Chapter 254 - Darkness (V)

"AWWUAAAATTT!!"

Strange 'howls' (groans? growls? a mix of those, probably) echoed out throughout the forest at fairly predictable intervals. Sometimes they were deep and sonorous, sometimes they were high-pitched, sometimes long and sometimes short. There was no true pattern to them, but after about a day of listening to them, we kind of got used to and weren't startled every time.

In the meantime, we faced two more beasts--one stood upright, though less so like a person and more like... I don't know, a werewolf might? Its legs were angled awkwardly, though its torso and arms were eerily person-like. All the same, it was consumed by strange growths, too, as was the other one who was much closer in appearance to the first one we've seen.

The two were dispatched by the kids within one strike, too, as they weren't particularly strong.

While all that was happening, I was mostly distracted by the hint that wasn't so much a hint as it was a vague statement. Follow a voice? What voice? Were there people in this place? Not as far as I could tell, anyway.

The only voice-like sound, even, were those howls, and even if we wanted to, we couldn't really follow them, per se, as they seem to originate from different parts of the forest.

I feel a bit cheated, to be honest, as I'd expected something a bit more concrete.

Nonetheless, it did confirm at least one thing: the garden, or at least its ersatz, was real and was somewhere in this place. Where?

Yeah.

That was the big question.

We did start sort of relaxing after the first few encounters and even dared go a bit deeper from the edge, which was also when I started notice a few... differences. Nothing major, or even particularly 'worrying' in any way, but different enough for me to pick up on them.

The first one was that the 'rotation' of Qi, as it were, was a bit slower.

Second one was less magical, as it was just that the humidity in the air was actually present. On the outskirts, the air was practically bone-dry. Reminded me of the very first cheap AC Yas and I got for the apartment and how it dried the living shit out of the place until we started leaving glasses of water everywhere.

While still dry, it was a bit odd that it was 'wetter' here.

Thirdly, and kind of in conjunction with the humidity, the air was getting... warmer. I mean, it might be my brain that's on backwards, but shouldn't it be the other way around? Hotter near the edges and then cooler as we inch deeper in?

The last one, and perhaps the most 'worrying' one, was that it was... too perfect. The trees weren't identical, no, but they were perfectly spaced out. No, seriously, if I had a measuring tape with me and started doing some measuring, I'd probably find out that they are perfectly spaced, with an inch or two of the rounding error.

All the other inconsistencies I could just handwave away with some notorious world magic that I was yet to grasp, but the last one was freaking me out a bit. I won't say (yet) that the forest's designed, but if there was some ADHD-addled kid who wanted to design a forest, it might just turn out to look something like this.

However, as nobody pointed it out... I kept my mouth shut. I don't want to make a fool of myself by saying it out loud only to learn that this type of a tree just naturally grows in a perfectly-spaced-out pattern or something.

"There are three now," Wan Lan warned as we all came to a halt and they executed their practiced ritual of surrounding me in a circle. I'd complain if I knew it'd do me any good.

Just like before, the three were quickly killed as they were still weak, and just like before, we walked up for a closer inspection. All three were mostly reminiscent of the first beast we've met, with the difference that they had slightly shifting hue of their fur. Or, well, what little they had left of their fur, the spaced bits that weren't consumed by growths.

As I was crouching, my foot slightly gave out under me and I stumbled back a bit, catching myself with my hand. I didn't have the time to be embarrassed about it as I've noticed another oddity--my hand was touching moss. It felt like moss, it was damp like moss, it was mossy like moss, but there was one key difference.

It was warm.

No, scratch that, it was full-on hot. Like a cup of coffee that won't necessarily scald you, but it's also not particularly pleasant to hold.

"Master, are you alright?" I felt Xi Zhao and Dai Xiu quickly try to pull me up, but I ignored them, crouching back down and putting the oil lantern next to me.

The dull gray that I saw grew saturated, turning into a decidedly not moss color of damp, drab, and moldy brown. I once again placed my hand on it, dragging it down; by chance, I pulled it open and, well, nearly shat my pants as I yelped.

The first one down was Long Tao, sword drawn out and pointed at the moss, his arm already in motion to stab before abruptly stopping; on his way down, he'd pushed me back so I stumbled into Lao Shun who was already primed to grab me.

What did make my heart nearly jump out of my chest?

An eye.

That's right.

There's an eye in there. Or, at least, I hope to God there is one, as I do not want to start hallucinating things.

"What is it, Senior Brother?!" Xi Zhao asked when he saw Long Tao standing still.

"... an eye." everyone gathered around the slightly parted grime of moss where, in the slit that I'd made, there jutted a human eye.

Long Tao bent forward and pulled it further apart, and it turned out it wasn't an eye.

Nope.

Just a whole-ass head.

Attached to a whole-ass body.

It was a cold, unmoving corpse of a woman who looked to be in her twenties, and as though she'd died like eighteen minutes ago. But there was no way--she was buried under several layers of moss, with roots of the tree having actually sprung around her, as though cradling her.

Loose patches of rotten clothes further proved that she'd been dead for a while, though as to what caused her body to be so perfectly mummified...

"Huh? Zou Min?" Lao Shun's voice dragged us out of our daze as we turned toward him in almost practiced unison.

"You know her?" I asked.

"Uh, not personally," he said, frowning. "Her Master, Lord Exalt," a bit redundant, isn't it? "He would hire me on occasion to concoct some pills for him. I met her once or twice, though she was still very much a child. I haven't seen either in, huh, must be almost a hundred years now. The rumors were that she rejected the proposal of some powerful Son of God so she had to run, and her Master ran with her. To think she ended up here..."

"You said almost a hundred years ago?" Dai Xiu said, frowning. "Why does she look like she died half an hour ago?"

"That," he stammered, smiling bitterly. "I really don't know..."

---

Just the one chapter today.
A fun tidbit: the initial draft of this particular arc (this was a while back) I had planned on using the Drought Demon (or its equivalent, at least) as the 'antagonist', with the twist that it'd turn out to not be an entity at all, but rather just a malevolent force of nature. I scrapped it because the twist felt kind of cheap & it sort of worked against, uhm, broader world building that I was going for (vague on purpose, 'cause spoilers and such).