Chapter 365: The Eggs Are Wrong

Breaking branches, starting a fire, waiting for the fire to burn bright, then roughly stuffing the sweet potatoes all at once into the stove mouth to steam until cooked; then, the iron pot on the stove was cleaned once and filled with clear water taken from the Sanxi River, and then the bird eggs were thrown into the pot to boil slowly.

Wei Chengye had never done these things before and only felt it was novel; staying with his little friends, squeezed into this small kitchen, sweating profusely from the heat, the bizarre experience in the woods earlier was quickly cast to the back of his mind—this is perhaps human instinct, to instinctively resist everything that makes one unhappy or afraid.

Originally, everyone was watching the fire in the stove mouth, paying attention to the steam escaping from the gap in the pot lid; perhaps because someone was bored of waiting, Sanmao suddenly asked out of the blue, "Manzi, did you run into a ghost?"

Upon hearing this, the group first looked at Sanmao in astonishment, then looked at the stunned Wei Chengye.

Wei Chengye was speechless for a moment, opening his mouth to deny it, but the memory of that truly terrifying experience just now sealed his lips like a strip of tape, unable to open his mouth to refute.

Suotou and Yumi both gave a dry laugh, saying that this was the Old Crow House where many bizarre things were rumored to have happened, so they shouldn't make such jokes here.

Shougou was bold enough to laugh and ask Wei Chengye, "If you ran into a ghost, did you see Wang Bozi's wife? I heard her blood is beautiful."

He laughed, and Sanmao, Suotou, and Yumi followed suit and laughed as well.

But Wei Chengye's next sentence made every one of them unable to laugh, their smiles stiffening on their respective faces.

"... I saw it." Wei Chengye said with his head lowered, his voice low, his body trembling slightly, "I don't know if that thing is the wife of Wang Bozi that you all speak of, but she had the appearance of a woman, with wide-staring eyes, a long protruding tongue, and a neck twisted and bent unnaturally... like someone who had been hanged, but she also had a bird-like body, and her two arms were a pair of huge wings..."

Caw—caw—caw—

The sound of crows around the Old Crow House rang out incessantly; Wei Chengye seemed unable to bear the noise, his head splitting with pain, holding his forehead, "That's the sound... she made this sound, looking at me like a monster, those eyes looking as if they wanted to eat me; she toyed with people like me who noticed her, wanting to make me afraid, forcing me to go mad, and then, when I was in despair, suddenly appearing to eat me alive!"

Gulp!

Hearing the sound, Shougou and the others all swallowed hard, the sound clearly audible; the crow calls surrounding the Old Crow House brought a deathly silence that chilled the heart.

"You must be hallucinating; there are no such things as monsters in this world." Suotou came to Wei Chengye's side to comfort him, that forced, nervous smile looking more like he was comforting himself; his gaze also looked toward the others, hoping to get their agreement.

His good brother Yumi, who had worn the same pair of pants as him since they were children, also ran over, one hand resting on Wei Chengye's shoulder, the other patting Suotou's back, "Yeah, we've grown up here for many years; if there were any terrifying monsters, we would have encountered them long ago, right?"

Suotou and Yumi laughed dryly, attempting to use laughter to resist this heavy, deathly stillness, yet the laughter only made the silence seem more sinister, exposing their inner powerlessness and panic.

"Isn't there a place the adults have warned us not to go since we were little?" Sanmao gave a rebuttal, lowering his head as he said, "It's right here, the Old Crow House; if there is any terrifying monster hidden in our village, it would only be here—coming in here means running into a monster."

Suotou and Yumi were instantly speechless, and together with Wei Chengye, they all hung their heads, their teeth chattering with nervousness.

At this moment, Shougou stood up, his face slightly pale, smiling reluctantly as he said, "Oh, you all... what are you doing? It's just a joke, why take it seriously? Hmm, it's about time, the eggs are ready to eat, come on, eat, eat, don't think about such strange things, finish eating early and go home, don't scare yourselves."

As he spoke, the surrounding crow calls became increasingly dense, the pitch growing sharper and sharper, sounding exactly like a flock of crows laughing crazily.

Shougou stepped forward to lift the pot lid, then took a dirty skimmer from the kitchen, fished out all the boiled eggs from the pot, and placed them on the inverted pot lid.

But as he was fishing them out, suddenly, Shougou's eyes widened sharply, and he let out a heart-wrenching scream, as if he had seen something terrifying; his whole body jumped up violently, hitting the wall as he jumped back, then, with a sobbing tone, he hugged his head and crouched down.

The group, immersed in the terrifying atmosphere, could not help but be startled by Shougou's sudden, violent reaction; Wei Chengye even thought Shougou had fished out something terrifying from the pot.

Aren't these the tropes of horror movies? When people discuss bizarre things, strange and peculiar events happen around them.

But Manzi stretched his neck to look and found that the things in the pot were perfectly normal; the boiled eggs placed on the pot lid were also cooked just right, steaming on the surface, not cracked, and even emitting an egg aroma that made one's mouth water.

"There's nothing there, what's wrong with you?" Wei Chengye felt it was his own reaction that had scared Shougou, and felt a bit apologetic.

However, Shougou extended a trembling finger to point at the bird eggs, shivering as he said, "It's not right... it's not right."

"What's not right?" Sanmao thought the count was wrong; he counted the bird eggs, and it was exactly the number put into the pot, so he turned back and said, "None are missing."

"No... it's the bird eggs that are wrong." Shougou was somewhat incoherent, unable to accurately express what he really wanted to say.

At this moment, Yumi seemed to have grasped Shougou's true meaning and also let out a terrified scream.

The other three looked at Yumi, only to see Yumi pointing tremblingly at the bird eggs, but unlike Shougou, this time he accurately expressed what he wanted to say: "It's... it's the eggs that are wrong, why are they quail eggs?"

"Nonsense, we were foraging for quail..." Sanmao was getting annoyed, but the words that had just left his mouth died out after hearing the strange cawing of the crows around them, and his breathing became rapid and heavy.

Suotou was so scared he huddled together with Yumi, crouching in a lump; only Wei Chengye stood blankly in place, looking at the quail eggs on the pot lid, foolishly saying, "We were foraging for quail eggs... but this is the Old Crow House... clearly, the most common bird around here should be crows."

When the terror that one thought was a delusion but was still fresh in memory combined with reality, the truth that surfaced finally broke through the defense line in Wei Chengye's heart.

There was clearly such a loud and dense sound of crows all around, but the flock of crows could not be seen; one could only hear the sound of the flock flying, the sound of their cawing, and even find no bird nests where they lived.

And there was actually an answer to this; Wei Chengye already knew in his "hallucination" that it was a monster bird with a human face moving at high speed, and all the sounds of flapping wings and cawing were made by it alone.

"Caw!" The five youths finally realized they had trespassed into a true forbidden land, the domain of a monster; they no longer cared about their greed and rushed out the door in a swarm.

But after running a few steps, they were so scared their legs went weak and they fell to the ground, eyes wide, looking up at the sky that had completely changed.

The time was 4:18 PM, night had fallen, the Blood Moon hung high, and mist gradually spread through the woods.