Deadly Silent Darkness, Has Yue Hongsheng Arrived?

Bulbasaur did not take long to recover completely.

Lin Xia also tested it and confirmed that he could indeed release the toxins of the Earth Crystal Snake and Skyhorn Snake.

This discovery left Lin Xia dumbfounded.

Back in Yue Hongsheng's courtyard, which had been full of poisonous creatures, Lin Xia had not felt anything like this.

Could it have been an effect brought about by his first soul skill, Life Poison?

Otherwise, Lin Xia could find no other explanation.

After all, this was simply far too outrageous.

Turn life into poison, turn poison into life!

Only now did Lin Xia truly understand the power of this soul skill.

If what happened afterward had not occurred, Lin Xia would honestly have been quite grateful to Yue Hongsheng.

If not for him, Lin Xia truly would not have obtained such an excellent soul ring!

With a smile, Lin Xia left the place with Bulbasaur and returned to the village.

Lin Xia did not know whether he had developed a persecution complex, but he pushed open the old side room door of the ancestral hall.

The instant he stepped into the village, an indescribably cold presence seized his heart.

It was too quiet.

Deathly silent, like a tomb.

Even the cicadas that should have been chirping noisily on a summer night had vanished without a trace. The air was not filled with the familiar scent of a village at night.

Instead, there was something else—a heavy smell of humus mixed with a sickeningly sweet metallic stench. It was more concentrated and more domineering than the Rotting Flesh Poison he had sensed on the back mountain, as if viscous blood had settled for a hundred years.

"Danaa!"

Bulbasaur's Vine Whip tensed, wrapping around Lin Xia's ankle and conveying a restless tremor.

The strange seed bulb on its back gently expanded and contracted. It had clearly reacted instinctively to the potent poison permeating the air, but it could also distinctly sense that the threat contained in this smell far surpassed the previous Rotting Flesh Poison.

Every muscle in Lin Xia's body instantly tightened, while the Poison Vine Bone Wings silently gathered strength along his spine.

Something was wrong! This was absolutely wrong!

This was not an aura that an ordinary village should have!

Without the slightest hesitation, Lin Xia scooped up Bulbasaur and practically slammed open the wooden door of the side room.

Using the bleak moonlight outside, his hands moved so fast they left afterimages as he stuffed his few sets of clothes, the Sun-Gathering Mirror, crystal shards, money pouch, and that important record book and awakening materials into his bag in one go. The entire process took no more than five breaths.

"Go!"

Lin Xia's voice was low and urgent. He spun around and rushed out of the side room, heading straight for the village entrance.

Along the way, that spine-chilling sense of deathly silence clung to him like a shadow.

He deliberately softened his footsteps, spreading his spiritual power around him like a spiderweb as he tried to catch even the faintest fluctuation of life—no snoring, no sleep-talking, no crying babies, not even the rustling of rats.

Every low earthen house resembled a silent tombstone, radiating suffocating emptiness.

Bulbasaur was tucked beneath Lin Xia's arm. Soul Power faintly circulated beneath its green skin, and its Vine Whip stood alert, ready at any moment to strike back against an attack that might leap from any corner.

Its red eyes remained fixed on the shadows of the houses on both sides, while a suppressed, steam-like hiss came from its throat.

At last, they neared the relatively open clearing at the village entrance.

Yet the sight before him froze Lin Xia's blood solid!

An unusually bright bonfire burned at the village entrance, its dancing flames staining the entire area a sinister golden red.

And before the bonfire stood every villager of Skyhorn Village, packed together in dense rows!

Men, women, old people, and children—including the lean, dark-skinned old village chief who had been fearful and wary during the day!

They stood motionless, like wooden carvings or clay statues.

Under the firelight, their faces were incomparably stiff, their eyes hollow like dolls whose souls had been gouged out. There was no focus, no emotion, only a dead-ash numbness so unsettling it made his scalp prickle.

What made Lin Xia's heart pound even harder was the huge, familiar figure lying on the ground before those "living dead" villagers!

It was that thousand-year Skyhorn Snake!

Its current state could only be described as miserable.

Its enormous dark-green body had been forcibly torn apart and bitten through at the middle, split into two halves!

Its organs, mixed with thick purplish-black blood and shattered bones, spilled from the enormous wound and dyed the ground red.

The scales along the edges of the wound had turned charred black, as if crystallized. The severed section was a mangled mass of flesh, bearing nauseating serrated bite marks—the imprint of that enormous maw faintly overlapped with the terrifying scythe-like jaws Lin Xia had glimpsed in the shadows of the canopy!

A sweet, rusty stench a hundred times stronger than before mixed with the reek of corpses, spreading through the air almost tangibly.

Lin Xia abruptly stopped in the shadows at the edge of the village entrance.

He felt a chill shoot from the soles of his feet to the top of his skull, every hair on his body standing on end!

Fuck...

Lin Xia roared madly inside, the corners of his mouth nearly twitching out of control.

Does everywhere I go collapse? Am I some kind of bad-luck star?!

Yue Hongsheng keeps haunting me, I run into soul beast nests wherever I go, and now even an awakening mission comes with a thousand-year soul beast hunting me down plus a bizarre transformation of the entire village?! I'm only seven years old! I just want to keep a low profile and grow in peace. What did I do wrong?!

The frantic complaints and terror in his heart surged like a tsunami, nearly swallowing him whole.

But the nerves honed by countless desperate escapes stretched to their limit at that moment.

Lin Xia forced himself to take a deep breath of the foul, pungent air and forcibly suppressed the storm raging within him.

The muscles on his face twisted briefly before he finally forced out an extremely stiff smile, one that desperately tried to convey confusion and surprise.

He set Bulbasaur down and took a few steps forward, exposing himself at the edge of the bonfire's glow. He did his best to keep his voice steady, with the slight confusion expected of a Spirit Hall deacon.

"Village Chief? Everyone? What... what is going on? It's so late. Why are you all out here?"

"And this... this snake... who brought this thing..."

Lin Xia pointed at the terribly mutilated snake corpse on the ground.

"...here? Are you all right?"

Lin Xia's gaze locked tightly onto the old village chief nearest to him.

Yet the old village chief's weathered face, which had shown worldly cunning and shrewdness during the day, now looked as though it were covered by a waxy mask.

His lips were slightly parted, but he showed no intention of answering.

There was no anger in those clouded eyes, no fear, not even the wariness from earlier that day. All of it had vanished completely, leaving only lifeless, vacant dullness.

And it was not just him.

Lin Xia's gaze swept across face after face—a woman holding a child, a curled-up old man, sturdy hunters... every single one of them was the same!

They paid no heed to his abrupt appearance, his loud questions, or the conspicuous giant snake corpse behind him!

The villagers merely stood stiffly, like stage backdrops manipulated by invisible strings. Their hollow eyes passed indifferently through him, fixed upon the depths of empty darkness.

Cold sweat instantly soaked Lin Xia's back!

Could it be Yue Hongsheng?