“What the fu-ck is this—?!”
While Gan Tang cried out in shock at the severed foot in his hand, further away from them, at a location far from the descent path, another person let out the exact same terrified whisper.
Xijiao no longer remembered when he had lost track of the main group.
In fact, his name wasn’t really Xijiao. He once had a proper name.
But in the eyes of the people in Fengjing Village, his name was simply Xijiao—”Thin Leg.”
When he was a child, he had fallen ill, and the nerves in his right leg had been burned, leading to severe muscle atrophy. His right leg was visibly thinner than his left, and even now, despite his age, the occasional nerve pain still kept him awake at night.
The only way to stop the pain was alcohol.
He would mix packets of headache powder into strong liquor, gulping it down. As his consciousness blurred, the pain seemed to fade along with it.
But because of his drinking, his vision was always blurry, and his frail, child-like right leg made him slow when he ran.
When Lao Er noticed someone spying on them, his only thought was to chase them down and catch them.
The others, naturally, followed suit—sprinting after the intruder.
Only Xijiao couldn’t keep up.
He tripped over a rock, and by the time he struggled to his feet, he realized—
Everyone was gone.
The back mountain of Fengjing Village wasn’t particularly famous. The villagers simply called it “the back mountain.” But in reality, it was a branch of the Xi Mountain Range, far more vast, deep, and boundless than its name suggested.
The areas where people usually roamed were fine, but the moment one ventured deeper into the forest, the atmosphere would turn eerily sinister.
The wilderness here was unlike any other place—logically, with so few people around, there should have been more wildlife.
But in the back mountain, even common birds and beasts were far scarcer than in other areas.
The mountain was filled with towering, dense trees that blocked visibility, their twisted shapes casting unsettling shadows. The undergrowth was perpetually damp and dark green, likely due to the lack of sunlight.
Even the trees themselves grew in grotesque, twisted shapes, and from a distance, some resembled shadowy human figures. It was only upon closer inspection that one would realize—those pale, hollow “faces” were nothing more than gnarled knots on the tree trunks.
And once night fell, the entire mountain would become shrouded in a mysterious, poisonous miasma.
If someone entered unprepared, a single night spent in the depths of the back mountain would drive them insane and lead to their death.
Even with proper precautions, venturing into the mountain was still incredibly dangerous—
If one strayed from the narrow paths trampled down by the wild men, losing their way, the entire back mountain would transform into a vast, endless green maze…
Dangerous? Yes.
But it was also the perfect place to kill and dispose of a body.
Otherwise, they wouldn’t have come here in the first place.
But now…
Xijiao looked around nervously, a growing sense of unease creeping into his chest.
The surroundings were filled with thick forests and overgrown shrubs. The dense canopy cast deep shadows below, leaving everything in gloomy darkness.
And that fall… it had been a hard one.
When Xijiao got back up, he squinted into the murky surroundings and realized—
He could no longer tell which direction to go.
No, it’s fine.
It had only been a moment. Zhang Er and the others must still be nearby.
Xijiao took a deep breath, trying to calm himself, then craned his neck and shouted into the eerie green woods.
He hoped Lao Er would yell back, guiding him toward the right path.
But…
Maybe they had already run too far.
Or maybe the dense trees had swallowed his voice before it could reach them.
Because after several calls—
The only response Xijiao received was the rustling of the undergrowth.
But…
There was no wind in the mountains at this moment.
As soon as he realized this, a cold chill shot up from his thin, numb ankle—
And crawled all the way to the back of his neck.
He warily turned toward the source of the rustling leaves.
Then, he swallowed hard.
“Zhang Er… is… is that you?”
His voice trembled as he called out.
The underbrush on the ground stilled.
Around Xijiao, a sudden silence fell.
Second after second passed. A drop of cold sweat slid down from his forehead, stinging his slightly swollen eyes as it fell.
Then, from deep within the shadows of the trees, he heard a strange sound.
“Zhang… Er… is… that… you?”
The voice was dry and hoarse, but the intonation was identical to his own voice from moments ago.
Yet, the tone was unnaturally eerie.
Even Lao Zhang’s pet mimic bird from years ago had sounded more human than this.
The bushes began to shake again.
Xijiao stared in terror at the rustling leaves… Something was inching closer to him.
It was repeating the same sentence—over and over, like it found great amusement in doing so.
“Zhang Er, is that you?”
“Zhang Er, is that you?”
“Zhang Er, is that you?”
…
“Ugh…”
Xijiao staggered backward uncontrollably.
The more panicked he became, the more unstable his footing grew.
His foot slipped—and in an instant, he fell hard onto the ground.
And in that very moment—
Xijiao finally saw it.
It nimbly parted the leaves, emerging from the dark, dense underbrush.
His eyes widened in disbelief.
Then—he let out a scream.
For a moment, he thought he must have been drunk again—
Otherwise, how could he be seeing something like this?
It could repeat human speech—
Yet, it was nothing more than a severed arm.
A severed arm that had been hacked off in an exceptionally crude manner.
Whoever cut it off had clearly been weak and inexperienced—the amputation was uneven and jagged, the bone shattered apart, its pale-white splinters jutting out from the shriveled, dark-red flesh.
