Chapter 100

【Face?】

Kup retreated several steps, leaning against Kraft, and stared intently: Peter stood at the edge of the light, his back a profound darkness beyond the reach of the torches, a uniform void of absence.

Seeing Yin Feng unharmed, William returned to the front of the line with his torch, the reddish-yellow glow expanding forward, drawing near the distance where the thing had appeared.

He drew the page hammer from his waist, gripped it firmly, stepped half a pace back into stance, and shifted sideways to clear space for Kraft to react.

This was a prearranged plan. As a novice, no one expected him to offer substantial direct aid; if anything happened, the first to react had to be—and could only be—the trained core members.

He trusted Kraft knew what had happened and would react immediately, yet beneath his thin shirt, a chill crept in—sweat dampened, wind brushing through.

The night curtain withdrew like water parting at a ship’s bow; the torchlight illuminated the space behind Peter—same gray-yellow earth path, sand and stones slowly emerging from darkness like a receding tide.

The largest object was merely a broken stone—no broad, flat face, no retreating watcher. Taut nerves struck empty air, like an opponent suddenly withdrawing force in a standoff: the hard-won strength vanished uselessly, wasted on nothing.

Kup stepped forward and kicked the stone aside; the rock, barely embedded in the ground, rolled easily, spinning several times before vanishing at the boundary of light and shadow.

A faint, barely audible laugh drifted near his ear—resembling the sneering mockery of a dock employer—and he felt a vague, involuntary anger, scanning every face around him: solemn, or still shaken.

The voice dispersed, like the face-like apparition—details too slight to be recorded, making him question whether his senses had deceived him. He could not even confirm whether it truly had been a face or a laugh, only evoking a fleeting association, filling in gaps from memory.

It was close—no distance at all—closer than his ear, so near it might as well have been blown into his ear canal, yet Peter, the nearest, stood frozen, back turned.

William whispered something to the guide, then pulled him forward, torch burning brightly. Sailors returned to the rear; Kraft took Yin Feng’s arm, brushing dust from her cloak—no one seemed to notice anything amiss.

The circle of light moved toward Kup; William held the torch high, drawing him into its center. This sole safeguard failed to comfort him; a sense of isolation rose, as if severed from the others, alone in a realm infinitely near yet utterly alien.

This feeling was stronger than the hallucinations or phantom sounds—so sharp it became unmistakable, like taking a wrong turn and suddenly realizing your companions were far behind.

The path beneath his feet was the same as before, yet undeniably different in subtle, indescribable ways—on that “fork,” familiarity had transformed into strangeness.

But the mountain path had no branches; William and Peter walked past him, eyeing his tightly gripped hammer handle with hesitation—their closeness clashed with his instinctive sense of distance, his subjective perception splitting from sight and sound.

He became more alert than ever; the sense of danger forced his memory to dig up buried, similar experiences to confront the threat.

In his life as a hired laborer, Kup had never realized he had such a wealth of experiences to compare with this strange perception.

No—he had.

Unrelated events were linked together: waking from bed, the bedsheet’s creases identical to when he fell asleep, his hand clutching not the hammer handle, but half his fortune—a complete silver coin.

The window, unchanged from before sleep, emitted light for no reason, like a face-like shape floating out of empty darkness.

A homesickness deeper than standing at the stern of the Bing Shan, watching Wendeng Harbor vanish beyond the horizon. No sign warned him he had left his familiar world; one moment, he simply felt the grief and terror of being thrust toward an unknown land—his heart swelled with ache, sting, and… fear.

Fear that everything had already shifted toward the unfamiliar, and only halfway did one realize—too late.

Then came something that defied understanding: something burst through the attic window, or a mocking laugh pierced his ear.

“No, no, no—this isn’t right.” His fingers rubbed the binding on his weapon, arms trembling with tension. It was likely the same thing—he vaguely grasped the meaning of this feeling—though he still didn’t understand its depth, only that he was leaving the familiar, moving closer to them.

The laugh-like sound pressed against his eardrum, probing deeper, scratching inside his skull. This time he heard clearly: it came from the front of the line, from the path still unlit by William’s torch.

His breath came fast; he tried to swing his weapon, smashing at something, dispelling the invisible claws about to close—but it merged with the memory of that past experience: he couldn’t move, pinned fast, the powerful grip beneath the black sleeve squeezing his flesh and bone with unbearable force.

“Kup, look this way!” The hand gripping him tightened further, dull pain digging into below his collarbone; his palm was forced open, the page hammer falling to the ground, kicking up dust.

His vision refocused: Kraft stood before him, gripping his right shoulder, locking the entire joint.

His right hand had been raised high, about to bring down the page hammer—his heels had retreated to the edge of the mountain path; behind him lay a steep cliff.

Others watched him nervously, hesitant to approach due to his raised weapon; only when Kraft disarmed him did they cautiously step forward and pull him back from the edge.

“I—” Kup hurried to explain, wanting to describe what had happened.

“Walking too long at night invites delirium. You’ll follow me from now on.” The baseless assertion cut off his explanation, silencing the half-formed words; behind everyone’s backs, Kraft mouthed, “I know.”

He let go, picked up the page hammer, gripped the head’s near end, and offered the handle back to Kup.

Kup quickly took his weapon; the hand holding the handle did not release until he was certain Kup was lucid, then added, “Remember this: don’t use your weapon blindly, and don’t act recklessly.”

His fingers released; the page hammer returned to Kup’s grasp.

The group continued along the mountain path; after several twists, the road finally began to descend, zigzagging toward the valley.

As they estimated nearing the bottom, a faint light appeared at the slope’s end.

A peculiar clay lamp, shaped like a raised hand, sat before rocks of contrasting upper and lower hues, filled with oil.

The vertical cliff face was lit by the flame: the upper half, common brownish stone of the mountain path; the lower half, a starkly different gray-white rock, sharply divided into two distinct sections.

Winding bands, painted with red-black mineral pigment, formed from countless segments joined together, coiling densely at the base, indistinguishable from one another. Tiny stick-figure figures clustered within the bands, moving chaotically in all directions or crawling.

At the band’s head—or perhaps tail—it arched upward. The segments ended there, opening into a structure between petal and sepal, precisely aligned with the boundary between the two rock hues.

The stick figures within the bands seemed to have found an exit, spilling into the brownish space. Their limbs were rendered in crude, minimal lines—or omitted entirely—but their heads and faces were exaggeratedly prominent, rendered in distorted proportions.

The artist maximized the upper space to depict these disproportionate figures, even detailing each face’s features—crude technique, yet each unique.

Kup only saw the patterns clearly when he drew near the rock face; perhaps due to limited tools, to fit more content, the artist had to spread the design—so all the faces were drawn wide and fat, lacking depth, appearing broad and flat.

The path curved around the rock; clustered stone-and-mud dwellings lined both sides, their high, small windows dark—village asleep.