1TWITF[C Chapter 71

Lu Yanli ignored Luo Ying’s instantly cold face, the hand in his pocket quietly gripping the jade pendant.

“I don’t intend to betray the sect, it’s just that I must participate in the ancestor worship.” He said with a smile, “After I finish participating, I’ll give it back to you, okay?”

He wasn’t clear on why Luo Ying insisted on him returning, but he suspected it wasn’t anything good.

Luo Ying couldn’t snatch it from him, and could only secretly hate why she had given him the item ahead of time, and why she had revealed the jade pendant’s function. She naturally didn’t know that she was influenced by some hypnosis; she only thought she had been too complacent and made such a mistake. Now, hearing that there seemed to be a chance, even though she didn’t quite believe Lu Yanli, under the dual guidance of a strange trust in him and a bit of wishful thinking, she couldn’t help but believe Lu Yanli’s words.

Lu Yanli sensed that his psychological suggestion was working, and nodded. His face showed some timidity: “Actually, I don’t want to either, but… I always feel that this ancestor worship is very, very dangerous.” He sighed softly, “I don’t want to die…”

“I swear, after the ancestor worship ends, I will definitely return the jade pendant to you. Otherwise, may I be cursed to be unable to reach the kingdom of God after death, unable to listen to the Gospel of God.” Lu Yanli added fuel to the fire.

This vow truly put Luo Ying at ease. She made Lu Yanli repeat the vow to her again before letting him leave.

Lu Yanli walked back step by step.

Now, the problem he needed to solve was Lili.

Lili had rarely been in the village recently, but it wasn’t impossible to run into her.

But it didn’t matter. From the moment she killed Yu Xianguang, she already had an enemy. Lu Yanli believed that Lin Chu would help him.

He made a phone call to Lin Chu: “…It’s me, is it convenient to come out for a bit?”

*

An Xingyu and the others searched for a long time, but couldn’t find Lu Yanli. Midway, Lin Chu sprained her ankle while running, and planned to go back to rest. Yu Huan and Xie Ziqing escorted her back. An Xingyu and Lin Xueyuan planned to go to the village and take another look.

An Xingyu wanted to know where the reservoir in the village led, and why there were so many corpses.

Were they all killed by Lili?

Judging by the frequency with which she fed her dog “Eater,” how many people did Lili have to kill to maintain such a large number in the river? Who were those corpses in life?

Of course, this was just An Xingyu’s ostensible reason. He mostly wanted to know if the people killed by Lili were his brothers and sisters.

Their progress was quickly stopped. After walking only a few hundred meters, there were a large number of bushes in front of them, making it impossible to move forward. The two tried to detour, but they walked further and further away.

“Otherwise, should we just go back?” Lin Xueyuan said softly, “Isn’t it better for us to stay safe until the day of the ancestor worship? Look, although there is danger in the village, we’re not in danger…”

Although those weird things would come to their door, as long as they paid attention, didn’t answer casually, and didn’t break any taboos, they wouldn’t die.

Until now, only one task-taker, Yu Xianguang, had died. Who knew if he had offended Lili? Although she felt very sorry for Lin Chu, Lin Xueyuan was still very grateful to Lili. If she hadn’t been protecting the village, she might not have been able to live peacefully until now.

An Xingyu only shook his head and continued to walk forward.

He never thought this task was that simple. The current peace and tranquility was just a smokescreen. His intuition told him that if they didn’t find a way to break the situation before the ancestor worship arrived, then all of them would die in this task.

Without exception!

The road came to an end.

An Xingyu suddenly raised his head. In the distance, there was a mountain.

But, they hadn’t seen this mountain at all just now.

An Xingyu knew that it was strange. He cautiously took a step or two forward, trying to touch the mountain, but as soon as he took a step forward, a huge and majestic chill made him shiver violently, and a strong feeling of palpitations came over him.

He had never, not even for a moment, produced such a clear awareness as he did now: if he went forward, he would definitely die!

