Strange Village

"Chi Ao Chi Yin likes to eat people. Wuyou, I like that setting."

Old Yuan's voice before bed seemed to still echo in his ears when Ao Ye's figure vanished from the shore.

All that remained was a headless corpse, its blood flowing along the bank into the river, and a white-furred bull-shaped statue crouching on a stone pedestal by the shore.

The bull-shaped white-furred statue held up a round stone sphere, looking as though it were idly playing with it.

"Ah!!!"

A frail, skinny girl collapsed onto the bamboo raft. Once she came to her senses, she let out a piercing scream at the sight of the headless corpse.

Her long hair hung messily over her shoulders, and her reddened eyes made her look pitiful.

The shorter girl beside her seemed to know her and immediately clung tightly to her.

It was impossible not to be afraid.

Zheng Wuyou considered herself someone who had seen plenty of corpses. She did not think this body would shake her.

But once she realized she was facing death itself, rather than merely a corpse, she could no longer remain as calm as she had when facing cadavers in anatomy class.

This was reverence for death.

The Little Girl beside her lowered her head in fear, but her hand tightly gripped Zheng Wuyou's clothes.

Zheng Wuyou could feel from her constantly trembling hand that she was trying to hold back a scream.

But the Little Girl's state made it impossible for Zheng Wuyou to get up and go ashore to inspect their surroundings.

Instead, a man in dark blue pajamas with an excellent physique was the first to step off the bamboo raft.

He steadily walked onto the shore.

His eyes calmly swept over the surrounding area.

Then he headed first toward the rugged, muddy path by the riverbank, the only path leading into the village.

The path appeared to have gone untouched for years, with weeds already spreading across it.

"Hey, young man, do you know this place?" The uncle in capri pants suppressed his fear. After hesitating, he shut his eyes, took a large step over the corpse lying before the raft, and caught up with him.

"...If we don't leave the raft, we'll die." He gave no further explanation, only that calm reply, a composure chilling enough to make others wary.

Yet Zheng Wuyou immediately caught the key word.

Die.

While comforting the Little Girl earlier, she had observed the surroundings.

They seemed to be halfway up a mountain. Aside from the yellowish hills, there was only muddy water.

And a small mountain village laid out before them.

Anyone who had not watched Village of the Living Dead would not understand Chu Renmei's charm in these elements.

Zheng Wuyou sighed, wondering what force had brought her to this place.

Every sensation and every scene felt real, vividly real.

There was even a half-human monster that liked eating heads, along with a headless corpse.

If she had truly been transported out of thin air from her dormitory on the plains into the depths of a mountainside, then only some unknown force could explain it.

The sky, which had been clear moments ago, was somehow now packed with dark clouds. Zheng Wuyou brushed aside the short hair the wind had blown across her vision and looked up at the heavy layers of clouds gathering over the mountainside.

It looked like a torrential downpour was about to break.

Her instincts told her this was not a good sign.

Perhaps that man was right. If they did not leave the raft, they would die.

Even if the Monster Bullman did not eat them, the rapidly rising river would sweep them downstream.

Then their chances of survival would truly be slim.

"Little sister, stop crying. It's going to rain. We need to leave quickly." Zheng Wuyou did not know where this kindness had come from, but seeing the Little Girl keep clutching her, she could not bear to abandon her alone on the raft.

Perhaps it was because the girl gave her an inexplicable sense of familiarity. Some feature of hers might have resembled one of Zheng Wuyou's relatives.

Whenever she read the apocalypse novels Old Yuan recommended, she had always hated these saintly moments the most.

Yet in this unfamiliar environment, she had briefly become that sort of person herself.

The Little Girl blinked her large, tear-filled eyes and obediently nodded.

Then, with Zheng Wuyou supporting her, she stood up from the bamboo raft.

The two of them left the swaying bamboo raft together.

As they stepped over the headless corpse, the Little Girl squeezed her eyes shut, but Zheng Wuyou could clearly see the soft, jagged wound at its neck.

She could not imagine it.

How many teeth must that mouth have had?

Following the direction the two men had gone, with them clearing the way ahead, the girls luckily entered the mountain village.

Seeing everyone leave one after another, the people remaining on the raft also began pairing up in twos and threes.

They gathered their courage and stepped over the corpse.

The two girls emerged from behind the eaves of a mud house, passed a cesspit giving off the sour stench of fermentation, and reached the dirt road within the village, paved with piled stones.

They had expected the village to be thriving, or at the very least for villagers to be going about their work.

Instead, every household had its doors and windows tightly shut. At the end of the road stood a Two-Story Wooden House that looked slightly better furnished than the other mud houses.

It was far too strange.

This was Zheng Wuyou's first time encountering a mountain village laid out like this. On both sides of the Stone Path stood only two neat rows of Black Soil houses.

Behind the houses lay dry, yellow earth. The fields were filled with withered, dead vegetable sprouts drooping limply onto the ground.

It seemed no one had tended them for a long time.

At the far end stood a distinctive Wooden House, its exterior painted white.

When she turned around, she saw the Black Gate Arch at the village entrance, with an inscribed plaque hanging from it.

Viewed from above, this layout resembled the white funeral banners and black curtains hung at the entrance during a burial.

But the urgent matter now was finding shelter from the rain. Once this downpour began, there was no telling what unforeseen things might happen.

Yet every house in the village had its doors and windows shut tight. Even the space beneath the eaves where they could shelter from the rain was piled full of clutter.

Looking across the village, where everything was visible at a glance, only one household had left its front door half-open.

It was the Wooden House at the end of the Stone Path.

It was as though its owner knew they were coming and had deliberately opened the door to welcome this group of strangers who did not know one another just as the rain was about to pour down.

Through the crack in the door, she could see an elderly man sitting directly opposite the entrance, his face full of sorrow. The faint candlelight magnified every one of his movements.

The old man held a Smoking Pipe in one hand and occasionally brought it to his mouth, seeming to savor it before exhaling choking white smoke into the air.

Several yellowed, indistinct sheets of paper lay beside his other hand.

Inside the doorway stood the man in dark blue pajamas and the uncle in capri pants who had left earlier.

One rested with his eyes closed, while the other looked utterly at a loss.

It seemed they had arrived here long ago.

Seeing people from the same raft standing inside, Zheng Wuyou no longer hesitated.

The wind outside was growing stronger and stronger. They definitely could not stay outdoors any longer.

So she led the Little Girl inside after pushing the door open.

The old man's expression did not change in the slightest at her arrival. He continued smoking his tobacco, the scattered sparks on the pipe flaring and fading with the rise and fall of his lungs.

The room was thick with smoke and reeked of the choking smell of tobacco.

Toothless Pajamas, the first to wake up, entered the room with another powerfully built man. The others from the raft, familiar faces and unfamiliar ones alike, followed in after the crowd one by one despite not knowing what was happening.

Sometimes, herd mentality was a good thing.