Undying Body

This was a road that seemed to have no end. Whether they walked forward or backward, they could never reach the end of it. They could neither reach the mountaintop nor descend toward the farmstead at the foot of the mountain.

Team Leader Zhou parted a patch of weeds and emerged from the jungle, only to find himself still halfway up the mountain. Far below, fields crisscrossed one another, ancient homes glimmered with faint firelight, and a tall mill stood by the river. In the distance, a village lay hidden in darkness, its full shape impossible to make out.

They had been walking for seven or eight hours. By now, dawn should have broken, but the world remained shrouded in darkness.

Everyone had stayed up all night without eating or drinking, and they had been running around for seven or eight hours straight. Their mental and physical states were both nearing their limits. The bizarre situation they faced only magnified the fear and panic in their hearts to the extreme.

"We're doomed, doomed! We're all doomed!" Xiao Huang's lips were so dry that they had turned white and split open. He slammed his hat onto the ground and refused to move another step.

"We can't get out! We must have run into a Ghost Wall!" A Kai kept licking his lips, his body parched to the limit.

"This isn't going to work, Captain!" Da Tou looked toward the foot of the mountain, then up at the sky.

But just as Da Tou raised his head, he saw black rain falling from the sky. No—it wasn't rain. It was black ash.

"Is it raining?" Da Tou felt something land on his face.

"How can there be black rain?"

"It isn't rain! It's... ash?" Team Leader Zhou wiped the ash from his face. The black dust stained his face and hand completely black.

Ash poured down endlessly from the sky, landing on their faces. They looked up and immediately saw that the sky, where the moon had remained invisible until now, had gained a dark-red moon climbing above the clouds.

The moon was a half-circle, like a blade, like blood.

Ash fell like rain. The crescent moon was a brilliant red, and the clouds in the sky were torn apart and stained black, forming a bizarre shape. The entire sky was reflected in shades of red and black. Its beauty carried an aura of terror and horror.

"This... this isn't normal!" Da Tou could no longer keep up his pretense of calm. Terror appeared on his face.

"How can there be a moon like that?"

"Where... where exactly are we trapped?"

"Captain! Captain, what should we do?" Everyone kept looking toward Team Leader Zhou, as though he were the pillar holding them up.

"Dong!"

At that moment, a crisp sound came from the distance. The clear toll of a bell reverberated, dragging out a long echo and startling the already-panicked group like frightened rabbits.

"Where did that bell come from? The temple? Or the foot of the mountain?" Team Leader Zhou looked around, but his gaze immediately fixed on the mountain below.

It wasn't because he had found the source of the bell. Rather, firelight had appeared below—a long row of flames, as though a multitude of people were carrying torches or lanterns up the mountain.

"People! People are coming up the mountain! We can follow them. If we follow them, we'll be able to get out!" Xiao Huang sprang to his feet and shouted toward the foot of the mountain.

"We're here! We're here!" Xiao Huang's shout traveled through the air.

"People are finally coming up the mountain! Captain, we can finally leave this damned place!" The others stood as well. Even though they were veteran police officers, this bizarre place had left their hands and feet numb with fear.

"Something's wrong. Don't move yet! Watch and observe!" Team Leader Zhou sensed that something was off.

There had originally been only a dozen or so lights below the mountain. But as they continued moving uphill, the procession carrying torches grew larger and larger, and the line of fire stretched farther and farther.

A dozen or so. More than twenty.

After turning around a mountain path, they instantly became a long dragon of more than forty people, winding steadily uphill along the trail.

"They're coming! They're coming! They're finally here!" Xiao Huang was overcome with excitement as he pointed at the approaching procession.

"They must be rescue workers!" A Kai nodded.

"Why aren't they using flashlights? Why use torches?"

"Everyone, be careful. Take out your guns and stay alert."

Team Leader Zhou kept shaking his head, still ordering everyone to remain on guard.

At that moment, the firelight in the distance finally appeared before them on the descending path. But the joy on everyone's faces froze in an instant, because the people coming up were dressed in strange black robes.

What they held aloft were not torches, but silver candlesticks. Bizarre white candles burned with bluish-green flames. As they advanced, they did not walk at all—instead, they spun and leaped without pause.

They sang strange songs in a language none of them could understand, their exaggerated movements dancing wildly. They looked like marionettes, pulled by strings and jerked into exaggerated swaying.

They raised their candlesticks and danced and sang without pause, as if holding a grand ball.

They marched in neat ranks, keeping an orderly rhythm as they came up the mountain. Every one of them swayed from side to side, wobbling forward. The Red Moon bathed the entire mountain in the color of flowing blood, while the falling black ash blurred the whole world.

"Dazed and hazy! Slaughtering through blood! Hee hee hee hee!" The black-robed figure at the head sang and danced, finally erupting into a maniacal laugh.

"Mother killed me, Father ate me." A short black-robed shadow that looked like a child followed behind, uttering an even more terrifying line.

"Brothers and sisters sat beneath the table, picked up my bones, and buried them in the cold stone tomb." Another little figure of roughly the same height leaped out with a candlestick and shrieked the latter half of the song.