This forced him to take two steps back.

Looking back, Lin Xueyuan was also trembling. An Xingyu approached her, and the living warmth from the other person’s body gave him some peace of mind. He asked, “What’s wrong?”

Lin Xueyuan took two quick breaths, lowering her voice: “I was originally going to take a picture just now, but, the camera can’t take it!”

“How is that possible?” An Xingyu blurted out.

He didn’t believe it, so he stood further away, turned on the camera function on his phone, and aimed it at the mountain, but what was displayed on the screen was completely different. It was a vast expanse of white, with nothing there.

“Let’s go, quickly? This place is too strange.” Lin Xueyuan begged him.

Unreachable in the distance, unable to touch, unable to photograph… Was this the back mountain that the villagers spoke of?

What was locked up in the back mountain?

An Xingyu felt very uneasy. He felt very uncomfortable all over, dizzy and lightheaded, and a burst of irritable emotion was rushing around inside his body, almost breaking through his throat and turning into a shout to be released.

He wanted to rush over and try.

His chest heaving violently, An Xingyu suppressed the impulse and forcibly turned his head: “Let’s go.”

Lin Xueyuan didn’t speak, and silently walked two steps away from him to stand on the side. What she didn’t say was that An Xingyu’s ferocious appearance just now was no different from an evil ghost.

Of course, she didn’t see her own face, which was pale and gloomy, and also no different from an evil ghost.

Her originally childish and fair face was twisted and ferocious, her eyes were pitch-black, without a trace of white. She stared fixedly at the departing two people, with a face full of resentment.

After a while, the little girl’s figure disappeared.

A pair of hands supported her.

But, when she stood up, she found that An Xingyu, who had been standing in front of her, had disappeared!

In an instant, Lin Xueyuan felt like she was in an ice cave. Her heart shook fiercely, and she could hardly believe her eyes.

She had only tied her shoelaces. An Xingyu wasn’t the kind of person who would abandon his companions, so where had he gone?

“An Xingyu?” Lin Xueyuan was frozen in place, fear making her almost unable to make a sound, so she could only call out weakly, “Where are you?”

“An Xingyu? An Xingyu?”

After taking the first step, the rest was much easier. Lin Xueyuan ran outwards, her steps getting faster and faster. Finally, a familiar figure appeared in front of her, and she was overjoyed and immediately ran over.

Seeing her companion, the breath that was stuck in her chest dissipated, and Lin Xueyuan slowed down, walking over step by step. She then realized that her calf was burning with pain, presumably from being scratched while running just now.

But all of this couldn’t compare to the feeling of relief after surviving a disaster.

Wait!

Lin Xueyuan suddenly thought of something.

If An Xingyu had been walking in front all along, then who was it that had helped her just now?

An Xingyu paused, then turned his head.

His face was like it had been peeled of skin, full of gnarled red muscles. The positions of his two eyes still showed some expression, and at the moment he turned his head, those eyes, filled with resentment, coldness, and venom, stared fixedly at her.

It, it was a ghost!

Lin Xueyuan then realized that the touch under her hand was incomparably cold.

“Ahhhhh—”

The scream stopped abruptly.

An Xingyu and Lin Xueyuan jogged all the way until they saw the edge of the forest in front of them, then they slowed down.

He suddenly realized that the latter was a little off.

Lin Xueyuan seemed to have lost her soul, her eyes were blank, and only a shell of a body was being dragged forward stiffly by him. An Xingyu tentatively called her name twice, but it was no use. Her eyes were still dull and she didn’t respond to him.

What was going on?

He reached out to test her breath, and she was still breathing, so she wasn’t dead yet. But looking at the way her eyes were gradually turning white, it was clear that she was in a bad situation. If he didn’t think of a way, she might die soon.

An Xingyu was anxious, but he couldn’t think of a way to help. He gritted his teeth, picked her up on his back, and ran quickly, trying to return to the village and ask Lili for help.

