Unlike Huang Jun, Yao Shunyu had long since guessed that the villagers weren't human. Li Bai had told him about the monstrous infants hatched from the clay figures underground, and these villagers were clearly what those infants had grown into.
The entire Heishui Village was a gigantic nest—the nest of Zhusheng Niangniang.
As he lay on the brink of death, Luan Lihui had detonated the explosives. He was a man of blood and guts, unwilling to be killed just like that. Even if he had to die, he would take Zhusheng Niangniang and those damned villagers down with him.
Unfortunately, he had underestimated how resilient these creatures were. Zhusheng Niangniang, standing very close to the blast's center, had barely been affected. Only a large patch of the dry clay covering her body had been blasted away, revealing the bruised, bluish skin beneath.
No one knew what material the enormous red veil was made of, but it had remained completely still in the terrible blast.
The villagers nearby seemed to realize that their identities had been exposed. They no longer bothered hiding what they were, standing where they were with terrifying appearances and glaring venomously at Yao Shunyu and Huang Jun.
Huang Jun nervously swallowed. Though shocked, he couldn't help feeling relieved. If—if he had really chosen to go second, would this terrible hanging punishment have fallen on him?
It seemed that dead infant wasn't anything good, either. Maybe it only brought people misfortune.
The enormous explosion hadn't affected Zhusheng Niangniang, but it had overturned several boxes of offerings on the palanquin. Several corpses, skinned and disemboweled, tumbled out.
Though the bodies were a bloody, mangled mess, Yao Shunyu could still tell from the scraps of their torn clothes that they were the men who had been imprisoned in Heishui Village.