He watched Wang Peng and the others board the ship.
Jiang Qiao stood in the deep pit, in no hurry to move.
An eerie silence hung over his surroundings.
He lit a cigarette. The smoke rings rose, paused in midair, then drifted toward the center of the island, tugged by something. They moved in a straight line, as though someone were pulling them on a string.
After a long while.
He started walking, climbed out over the edge of the pit, and headed into the deepest part of the woods.
He had cleared away most of the charred woods on the outskirts, but the deeper he went, the more those burned trees reappeared, packed tightly together. Their trunks and branches were thicker, and the cracks in their bark ran deeper.
Ash carpeted the ground again.
It was clearly thicker than on the outskirts, deep enough to swallow his ankles.
This island...
So far, they had really only been circling its edges. Without Jiang Qiao accompanying them, Wang Peng and his group would have been wiped out in that last encounter.
And after killing them, the evil entities would not have stopped.
The very act of setting foot on the island could be said to have breached a spatial boundary.
Once stimulated by living people, the evil entities might well seep out and eventually attack the ships.
"They're not strong enough."
"Looks like this fragile balance has only held thanks to those reclusive old monsters who survived the Mist Era."
"The supernatural is clearly stirring further now."
"Are those old monsters slowly dying off?"
"Or has something else changed?"
Jiang Qiao pondered as he walked.
As he continued onward.
The scene ahead changed.
The ash on the ground gradually thinned, exposing a hard surface. Fine gravel covered it, but splinters of