Chapter 65: 63. Legend (Two-in-One)

63. Legend (Two-in-One)

Curiosity is a great driving force for human progress, but it is also a major factor in stepping toward death.

"Xiaoxiao, are you going to the group dinner at noon?" Zhang Xiaoxiao asked while flipping through books with a thirst for knowledge, simultaneously answering a WeChat voice message sent by a friend.

After listening, she immediately tapped away to reply: "No, I have some things I haven't finished yet. You guys go ahead."

After replying, Zhang Xiaoxiao tossed her phone onto a desk piled with books half a person high, reading with such absorption that she forgot to eat or sleep, devouring the occult books collected in the Xiangcui University Tushuguan.

As she flipped through the pages, Zhang Xiaoxiao was secretly cursing herself for being crazy.

The matter of the female assassin jumping onto the tracks to commit suicide had already receded from her, but for some reason, she had been unable to sleep for the past few nights; the moment she closed her eyes, her mind was filled with images of that night's last train, imagining the cruel and sharp methods the female assassin used to kill everyone.

Although it was a fantasy, every scene was incomparably real, as if it were right before her eyes. There were moments when she even felt that if that strange young man hadn't been on the train at the time, if that young man hadn't said those strange things, if she had endured the couple's foul language just to get back to school faster... perhaps she would have already died on that death-dealing subway.

She would have had her head chopped off by a cold Bone-Chopping Knife, her terrifyingly dead head would have been packed into a luggage bag along with those annoying people, and her corpse would have been thrown into that cold, damp underground, to be gnawed away by some dark and hateful thing.

Placed within such a cold and bloody Dream Demon, Zhang Xiaoxiao thought she had to do something; the first thing she could think of was to find out the truth about that bloody night.

Why exactly did that cold and stunningly beautiful female assassin want to kill everyone on that train?

She had thought about looking for the young man who left the subway with her that night, but once she thought about the possibility that the young man might not be human, Zhang Xiaoxiao rationally dismissed this shortcut.

As a future graduate student guaranteed admission to the world-class Miskatonic University, Zhang Xiaoxiao had her own systematic habits for collecting, organizing, and processing information. She thought that perhaps she could find the answer just by relying on herself, even if it might not be easy.

The largest Tushuguan in all of Cuizhu City was the one in the city center, but when it came to the one with the longest history and the richest collection, it was undoubtedly Xiangcui University. And what was unknown to most was that the Xiangcui University Tushuguan seemed so ancient that even some strange, bizarre, and heterodox forbidden books were included in this vast sea of books. They were like sinister traps hiding in the darkness, waiting for some naive, ignorant, and knowledge-thirsty students to fall into that realm where death and danger could be seen.

Zhang Xiaoxiao also did not expect that she could find such a large number of strange evil classics documenting ancient Abnormal events in the school's Tushuguan. At this moment, she was working hard to find the truth on one hand, while on the other, she could not help but feel amazed and excited by the horrifying legends and ancient rituals recorded in the books, as if she had discovered a New World or found a Golden Land, yet she was also anxious and uneasy about stepping into unknown, forbidden knowledge.

If the female assassin's slaughter was not accidental but purposeful, then the female assassin's actions must have a set of patterns and logic.

Zhang Xiaoxiao checked the number of missing persons in Cuizhu City over the years, starting from the time Subway Line 3 was built. She discovered that there were missing persons related to the subway every year, and the dates were all concentrated on October 26th of each year, which happened to be the day the death subway incident occurred.

Seen this way, those missing persons who mysteriously disappeared after boarding the Cuizhu City Subway Line 3 on October 26th had mostly died at the hands of that female assassin or the mysterious forces behind her.

The regular and logical slaughter immediately reminded Zhang Xiaoxiao of the eerie legends circulating in the secular world; only evil rituals born from following certain dogmas and precepts would have such an abnormal and sinister "elegant" aura.

After flipping through mountains of books that crossed human ethics and were hated by gods and ghosts alike, Zhang Xiaoxiao finally unearthed the evil secret hidden beneath Cuizhu City in an Ancient Book titled "Fish Transformation Miscellaneous Notes" written by the famous mad scholar "Ye Gong".

The mad scholar "Ye Gong" did not write much in his life, and his grotesque and crazy works contained too much sinister and hateful content. Not accepted by the public, the books he wrote naturally could not escape the fate of being abandoned by the masses. After Ye Gong died, his books were regarded as heretical evil objects and almost burned to the ground; the original manuscripts and copies that survived were few and far between.

