Chapter 109: “It seems I was punished, punished by one of my own kind.“
An Wujiu reached out and stroked Shen Ti’s cheek.
Even though he didn’t speak and couldn’t speak, Shen Ti seemed to have already understood An Wujiu’s heart.
Their hearts were always connected.
“So cold.” Shen Ti held An Wujiu’s hand, “Let’s go back.”
The base of this pyramid appeared to be over thirty meters tall and was covered with thick snow, making it very difficult to climb. Just as An Wujiu and Shen Ti were about to reach the temple, a distant and terrifying sound suddenly came from afar, mixed in the howling cold wind.
An Wujiu turned around abruptly. Standing at a high point, his eyes swept across the snowfield but could not find the source of the sound.
“It sounds like a human scream,” Shen Ti said, then doubted, “But it seems to come from very far away. How could a human scream be so loud?”
An Wujiu didn’t know either.
It sounded too much like a scream, but even though this place was deathly silent, a human’s voice could never travel this far or this loudly.
It was more like some kind of giant beast being stabbed.
As he was thinking, that strange sound appeared again, this time from an even farther distance, rising and falling. The sound seemed like a sharp object piercing their temples, making them shiver and inducing fear.
An Wujiu had no idea what was in the distance. He wondered if it was a disaster similar to the Blood Moon. This thought reminded him of the howls of wolves during a full moon, but it was different.
The snow continued to fall incessantly, as if it would never stop. The land was desolate and cold, and these few strange “screams” added a layer of eerie gloom to this already peculiar place.
An Wujiu recalled the strange expression on Yasia’s husband’s face earlier.
“Wujiu-ge!”
Hearing Wu You’s voice, An Wujiu looked back and saw him and Nan Shan standing in the open space in front of the temple, waving at them.
So An Wujiu had to give up on the strange sounds and returned to the temple with Shen Ti.
Since there was no food in the temple, everyone except Andrew had to go down to the town’s commoners to get food and water, but they also brought back some new things.
An Wujiu and Shen Ti obtained a sharp obsidian knife, while Nan Shan and Wu You had a stone plate carved with many intricate patterns. Although called a stone plate, it was not a thin plate for holding food but a heavy upper millstone. There was a circular depression in the center of the plate, with a groove connecting the center circle to the edge of the stone plate.
“It seems like something is meant to be placed in it, and then something flows out.” Toudou Sakura pointed at the stone plate.
Indeed, An Wujiu stared at the side of the stone plate, where carvings similar to those on the temple ceiling depicted warriors wearing feathered crowns and serpent-like gods.
The sun symbol and snakes, these were all closely related to Shen Ti.
An Wujiu turned his head and gazed at the symbol on Shen Ti’s throat.
“And this,” Megan took out a thirty-centimeter-long stone spike and placed it on the ground, “I don’t know what it’s for.”
“Was this given by a townsperson too?” Toudou Sakura asked.
“Yes, I went to an old lady’s house, and she said this had been prepared for us a long time ago,” Megan explained.
Toudou Sakura nodded, “I went to an old man’s house with Matsubara.”
Lao Yu snorted and said to Megan, “I advise you to stay away from her; she must be a cultist.”
Toudou Sakura smiled nonchalantly and turned to Lao Yu, “What about you? What did you bring back?”
Lao Yu had placed his item on the ground earlier. It was a clay sphere that didn’t look like a vessel. An Wujiu bent down to pick it up and found some vertical rows of round holes on it.
“This looks like a musical instrument,” Matsubara Mori guessed.
“What’s it for?” Toudou Sakura was puzzled. The things they brought back seemed unrelated and had no clear purpose.
“And that stand.” Wu You pointed at another item on the ground, a small stone stand that could only hold a stack of corn or a few melons.
“I brought this back,” Yang Ce said in a deep voice, “An old man gave it to me.”
“The house I went to also had an old man, his hair all white,” Noah said, looking up, “He even told me, ‘I haven’t seen such a lively and cute child in a long time.'”
An Wujiu suddenly realized something.
In this water city, it seemed they hadn’t seen any children.
“This is what he gave me.” Noah showed everyone, “A drum.”
Zhou Yijue was the last to return. He patted the snow off himself and carried many masks strung together with hemp rope in his right hand.
“For you all.”
He handed them out, one for each person.
“These were given to me by the townspeople. They said these are used by priests, one for each person.”
An Wujiu looked at him and noticed that he had only brought back eleven in total.
It seemed they had already assumed that someone would die today, so they didn’t bother preparing a mask for the deceased.
The wind and snow grew heavier. Shen Ti and Matsubara closed the stone door again, and An Wujiu distributed the corn cakes they had obtained from Yasia to everyone. The morning ritual had consumed a lot of energy, and everyone was filled with suspicion and doubt toward each other, unwilling to speak much.
Among them, Lao Yu was the most mentally strained. An Wujiu understood this; in his mind, Lao Yu was the witch of the group. Even if he wasn’t, he was a cultist. In times like this, he would surely be tense because either he or Toudou Sakura would not live to see the next sunrise.
If it had been the old An Wujiu, he wouldn’t have been able to bear seeing these people die on the altar, but now his heart seemed to have grown harder, making it difficult to feel the same compassion as before.
At least that’s what he thought.
