Human Feeding
Klaus went on and on, eventually explaining all the important points to Yu Xing.
Yu Xing, among others, had already decided to defy most of the rules and thoroughly explore this underground city.
But before that, after seeing Klaus off, he obediently closed the door and planned to check the house thoroughly.
For example, is there a place that connects to the cursed branches of the Ghost Tree, like the bottom of a barrel?
What are some interesting places that he can have fun in?
With her gaze lingering on the futon, Yu Xing's eyes gleamed with excitement and a sense of suicidal glee. She forced herself to look away and turned to the bed.
The bed is also a rattan bed, which is quite firm. I can only say... it's not very comfortable, but it's good for your back.
Yu Xing ran her fingers across the bed, but she couldn't sense any curse. It seemed that this bed, like most of the items, came from the Ghost Tree, but the connection had been severed.
He crouched down and looked under the bed, but found nothing unusual, so he walked to the workbench.
The workbench was clean, but there were a few strange bowl-shaped grooves on the surface, as if they were used to hold something.
Yu Xing touched it, but didn't quite understand it, so she could only leave it for later to learn more.
The last thing that caught his attention was the bookshelf next to him. It was hard to imagine that books would remain in such a deliberately created place of ignorance and isolation as the Underground City.
He walked over and scanned the books from top to bottom, only to find that none of them had titles and their styles could be discerned at a glance.
I pulled one out; the purple cover was a bit rough, like frosted glass. The book itself wasn't thick, but the pages inside were quite thick, probably parchment scrolls. A book like that couldn't possibly contain much information.
Yu Xing lowered her eyes and turned to the first page.
The ink slid randomly across the paper, eventually forming a strange eyeball.
Below his eyeballs was a line of twisted and ancient characters that he couldn't understand. Yu Xing squinted, just about to feel the power contained in the characters, when he discovered that the ink was slowly wriggling and eventually turned into Chinese characters.
[Gazing at you]
The intelligible meaning struck Yu Xing's eyes, and his mind went blank for a moment, as if he were instantly feeling a huge, malevolent gaze.
At that moment, an indescribable sense of dread surged in from all directions, as if every unseen crevice was filled with countless eyeballs, and those eyeballs were always... everywhere...
I'm looking at you, looking at you, looking at you.
The eyeballs drawn on the book pages are also looking at you.
The words that form your vision are looking at you through the glowing screen.
That's the feeling.
Yu Xing covered his forehead, and the power of the curse instantly dissipated from his limbs and bones, gradually offsetting the pollution from the book. He squinted, making his phoenix eyes appear even longer and more dangerous, and revealed a wanton smile as his fingertips rubbed against the pages.
Interesting.
A single book can be filled with such deep resentment; what could it be?
It's so dangerous, why didn't Klaus mention anything about not opening the books when he was rambling on?
Unless... these books aren't dangerous to those inhuman, ghostly puppet spirits, for example—the text doesn't change, so they can't understand it.
Yu Xing's knuckles turned white. The feeling of being watched gradually dissipated within the envelope of the curse's power, and he turned to the next page.
[What the fierce ghosts see is a scene of hell, a point of calamity. Existing solely by resentment, they should crawl in the darkness until they shed their human form.]
What's this?
Yu Xing raised an eyebrow and continued scrolling down.
[Only the purest and most extreme resentment can nourish the seedlings of evil; the eyes of a demon... are fertile ground for such growth.]
On the next page, there is no more text, but a detailed picture.
In the picture, a bowl is placed in the middle, filled with a strange black liquid, with countless eyeballs piled up to the side, and more bottles and jars next to the eyeballs.
On the next page, an eyeball is added to the bowl, and the liquid turns bright red.
On the next page, a swollen and enormous eyeball floats up from the middle of the red liquid, its viscous surface moving like a new life.
On the next page, the bowl tipped over, the eyeball was poured into a relatively narrow bottle, and the liquid was poured into another bowl.
On the next page, a pestle is inserted into the bottle, ignoring the eyeball's frantic attempts to escape, and mashes it into a lump of mud... no, a mass of nerve tissue, with long blood vessels distributed in the shapeless mud, surrounded by shattered eyeball lenses.
On each subsequent page, the eyeballs became increasingly fragmented, until finally, only a black, gooey mass remained in the bottle.
The red liquid was poured into the black paste, and this time, the liquid was completely absorbed, while the black paste gradually turned...
Yu Xing didn't know how to describe it, but looking at the dark blurry pages of the book, she had the illusion that she was seeing the world through that darkness.
It was pitch black, painted with ink, yet the feeling of endless resentment and the atmosphere of the city, the deep mountains, and the desolation was so intense.
The last page.
The dark mass was buried underground, and as it was wriggling, long, complex roots broke through the soil and burrowed into the dark mass. Even through the book, Yu Xing could almost hear the dark mass's mournful howls.
The roots gradually absorbed the dark, sticky substance, growing stronger and thicker until, in the blink of an eye, they stretched for thousands of miles.
Yu Xing closed the book.
I understand now. This book actually records the process of artificially creating nutrients to cultivate the Ghost Tree. That person fed the Ghost Tree with the eyeballs of fierce ghosts, causing resentment to gather in the Ghost Tree, which is why the tree on Dead Silent Island grew so exaggeratedly.
It might not just be the eyes of a demon.
Yu Xing glanced at the remaining twenty-odd books on the bookshelf and fell silent.
He seemed to have stumbled upon the greatest secret about this Ghost Tree, but how could such a book be placed here?
This was definitely not Ghost Tree made on its own initiative; it could only have been left by the person who fed the Ghost Tree. Yu Xing couldn't even imagine what kind of person could have fed the Ghost Tree from when it was just a tiny seedling until it had almost hollowed out the entire island's underground.
Trees can grow, but can humans live that long?
Even Yu Xing, who is capable of resurrection, is uncertain whether his resurrection ability will still exist after a thousand years.
Unless--
Unless you're feeding the Ghost Tree, you don't need to live that long; you can simply jump back and forth between different points in time!
Right, Witch?
Witch wields powers related to time—wouldn't she be the perfect person to feed a Ghost Tree?
Yu Xing chuckled ominously. He wanted to finish reading these books... to see what the feeder had done to this Ghost Tree, and also to see... what the purpose was in deliberately letting him understand these books.
Just then, night fell.
The lights went out.