A Lovely Figure Behind Him, Black River Cableway

The sky brightened, and the rain gradually weakened.

The colossal beast glimpsed in that fleeting instant vanished without a trace, as though it had been nothing but an illusion.

He drew a deep breath, suppressing the shock in his heart, then returned to sit beside the fire, temporarily abandoning the chance to slip away.

Compared to outside, it seemed safer in here.

Yao Yuzhi said nothing either. She withdrew her gaze, bent her slender waist as she sat down, and the two simply sat around the fire in a daze, each harboring their own thoughts.

Only after the firewood had burned out and the charcoal glowed red did Chu He rise to inspect outside. Seeing that the rain had stopped and mist was billowing everywhere, he turned back and said, "The rain has stopped. Miss Yao, let us part ways here. Until we meet again."

With that, Chu He turned and walked out the door.

Outside, the mist was hazy. A bluestone path lay across the ground, stretching some ten meters before connecting to a black trail paved with obsidian.

Washed by the rain, the obsidian was deep and smooth like black gemstones.

It was said that obsidian produced a special fluctuation that could conceal the scent of the living on a person, making sixty percent of the strange entities unable to smell it. That was precisely why obsidian was used to pave roads.

Chu He stepped onto the path and pushed off with both feet. The puddles rippled lightly as he shot toward Black River Town like an arrow loosed from the bowstring.

As he passed a fork in the road, Chu He abruptly stopped. His expression darkened slightly as he turned to look at the figure behind him. "Miss Yao, what is the meaning of this?"

"..."

A breeze swept through the woods, gently stirring the veil hanging from her conical hat. Her fair, lovely chin flickered in and out of view, yet the person behind him remained silent.

Just as Chu He was pondering her intentions, Yao Yuzhi suddenly raised a jade-like hand to hold down the slowly lifting veil and said softly, "Mm... Chu... Chu He, take me out of the Misty Forest. Name your terms..."

"This..."

Chu He looked at the woman before him in confusion.

Hadn't he already told her how to leave the Misty Forest? As long as she followed the narrow trail and kept heading north, she could leave the forest.

Why did she need him to lead the way?

At once, Chu He became wary, suspecting that she harbored ill intentions.

"My apologies, Miss Yao, but I am accustomed to traveling alone."

Chu He politely declined.

Yao Yuzhi flipped her palm. A flash of gold glinted, and with a light toss, she threw a gleaming gold ingot toward Chu He.

Chu He frowned. He wrapped his fingers in a golden film and caught the ingot. After confirming that nothing was wrong with it, he turned his head and said displeasedly, "Miss Yao, do you take Chu for the sort of man who covets wealth? I said I am used to being alone, and that is that."

His fingertips lightly rubbed the ingot's surface. It weighed at least three taels—back in the small mountain village where Chu He had been born, that would have been an enormous fortune.

"Is it not enough?"

The black veil swayed as Yao Yuzhi murmured softly.

"No, this is not about money or—"

Before he could finish, she tossed over another gold ingot.

Chu He frowned, feeling deeply insulted.

"No, you—"

"Wait, let me finish—"

"Listen to me first—"

"Fine, you win."

Looking at the four or five gold ingots in his hands, Chu He stopped his feeble protests.

She certainly knew how to bury people in money.

Chu He came from a poor background and did not even have a few taels of silver on him.

To be honest, he truly could not withstand the temptation of money.

"Is it all right now?"

Yao Yuzhi walked up to Chu He and blinked her eyes.

"Haha, certainly. I was heading to Black River Town anyway. Taking you out of the Misty Forest is merely along the way." Chu He smiled warmly, with no trace of the distant coldness he had shown before.

"Then let's go."

Yao Yuzhi tilted her fair, jade-like neck as she spoke while walking.

"Sure."

Chu He agreed readily and tucked the gold ingots into his clothes. Yet after only a few steps, he suddenly stopped again. Noticing his strange behavior, Yao Yuzhi's veil trembled as she turned and asked, "Why have you stopped?"

"Uh..." Chu He wore an odd expression as he pointed toward another fork. "That direction is north. That is the road to Black River Town."

Yao Yuzhi's body stiffened, but she forced herself to remain calm.

"Mm, I know."

With that, she turned around and left, while Chu He quietly followed behind her.

He raised a brow, seeming to understand why she had been following him.

Black River Town.

The black waters churned without cease, splashing up scattered waves.

The several-meter-wide Blackwater River flowed along the edge of a sparse forest. A massive stone fortress had been built snugly against the river's outer bank. To reach the Misty Forest on the opposite shore, there was only a two-meter-wide iron-chain cableway.

Beneath the cableway surged the raging black water, its pungent stench wafting from the river. Hideous, bizarre heads occasionally surfaced from within, their scarlet eyes like the red lanterns hung outside every household during the New Year.

As Hong Shou lay on the verge of death, he had told Chu He about the nature of Earth River Village. At its root, it was merely a driving point for a great formation. Dozens of villages like theirs, each serving as a driving point, were scattered throughout the Misty Forest.

The destroyed Plow Village had been one of them as well.

The true object that powered them lay in the deepest depths beneath the village. No one knew what it was. They only knew that at certain intervals, a strange entity resembling a human head would be born around the village.

At such times, the martial guards stationed in the village would contact the imperial court and join forces to suppress and capture these head-type strange entities, sealing them within the Land God Temple.

They would temporarily serve as replacements to protect the village.

Once a Head Ghost's strange aura had been mostly worn away, another human-head ghost would be born, repeating the cycle and replacing the previous Land God statue.

Whenever Chu He thought of this, he found it inexplicably familiar.

Wasn't this renewable energy?

Naturally, such a thing came with dangers. Should the seal be broken by accident, the entire village's people would be buried with it.

Plow Village was the lesson written in blood.

What happened to Earthhead Village had been purely a man-made disaster. Had Hong Shou not possessed half a token, the human-head ghost Li Fang had stitched together could only have wielded the power of its hair. Otherwise, Earthhead Village's fate might not have been much better than Plow Village's.

And the central hub of all these driving points... was Black River Town before them!

Chu He stood on the bank of the Black River. The gale that whipped up the waves blew against him, sending his flowing black hair flying. Wild exhilaration swelled in his eyes, and he dearly wanted to raise his voice and shout into the wind.

But...

He suppressed those intense emotions, and in the end, they became nothing more than a heavy sigh.

"I've finally left the Misty Forest."

The dense, oppressive fog was gone, and the sight before him suddenly opened wide. His mood improved without his realizing it. Though faint mist still drifted about, to Chu He, it was already negligible.

A faint layer of blue light appeared before Yao Yuzhi, offsetting most of the fierce wind. Yet the fishy gale still outlined her shapely, graceful figure in exquisite detail.

Yao Yuzhi blinked her bright eyes.

At the same time, she let out a sigh of relief inwardly.

After being trapped in the forest for more than ten days, she had finally made it out.

She turned her gaze toward Chu He, who was sighing beside her.

Chu He gathered his emotions and turned toward Yao Yuzhi, just about to speak when his neck suddenly went cold, and a faint sense of danger coiled around his heart.

.