Chapter 80

Chapter 80

The compass had four needles, the two in the middle looked to be made of gold and silver, with miniature needles about a knuckle long on either side. The face of the dial was carved with strange symbols. Xu Muchan had seen Yan He use a similar compass before—according to Yan He, this kind of compass could measure shifts in the concentration of yin energy nearby.

But this compass was a bit different from Yan He's. For one thing, Yan He's didn't have those strange symbols.

He had no clue what it was meant to detect. Xu Muchan pocketed the compass.

Ou Yangmu next to him seemed to glance his way. Xu Muchan turned, but the other man was just talking to Chai Ming, as if that glance had been his imagination.

Xu Muchan frowned. Although Yan He had said the Ou family had switched professions back in Ou Yangmu's grandfather's generation, the only one who'd gone to the Wei place, survived, and was still active today was Ouyang Yuping.

And now Ou Yangmu just happened to show up at Immortal Village. Given the connection between the Wei family and Immortal Village, it was hard not to let your mind wander.

Rubbing the compass in his pocket, Xu Muchan lowered his eyes, thinking he'd need to find a chance tonight to test it in the wooden tower. If it reacted, maybe he could figure out what Ou Yangmu had been sneaking around doing that morning.

During the brief talk about escape routes just now, he'd noticed Jin Qingqing, Chai Ming, and the others getting restless—danger was closing in and they still couldn't find a way out. They tried hard to hide it, but the agitation showed in the corners of their eyes and brows.

Ou Yangmu, on the other hand, looked totally calm. Two nights in a row, the people who died were all brought in by him, yet he showed no fear, no urgency. Xu Muchan got the feeling he wasn't in any hurry to leave.

With that in mind, Xu Muchan shot another subtle glance at Ou Yangmu, who was discussing with Chai Ming and the others—since no way out could be found in the village, maybe they should look outside. Even though this ghost domain was tied to Immortal Village, the way out might actually be outside.

Ghost domain passages often had no set rules. Most of the time, the only way out was to take down the evil spirits that created the domain, making it collapse. In rare cases, you could force open a temporary passage by various means and get out.

But the monsters that came out at night in Immortal Village were tough to deal with. All they could do was search everywhere for weak spots and see if they could force a passage open.

It was a last resort, though Xu Muchan wasn't optimistic.

When Jin Qingqing asked if he wanted to go along, Xu Muchan thought for a moment and declined: "My brother still hasn't woken up. I'll stay and take care of him, and also look around the village to see if I can find anything else."

Hearing that, the others headed out of the village.

Xu Muchan propped Wei Xilou's body under a tree, pulled out the compass, and looked—the needles were completely still.

He tucked the compass away and walked the village outskirts.

The chicken-head people in the village seemed busy, but their gazes kept following him, their pale red eyes giving off something eerie.

Xu Muchan pulled out the dog-face mask and put it on.

Through the dog-face mask's eyes, he noticed the veins on the chicken-head people's exposed arms were dark gray, as if what ran through their bodies wasn't blood, but some kind of black liquid...

This hadn't been the case on the first day.

Xu Muchan immediately thought of the black river water under the altar platform.

He frowned, locking eyes with a chicken-head person who was secretly watching him from the shadows. The chicken-head person stared at him for a moment, then actually looked away.

Xu Muchan's heart stirred. He took off the dog-face mask and looked at the chicken-head people again.

This time, the other party stared at him without blinking, like a doll, until Xu Muchan put the mask back on—then it looked away. There was a hint of evasion in it, like... fear.

Xu Muchan bit the inside of his lip. None of this had happened before. He wasn't sure if these changes were because Immortal Village itself had shifted over time, or because his brother had suddenly passed out and the black river water under the altar platform had vanished.

Before long, Jin Qingqing and the others who'd gone to scout outside the village came back.

As expected, they found nothing. The whole group was tense and restless, and no one spoke.

And then, inevitably, it started getting dark again.

Xu Muchan's instincts were right—darkness was coming earlier, and the nights were getting longer and longer.

Everyone was already used to scattering and hiding nearby. Xu Muchan also hoisted Wei Xilou onto his back and picked a random house to duck into.

Almost as soon as they were hidden, it switched to deep night.

But this time, Xu Muchan didn't lock the skylight. After settling Wei Xilou on the bed, he climbed up to the skylight and peered out. Once he confirmed everyone was hidden and the monsters hadn't come out yet, he climbed out nimbly.

Wearing the dog-face mask, he carefully closed the skylight, jumped off the roof, and slipped into the night.

Yet after waiting in the dark for a long time, no familiar "gurgle gurgle" came from the wooden tower. The whole village was silent. The moon overhead was round and large, hanging very close to the ground, giving everything an unreal quality.

It was like the moon that had risen from the branches on the banks of the black river.

