Could he just be imagining things?
After looking around and seeing nothing, Xie Fan frowned slightly. He suspected he was simply getting paranoid. After all, this was his first time going out alone at night.
Besides, the entire village was far too quiet, so quiet that it made him inexplicably uneasy. He gently pressed a hand over his heart, suppressed his emotions, then raised his head to get his bearings.
He remembered that when the protagonist group came in, they should have taken this road...
Recalling the route he had happened to overhear that day while looking for "Sun Zhou," Xie Fan shifted direction.
There wasn't a trace of light in the pitch-black night sky. The entire path was illuminated solely by the candle in his hand. The gloomy white candlelight fell across the large trees beside the village, making the entire place seem submerged in deathly silence. Even the wooden houses he passed, each with its doors and windows tightly shut, somehow looked... fake.
Xie Fan instinctively glanced aside. The farther he walked, the more he felt as though gazes were seeping out from behind those windows, watching him.
But how was that possible?
No one lived along this particular route. The only two households nearby had already gone to the village chief's place earlier.
Xie Fan brought the candle closer in front of himself and let out a sigh of relief. Once his surroundings became clearer, he realized that at a time like this, light really did provide a sense of security. And...
As he smelled the honey fragrance coming from the candle, his heart gradually calmed down.
The soft, sweet scent drifted gently from the white candle, relaxing his expression. Without realizing it, he made his way through the village paths.
After walking for who knew how long, Xie Fan finally saw a concealed mountain slope behind the village chief's house...
He'd made it!
As long as he passed through the woods and found the giant rock, he would know whether he could get out.
Xie Fan wasn't entirely sure himself, but he had already come this far. The threshing ground where the protagonist group was gathered lay downhill. There was no room left for regret.
After one last glance at the bonfire far below, he gathered his courage and plunged headfirst into the woods.
The very instant he entered the forest, there was a "rumble."
Down the mountain, the village chief was holding a candle and preparing to light a torch when an explosive sound suddenly erupted beside his ears.
The change came so abruptly that no one had expected the flames to suddenly surge upward, swiftly engulfing his entire wrist.
Through the firelight, Shen Xun and the others were all startled. Even He Cheng, who had never liked the village chief, frowned.
But once the flames receded, he realized it had merely been a false alarm. The village chief hadn't actually been burned.
The atmosphere became faintly stagnant.
"Village Chief, are you all right?"
A-Qi's lips moved as he turned around, looking somewhat puzzled.
Those outsiders had been sitting too far away to see clearly. Only he had seen that, for a split second, the flames really had swallowed the village chief's wrist. But...
He gave his uncle a strange look.
The village chief coughed softly, seemingly puzzled as well.
"I'm fine."
The flames still left him with lingering fear, but what frightened him even more was—
That one seemed to have... opened its eyes just now?
But the sensation had vanished again after only an instant.
Had something happened?
The outsiders were still here, so the village chief didn't dare dwell on it. He barely managed to collect himself and spoke with a genial smile.
"I heard from A-Qi that someone got soaked in the rain today. Are you all right?"
"If you're feeling unwell, our village has a specially prepared medicine for colds. It works fairly well."
Following A-Qi's gaze, he looked meaningfully toward the handsome young man in the white outdoor jacket sitting in the middle.
Shen Xun hadn't expected the village chief to suddenly ask about him. He coughed twice.
"There's no need, Village Chief. I'm already feeling much better now."
He had regained consciousness after taking medicine that afternoon. Although he was still somewhat dizzy, it wasn't anything serious.
Besides, to tell the truth, he didn't particularly dare try some secret medicinal concoction from this village.
Ever since his fever had gone down, he had felt somewhat uncomfortable in this village, especially whenever he saw those white candles.
Shen Xun collected himself. After speaking a couple more sentences, he coughed again and instinctively picked up the hot water in front of him.
To welcome the tour group, the cups in front of Tan Qingxian and the others were filled with the village's homemade honey wine. Only Shen Xun, because he was sick, had been given hot water instead.
After drinking it, Shen Xun finally felt the irritating tickle in his throat ease somewhat.
The village chief glanced at him, the same doubt A-Qi had experienced that afternoon surfacing in his mind. However, he quickly came back to himself and instructed A-Qi to light the dry grass placed in front of everyone on the threshing ground.
"This is a special ritual unique to our village. Outsiders who have just entered the village all have to be smoked with dry fire. It wards off evil and dispels miasma."