Wearing Shen Ti’s gloves, An Wujiu leaned against the head of the bed and fell asleep alone. He had a strange dream. He dreamt of a giant monster covered in hard black scales like armor, each scale emitting a faint greenish-brown light, and at the center of each scale was a gem-like green serpent’s eye.
Those tentacles, coiling and stretching, moved slowly behind him, twisted with blood-red abysses at their tips, resembling a slow and deliberate revelry, a semi-solidified dance.
It was as if he was trapped inside this dark temple, on a golden high platform, with the giant monster and the sacred altar, behind him the blood-red sunset clouds and the rays of light that seemed to descend out of mercy. Everything was strange and magnificent.
An Wujiu felt as if he was standing right in front of it, his eyes unable to move anywhere else.
He seemed completely controlled.
It was not just strange, nor just dangerous. He seemed to see the confusion and pain, the fragility and torment, in those countless pupils.
Facing such a monster that could devour him at any moment, An Wujiu felt a profound sense of compassion.
In a daze, he clearly saw blood flowing from the monster’s chest, as if the hard scales were pierced by sharp claws, oozing a green viscous liquid, which must be its blood.
That pain slowly seeped onto him. An Wujiu stiffly lowered his head and found himself covered in blood.
His chest had an empty hole, with nothing inside.
Suddenly, a familiar “scream” passed by his ear, a sharp sound trying to pull him out. He turned around abruptly, and saw another monster, a giant one with red pupils. When he turned back, the scene began to collapse as if crumbling, and An Wujiu tried to save himself inside the temple, but he too disintegrated.
The scales fell like rain, scattering down, leaving only a red gem, like a puddle of pigeon blood, calmly resting on the ground.
An Wujiu bent down to pick it up, only to find he was holding an old book, its velvet cover covered in dust.
Just as he opened the first page, he heard his mother’s scream.
He woke up in shock.
The first thing An Wujiu saw was Shen Ti, guarding by the bedside.
“You’re sweating a lot.” Shen Ti reached out to touch his forehead. An Wujiu saw the lines on his hand and was suddenly startled, remembering the scenes from the dream.
“How did you get those lines on your hand?”
Shen Ti’s first reaction was to realize he could speak, so he smiled slightly, but hearing An Wujiu’s question, he fell into a reverie.
“I… don’t remember.” Shen Ti said honestly, “I think I was born with them.”
“Where were you born? Who are your parents, are they still around?” An Wujiu asked many questions.
These were questions he usually didn’t think about or want to dwell on because he knew Shen Ti had endured long-lasting pain in the past, and he didn’t want to remind him of those unhappy memories.
But this time, he genuinely wanted to know. His curiosity was driven by fear, the dream made him uncontrollably think and ponder.
He wanted to know why the altar was the altar, why his father died young.
Why did his mother go mad? Why was he trapped in a laboratory, becoming a modified specimen?
Why did he meet Shen Ti?
Why was Shen Ti different from him, different from everyone else?
No, maybe he was supposed to be like this because he wasn’t human at all!
An Wujiu waited for his answer.
But no matter how hard Shen Ti tried to recall, he just couldn’t remember.
He could only tell An Wujiu, “It seems I was punished, punished by one of my own kind.”
This ambiguous answer didn’t solve any questions. He didn’t understand why An Wujiu asked this way. He also wanted to recall and give a proper answer, but he feared he couldn’t provide a perfect one.
However, it was An Wujiu who gave up first.
He stopped pressing and instead reached out his arms to embrace Shen Ti tightly.
“I understand,” An Wujiu said, kissing Shen Ti’s neck repeatedly, “I understand.”
When Shen Ti’s eyes showed confusion and vulnerability, An Wujiu knew that he didn’t really need the truth.
No matter what Shen Ti’s past was, no matter who or what he was, An Wujiu didn’t care.
The only thing he cared about was whether he would lose Shen Ti.
The sacred voice suddenly sounded.
“Twilight has arrived. Please prepare for the ritual.”
Like the others, they returned to the hall as instructed upon hearing the sacred voice. Strangely, Andrew, who had been lying on the bed in the room, was now lying under the obsidian stele in the hall, placed inside a stone coffin.
“Please put on your masks one by one.”
Everyone followed the instructions, putting on their masks and carrying the items they had taken from the townspeople. The male players together lifted the stone coffin and, with heavy steps, walked in the direction guided by the sacred voice.
It was a mountain, covered in ice and snow, the sun half-set, and the blood-red moon already rising, with the sun and moon shining together. The red light cast on the snowy land was not the light of the sunset but the moonlight of the blood moon, climbing bit by bit, following behind them as if it too wanted to reach the mountain top.
Strangely, as they carried the coffin up the mountain, An Wujiu kept hearing crying. With each step up, the crying grew louder, sounding like a child’s cry.
But there was no one else on this small mountain, only them.
“Why are you crying?” Lao Yu shouted at Noah.
Noah, walking in the front, turned around. Her face was dry, with a pure expression.
“I’m not crying. It’s not me who’s crying.”
This statement made Lao Yu shudder, almost losing his grip on the coffin.
“What… then who is it…”
“I don’t know either.” Noah turned back indifferently, her voice light, drifting to their ears with the wind and snow.
“Maybe it’s a child’s ghost.”
So many discoveries in this instance ( ・ω・) we’re getting closer and closer to the truth.