A little while passed.
The sound changed, as though people were whispering. It was quiet, as if they were trying hard to keep their voices down, and no one could make out what they were saying.
Just as everyone pricked up their ears and listened closely.
Suddenly.
A shout rang out:
"Mao Zhen—"
Another call, but unlike the earlier ones, this one made everyone in the stone hut freeze.
Because that voice.
Was actually Mao Zhen's own!
Everyone's eyes snapped toward Mao Zhen in the corner.
He gripped his ghost-head saber, his back pressed tightly against the stone wall, his eyes wide with horror.
Compared to the others.
His perception was different.
He genuinely felt... that the person calling outside was himself!
It was a kind of cognitive confusion.
His mind had been affected by something supernatural.
He was sitting inside the hut.
Yet he felt as though he were outside.
He could hear the shout, yet he felt it was coming from his own mouth.
It was bizarre.
Deeply uncanny.
The voice outside continued.
It used Mao Zhen's voice, hoarse and rough, with an aggressive edge. Even his habit of speaking with a slight nasal tone was identical.
"Something's wrong with this voice."
Jin Shanba was the first to react, speaking in a lowered voice.
He stared fixedly toward the doorway. The corpse blotches on his arms were surfacing uncontrollably, spreading layer by layer like ink dripping into water.
"It's completely different from those earlier calls."
It certainly was.
The calls carried on the wind earlier had imitated the voices of loved ones. Although they were chilling to hear, at least each voice belonged to "someone else."
And they had drifted in from far outside, torn into fragments by the wind.
They had sounded relatively distant.
This voice was