"Wards off evil and dispels miasma?"
Tan Qingxian seemed somewhat puzzled. Holding his cup of wine, he smiled.
"Is that necessary in the village too?"
The village chief's expression remained unchanged. "You live outside, so you wouldn't know. Our village is deep in the mountains, where there's a lot of miasma. If you stay too long, you'll gradually become mentally exhausted without realizing it and start hallucinating."
"Warm yourself over the fire for a while, and you'll feel better."
Tan Qingxian had expected the village chief to tell him some kind of superstitious legend. Unexpectedly, his explanation actually sounded somewhat reasonable, making Tan Qingxian's expression turn strange.
He Cheng, on the other hand, looked toward Shen Xun after hearing the village chief's words.
"Could the dream you had last night have been caused by the miasma when we first entered the mountains?"
Shen Xun had spent almost the entire day feverish and groggy, so he had barely thought about last night's dream at all. It was only after He Cheng reminded him that he recalled it.
But just as he was about to say something, he suddenly coughed again.
"You okay?"
He Cheng frowned.
"I'm fine."
Shen Xun shook his head. He wasn't sure whether it was because he had been exposed to the wind outside for too long, but his head was starting to ache again.
On the mountain:
Xie Fan, who had entered the woods, knew absolutely nothing about what was happening on the threshing ground.
After following the winding path for more than ten minutes, he suddenly stopped, his expression becoming strange.
Had he gotten lost?
No.
He wasn't lost.
Before entering the woods, from where he had been standing, he could see the firelight from the village chief's house down the mountain.
He could still see it now.
Even the angle was exactly the same.
So after walking for more than ten minutes, he was actually still in the same place?
Xie Fan lowered his head and looked at the footprints on the mountain path.
Sure enough, there was no way out of this place.
When the thought surfaced in his mind, Xie Fan actually felt as though it was exactly what he had expected.
He knew it couldn't possibly be this easy.
If escaping were really that simple, the protagonist group wouldn't have ended up completely wiped out.
Still, at least he had confirmed one thing—
Leaving the village wasn't possible.
Even Xie Fan himself hadn't expected to calm down so quickly. After realizing that no matter what he did, he couldn't make his way out, he took a deep breath and simply sat down cross-legged to rest for a few minutes and recover his strength.
After all, he had been climbing the mountain for quite a while. With his pathetic stamina, he was exhausted too.
The moment he relaxed, fatigue flooded his entire body. Xie Fan felt as though his shoulders and legs were aching to death.
After all, this wasn't some mountain trail developed for tourists. Climbing it was anything but easy.
The soreness in his muscles made him frown. Squatting on the ground, he casually massaged them a couple of times. Once the aching in his calves eased slightly, he couldn't help supporting himself against a tree trunk as he stood up.
But the next second, Xie Fan's movements abruptly froze.
He seemed to have...
touched something?
The faint sensation of an insect beneath his hand made his entire body stiffen, and he immediately tried to fling his hand away.
But when he instinctively raised the candle toward the tree trunk, he discovered that it wasn't an insect.
Xie Fan, who had an instinctive aversion to bugs, breathed a sigh of relief.
It was only a leaf that had been soaked soft by the rain.
A false alarm.
That scared him to death.
His heart was pounding wildly, and his entire body was covered in cold sweat. He had only just begun to relax when he suddenly realized something.
Hadn't his reaction just now been a little excessive?
It wasn't as though he had never lived in the village before.
He hadn't been that afraid of insects before either. After all, things like that were extremely common in the village.
But the instant he'd suspected that he'd touched a bug just now, every inch of Xie Fan's skin had crawled, dense goosebumps breaking out all over his body.
It was almost as though...
he instinctively feared something.
That dizziness returned before his eyes.
Xie Fan inexplicably began to feel sleepy. He immediately pinched his thigh viciously.
Something was wrong.
Something was seriously wrong.
No matter how sleepy he was, there was no way he should be falling asleep in a place like this.
Yet wave after wave of drowsiness continued coursing through his body. There seemed to be a voice in his mind telling him:
If you're tired, just rest.
It's all right.
Xie Fan desperately resisted for what felt like ages, only for his thoughts to become increasingly muddled.
Realizing that he was about to sink into that strange, hazy state of mind again, he tightly grabbed hold of a tree branch.
One final thought flashed through his mind.
Suppressing his fear, Xie Fan forced himself to look again at the leaves that resembled insects.
Insects...
There was something wrong with his memory!