The next day, White Mound Village.
A warm breeze swept through the village as the midday sun blazed at its fiercest.
In front of the scattered, desolate bungalows, a tall figure dressed in a gray-black Anti-Stab Suit slowly walked along the gravel road, as if patrolling the surrounding area.
The figure wore a helmet and carried a black Wolf Tooth Club. Its spikes glinted with a faint Silver Light beneath the sun, looking hideously savage.
Before long, the figure raised his head, revealing Yu Hong's pale, expressionless face.
His footsteps halted, and he stopped before a dark Stone House that was slightly larger than the others.
Without making a sound, he quietly took a backpack from his back, opened it, and pulled out a yellow wooden board about the size of a palm.
Embedded in the wooden board was a jade-colored, circular Large Glowstone Symbol Array.
He gently pressed the board bearing the array against the Stone House's wooden door, then secured it in place with nails.
Lowering his hand, he pulled open the door. Looking at the pitch-black darkness within, he drew a deep breath and stepped inside.
Before long, his figure vanished into the darkness, and silence descended.
Time trickled by.
Five minutes later.
Bang!!
A figure suddenly burst from the darkness and sprinted toward the door.
It was Yu Hong.
His expression was calm, but several spikes on the Wolf Tooth Club in his hand had already bent.
Hiss! Behind him, a black-clothed woman whose head had been smashed inward flashed rapidly closer, stretching out her pale, rotten right hand toward his back.
Just as the woman's hand was only a dozen centimeters from Yu Hong—
He suddenly lunged forward and rolled across the ground, slipping out through the door, which had been opened a crack, and narrowly avoiding the grab behind him.
Caught off guard, the black-clothed woman's hand slammed into the door, where the wooden board bearing the array had been nailed.
Aaaah!!! A sharp, invisible sonic wave exploded. The black-clothed woman's right hand rapidly turned transparent and twisted, like mist blown by the wind and about to disperse.
Then her entire body seemed to suffer intense interference. It rapidly twisted, stirring up countless ripples.
Pfft! A few seconds later—
The black-clothed woman vanished from the spot.
The array board on the door had also completely changed from jade-colored to gray-white, and the array patterns had snapped apart section by section.
After the scream, everything returned to silence.
On the gravel road, Yu Hong slowly climbed to his feet, his eyes fixed on the array board on the door.
"It's actually much stronger than an ordinary Large Glowstone. So it seems that whether it's a Large Glowstone or a Symbol Array, its power is related to the specific area of the array."
This was not even the strongest Silver Symbol Array, merely an ordinary Large Glowstone array. Yet one board had been enough to take out a Ghost Shadow.
After removing the nails and the array board, he carefully determined the range within which the array had taken effect.
A faint gray-white mark circled the Wooden Door around the array board.
The mark looked like a ring drawn in chalk, surrounding the array itself. It had not been there before, but had appeared on its own after the array came into contact with the Ghost Shadow.
Yu Hong reached out and gently touched it. He confirmed that it could not be wiped away; the mark had already been carved into the Wooden Door.
He thoughtfully withdrew his hand and estimated the size of the ring. It was roughly three times the size of the array.
He took out a charcoal pencil and recorded the information in a newspaper, then packed up his things and quickly left.
After walking some distance, he suddenly felt a cold breeze brush across his back. He hurriedly turned around and looked toward the Stone House he had just left.
Inside the Stone House, the Wooden Door stood open. Within the shadows, a vague figure of a black-clothed woman stood motionless.
It was the female Ghost Shadow that had just been dispersed.
However, the female Ghost Shadow seemed to be reconstructing itself, its body gradually becoming clearer from its initial blurriness.
Yu Hong withdrew his gaze, estimated the time in his mind, lowered his head to record the data, and then strode away.
He soon left White Mound Village. Along the way, he picked up some dry firewood and returned to the Cave.
He took out the Large Glowstone ink again and filled in the broken array lines on the wooden board. Then he reached out and pressed his hand against it.
The black lines flashed, and a countdown automatically appeared on the board: 45 minutes.
After finishing, Yu Hong went to the corner and took out a thin wooden array board he had begun making the previous day.
The board bearing this array was extremely thin, almost no thicker than a cellphone. He had made more than ten boards of this thickness, all piled up in the corner.
Ever since he discovered that Eve had been infected with the Black Handprint, he had returned and begun making every preparation to deal with the Evil Shadow.
An ordinary Large Glowstone definitely could not stop it. Someone had already tested that much. The effect of one Large Glowstone was at most equivalent to a bag of ordinary Glowstones. With so many people in town dying overnight, it was impossible that no one had tried using bag after bag of Glowstones.
The more likely possibility was that bagged Glowstones were completely useless.
Therefore, he needed a more powerful means of dealing with it.
And the Symbol Array was the trump card he had prepared.
Sitting in the corner, Yu Hong picked up a board and began drawing a Large Glowstone array on it.
Crack.
At that moment, faint footsteps came from outside the door.
Crack.
Crack.
The sound was slow and rhythmic, stepping on dry branches as it steadily drew closer.
As the sound approached, Yu Hong stopped drawing. He set down the board, rose to his feet, and gripped the Wolf Tooth Club beside him.
He warily stared at the door and slowly moved forward. The footsteps approached in perfect synchrony with his own.
The Viewing Window in the door was closed, allowing him to see only the sunlight faintly shining through the gaps.
Although the light was bright and hot, an intense, bone-chilling cold still slowly rose from the depths of Yu Hong's heart.