Xu Muchan pondered for a moment with furrowed brows, then carefully approached the wooden tower.

The wooden tower was utterly silent, without the slightest sound. Xu Muchan peered inside—the altar platform was empty, with nothing on it.

Neither the deep well nor the black river water that had appeared last night had reappeared.

Xu Muchan looked around in confusion, when a faint sound came from his pocket. He reached in and touched the compass he had obtained from Ou Yangmu.

At this moment, the four needles on the compass were spinning continuously. Because the rotation was so wide, the metal needles made faint clicking sounds.

Xu Muchan carefully observed the changes in the needles and found that the constantly spinning needles were gradually all pointing in the same direction—behind the wooden tower.

As far as he remembered, behind the wooden tower was a snow forest. Xu Muchan came out of the wooden tower and followed the direction the needles pointed, walking toward the woods.

The snow forest at night presented an unreal silver-white hue. The overly bright moonlight spilled onto the ice-covered branches, refracting a hazy, dreamlike glow. Deep, heavy cold air drifted within the glow, as if stepping into another world.

The snow forest was vast, with no conventional paths to traverse. Xu Muchan moved through the snow forest following the compass's guidance.

Every tree here seemed to look the same, with only extremely subtle differences. Combined with the monotonous silver-white color, it was easy to lose one's sense of direction. After moving through it for a while, Xu Muchan stopped with a frown.

He had clearly made a point of memorizing the scenery along the way, certain that he had not been walking in circles, yet he had an extremely strong feeling that he was going around in circles in the same spot.

This inexplicable sensation made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Driven by instinct, his body quickly retreated a few steps to the side.

Almost the moment he moved away, the ground where he had been standing began to tremble, as if something was passing beneath the surface, arching the earth upward.

The entire snow forest shook with it. Branches quivered, leaves rustled, producing a rustling sound.

Xu Muchan cautiously observed the heaving ground and found that the area of upheaval was only about a meter wide, but it stretched endlessly in both directions, with no visible beginning or end.

Xu Muchan looked at the compass in his hand and walked forward along the heaving ground.

The further he went, the greater the amplitude of the ground's upheaval. The ice-covered trees trembled and let out whimpering sounds, like the lament of some creature.

At the end of the lament, Xu Muchan saw chicken-head people kneeling in a clearing in the forest.

More precisely, the corpses of chicken-head people.

They remained in the posture they had died in, forming a circle in the snow forest clearing. Their abnormally long arms, with feathers falling off, were linked together, and in their murky, dead pale red eyes, a fierce hatred was visible.

The trembling of the ground originated from beneath them.

Like some kind of ritual.

A string in Xu Muchan's mind was plucked lightly. His gaze shifted from the corpses of the chicken-head people to the heaving ground.

The ground here was churning violently, the ice-covered earth cracking open like skin slashed by a sharp blade, with faint traces of blood seeping out from within.

The blood was black.

It was Black River Water.

Xu Muchan suddenly understood—these Chicken-head people, after realizing ascension was a hoax and seeing their kin die horribly, had no way out, and chose to use their own bodies to summon the Black River.

Just like the wrongly killed villagers of Huangshi Town and the girls of Leigong Village.

But this time, for some reason, it wasn't the tide that swallowed and swept everything away.

Xu Muchan approached cautiously, using his foot to push aside the cracked dirt, and saw the black liquid sluggishly flowing underneath.

The black liquid slithered like a serpent, coming from nowhere and going nowhere.

The compass needle in Xu Muchan's hand spun violently, vibrating slightly from the sheer force of its motion.

Its violent reaction and the direction the needle pointed made its purpose clear—this compass was actually designed to locate the Black River.

But something still didn't make sense. The Black River appeared completely at random, and Xu Muchan himself had only seen it three or four times, while no one at the Heihe Research Institute had ever faced the Black River directly—those who did never came back.

For humanity, the Black River wasn't a safe or friendly word.

Why was Ou Yangmu looking for the Black River?

Xu Muchan thought for a moment, then corrected himself—

Ou Yangmu was searching for a tributary of the Black River.

A Black River tributary.

Xu Muchan still remembered his elder brother mentioning that the first ancestor of the Wei family had once devised a secret technique to imprison a tributary of the Black River beneath the old Wei family estate.

Later, in the generation of Old Master Wei, the Wei family was threatened by the Five Wild Gods and faced annihilation. Coincidentally, Wei Xilou was born at that time, so the Wei family took a desperate gamble, feeding Wei Xilou diluted Black River water, hoping to help him ascend and replace the Five Wild Gods.

Afterward, someone witnessed it all and wanted to emulate Wei Xilou's ascension.

But to emulate the Wei family's ascension, structures like the Ascension Tower were merely superficial—the truly essential part was the Black River tributary, along with a ready-made deity that could be devoured.