Chapter 24: 24 Escape!

Deep mountains, an isolated village far from the world and sparsely populated.

Song Cheng stood in his courtyard and suddenly closed his eyes.

His Heart Eye remained; after closing his eyes, his perception was actually somewhat enhanced.

The ink-wash, plain white world returned in an instant.

Ding. A light, metallic sound like an auditory hallucination arrived abruptly.

Song Cheng, as if poked from behind by a sharp thorn, jerked his neck and turned toward the direction of the metallic sound.

The airflow stirred by the twisting of his neck swirled like heavy mercury.

Both women stopped because of his movement.

Most of the surviving villagers had formed new families; this aunt paired with that uncle, just barely getting by.

But Young Mistress Nan Hui truly had nowhere else to go, so she could only stay on Song Cheng's side every day, then built a side room next to the main house and lived there.

She also knew she had been with a man, and rumors of "sleeping with her father-in-law" had even spread in the village; furthermore, she had been abducted by bandits and humiliated day and night. Although she still had her looks, she was a faded flower and a willow in the gutter, so she dared not let the thought of "being with Song Cheng" arise.

Of course, besides her low self-esteem, she also had a feeling of "disgust toward men," and what she sought now was merely to live.

And she felt that only by staying by Song Cheng's side was the possibility of surviving the greatest, which was why she lowered her status and even disregarded her reputation to stay here.

After watching Tong Jia practice martial arts, Nan Hui took the initiative to take on chores like cooking, washing clothes, tending the herb garden, and sewing and embroidery.

Honestly, she did this work better than Tong Niangzi.

Song Cheng and Tong Xiaoniangzi had also discussed it and could mostly guess her thoughts, so they let it be.

At this moment, Nan Hui saw Song Cheng's tense face and grew nervous as well.

The oppressive atmosphere made her unable to help wanting to speak.

Tong Jia made a "hush" gesture.

Only then did Nan Hui hurriedly cover her mouth, yet she still watched Song Cheng with extreme nervousness.

After that one auditory hallucination, Song Cheng found nothing else, so he opened his eyes.

"What's wrong, Brother Song?" Nan Hui asked urgently.

Song Cheng said: "Gather the villagers, bring food and water, we are going to the foot of the mountain to stay for two days."

Having said that, he added: "There might be something unclean."

Once the villagers heard Song Cheng say there was something unclean, everyone hurriedly packed up, then shouldered their bundles and rushed out the door.

A group totaling nearly two hundred people arrived at the foot of the mountain by evening, everyone tired to death.

A bonfire was soon lit, and the group sat around it, peering toward the west; that was the misty Tanghe Village, also the village of murder.

Everyone huddled toward the east while asking Song Cheng questions.

"Master Song, what kind of unclean thing? Can you see unclean things?"

"Old sister-in-law, there is no Master Song here; if you call Master Song, no one will answer."

"Hehe, Brother Cheng is just good. Then sister-in-law asks you, is there really something unclean?"

Everyone held their breath and focused their attention on Song Cheng.

Song Cheng thought for a moment and said: "Everyone, honestly, I am not sure either. But I just feel something is not right."

A rather elderly man said: "Brother Cheng, is it that rot smell?"

Song Cheng nodded.

The man stammered: "Actually, yesterday afternoon, Xiao Erzi and I saw some animal carcasses more than ten miles south of our new village; the smell should have come from there..."

Song Cheng was stunned, and suddenly he himself developed some doubt.

He was a Martial Artist; perhaps his sense of smell was sharper, which was why he felt the stench of rot was strong?

Just as the man finished speaking, someone else nearby said: "Uncle Fuhai, listen to Brother Cheng. Is there anyone here more capable than Brother Cheng?"

Song Cheng thought for a moment, looked at the man and said: "Uncle Fuhai, how about... let's just forget it."

The commoners immediately began to persuade him, one after another.

"Brother Cheng, spring plowing is coming soon, everyone is preparing, we can't leave the village."

"Brother Cheng, why not go take a look first? You tell us, where else can we go? This village was built with such difficulty. We can't run away before we've even seen a shadow of trouble."