It was the cold air spreading from the back mountain that had invaded An Xingyu, otherwise he would never have been so suicidal normally. In previous tasks, or in horror movies he had watched, there were too many cases where the person being carried on the back suddenly turned into a ghost. An Xingyu should have abandoned her and run away, but he didn’t dare to do that.

If he really left her in the forest, an uncontrollable and strange event would definitely happen!

He ran wildly with Lin Xueyuan on his back, and gradually, he was becoming a little exhausted. But the strong desire to survive made him not dare to stop.

After running wildly all the way, he finally came to the edge of the other side of the road. He suddenly took a step across and came into the sunlight.

He had left the forest.

But just then, he felt the pair of arms around his neck tighten.

The touch on his back was gradually becoming cold, not like a living person.

It wasn’t until now that An Xingyu realized that the thing he was carrying was abnormally light, not the weight that a normal adult woman should have.

In order to complete tasks, most task-takers would exercise regularly in order to run faster when being chased by ghosts. Lin Xueyuan was the same. She wasn’t trying to lose weight, and besides, no matter how much she lost, it was impossible for her to be so light.

An Xingyu took a light breath to calm himself down.

He still carried the thing on his back and walked forward, lifting his hands up to let the pair of arms relax slightly, and then walked step by step towards the reservoir.

The thing on his back was cold, stiff, and didn’t answer.

It was Lili!

An Xingyu had a feeling of being saved. In the distance, he could see Lili throwing something into the water.

It looked like… a person.

Lili noticed An Xingyu’s gaze. Not knowing what she was thinking, she laughed excitedly and waved to him.

The pair of arms wrapped around An Xingyu’s neck loosened and hung down in front of his chest, swaying as he ran.

An Xingyu ran to the riverside, and without looking, he suddenly threw the thing on his back out, throwing it into the river and splashing a large area of ​​stinky water.

Lili giggled and pointed to the river, signaling him to look over.

But… what made An Xingyu even more unbelievable was another corpse next to it.

It hadn’t been dead for long, and it was easy to tell who it was from that twisted face.

It was Lin Chu…

Like the other corpses, her eyes had been gouged out, with two black holes in the eye sockets, and he could still see the horror on her face. She was mixed in with a large pile of rotten and swollen corpses, and soon, she would become the same as those corpses.

An Xingyu couldn’t believe that Lin Chu had died like this, but the truth was in front of him, and he couldn’t help but believe it.

How was this possible?

An Xingyu couldn’t disobey her order, so he had no choice but to do the same as last time.

Unsurprisingly, he fished up Lin Chu’s corpse.

An Xingyu suddenly came back to his senses and stared intently.

Lin Chu had an accident, so what about Yu Huan and Xie Ziqing, who had escorted her back?

Lin Xueyuan and Yu Xianguang were already dead, leaving only the three of them.

Lu Yanli, where had he gone?

*

Upper Immortal Village, at Zhang Bo’s house, everything was covered in plain white, showing that a funeral was about to be held.

Zhang Bo sat under the stage and wailed loudly. On the mourning hall, there were two black and white photos. The faces on the two photos were somewhat similar, showing that they were related by blood.

Lu Yanli stood beside him, comforting the other party in a soft voice.

“Please accept my condolences.” After Lu Yanli said a few words of comfort, he helped to busy himself inside and outside the mourning hall. There had been many funerals in the village recently, and the villagers had gotten used to it. Many people even simply didn’t cook, and went out to mooch a banquet meal when it was mealtime.

Lu Yanli was entrusted by the village chief to come to Zhang Bo’s house to help receive guests.

After he stepped out the door, the two portraits placed in the mourning hall blinked and smiled.

Then, the eyeballs of the two people in the photos gradually tilted to the lower left, staring at the middle-aged man who was sitting in front of the mourning hall and wailing.

Zhang Bo was still crying. The pain of losing his wife and son in middle age had turned most of his hair white overnight, making him look very pitiful.

In the photos, the two faces moved and stretched their heads out.

