pressure outward, making one want to commit suicide on the spot just from a single glance; perhaps only death could make one forget the fear of that visage.

Fang Mu stood before the giant, unable to move, his eyes staring fixedly at the other, unable to even blink; his eyes seemed to be held by a magnet.

Suddenly, the giant woke up. But the eyes that woke first were not on its face, but at the base of its two atrophied thighs. Blood-red fleshy eyes rotated, then suddenly locked onto Fang Mu. Immediately after, that lazy giant's entire body of black crevices squeezed out eyes one after another, and scarlet gazes quickly looked toward Fang Mu.

"Don't look at me, don't look at me..." Fang Mu screamed frantically in his heart. He felt his whole body was so itchy, as if something terrifying was about to crawl out from within him, yet those eyes were staring at him with desire, as if appraising him.

Motionless, Fang Mu saw the giant's body in the darkness vaguely deform and split, the body tearing open into long, thin, fleshy tentacles. Some of those tentacles had teeth, some had eyes, all different, approaching and surrounding Fang Mu.

Immediately after, a pair of tentacles reached out from the darkness. That pair of tentacles each held something: a large Nail and a Hammer. These were the two things Fang Mu had lost, yet now they appeared before Fang Mu's eyes.

Fang Mu watched helplessly as the Nail appeared before his eyes, the tip of the Nail aimed at his pupil. Just as his breathing frequency reached its peak, the Hammer struck down fiercely.

A heart-wrenching scream swept away the silence in the darkness, and before the person screaming could catch their breath for a moment, the next strike followed immediately.

Clang!

The second scream was even more painful. Breaking free from the stiffness of fear, the intense pain made Fang Mu roll on the ground. As he convulsed, he felt his soul being pulled away.

Even though he was in pain, he seemed to be a bystander, able to see himself tossing and turning on the ground. Looking back at the black giant behind him, the giant's eerie appearance was as clear as day. This was also the first time he had seen the full picture of the Toad God, and it was no longer just a vague shadow.

The head resembled that of a bat but was flatter, the mouth wide and thick, the tongue constantly retracting and protruding from the mouth like a snake's. On that thick belly was a huge opening exposed to the air; it seemed to be an ovary or a uterus. Unknown, human-sized giant embryos were developing and growing inside. Some of the creatures in the embryos seemed to have consciousness; they sensed Fang Mu's presence, their deformed frog faces pressed against the flesh-colored membrane, revealing ferocious and strangely twisted figures.

This insane scene made Fang Mu collapse several times. He hammered his head against the ground with all his might; the intense pain and the maddening scene made him want to die.

However, Fang Mu did not expect his physical body to be able to display such tenacious vitality.

Fang Mu... or rather, the soul stripped from the physical body, watched helplessly as he hammered his own head until it was smashed to pieces, exploding like a watermelon. Yet his blood-soaked corpse could still mechanically repeat the action of kowtowing himself to death over and over again; neither the kowtowing nor the pain showed any sign of stopping.

Not until the Toad God uttered a few deep, unintelligible whispers at him did the Toad God calmly close the eyes all over its body again. Fang Mu's body finally, like a silly dog humbly fawning over its master, obediently stopped moving, and his life immediately withered and ceased.

Fang Mu watched helplessly as he died. Apart from feeling the pain, he could do nothing. He silently turned his head to look back, but before he could catch another glimpse of the Toad God's appearance, a black, giant mantis figure suddenly flashed over and slashed him with a blade.

Fang Mu woke up with a start, instinctively straightening his body, only to realize he had woken up in the middle of a cold, watery pond.

He was stark naked, like a newborn baby, his hands crossed and wrapped around himself, his body curled up, instinctively trying to warm himself. He trembled all over, looking at this strange environment with a blank gaze.

Could everything just now have been a dream?

He had been brought by the frogmen to the mysterious Ancient Underwater Palace and had met the leader of the frogmen, the Toad God.

After the Toad God saw him, it did not show any anger, but instead, very eerily, picked up that set of Nail Hammer. Even though the other party had been so fearful and wary of the Nail Hammer last time, now it was conversely used as a weapon or some kind of torture instrument, inflicting incomprehensible punishment upon him.

Fortunately, the pond water was neither deep nor wide. Fang Mu shivered as he walked onto the shore, falling over several times during the process. Relying on his strong willpower to resist the cramps and the cold, he finally struggled and crawled out of the water.

After crawling onto the shore, Fang Mu could no longer hold on and collapsed onto a small dirt road. His sensitive ears vaguely heard the sound of a tractor. The tractor seemed to be carrying an antique-brand radio, and the radio emitted a low-quality sound: "Dongfanghong No. 1, launch successful!"