Crack.
Crack.
The footsteps continued to approach.
Finally—
The sound stopped.
The owner of the footsteps seemed to have halted not far from the door.
The other party seemed to be considering something, hesitating, and then stopped moving altogether.
Yu Hong also reached the back of the door. He held the Wolf Tooth Club in one hand and two Large Glowstones in the other, gently pressing against the Wooden Door.
One minute.
Two minutes.
Three minutes.
There was no sound outside at all.
Yu Hong's taut nerves slowly relaxed. He glanced at the Large Glowstone placed behind the door.
The Large Glowstone had silently been depleted by half. Now that it had stopped, it had returned to stillness.
Phew. He gently let out a breath. Then he reached out, pulled open the Viewing Window's cover, and looked outside through the window.
Outside, the sun shone brightly, the weather was fair, and the surroundings were completely empty. There was nothing there.
Seeing this, Yu Hong let out a long breath, replaced the Large Glowstone behind the door, and reached out to pull the cover closed again.
Bang!!! At that moment, a deathly pale human face suddenly slammed against the iron mesh of the Viewing Window.
With a tremendous crash—
The rotten face pressed frantically into the iron mesh, forcing the grid to creak as though it might rupture at any moment.
The face stared fixedly at Yu Hong, then exerted itself again.
It actually broke through the iron mesh and forced its way through the Viewing Window!! Hummm!!! In an instant, the Large Glowstone behind the door turned into white powder. At the same time, the other two Glowstones in Yu Hong's hand shattered as well.
These Large Glowstones could not stop the face from entering at all.
And just then—
The Silver Symbol Array on the door suddenly glimmered with Silver Light.
This higher-level array, which had taken two full days to reinforce and complete, abruptly erupted with a pure and powerful invisible wave.
The wave spread like ripples, instantly covering the entire door. Even the surrounding Cave walls were enveloped.
As the wave swept over it, the rotten face flashed once and vanished from the spot in the blink of an eye, like a phantom.
Everything instantly fell silent.
The iron mesh of the door's Viewing Window remained damaged, but the face from moments ago had completely dispersed.
Huff! Huff! Huff! Yu Hong's entire body was rigid. Only now did he react, gasping heavily for breath.
Just now, he had been completely unable to control his own body.
It had happened too suddenly!
The pressure from the attack had been so overwhelming that he had been startled senseless and had not even realized how he should respond.
By the time he came to his senses and prepared to act, everything was already over.
No, that's not right!! There was another special force forcibly pinning me in place! Yu Hong carefully recalled the sensation. Logically speaking, he was no longer the newcomer who had first arrived in this environment. No matter how afraid he was, he should not have been completely unable to move.
Yet that feeling just now had made him seem to return to the beginning.
That terror... He lowered his head and looked at his body. On the jacket over his chest, a faint gray-black handprint was slowly fading away.
"The Withered Woman?"
That was his guess.
Compared with the Ghost Shadow, the force of that attack had far exceeded it—by far too much.
If not for the Silver Symbol Array taking effect, he would probably have been caught just now and exposed to an unknowable, deadly threat.
He bent down and carefully inspected the Silver Symbol Array, discovering that its silver color had faded somewhat. Clearly, part of its power had been consumed.
"Tomorrow is the High Tide Period. It seems I can't go outside casually anymore."
Yu Hong inspected the damage to the Viewing Window and reached out, preparing to reinforce and restore it, but then remembered that something else was still counting down. For now, he could only wait.
So he simply dragged over a stool, sat down heavily in front of the door, and recovered his strength.
Before long, after the countdown ended, he began pressing his hand against the door and repairing the broken wire mesh.
The wire mesh was soon repaired. Yu Hong then began replenishing the depleted Silver Symbol Array.
After spending a full two hours, the Silver Symbol Array had recovered completely, and everything looked almost the same as before. In reality, however, Yu Hong had now gained a rough estimate of the Withered Woman Evil Shadow's strength.
***Inside Jenny's Cave.
Eve held a wet towel and scrubbed fiercely at the Black Handprint on her buttocks. No matter how hard she rubbed, the handprint remained completely unmoved, as black as ink.
Her face was filled with terror, even bordering on panic. When she saw that it would not come off, she directly tried to grab a knife, intending to cut the flesh away herself.
Smack! A stick struck her hand viciously from the side, knocking the knife to the ground.
Jenny held the stick. Her face was cold, with a trace of fear, and she watched her surroundings tensely.
"Don't do anything pointless! You're not dead yet, so there's still hope! Don't give up on yourself!"
"But, Mom!" Eve's face was deathly pale as she raised her head, her eyes already swollen and red from crying. "Even Lao Yu is dead. I can't escape."
"Get into the Isolation Room. Hurry!" Jenny barked.
Eve jumped in fright, but she still gritted her teeth and quickly turned toward one of the bedroom walls.
She moved aside a bear hide hanging on the wall, revealing a silver metal door beneath it.
She slid the metal door open sideways, slipped inside, and closed it behind her.
"Starting today, you can only stay in there." Jenny's voice was low and stern. "Until the handprint completely disappears. Do you understand!?"
"...I understand." Eve's voice came faintly through the silver metal door.
"Tomorrow is the High Tide Period. I'm going out now to find a way to help you." Jenny lowered the stick, stepped forward, and let the bear hide fall back into place. Then she picked up a bag of Glowstones, glanced at the wind-up mantel clock, and hurried out of the Cave.
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