"This thing looked pretty scary from a distance, but why is it so disgusting up close..." Tang Cha crouched beside the unconscious Man-Snake, picked up a small stick from the ground, and poked its face.
Tang Cha barely applied any pressure, yet he poked a hole straight through the Man-Snake's face.
Lu Jiancheng said, "No wonder their heads felt so fragile when I was fighting them. They're dead people's heads that have nearly rotted away."
"Tang Cha, stop poking it! That's disgusting!" Xin Xin said with a frown.
He had practically turned the Man-Snake's face into a sieve, and Xin Xin felt every hair on her body stand on end.
"I won't feel better until I've poked it to pieces. This thing chased us for so long, and now I've finally got my hands on it!"
Tang Cha's delight was short-lived. The Man-Snake suddenly opened its eyes and lunged to bite his hand. Fortunately, Ji Xun reacted instantly, grabbing Tang Cha by the collar and pulling him out of its jaws.
Lu Jiancheng used the same trick as before and knocked the Man-Snake out again.
Tang Cha threw away the stick and patted his wildly pounding chest, lingering fear written across his face. "That scared me to death! Scared me to death! You really can't get too cocky."
Fang Rui said, "Are we going to question it here? Shouldn't we find some rope and tie it up first?"
Ji Xun glanced at the monsters watching from the shadows. "Bring it inside."
That was easier said than done. Faced with such a foul-smelling monster, nobody wanted to touch it.
Ji Xun even tipped his face toward the sky, making it clear that he absolutely refused to lay a finger on the stinking thing.
In the end, Lu Jiancheng came up with a solution. He found a coil of hemp rope and a thick pole, and the boys carried the Man-Snake into the house like a pig.
To keep it from hurting anyone when it woke up, Tang Cha practically bundled the Man-Snake into a tightly wrapped dumpling.
Ji Xun actually wanted to tell him there was no need to go to so much trouble. Inside this house, it probably had no ability to hurt anyone at all.
Sure enough, when the Man-Snake regained consciousness and realized it was inside the little house, a flash of terror crossed its ashen face.
Ji Xun spoke coldly. "Where are this village's original residents now?"
The Man-Snake kept glancing toward the bedroom, but stubbornly answered, "I don't know."
His voice was low and hoarse, as though it came through a layer of wet cloth.
Ji Xun said, "Tang Cha, open the bedroom door."
Though Tang Cha did not understand why, he obediently opened the door, exposing the half-excavated cavity in the heated brick bed.
The Man-Snake met the skeleton's eyes. Suddenly, he writhed frantically on the floor as though electrocuted. "I'll talk! I'll talk!"
Ji Xun sneered and had Tang Cha close the door again.
The Man-Snake calmed down, though he still looked at the players with lingering fear. "The villagers... apart from the usable ones, we ate the rest."
"They're people, not objects! What do you mean, 'usable'?" Tang Cha demanded angrily.
The Man-Snake sneered. "The young, able-bodied ones were top-quality goods. What use was there in keeping the inferior ones?"
"You!" Tang Cha was furious, only barely calming down after Fang Rui held him back.
"That's not what I want to hear." Ji Xun crouched down and looked at him with a gaze the Man-Snake knew all too well. "If one more word I don't want to hear comes out of your mouth, I'll let you experience being cooked and eaten yourself. Don't forget, you're the meat on the chopping block now, and I'm the one holding the knife."
The Man-Snake clamped his mouth shut. The instant their eyes met, he felt a chill spread through his entire body, inside and out. He had no doubt that if he had said another word just then, this man really would have tossed him into hot oil and fried him into dried snake.
"We used... took over some people's bodies. Those traitors took the rest away." Seeing Ji Xun narrow his eyes slightly, the Man-Snake hurriedly corrected himself.
"Traitors?"
The Man-Snake said disdainfully, "Those useless fools were assimilated by the villagers. They spend all day crying and demanding to find their children."
Only then did Ji Xun understand. No wonder Tang Cha had said the elderly people in the village were not the villagers they needed to find for the main quest.
They had been replaced too.
But the monsters had not merely taken over the villagers' bodies. They had also inherited their memories. With their original hosts' memories, the monsters gradually became confused about their identities and believed they were villagers born and raised here.
"So, in the end, you still don't know anything?" Ji Xun stood and looked down at the Man-Snake.
Panic seized the Man-Snake, and he struggled desperately to break free of his bonds. "I-I've told you everything I know. Let me go."
Ji Xun looked at him with pity. "When did I ever say I would let you go?"
"You tricked me!" The Man-Snake let out a beastlike roar. Its eyes turned scarlet, and its gaze filled with hatred as it stared at the players.
Scrape-scrape-
A shrill sound burst against their ears. It was not unfamiliar, and all the players turned toward the closed bedroom door.
The Man-Snake stiffened, then began trembling uncontrollably. "Let me go. Please, I'm begging you, let me go. I'll help you find the villagers. I'll take you out of here!"
It crawled toward the front door like a silkworm pupa, but its bound body could no longer slither as quickly as before. Just as it was about to reach the door, Tang Cha seized one end of the rope and forcibly dragged it back.
"I know you're in a hurry, but don't be in such a hurry!"
Xin Xin covered her mouth to hide her smile.
"You little bastard, you're asking to die!"
"I'm not letting you go. Hit me if you can!" Tang Cha looked at Ji Xun. "Bro, should I let him out?"
When Ji Xun nodded, Tang Cha strode forward and pushed open the bedroom door.
A skeleton stood silently behind it. His bloodstained hand bones were still raised, as though he had been trying to push open the door that stood between him and his revenge.
Tang Cha hurriedly stepped aside. The skeleton advanced one halting step at a time, walking with great difficulty, yet he continued resolutely toward the Man-Snake on the floor.
"Should we help him?" Xin Xin asked quietly.
Lu Jiancheng sighed. "No. Let him take his own revenge. That's probably what's kept him going until now."
The skeleton-or rather, Teacher Meng's husband-finally reached the Man-Snake. With nowhere left to retreat, the Man-Snake still struggled desperately. "I wasn't afraid of you alive! Why would I be afraid of a dead man?"
Tang Cha rubbed salt into the wound. "Then why are you backing away? Why did you brick him into the bed? Clearly, you were scared out of your minds."
The skeleton crouched down, raised his long, slender fingers, and plunged them viciously into the Man-Snake's throat.
Though his hand bones had no flesh, they were incredibly hard. They easily pierced the Man-Snake's throat, but he did not stop there.
Again and again, he raised his hand and repeated the motion, until the Man-Snake's human head fell from its serpentine body.
By then, its throat had been reduced to mush. A black snake about twenty centimeters long crawled out from the severed gap between the head and the snake's body.
The snake was pitch-black all over, its eyes cunning and sly.
Before the players could react, the skeleton used his hand bones once more to pin the black snake to the floor.
The snake hissed for a while, then soon stopped moving.
Ji Xun frowned at the sight. "This is bad-"
Before you continue