Chapter 120

"Kraft!" William's heart eased—he saw Kraft trapped in a meat grinder, lingering for an instant among shadow-forged blades, barely escaping before being sliced to pieces.

Sharp, barbed darkness boiled; human faces rose and sank; vibrations drew near from afar, pebbles trembling and hopping on the ground.

"Retreat!" Though the voice was muffled, William understood the word amid the horn's blare—the first half of the plan was complete; the massive digger was hurtling toward them, crushing through the rock passage.

Now they had to put distance between themselves and that face-limbed abomination, buying time and space for the dimensional shift.

The danger had not passed—it advanced at a sinister speed, like darkness itself surging upward, countless chaotic limbs striking rocks, trampling over torches on the ground and snuffing them out.

William hurled the long stone with all his strength, lightened his load, and turned to flee.

The ground heaved worse than a deck on a wave's crest; he fled solely on years of practiced balance. Perhaps that single sword strike had truly been effective—they quickly drew back, and when they looked back, only the last visible segment of limbs was flung beyond the circle of light.

The familiar routine repeated: a hand pressed onto his shoulder; he closed his eyes skillfully, waiting for the sensation of falling.

But this time was different—his feet lost their solid ground without warning, and the fall accelerated violently. The sudden change in speed made his heart skip a beat; if before it had been a prepared dive from a deck, now it was as if someone had kicked him hard from behind on a seaside cliff, dragging him down with stones tied to him.

From the very start, the fall felt unnatural; he only realized belatedly that the driver's state seemed off.

Fear and loss of control made him instinctively open his eyes, seeking to assess his situation—but what flooded in was even more incomprehensible: the surroundings fractured and twisted in violent flux, caverns strikingly similar yet clearly distinct nested within each other, light and utter darkness fused together.

Torches flickered, stretched thin, and vanished; the illuminated zones remained suspended in air; the pursuing limbs pierced the circle of light, then stabbed uselessly into the next patch of darkness.

The threat was both inches away and impossibly distant; the moment his mind grasped this, his vision was yanked into total darkness, plunging into another layer of cavern.

In the final instant before departure, within his lens-distorted vision, he faintly saw the cluster of extra limbs abandon pursuit, reshaping itself to cling to the wall, becoming as thin and formless as true shadow.

A quake that shook the mountain reached close at hand; the shadow-clad mass, bearing human faces, attached itself to a colossal elongated body; sparks flew, revealing a fleeting glimpse of thick armored plates; between the shadow-coated segmented scales, countless pale faces crowded together, twisted or grinning eerily.

They rode the digger, sensed human presence, and sprouted fine, spiny limbs, turning toward this spot as if eager to abandon their host and join the chase.

The dimensional shift robbed them of their target, yet this hellish vision revealing the rock painting's truth still plunged the mind into chaos and terror, making them forget the weightlessness of falling.

…

…

Kup found the captain's among a pile of packages. It was easy to identify—few would willingly carry thirty percent extra weight just for a few bottles.

Inside was a bottle of alcohol Kraft had said could clean wounds; rules didn't matter now.

"Sss!" He picked the one with the strongest smell, poured a little onto the wound—it hurt more than the injury itself, muscles twitching like a live fish on a chopping board.

He had no idea how much that spilled amount could fetch among captains—if he had, the pain wouldn't have been limited to the wound.

"Yin Feng, wipe some on Peter's wound." See if the pain wakes him up.

He unwound the cotton rolls Kraft had prepared in advance, bandaged the wound, felt somewhat better—perhaps just psychological, from the boiled cotton. This looked expensive; he picked a small piece, pressed it firmly onto Peter's wound, and secured it with the original burlap wrapping.

He sat by the bed awhile, but realized he couldn't rest peacefully beside the "trophy," so he grabbed Peter's feet and dragged him outside.

Probably from blood loss, his steps felt light and unsteady; he even felt a hallucination of the ground gently rising and falling.

Kup shook his head, but the hallucination didn't fade—it intensified, growing from barely perceptible to unmistakable, even directional. He looked up in alarm, toward the rolling hills in the night.

Faint, cold moonlight struggled through thin clouds, spilling over rocks and soil, outlining indistinct, dark, towering silhouettes.

Among these solid shapes, a vibration rose from deep within, drawing closer to the surface.

"No way…" It came from the direction of the mine shaft—over ten minutes' walk to the mountain's foot; even after half the tremor had dissipated, it still shook his steps.

Voices erupted from all sides; the village awoke to the shaking; unstable objects shattered, earthen walls trembled, dust rained from rooftops. Children cried, screams erupted from nightmares made real, unanswered questions rang out, and a few shouted in wild, half-terrified, half-joyful frenzy.

As clouds drifted past, the barren, jagged yellow slope, washed in cold light, resembled piles of bones—the remains of countless lives swallowed directly or indirectly by the mine, nurturing and concealing evil.

On the mountainside, where the cave deemed impossible for human hands to dig lay, "bones" were flung outward—each white-yellow "fragment" was a rock buried deep in the mountain, erupting with thunderous, sky-shattering roars.

The sonic wave crashed through valleys and gullies, drowning all other noise, leaving only pure, immense, overwhelming force to proclaim its arrival.

From afar, beneath the cold, distant moonlight, those who had fled outdoors still saw the colossal object amid the howling dust.

It resembled a serpent, writhing with a head like a raised valve and pincer claws, armored in segmented, rock-textured scales, crushing and spewing rocks from within the mountain, obliterating the front slope's terrain, turning the wretched little path into a broken dotted line with falling stones.

Like a flying fish leaping from water, a living ridge of mountain now spanned the ravine midair, plunging headlong into the opposite slope, returning to the earth where it moved unimpeded.

【Messenger】

Kup understood the term's meaning—those who treated rock strata as nothing could easily explain why heretics believed it could pierce the barrier between the living world and the realm of the dead, bringing the departed back to the living.

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"Get out of the way!" He shouted to warn the dazed onlookers, charging toward the door as a dark blotch, accompanied by a shrill whistle, fell from the sky—the lingering rain of stones.