"La la la la la ah!"

"Wuu wuu wuu wuu wuu!"

The eerie black shadows behind them followed along, calling out the accompaniment in unison.

"La la la la la ah!"

"Wuu wuu wuu wuu!"

The group had been delighted just moments earlier, but when they saw this bizarre scene, a chill swept over their entire bodies. The expressions on their faces slowly stiffened, turning deathly pale.

At that moment, the black-robed figure at the head, who held his candlestick high, turned and glanced at them. He raised his head, revealing their true appearances beneath the black robes.

They had faces made of bound straw, and their hands were made of straw as well. The candlesticks had been thrust directly into them, preventing them from turning easily. They could only move with a sway from side to side.

A sheet of paper was pasted over each face, with crooked features drawn on it like a child's doodle. In the darkness, they looked even more terrifying. Their eyes were black stones—not carefully embedded, but more like violently slapped and stuffed into place.

This was a procession of scarecrows: scarecrows that could move and sing.

Team Leader Zhou and the others were drenched in cold sweat, their calves trembling nonstop. Terror and fear sank deep into their souls and devoured every shred of reason. The frenzied singing drilled into their ears as if gnawing at their spirits.

They wanted to draw their guns and make the creatures stop, but they could not move even a single finger. They wanted to run, but their feet would not budge. They wanted to shout and roar, but they found that their throats could not produce a single sound.

The black-robed scarecrows circled around them once, then continued toward the mountaintop. From above, the procession carrying candlesticks looked as if it had tied a knot, with Team Leader Zhou and the others trapped inside it.

They remained motionless in the center. Then their gazes slowly dulled, and straw began sprouting from their bodies as though plants were taking root and budding. The withered yellow straw devoured their flesh, their eyes, and their brains.

They raised their hands, and a phantom candlestick appeared in each of them.

When the procession reached its tail, they immediately filled the gaps.

By then, they had become identical monsters. A sheet of doodled paper covered each straw face, with two irregular stones stuffed into it. They raised their torches, moved in exactly the same manner, swaying from side to side as they advanced in a daze.

"La la la la la ah!"

"Wuu wuu wuu wuu!"

The procession continued uphill. The farther it went, the more people who had previously vanished in the mountains could be seen joining it. Their numbers grew from dozens to hundreds.

They continued approaching the mountaintop, drawing near the Necro Tree towering there, hundreds of meters high and still swelling madly. Compared with the outside world, its body here had expanded tenfold, making it look like a pillar supporting the heavens.

The Necro Tree lashed its long vines wildly through the sky, like the shadows of devils dancing overhead.

At that moment, the blood-red sky was torn apart. White light illuminated the entire world, as though a bolt of lightning had pierced through it and cleansed everything.

A figure as radiant as the sun appeared in the sky, illuminating the entire Illusory World.

He tore open the sky of this world. The instant he charged in, he fixed his sights on the enormous demonic tree atop the mountain, and fierce light burst from between his fingers.

"Divine Art: Holy Storm!"

A violent storm of light swept up from the mountaintop and spread in an instant, annihilating and grinding everything atop the mountain to nothing.

Dust billowed, ash scattered, and shattered stones kept tumbling from the mountaintop. Smoke rose hundreds of meters into the air, while exploding sparks fell toward the foot of the mountain like meteors.

"Roar!"

A tremendous roar of pain came from the mountaintop. Along with it, the entire world shook continuously. The Red Moon in the sky dimmed and faded, and the black ash stopped falling.

Yet amid the roar, the demonic tree that should have been erased grew back once more. Enormous power erupted from it, and its vines shot thousands of meters into the air in an instant, wrapping toward Fang Xiu.

On those vines, Fang Xiu saw bizarre faces on every single one, like terrifying nightmares that roared, cursed, and spat maledictions at him.

Fang Xiu discovered that after entering this Illusory World, his power had swelled to its absolute peak. At the same time, the power of that demonic tree had also swelled to its absolute peak.

Countless vines lashed the sky. Everywhere he looked, its nightmare whips roared and radiated bizarre power as they pursued and bit at Fang Xiu.

"Implosion Spell!" Fang Xiu used the spell brought by Saintly Posture, bombarding the demonic tree without pause. A red sphere of light fell to the ground and merged into the Necro Tree's body before exploding in an instant.

"It still won't die? What exactly is going on? Is this an undying body?" Fang Xiu raised his head and looked beyond the world, immediately discovering that the Necro Tree in the outside world had revived once more.

"Are both of them its true bodies? Must they be killed simultaneously to kill it?"

"What the hell is this thing?"

Fang Xiu immediately realized just how difficult it was to deal with anything even remotely connected to the word "god."

"Rumble!"

At that moment, a violent explosion suddenly came from the real world above. The Illusory World shook violently along with it.

Fang Xiu raised his head and saw the Necro Tree in the real world being torn apart and blasted to pieces. Fierce flames completely ignited the mountaintop, while the trunk of the Necro Tree burned into a field of wreckage amid the artillery fire.