Slowly, two white figures crawled out of the photos little by little. They still wore the kind smiles from the portraits and reached out to Zhang Bo.

Lu Yanli smiled gently, “It’s okay, besides, I also received a lot of help from Zhang Bo’s family when I first returned to the village.”

“Good, good lad.” The village chief patted him on the shoulder, “It’s not good to leave him alone inside. Everyone should go in later to take care of things. These days have been chaotic, so we have to bury them quickly.”

A group of people were eating at the banquet outside, chatting and talking. After the food on each table was almost finished, a group of strong, middle-aged laborers stood up, knocked on the door, and went inside to help carry the coffin.

Strangely, the courtyard was empty. Zhang Bo, who had been wailing under the stage, was nowhere to be seen.

The brazier had been knocked over, and a pile of ashes was lying on the ground, with traces of dragging on top of it.

On the mourning hall, the portraits had become three, and the black and white family of three was smiling neatly at the guests.

The villagers were shocked, and for a moment, they didn’t dare to enter.

This… this was clearly a ghost!

After a while, the three photos smiled neatly.

“Ghost ah!!”

Lu Yanli was the last one to leave, also running outwards. On the way, he met Yu Huan and Xie Ziqing. They looked at the villagers running away one after another, were stunned for a moment, and immediately followed them and ran.

In the past, the ghosts in the village were harming people in private. Everyone knew that the villagers were dying a little too much, too abnormal, but Lili was there, so she could always suppress it. There had never been a situation where an evil spirit appeared in public.

Lili? Where had she gone?!

An Xingyu was about to walk from the reservoir to the village when he suddenly heard a noise coming from the distance. When he got closer, he heard the villagers crying and shouting as they came this way.

Didn’t they say that the villagers usually didn’t come to the reservoir?

An Xingyu shook his head, afraid that they wouldn’t see him, and shouted back, “She’s gone!”

What he said wasn’t wrong. After Eater finished eating, Lili’s figure had disappeared. An Xingyu didn’t know where she had gone.

“Protecting the family, what a load of crap! We provide for them with good food and drink, but when it comes to being useful, they’re nowhere to be seen!”

“Aren’t we good enough to her?! Why doesn’t she come out?”

“She doesn’t even want her own father and grandparents, so why would she protect us? I think we should change to someone else. Didn’t they say that Grandma Li’s granddaughter who is studying outside can do it too? Tell her to come back quickly.”

An Xingyu ran closer and heard a lot of the villagers’ unscrupulous words, and he vaguely had a guess in his heart.

Could the protector of the family be replaced?

Then, how did Lili become the protector in the first place?

The villagers said that she didn’t protect her father and grandparents, did that mean that Zhang Bo’s family was dead?

There were too many villagers. He barely found Yu Huan and Xie Ziqing. After the three of them met, An Xingyu lowered his voice and told them the story of Lin Chu and Lin Xueyuan’s deaths from beginning to end.

“So, there are only three of us left…” Yu Huan’s face was full of horror.

An Xingyu nodded: “Don’t be discouraged, we still have hope. By the way, have you seen Lu Yanli?”

Xie Ziqing said, “He’s behind us, didn’t you see him before?”

An Xingyu shook his head, and didn’t mention anything about his discovery of the “back mountain”. He planned to find Lu Yanli to discuss it with him.

Since Xie Ziqing had said that, An Xingyu walked backwards against the flow of people. Soon, he saw Lu Yanli standing not far behind the villagers, waiting by the tree.

“Lin Chu is dead?” Lu Yanli was particularly surprised, muttering to himself, “That shouldn’t be, that person…”

He closed his mouth and instead began to inquire about other matters.

Lu Yanli said, “It’s not necessarily a dead end, did you forget? There’s still one place in the village where there won’t be any ghosts.”

“What?”

Lu Yanli spat out two words: “Forbidden ground.”

An Xingyu’s eyes lit up.

From this point of view, the forbidden ground was indeed a good choice.