"Brother Cheng..."

Song Cheng listened to the many villagers' persuasion and pondered again.

After a long while, he still nodded.

Being able to hide in the mountains and develop steadily, he naturally didn't really want to leave.

Besides, Uncle had already scouted it. There was no need to be so suspicious and fearful; at the very least, he had to do a little investigation first.

He liked it here, and the villagers had put in a lot of effort; how could he give up easily when "nothing had even begun"?

Uncle Fuhai saw him nod and smiled: "Alright, alright."

Two days.

Nothing happened.

Song Cheng turned his head to look west at Tanghe Village; there was an obvious blood-red question mark floating over Tanghe Village, and looking toward the big mountain, there was nothing at all.

"Let's go, let's go back." Only then did Song Cheng decide.

The next day.

Song Cheng, along with Uncle Fuhai and Xiao Erzi, walked the mountain path for more than half an hour and arrived at the place where the animal bones and corpses were buried; Tong Niangzi and Nan Hui also followed.

Black mud wrapped around white bones, and moist water vapor carried a pungent smell of rot.

"Brother Song, is this it?" Xiao Erzi asked.

Song Cheng scanned the surroundings.

Aerial roots hung down, dead leaves were piled a thousand layers deep, old trees towered into the sky, and even the falling sunlight was extremely sparse, so that both in terms of light and temperature, it exuded a sense of eeriness.

Tong Xiaoniangzi suddenly shouted: "Master of the house, master of the house, over here!"

Song Cheng walked over and looked in the direction his wife was gazing.

It was a slope. Perhaps due to a mountain flood or melting snow, a large chunk of the slope had collapsed, revealing a rotten, rusted black cage that had originally been buried in the soil.

Uncle Fuhai asked in surprise: "How could there be a cage here? In this deep mountain forest, why would someone put a cage here?"

As the old uncle spoke, he walked toward that side. Song Cheng stared at the cage.

Suddenly, he recalled the metallic sound he had heard three days ago, which had felt like an auditory hallucination, and hurriedly reached out to grab Tong Xiaoniangzi's hand.

Seeing this, Nan Hui, who was nearby, also subconsciously grabbed the corner of Song Cheng's clothes.

Old Uncle Fuhai walked forward step by step, and upon reaching the slope, he grabbed his homemade hardwood hiking staff and poked at the mud a few times.

With this poking, the soil actually fell away in a rustle, and more of the cage was revealed.

A flash of gray-white, hollow, and deathly silent terrifying luster leaped out from the cage, expanding silently. Everything around them began to undergo strange and horrifying hallucinatory changes.

Yet, the crowd was completely unable to perceive it.

They held their breath and stared quietly.

The cage was not small, but it was clearly a cage used by hunters to trap wild beasts.

Inside the cage, at some unknown moment, a beast resembling a tiger but looking like a cat was crouching, its fangs exposed, yet its eyes no longer held a shred of spirit or ferocity, only numbness and submission.

"How is it? My tiger-cat is not bad, right?" A man with a handlebar mustache wearing loose, ornate robes leaned over and asked with a smile.

While laughing, he clapped his hands and said to the surrounding crowd: "Welcome everyone to my Extreme Bliss World. You have all traveled a long way; you must be wanting to see something fresh."

As he spoke, he stepped onto a high platform.

Nan Hui looked at the handlebar-mustached man, scanned the dense crowd gathered around, and whispered: "Brother Song, it's so lively."

Song Cheng nodded.

He did not discover the slightest abnormality; his brain did not even provide any warning or sense of incongruity.

He seemed to have seamlessly connected and naturally entered a certain scene.

"It seems there is something worth talking about here; it was not in vain that we made a special trip here."

Beside him, Tong Xiaoniangzi said: "Indeed, master of the house, if there were no acquaintance to vouch for us, we wouldn't have been able to get in at all, would we? What exactly is this?"

Song Cheng said: "Just watch."

He looked closely and saw the man walk up a flight of steps covered in thick black cloth; each step seemed to hide a cage beneath it, and the cages were very quiet, like blind boxes where one did not know what was inside.