This "Fish Transformation Miscellaneous Notes" was even more of a work by Ye Gong that had never circulated outside. Even though what Zhang Xiaoxiao held in her hand at this moment was just a copy reproduced by some "fan" of Ye Gong, its preciousness was evident; perhaps this book in her hand was the only surviving manuscript of Ye Gong's unknown works.

Zhang Xiaoxiao carefully opened the book, as if pushing open a forbidden door. In those all-encompassing, imaginative records of the strange and supernatural, she learned that this book was probably written in Ye Gong's later years. When he was exiled to the Southern Barbarian Sea, he processed and organized the stories and personal experiences passed down from generation to generation by the fishermen who lived by the sea, as well as what they had seen with their own eyes.

When the story of the "Ghost Sea Jiao-person" was mentioned in the book, Zhang Xiaoxiao learned that the fishermen living in the Southern Barbarian Sea back then had a legend passed down by word of mouth about an Abnormal creature called the "Ghost Sea Jiao-person".

The Jiao-person was not an unheard-of creature; it was often mentioned in various novels and stories of gods and monsters. Because they had the special constitution of shedding tears that turned into pearls, with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a fish, and were stunningly beautiful and physically delicate, they often appeared as persecuted figures. But the image recorded in the "Fish Transformation Miscellaneous Notes" was not quite the same, and in some ways, it was the exact opposite.

Although the Ghost Sea Jiao-person also had a stunningly beautiful and mysterious appearance and a melodious, sweet singing voice, her pure and lovely exterior attracted countless sailors and fishermen who heard her moving song. Then, those attracted by the Jiao-person's voice would involuntarily want to approach her, sailing their boats or swimming toward the direction the sound came from, until they entered the mist, and no one ever walked out of the mist again. Clearly, these people had become the Ghost Sea Jiao-person's meal.

However, it was not as if no one had ever survived the Ghost Sea Jiao-person. There was still a girl who went to sea with her father who survived after entering the mist. It was said that she even killed the Jiao-person with her own hands, and this statement did not seem to be false, because ever since she returned to land, there were indeed no more reports of the Jiao-person harming people.

But although there were no more incidents at sea, after the surviving girl returned to the village, the village began to have incidents one after another. People in the village disappeared mysteriously one by one. Seeing that there were almost no people left in the village who could work, the villagers were all saying that a monster was at work, and the head of the fishing village was very anxious.

Just as the days in the fishing village were becoming tense and scorching, a bhiksuni happened to pass by. She saw the abnormality of the fishing village at a glance. After being treated to a lunch by the village head, the bhiksuni decided to do the village head a small favor, helping them find and expel the monster.

And that bhiksuni had great supernatural powers. After walking around the village, she immediately made a discovery, pointing out that the girl who had survived the Ghost Sea Jiao-person was the culprit behind the village's trouble; that girl was not human.

Sure enough, the pointed-out girl's face immediately turned gloomy, and in an instant, she transformed into a huge mountain of flesh with countless male and female bodies biting and entwined together. The bhiksuni used her magic to fight and clash with the flesh-mountain monster. Both were injured; the flesh-mountain monster was beaten until flesh and blood flew everywhere, and the bhiksuni also had an arm bitten and gnawed off by the flesh-mountain monster.

After a fierce battle, the flesh-mountain monster was finally defeated and fled in a sorry state.

Seeing the monster repelled, the villagers were extremely grateful to the bhiksuni and curiously asked what kind of monster it was.

The bhiksuni said that it was a very ancient formless demon. Because it often appeared in a female form, it was also called the Daughter of Gluttony. It could transform into whatever it ate. The Jiao-person that ate people at sea was it, because it ate the real Jiao-person, and the person who made the villagers disappear in the village was also it, because it transformed into the appearance of that surviving girl and mixed into the village. This time it escaped, and it would turn into other things to harm people again. In order not to let others get hurt, she decided to track down that demon and thoroughly deliver it to the afterlife.

Hearing the bhiksuni's plan, the villagers were full of admiration and gratitude, hoping that she could soon bring the demon to justice and deliver it.

But what happened afterward did not have any thought-provoking or intriguing ending like traditional supernatural novels. Zhang Xiaoxiao only saw a suffocatingly desperate ending.

The bhiksuni died on the way to deliver the Daughter of Gluttony, and this seemed to be the work of the Daughter of Gluttony.

