Chapter 304: Three Hundred: Madness

Three Hundred: Madness

With various misgivings in his heart, Fang Mu no longer felt any trust toward the village of Wenya Tun. This time, he did not choose to hitch a ride to reach the village, and he did not even have the intention of entering it head-on.

By nightfall, this village with little nightlife had almost all its lights extinguished by nine o'clock, with only the lights in a certain room of two or three houses still visible.

Fang Mu chose this moment to finally set foot on the village's land.

The atmosphere of the village at this moment was vastly different from when he first arrived here in his previous life. An unusual, deathly silence permeated everywhere in the village. When Fang Mu saw the Soul Banners—symbols of a death in the family—fluttering in the wind in front of every door, he finally realized the reason for the eerie, heavy silence of Wenya Tun.

People had died in this village in a short period of time; many people had died.

Fang Mu quietly approached a house and caught a scent of rotting meat, even more intense than what he had smelled since entering the mountain village. He used his mind to listen with his sensitive ears, only to hear weeping murmurs coming from inside, accompanied by the hair-raising sound of tendons and bones snapping—the sound of human teeth tearing into tough flesh—along with the low, continuous croaking of frogs and toads.

Curious about what this family was doing inside after the lights were out, and although Fang Mu did not think it would be anything good, he still could not help but peer through the dark window to check the situation inside.

With just one look, Fang Mu was instantly so shocked by the outrageous scene before him that his eyes widened and he forgot to breathe.

He saw a couple inside the house raw-eating a humanoid monster with the face of a toad, chewing on webbed frog paws covered in raised bumps and unevenly sized, colored spots. The way they tore at the arms looked exactly like starving wild beasts. They ate with blood-stained mouths, seemingly unable to suppress the corners of their mouths curling upward, eating with crazy smiles, yet they were crying with empty, hollow eyes that streamed with tears.

The monster's corpse was shriveled and rotting, its missing limbs emitting an eerie odor—the very source of that rotting stench. Its eyes, filled with bloodshot veins and maggots, were chilling to behold. The giant frog eyes, in which unknown flesh-worms moved, seemed to reveal an eerie look of mockery, as if they held the crazy couple in contempt.

The couple ate until their faces were deformed, their limbs bloated, and their bellies distended, their eyes bulging. They were clearly unable to eat any more, yet they still ate the flesh that fell onto their hands and feet, stretching their skin until it became thinner and more transparent, ready to burst like swollen balloons at any moment.

Fang Mu felt a chill run through his entire body, his limbs stiffening. Like a living Straw Man, he walked with stiff, wooden steps and climbed over to the next house, where the same nauseating sounds and foul odors emerged, and the same horrific, inhuman acts were being committed.

Fear, when reaching a certain level, can catalyze strength. Fang Mu's stiff limbs suddenly regained their flexible resilience, and he fled rapidly.

At the same time, fear also caused his superhuman senses to be released uncontrollably. Fang Mu heard more sounds of flesh being eaten and bones being gnawed, smelled the extreme stench that seeped into his marrow, and even his eyes, acting beyond his control, saw the various strange events that had occurred throughout the village over the past week.

On the muddy road where he was running, several villagers who had entered the mountains outside the village had caught strange toads that should have lived in Nong Mountain. Those villagers had never seen toads of such strange forms—bizarre colors, exaggerated deformities, unlike normal toad species. They were also fierce in temperament, biting anyone they saw, and their activity was so great that even the sturdy young men who worked in the deep mountains all year round could hardly restrain them with one hand while they struggled.

The strange thing was that, although they clearly looked like they were not meant to be eaten and revealed strong oddities everywhere, the few people who caught the strange toads, as well as the villagers who passed by and saw them, all produced a strong appetite without exception. That intense desire to eat appeared on their undisguised faces, with saliva dripping down.

Continuing to run down this muddy road, Fang Mu saw a group of villagers gathered together in the village drinking meat soup. Before some of them had even finished the soup, their bodies began to undergo mutations, rapidly transforming into the frog-man appearance familiar to Fang Mu.

Seeing this eerie scene, those villagers who had not been affected by the meat soup and had not undergone morphological changes all had their eyes light up, let out zombie-like roars, and pounced on the group of newly transformed frog-men. What followed was a scene of bloody violence, along with the heart-wrenching screams of the pounced-upon frog-men...

Fang Mu finally understood what terrifying thing had happened to this village. He was now immensely glad that he had chosen to sneak back into the village, but at this moment, he wanted more than anything to quickly escape this village that had gone mad.

However, how could the sounds Fang Mu made while sprinting through the village, along with his heavy panting, fail to attract the attention of those around him?

Soon, Fang Mu heard windows shattering, walls bursting, and the excited, manic laughter of villagers from all directions. Their rapid, frantic footsteps sounded like the drumbeats pronouncing his death sentence.

"Don't run, come over and join us!"

"It's delicious!"

"Let's become the same kind of people!"

"Eat! Eat! How can you not eat!?"

"Let's become each other's food! Let's see who becomes the food first!"

"

"..."

Fang Mu felt his heart go cold. These villagers had truly gone mad. Those bastards who brought the strange toads back to the village had no idea what kind of disaster they had brought back. Facing this scene of horror, which was akin to a biological crisis, he truly wished his body in this life were stronger. The feeling that he could be caught by the villagers at any moment made him nearly collapse.

"Come here quickly!" Just as Fang Mu was running until his strength failed and he was about to fall on the road, he saw a familiar face standing on the security-grille balcony of a second-floor house, waving frantically and signaling him to run to his side quickly.

There were still several hundred meters to the village entrance, while the distance to the house of the person calling out was only twenty-some meters. Fang Mu had no other choice, and he subconsciously chose this villager who had extended an olive branch in his moment of crisis.

Fang Mu immediately changed direction and ran toward that house. The villager who had signaled to him on the balcony opened the door a step ahead of Fang Mu's arrival, letting Fang Mu rush into his house, and before the group of madmen could catch up to the house, he closed the door, sealing everything inside.

"What exactly is going on, Village Chief Mo?" Fang Mu looked at Mo Longwei, who was leaning his back against the door, trembling uncontrollably.

Mo Longwei sat on the floor as if he had lost all his strength, clutching his balding head in a breakdown, and muttered, "I really don't know, I just... I just wanted them to look for Guangning's whereabouts, but who would have thought that after going into the mountains and the villagers eating a meal of game, they would turn into this state by nightfall.

I really don't know, I really don't know..."