The stacking of the cages formed undulating, mountain-like mounds. He had heard from acquaintances that this was the "Extreme Bliss World," and that the handlebar-mustached man was the master of this Extreme Bliss World; anyone who arrived here could enjoy unprecedented stimulation that the mundane world could not provide.

The man in ornate robes walked to the highest point of the mountain-like mound, looked down at the crowd, and smiled: "Guests, guests, wait a little longer; there are still many guests like you on their way.

Good things take time; waiting a little longer for that moment of extreme bliss is also a kind of delight."

Some people in the crowd began to laugh along.

Yet no one heckled; those who could come here were all wealthy people craving novelty, and no one lacked even a shred of patience.

Not long after, footsteps were heard from behind.

Song Cheng turned his head to look and saw quite a few acquaintances.

"Miss Guan Xi," he called out.

That beautiful young girl also walked over hurriedly and smiled: "I didn't expect Mr. Song to have such refined interests as well."

Having said that, she stood next to Song Cheng.

Song Cheng looked at the other acquaintances and called out to them one by one: "Caihua Sao, Baojin Sao, Uncle Tianzi, Xiaoding..."

The acquaintances also bowed one by one, saying: "Brother Cheng is here too."

The crowd gathered more and more. Song Cheng watched the black-cloth-covered mountain of cages with great interest and anticipation.

Everyone beside him was the same.

Their eyes flashed with "craving," "indulgence," "novelty-seeking," and "enjoyment"... Everyone knew that when the heavy black cloth was lifted, the Extreme Bliss World would arrive.

But what the Extreme Bliss World was, no one knew.

This was novelty-seeking! Stimulation!

Suddenly, Song Cheng felt his eyes were a bit itchy, so he lowered his head and rubbed them.

"Master of the house, what's wrong?" Tong Xiaoniangzi asked.

Song Cheng said: "It's nothing."

Having said that, he looked up again.

Up high, the handlebar-mustached man saw that everyone had arrived and was just about to speak when a commotion suddenly came from the west.

The crowd turned their heads to look and saw a group of aggressive, mud-legged villagers running over.

The man in the lead shouted: "A few people are missing!"

After saying this, the man didn't even give the handlebar-mustached man a chance to react; he pushed through the crowd to Song Cheng's side and said: "You, come with me!"

*Zzz. * A sharp, intense pain erupted in Song Cheng's brain; it felt as if his whole person was about to be torn apart.

He opened his eyes, saw the person who had come, and asked in surprise: "Village Chief."

This leading man was none other than the Village Chief of Tanghe Village.

The Village Chief said urgently: "Hurry and come with me! You are from our village; that shameless woman did not keep to her wifely duties and harmed her elders, so she must be drowned in a pig cage. You must come and watch too!"

Song Cheng suddenly clutched his head with both hands, his headache unbearable.

The Village Chief grabbed his hand and dragged him out of the crowd by force.

Tong Xiaoniangzi, as well as the young mistress Nan Hui who was holding onto Song Cheng's clothes, were also dragged out like wooden puppets, then surrounded by that group of villagers and hurried toward the west.

To the west was Tanghe Village.

Song Cheng slowly turned his head back; behind him, the pitch-black thick cloth was slowly being lifted, and a blinding red light exploded in his eyes.

It was an eye that seemed to have just awakened from a Dream.

Those blazing blood-colored eyes stared straight at Village Chief, and also stared at him.

His heart began to pound wildly, like a beating war drum, and wisps of cold, sinister Qi crawled onto his body, as if the rotten, pale hands of a dead person were brushing over him, then followed his seven orifices to drill into his body. An illusion?! No! It is Chongxian! When, when did he fall for it?

He didn't know! He had no idea at all!

On the other side, Village Chief was hooking his shoulder, running along with him, shouting: "Run! The village is about to drown someone in a pig cage! There's no time!"

Tong Jia, who was being grabbed by Song Cheng, and Nan Hui, who was clutching the corner of Song Cheng's clothes, also began to run, running faster and faster.

(End of chapter)