After the bhiksuni died, the Daughter of Gluttony returned to that village. The villagers were greatly shocked to see the monster that had harmed countless people return. The brave villagers stood up one after another, but after a fight to the death, they were defeated and died one after another. The remaining group of weak, cowardly villagers swore they were willing to serve the Daughter of Gluttony for life in exchange for a chance to live.

The Daughter of Gluttony agreed, and surprisingly, she even "kindly" made a pact with the villagers, claiming that as long as they offered her enough food every year, she would not harm others and could even bless their village with a steady stream of wealth.

To ensure the quantity of the tribute was sufficient, the villagers did not cheat by giving her the corpses of elderly people who died naturally; the food she wanted had to be fresh. Thus, the Daughter of Gluttony specifically selected an executioner from the villagers who were gradually becoming her believers every once in a while, specifically to slaughter prey for her.

Because the villagers did not want the people being offered to be from the village, they actively built roads and opened trade markets, making more and more outsiders come to the village, and they took the opportunity to kill or kidnap those outsiders, sending them as tributes to the Daughter of Gluttony who lived in the cold and damp underground.

And the Daughter of Gluttony did not like to eat the head, so she specifically instructed that future tributes must be processed before being sent in.

The villagers were afraid of the Daughter of Gluttony's lewd power, yet greedy for the protection brought by the Daughter of Gluttony, which made their fishing harvests better and better, making the villagers of the fishing village richer and richer.

The villagers submitted to the Daughter of Gluttony, abiding by the agreement with the Daughter of Gluttony, and the Daughter of Gluttony really never attacked the villagers again.

Bringing wealth and protection to the village, and not eating the villagers of their village—under such a wonderful sweet-carrot offensive, as generation after generation of villagers replaced each other, the villagers' fear and curiosity toward the Daughter of Gluttony gradually transformed into obedience and awe. They even regarded the Daughter of Gluttony as a real god, offering sacrifices and worshiping her one after another, thereby slowly placing the Daughter of Gluttony on a pedestal.

Ye Gong stated in the book that he had also been to that rumored village to get to the bottom of it, discovering that the people there lived very prosperously and without worries. But every night, he saw the villagers surrounding a bonfire, numbly performing some kind of Sacrificial Ritual.

Because he was watching from a distance, he could not clearly see what kind of ritual the villagers were performing at the time, but Ye Gong vaguely saw that someone seemed to be tied to a place similar to an Execution Platform.

Then an executioner in black raised a butcher's knife and slashed down at the person tied to the platform.

Seeing this scene, Ye Gong, being a madman, ran out of his house to see the scene that made his spirit soar. But everything seemed as if it were his fantasy; nothing was left at the site where the Sacrificial Ritual was held. He did not see corpses, let alone villagers dressed in strange clothes; everyone was dressed as ordinary people as usual.

Ye Gong was not reconciled to this and was full of interest. One night, after the villagers were all asleep, he came to the cemetery where the villagers buried the dead. With a shovel, he began to dig. After digging up one grave after another, he was shocked and excited to discover that under each tombstone here, incomplete corpses were buried; except for the head, nothing was left of the body.

After finishing the story of the Ghost Sea Jiao-person, Zhang Xiaoxiao only felt a chill down her spine, and she finally confirmed the Abnormal factors hidden beneath the darkness of Cuizhu City. She also found the organization that might correspond to the female assassin's identity; the organization members were the descendants developed from that village, and the organization was a group born based on that village.

Zhang Xiaoxiao felt inexplicably panicked. She lowered her head and scanned her surroundings, always feeling that someone was secretly peeking at her.

She did not know how large that organization had grown after hundreds of years of development. Perhaps their manpower had already spread throughout Cuizhu, and having discovered the truth, she only felt that everyone around her might be a villain, and she might therefore become a target for the organization's hunt.

"Absolutely cannot let them know about this." Zhang Xiaoxiao thought to herself. She hurriedly stuffed the "Fish Transformation Miscellaneous Notes" into her schoolbag, then ran out of the Tushuguan without looking back, like a headless fly, not knowing where to go, surrounded by enemies on all sides, with no way to escape...

"Maomao!" Mother Xin burst into Xin Junmao's room, seeing her son fall from the bed and scream while covering his eyes, she panicked and hurriedly stepped forward to check her son's face.

She gritted her teeth and pried open her son's hands covering his face, wanting to check her son's eyes, but when she pried them open with force, she asked with a blank face: "Aren't you fine? What are you screaming for?!" The more Mother Xin spoke, the more she felt a sense of shame and anger.

However, Xin Junmao said painfully: "This... these are not my eyes."