95: Chapter 95 The Evil Tree's Banquet

Night fell, and the veil of evil energy completely blotted out the sky.

If the daylight filtering through the veil was a pale red, the moonlight shining through was a dark, blood-like crimson.

Dozens of li south of Qin Family Village lay a village named Wangjia Village.

The village was small, with around a hundred households. It sat against a low mountain with a few meager fields in front where they grew coarse grains.

When the Evil Domain shrouded all of Guanhai County and the Evil Tree took over the county seat, the villagers didn't dare step outside.

Every household kept their doors and windows tightly shut, not even daring to light a fire in their stoves.

They feared light, sound, and any movement that might attract bizarre, unnatural things.

Yet despite their caution, those things came anyway.

Wang Laosan of Wangjia Village was awakened from his sleep by a sharp pain.

He felt something suddenly bite down on his ankle, the pain causing him to bounce straight up off his bed.

He reached down to feel it, his hand making contact with something slick wrapped around his ankle, burrowing into his flesh.

He lit a fire striker, and the flame illuminated his foot.

It was a root tendril growing out of his skin and flesh, slick with his own blood.

Seeing this, Wang Laosan was terrified out of his wits and frantically reached out to yank at the root tendril.

But after pulling that one off, even more tendrils burst out from under his brick bed mat and squeezed through cracks in the wall.

These tendrils wrapped around his other foot, his wrists, and his neck.

He cried out, "Help!", but the sound was weak.

For at that moment, even his neck was tightly bound, leaving him unable to catch his breath.

He struggled desperately, his hands leaving bloodstains on the wall as his fingernails peeled back.

He wanted to call out to his wife, who was sleeping right next to him.

Turning his head, he saw her lying there motionless, her eyes wide open, pupils completely white.

Root tendrils were wrapped around her neck as well, far denser than those on him, already bulging out from under her skin.

Dried black blood was smeared at the corner of her mouth.

Wang Laosan stopped calling out.

He lay there, staring at the tendrils drooping from the cracks in the roof beams, staring at the black flowers blooming in the dark.

His pupils faded from black to white.

Compared to the deceased Wang Laosan, Village Chief Wang Deshun from the same village was somewhat luckier.

He was woken up by a bursting bladder.

Having drunk a bowl of thin gruel before bed, his lower abdomen felt uncomfortably full in the middle of the night, forcing him to groggily sit up.

Slipping into his shoes in the dark, he walked to the door and pulled back the latch.

The moonlight filtering through the veil looked eerie and unsettling, but he couldn't care less as he walked to the corner of the yard and unfastened his trousers.

Halfway through urinating, he suddenly felt an itch on the top of his foot. Looking down,

a pitch-black root tendril was squeezing out from the seam of his shoe, winding around his ankle and climbing upward.

Startled, his aim went wild, splashing urine over his hand.

Shaking his hand off, he bent down to yank the tendril away, then turned around, intending to head inside to grab an axe.

But as soon as he turned back, he saw that his house—from the edge of the bed to the threshold—was densely crawling with root tendrils.

His wife was still lying on the brick bed. The tendrils had already climbed the edge, a few wrapping around her ankles and slowly slithering under the blanket.

His wife turned over, mumbled something, but did not wake up.

Village Chief Wang Deshun's mind exploded with a roar.

He rushed inside, whipped off the blanket, and grabbed at the tendrils with both hands.

As he pulled at them, he shouted,

"Get up! Get up quickly!"

Dragged awake by him, his wife opened her eyes. Seeing the root tendrils covering the floor, she shrieked and bounced up from the bed.

Without even putting on shoes, she snatched up the child on the bed, held them in her arms, and bolted for the door.

The child woke up and burst into loud wails.

Village Chief Wang Deshun didn't run with them.

He rushed out of the courtyard and ran into his neighbor's yard.

The man next door was holding a kitchen knife, frantically hacking at the tendrils sprouting from the wall crevices.

Village Chief Wang Deshun yelled out,

"Stop chopping! Run! Run outside!"

The man froze for a moment, then gripped his kitchen knife and charged toward the entrance, stepping over the tendrils.

Village Chief Wang Deshun ran to the next house.

All along the way, he ran, kicked open doors, and shouted,

"Run! Everyone, run out of the village!"

He ran through most of the village, a trail of people following behind him.

Some held children, some carried the elderly on their backs, some were barefoot, and some wore only a single shoe.

Reaching the village entrance, Village Chief Wang Deshun looked back.

In the direction of his home, a thick, black root tendril had sprouted right out of the roof.

Burrowing through the roof tiles like a giant python, the tendril writhed in midair.

At its tip bloomed a massive black flower.

Village Chief Wang Deshun turned his head back and kept running.

His shoes had fallen off long ago; his bare soles stepped on the gravel road, sliced open in several places.

Blood stained the dirt path, leaving behind one footprint after another.

From then on, Village Chief Wang Deshun had no intention of looking back again. Only a single word remained in his mind—

"Run!"

On this night, Wangjia Village was far from the only one to suffer.

Similar horrors occurred in almost every village throughout Guanhai County.

These villages either faced attacks from the Evil Tree's tendrils or were assaulted by parasitic creatures.

It seemed that having expanded its Evil Domain, the Evil Tree was commencing its sumptuous banquet tonight.

Village Chief Sun Mancang of Sun Family Village had managed to escape.

He was the first person in his village to discover the root tendrils bursting out from underground.

It wasn't because he was particularly alert, but because he had stomach trouble in the middle of the night and was squatting over the latrine.

A tendril shot up right beneath his rear, nearly impaling him.

Pulling up his trousers, he fled the privy and banged on doors house by house.

"Run! Everyone run out of the village! There's something underground!"

Some believed him and ran along;

others disbelieved, cursing him for losing his mind in the dead of night.

Those who believed him fled and made it out of the village.

Those who disbelieved never emerged again after dawn.

Village Chief Sun Mancang squatted among the pile of rocks at the mountain peak, with dozens of villagers who had escaped from Sunjiagou Village behind him.

Day had broken, but the sunlight changed color once filtered through that black veil.

The world was dim and murky, as if covered in a filthy shroud of gauze.

The village below remained, and the roofs were still there, but the cooking smoke was gone.

The crows of roosters and barks of dogs had ceased as well; there were only those root tendrils bursting out from beneath the ground,

slowly writhing in the morning light like a nest of serpents brought to life.

He knew that those who hadn't fled would never be able to come out again.

"Mancang, where are we going?"

The speaker was an older villager, holding his three-year-old daughter in his arms.

The girl was still crying, her voice hoarse from sobbing, so he jammed the spout of his water canteen into her mouth.

After sucking twice, she stopped crying and stared at him with red eyes.

Village Chief Sun Mancang said nothing.

Squatting there, he clutched a branch, scribbling aimlessly on the ground and making messy marks.

He didn't know where to go either.

Head west?

The county seat was already gone, and rumor had it that the Evil Tree grew right out of it. Going there would be throwing their lives away.

Head north?

To the west were mountains filled with wild beasts, but who knew if those beasts had turned into monstrosities as well.

Head east?

To the east was the sea, and with that veil blocking the way, they couldn't leave at all.

Head south?

To the south was a village called Qin Family Village.

He had heard of Qin Family Village.

Word was that there was a temple there, housing a deity named Lord Qinling.

It was said that Lord Qinling could protect common mortals.