Chapter 306: 302 Seeing Hell

Fang Mu wandered around Mo Longwei's house, found a concealed back door, pressed his ear against a crack to listen, and upon discovering there were no demented villagers nearby, immediately opened the door and slipped out.

Relying on his keen extrasensory perception, Fang Mu could detect and avoid danger at the first moment; thus, he successfully escaped the village's perimeter and once again stepped onto the mountain path leading into Nong Mountain.

Chilling winds gusted through the mountains, making one's bone marrow tremble; Fang Mu could not help but hug his shoulders, hunching his body as he jogged.

When Fang Mu saw the thick fog shrouding the depths of the forest again, his heart was still shaken by it.

"Has it become thicker, and spread outward a bit?" Fang Mu thought, feeling uncertain. Since so much time had passed, he could not remember the details he had seen when he last came here, and could only make such a judgment based on sensory feelings and vague impressions.

Stepping into the mist, Fang Mu further unleashed the ability of his eyes; all the heavy fog seemed to vanish before his gaze, no longer able to conceal anything, and all things had nowhere to hide.

Fang Mu had once guessed that infinite peril and death must be hidden here, but he had never thought it would be such a terrifying scene of hell.

He saw countless corpses lying in the jungle, bodies strewn everywhere—insects, beasts, men, women, the old, and the young. Their remains could be seen every few steps. He even saw the corpse of a villager who had died only a few days ago; that stiff, pale face was filled with the most desperate emotions from before death. He must have exhausted all his strength trying to find a way out, yet until his death, he never imagined he would fall so close to the exit.

However, Fang Mu did not feel the man was particularly pitiful. His eyes, which could see scenes across dimensions of time, allowed him to see that before this man died, he had betrayed his friends to save his own life, kicking them down to let them block the pursuit of a group of frog-men with their lives.

In such a harsh and cruel environment, Fang Mu felt insecure, so he took out a wood-chopping knife he had swiped from the kitchen in Mo Longwei's house; only by gripping the handle could he feel a sliver of peace of mind.

Croak! Croak...

In the environment of thick fog, sound transmission became extremely difficult, and it was only because of his superhuman hearing that Fang Mu could barely hear the croaking of frogs. They should be patrolling nearby, searching for intruders like him.

His grip on the wood-chopping knife tightened again, and Fang Mu slowed his pace, trying his best not to make any sound with every step.

Gurgle-croak...

A low toad-croak came from a blind spot in his vision that Fang Mu had momentarily overlooked. Fang Mu turned his head to look and was immediately startled by that pair of frog eyes hidden in the shadows.

This was also the first time Fang Mu had seen such a sight; those strange toads that should have lived in the Nongshan Shandong had actually burrowed out from the rocky ground. It was not the physical form of a mole digging a hole, but rather more like a magical ability to pass through walls, emerging directly from beneath the ground to the surface.

That pair of frog eyes was very large, like two glowing lightbulbs. As they stared at Fang Mu, he imagined just how massive the owner of these eyes must be; its size was definitely not inferior to the giant flesh-toad he had encountered underground in his third life.

Croak!

That giant strange toad floated out of the ground like a majestic little mountain. It gazed at Fang Mu, as indifferent as if it were looking at a not-very-tasty food that could barely be used to stave off hunger.

Looking at that milky-white belly that kept inflating and deflating like a balloon, Fang Mu faintly saw a face that was both familiar and strange, and his scalp instantly went numb.

He saw a human face half-corroded by acid, and that face belonged to Mo Guangning, the guide who had led him into the mountains in his first life. It turned out this unlucky Mr. Guide had ultimately failed to escape the misty mountain forest, becoming instead a meal for the monster.

Given the huge size difference and the accumulated bones visible through the monster's inflated, translucent belly, Fang Mu realized the monster before him was not something his small frame could handle. He immediately turned and ran, specifically weaving around trees so the pursuing giant toad could not catch him right away.

The giant toad could also spit its tongue, and those stones were like rockets fired from a launcher; they would split mountains and shatter rocks upon landing, and break trees upon impact.

If this were to land on a human body, Fang Mu dared not even imagine it; it would likely be a terrifying torture.

Just like that, Fang Mu shuttled through the mountain forest, dodging the monster's pursuit.

Once again, on the verge of fainting from exhaustion, Fang Mu saw a small cave that only one person could pass through. He immediately jumped in impatiently, and after running five or six meters, the giant toad that had been in hot pursuit finally had to give up.

Fang Mu retreated rapidly, leaning against the stone wall; only then did he narrowly escape the attack of the giant toad's tongue.

Croak!

The giant toad let out a roar of unwillingness. The roar traveled down the direction the cave extended. A moment later, Fang Mu heard an incredible roar echoing from the depths of the cave toward the outside, followed by a complex and dense chorus of toad and frog cries, along with a series of footsteps.

"This beast can even call for help, huh." Fang Mu felt deep hatred, but he was powerless to stop it and could only continue walking downward, trying his best to listen and distinguish where they would appear.

After advancing about fifty meters into the narrow cave, the view before Fang Mu suddenly opened up. Before him was a large, hollow area within the body of Nong Mountain. The thing that brought immense pressure and a huge threat to everyone who entered this holy land was a giant ghost-essence. That massive, amorphous black liquid was currently doing its utmost to help four human-shaped meat-eggs accelerate their hatching. It wrapped around them, slowly infiltrating parts of its own body into the interior of those meat-eggs, which allowed Fang Mu to finally see the scene inside.

It was not that those meat-eggs had birthed human-like creatures, but rather that the creatures inside the meat-eggs were parasitizing humans who had not yet died, and were thereby constantly digesting and extracting the life force and power from them.

After the ghost-essence wrapped around the four meat-eggs, it immediately absorbed them into its own body, using its massive torso and dark shadows to cover its crimes.

As Fang Mu walked downward, he kept a constant watch on the changes in the ghost-essence; he later saw the four meat-eggs being merged together.

After a period of rapid digestion and deformation, those four meat-eggs completely disappeared; they became a part of the ghost-essence's body.

When the ghost-essence's body underwent a change and transformed into a new form, the people from those four meat-eggs became a part of the ghost-essence's manifested skirt. With four living human faces before his eyes, Fang Mu felt the sensations of all the corporate slaves who had entered its body without reservation.