Su Yu's Secret

Days passed one by one, and Shen Qingzhou seemed to have completely forgotten what had happened at the ancestral hall that day.

He gradually adapted to life here, but he also began to notice many things that sent chills down his spine.

For instance, the people here seemed to live according to some fixed pattern. At set times, they did the same things without the slightest deviation. Every time they wiped their sweat while tilling the fields, every time they bent down, neither more nor less, day after day.

Even the songs they chanted were exactly the same.

If that were all, it would have been one thing. But he had walked through the entire village and found that the women drawing water always carried exactly the same amount each time, even their rope knots never changing.

The men weaving bamboo baskets coughed once every twelve strokes. The children passing along the muddy road even seemed to fall in familiar poses.

These people seemed to be repeating the same days, day after day, year after year, trapped within a certain stretch of time.

After a Hunting Demon died, its body turned into a heap of ashes. Within those ashes lay a cloudy crystal.

They used the ashes to farm, brought the crystals back to the ancestral hall for sacrifice, and exchanged them for seeds and food. The villagers repeated this process, over and over without end.

Whenever Shen Qingzhou tried to ask about it, the villagers either answered with complete nonsense or merely smiled faintly and brushed the matter aside.

Once, he saw a villager wounded by the Dream Demon. What flowed from the wound was not blood, but a pale green liquid, like the sap of bamboo, carrying the fragrance of bamboo leaves.

Shen Qingzhou's heart immediately turned cold.