But the fact that it was a severed arm wasn’t what terrified him to the point of near incontinence.
What truly made his breath catch in his throat—
Were the thin, white tendrils wriggling out from beneath its skin.
Worms.
Worms thinner than noodles, whiter than bone.
The thread-like parasites slithered agilely across the ground, dragging the stiff, corpse-gray arm along with them.
Even the fingers were moving.
But if one looked closer, they’d see that it was because—
From beneath the fingernails, countless tiny, hair-like worms had emerged.
The worms wriggled and writhed, and with them, the entire severed arm moved—
Not like a dead thing, but as if it were alive.
It crawled swiftly through the muddy jungle, as nimble as some twisted, unnatural creature.
In its wake, it left a faint, smeared trail on the ground—
Like the marks left behind by a serpent—or perhaps, a swarm of insects.
Xijiao stared at the grotesque sight, frozen in shock.
And then, an absurd thought surfaced in his mind—
Earlier, when they lingered near the mass grave, they had seen many similar tracks in the disturbed soil.
No—wait.
Even on the way to the mass grave, those tracks had already been there.
But back then, he, Zhang Er, and the others had thought nothing of them.
It had just rained, after all. The mountains were always full of insects after the rain.
No one had given those tangled, chaotic trails a second thought.
Oh—right.
And last night—
The severed head he saw on top of the chicken cage.
Why had its neck been so long?
It was because the dim lighting and his alcohol-blurred vision had deceived him.
What he had mistaken for an elongated neck…
Had actually been a mass of writhing, intertwined worms.
…
A primal, instinctive fear seized Xijiao.
His mind went blank, his ankle throbbed in excruciating pain—he must have sprained it badly when he fell.
But at this moment, his injured foot was the least of his concerns.
The man scrambled backward desperately, using both his hands and feet.
But his feeble struggle felt utterly pathetic in the face of that abomination.
The severed arm twitched on the ground—
Then, suddenly—it stood upright.
Its palm unfurled.
Its fingers snapped rigidly straight, as though triggered by some unseen command.
And then—
A horde of white, thread-like worms burst out from the corpse’s rotting skin.
They surged forward—
Straight toward the tear-streaked, trembling Xijiao.
They swarmed toward the warm, soft, living human body.
The man’s mouth gaped open as a piercing wail tore from his throat.
That wail soon dissolved into muffled sobs.
Countless thread-like worms writhed over Xijiao, smothering him completely.
They slithered into his eyes, nostrils, and mouth—
Some even bit through his skin, burrowing directly into the bloody, gaping wounds.
His frail body collapsed limply onto the ground.
Like a man seized by epilepsy, his entire frame went rigid, while his limbs convulsed violently.
Beneath his skin, bulging lumps formed, one after another—
Vaguely, they resembled human faces, grotesquely distorted by the mimicry of their writhing forms.
…
“Did you hear that?”
Not far from Xijiao, in a small valley, Uncle Zhang Er led a group of men, struggling to cut through the overgrown vines and brush with hoes and spades.
One of them suddenly halted, frowning as he glanced behind him.
He murmured, “Did you hear something?”
Uncle Zhang Er shot him an impatient glare.
“Hear my ass—”
“We left Xijiao behind earlier. What if he ran into trouble?”
Ignoring the glare, the man stopped working, his voice stiff with concern.
“Yeah, that’s true… with how scrawny he is, if he fell, he probably wouldn’t even be able to get back up.”
“Exactly… Besides, that guy we were chasing moved way too fast. Maybe he wasn’t even from outside the mountains—maybe he was one of those ‘wild men.’ We’ve already lost track of him, and if we keep going, we might end up getting lost ourselves. That’d be real trouble.”
As soon as he suggested this, everyone except Zhang Er nodded in agreement.
Of course, it wasn’t that they particularly cared about Xijiao.
If they had, they would’ve gone back for him the moment they noticed he was missing.
No—what really unsettled them was how fast the person they were chasing had vanished.
That man had been crawling—yet no matter how fast they ran, he had disappeared in just the blink of an eye.
They had chased him deep into the forest, but the further they went, the more uneasy they felt.
The adrenaline that had driven them before had faded with their growing exhaustion.
Now, as they exchanged uncertain glances, none of them were eager to continue the chase.
But Zhang Er clearly wasn’t willing to let it go.
For some reason, there was something off about him.
His eyes darted about the dense foliage, his jaw muscles twitching nervously.
“Bunch of cowards. Fine, go if you want—I’ll chase him down alone! I don’t care if that thing is human or a ghost, I’m gonna catch it… Fuck, I’ve killed people before. What the hell else is there to be afraid of?”
The others frowned.
They didn’t want to keep chasing, but…
The man they had been after had overheard them murdering and burying a body.
That thought alone unsettled them just as much as Zhang Er.
As they hesitated, torn between staying or leaving—
A noise came from behind them.
The group stiffened, heads snapping around in unison.
Then—
From the muddy mountain path, a wavering shadow slowly emerged.
…
“Xijiao?”
