Chapter 347
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Chapter 347: The Paper Figure Behind the Window
Is anyone there?
Hearing this, Cao Yuan and An Qingyu furrowed their brows simultaneously, preparing for a fight. Bai Li Pangpang’s face turned pale, and he stammered:
“Is… is it a living person or… a dead one?”
“Of course it’s a living person looking at us from behind the window!” Cao Yuan couldn’t help but speak up.
“No.” Lin Qiye stared at the dark window, his other hand slowly tightening around the hilt of his knife. He took a deep breath and spoke in a hoarse voice, “That is not a living person… you all need to be mentally prepared.”
“Not a living person?”
An Qingyu turned to look at the window, a hint of gray appearing in her eyes. After a moment, she stood frozen in place.
“How is this possible…”
Cao Yuan’s pupils constricted slightly as he instinctively directed the beam of his flashlight toward the window, trying to see what exactly it was…
The bright beam swept across the dilapidated gray wall, illuminating the pitch-black hole. Behind the tattered brown wooden frame, a pale human face was pressed against the wall, a pair of pitch-black eyes without whites staring intently at the four people below!
This face was incredibly strange, lacking the three-dimensional quality of a normal human face, instead possessing an eerie flatness, with elongated slanted brows, pitch-black eyes, and bright red lips… There was no nose on that face, only two dark holes.
The moment Cao Yuan saw this face, a chill shot from his feet to his brain, and every hair on his body stood on end.
“This is not a person!”
“This is clearly a paper figure used for funerals!”
Bai Li Pangpang, witnessing this scene, felt his heart skip a beat. The strong psychological resilience he developed during training prevented him from screaming out loud. Instead, he bit his lip hard and, without saying a word, pulled a string of prayer beads from his pocket and shoved them into Cao Yuan’s hand.
“What are you doing?” Cao Yuan was startled by him.
“Aren’t you a monk? Here are the prayer beads! Quickly chant a spell to subdue it!” Bai Li Pangpang’s face was ashen as he whispered urgently.
Cao Yuan: …
After being illuminated by the flashlight, the pale paper face suddenly swayed and disappeared behind the dark window. Lin Qiye’s pupils shrank sharply, and he dashed into the building like lightning, shouting:
“Catch it! Don’t let it escape!”
However, someone was faster than him.
An Qingyu had already rushed out before Lin Qiye, her eyes behind her glasses fixed on the window where the paper figure had vanished. She quickly grabbed a surgical knife used for dissection and pressed it against the wall as she charged upstairs, her face filled with excitement and curiosity!
Seeing Lin Qiye rush out, Cao Yuan immediately followed closely behind, leaving Bai Li Pangpang gripping the prayer beads, stunned in place. After a moment, he too took off running.
“Don’t leave me behind!”
In the pitch-black low building, Lin Qiye moved swiftly, reaching the room where the paper figure had been in less than two seconds, while An Qingyu climbed in through the window at the same time.
But at that moment, the room was already devoid of the paper figure’s presence.
It had jumped out and run into the woods. Every move of the paper figure was within Lin Qiye’s perception. He immediately leaped out of another window across from him.
Upon entering the boundary of the river, Lin Qiye’s perception range in the “Mortal Realm” soared to five hundred meters. Although the paper figure was fast, it couldn’t escape Lin Qiye’s perception in such a short time.
The four of them left the abandoned logging site and sprinted at full speed toward the other side of the forest!
The sudden appearance of a paper figure in the deep mountain woods was already extremely bizarre, and Lin Qiye and the others naturally couldn’t let it escape so easily.
The paper figure seemed to have no weight at all. Riding the cold night wind, it leaped lightly and soared far into the woods, then drifted down to some hidden spot in the deep forest.
Lin Qiye and the others chased through the woods for a long time but were unable to close the distance to the paper figure, instead being left further behind, gradually losing track of it.
Lin Qiye frowned slightly and stopped in the woods.
After about half a minute, Cao Yuan and the others finally caught up to Lin Qiye. They looked around but saw no sign of the paper figure and sighed helplessly.
In fact, Lin Qiye could have caught up. In this night, his speed was already terrifyingly enhanced. If he used the “Sky’s Bard” to boost himself further, the chances of catching the paper figure would be significant. But the problem was that Cao Yuan and the others didn’t have such means; their speed simply couldn’t keep up with Lin Qiye’s pace.
If he continued to chase, whether he could catch the paper figure was uncertain, but he would definitely become separated from the group. At that point, with the four of them scattered in this vast primitive forest, it would truly be troublesome.
Bai Li Pangpang panted heavily and couldn’t help but ask, “Qiye, what exactly was that thing?”
“There were no life fluctuations, no mental energy responses, and no signs of being controlled by the Forbidden Ruins…” Lin Qiye pondered for a moment, shaking his head. “It doesn’t seem ‘mysterious,’ but I have no clue what it really is.”
An Qingyu sighed regretfully, “If only I could dissect it.”
Cao Yuan seemed to think of something and spoke uncertainly, “Don’t you all think that what just happened… seems familiar?”
Hearing this, the other three were taken aback.
“A pale face, indistinct features, resembling a person, yet also like… a dead person.” An Qingyu murmured, “So that’s it. Comparing the two, it resembles the legend I heard before.”
“That legend can’t be true, right?” Bai Li Pangpang couldn’t help but speak up. “The lumberjack who saw it was actually seeing the paper figure we just encountered?”
“The location was indeed a logging site…” Lin Qiye frowned. The location and the event matched perfectly; it seemed a bit too coincidental.
“If part of the paper figure is real, then could the other parts of the legend also be true?” Cao Yuan asked.
“What parts?”
“The eternal land of the dead that exists deep in the forest.”
Everyone fell silent simultaneously.
Is there really an eternal land of the dead deep in the primitive forest? It sounds like a tall tale, yet they had just confirmed that part of the legend was indeed true…
The mysterious red giant ants, the elusive queen ant’s nest, the inexplicably appearing and eerily disappearing pale paper figure in the forest, and the eternal land of the dead said to exist deep in the mountains…
Lin Qiye looked up at the dense black trees around him and the distant outlines of mountains hidden in the night, letting out a long sigh.
It seems the secrets of this place are far more than we imagined.