Chapter 10: Thicket Village (Ten)

“What! You want to stay here overnight!” Li Yulin exclaimed in shock.

“There was nothing during the day,” Fu Wuxuan hooked the corner of his lip. “So what we’re after must only appear at night.”

The other didn’t buy it at all and bristled. “If you want to court death, don’t drag us into it!”

He turned his head, seeking support from Yun Xueqing, hoping the other would also put a stop to this dangerous idea.

The person beside him nodded. “He has a point. We should wait until night to see.”

Li Yulin: “…”

Now it was two against one. Li Yulin lost, and he didn’t dare go down the mountain alone in the dark, so he could only pinch his nose and follow the two.

The three entered the main hall. Aside from a damaged Guanyin statue, there was nothing else, so they headed to the Back Courtyard.

There wasn’t much in the Back Courtyard either—just a few meditation rooms in the shadowy woods. Everything inside had been cleared out, leaving only a few boxes and cabinets.

They checked several meditation rooms, and they were all more or less the same. The only difference was that one room had its walls covered in snake paintings.

“Even painting their own room? What a ruthless person.” As Li Yulin looked around, a spider suddenly dropped from the beam, landing right on his neck.

He screamed in fright, thinking it was a Weird clamped onto the back of his neck. He immediately cried for help. “Big shots, save me! Save me!”

Yun Xueqing calmly brushed the spider off him.

Li Yulin’s face twisted in disgust as he muttered, “We really have to stay in this haunted place?”

Yun Xueqing reminded him, “It’s almost dark. It’s not safe to go out now.”

Li Yulin: “Fine, then let’s find a place to rest first.”

Conveniently, there were a few meditation rooms. Almost everything inside had been cleared out, but the wooden beds remained, so crashing there for the night wouldn’t be too bad.

“Not this room full of snakes—it’s creepy,” Li Yulin suggested. “Let’s switch to another room to sleep.”

Yun Xueqing shook his head. “It’s best to stay in this room.”

This meditation room had an indescribable aura, but it didn’t feel bad.

Fu Wuxuan also spoke up. “Compared to the other rooms, this one has something special about it. It might even restrain Weirds.”

Li Yulin glanced at the snakes of all sizes painted around the room and muttered softly, “Maybe this room itself is hiding a Weird.”

Fu Wuxuan raised a brow. “That’s possible too. You can judge for yourself. You don’t have to follow us.”

Li Yulin choked, then scooted closer to Yun Xueqing without any backbone. “Of course I trust the big shots’ judgment.”

He resignedly went to tidy up the bedding when he heard Fu Wuxuan suddenly say from behind, “Remember what the old monk said? Don’t sleep in open spaces.”

“Yeah, he did say that… but what did he mean?” Li Yulin was baffled and scratched his head. “Does it mean don’t just lie down anywhere in the wilderness?”

Fu Wuxuan hadn’t expected to encounter such a bottomless pit of human intelligence. The corner of his mouth twitched. “Who sleeps outside in the wild?”

Li Yulin’s mind was a fog. “So we’re supposed to pick the smallest room to sleep in?”

“Even the smallest room is still over ten square meters—plenty spacious,” Yun Xueqing frowned in thought. “We can’t sleep in the rooms.”

“Not in the rooms?” Li Yulin was truly confused and exasperated. “If not in the rooms, then where? We can’t sleep outside!”

Fu Wuxuan glanced at him. “The answer is obvious.”

Under Li Yulin’s puzzled expression, he pointed to the only cabinet left in the room.

They had opened this cabinet earlier. It seemed to be for storage and even retained a faint scent of incense and red candles.

Li Yulin’s expression twisted for a moment. “You mean the three of us grown men have to squeeze into a cabinet?”

Fu Wuxuan said cheerfully, “You’d better not join. That way, the cabinet only needs to fit two people.”

Li Yulin stared seriously at his face, hoping to find any sign of a joke, but he was destined to be disappointed.

What Fu Wuxuan said wasn’t serious, but there wasn’t a trace of joking on his face.

He couldn’t help muttering under his breath, “There’s a bed and you want to cram into a cabinet. It’s like you’re sick.”

Yun Xueqing glanced at him. “We can’t sleep in open spaces, so we can only sleep in cramped ones.”

Fu Wuxuan was already too lazy to deal with him. He took out a cloth from his Storage Finger Ring and wiped down the long-unused cabinet, clearing out the accumulated dust inside.

Night fell. Yun Xueqing and Fu Wuxuan had already hidden inside the cabinet, while Li Yulin dawdled, reluctant to enter.

After all, curling up inside such a cabinet for the whole night would definitely cramp his limbs.

Until rustling sounds came from outside the meditation room. He no longer cared about his hands and feet and scrambled inside.

The cabinet, which had some space before, became cramped and crowded with Li Yulin’s addition.

Yun Xueqing’s space was squeezed, and he pressed a hand against the cabinet wall, feeling uncomfortable. Then he heard someone chuckle muffledly.

He heard Fu Wuxuan say, “Have you seen Master Zhou’s Justice Pao?”

Yun Xueqing shook his head, then realized the other couldn’t see and added, “No.”

The other didn’t continue.

As someone who had slumbered for a thousand years, Yun Xueqing hadn’t seen movies, which was normal.

But Li Yulin understood what Fu Wuxuan meant.

There was a scene in the movie where the protagonist went to a brothel, but his archenemy showed up too, so he hid under the brothel girl’s bed. Then he found someone else already under the bed, and eventually even more people crammed in.

It was originally a comedic scene, but Li Yulin couldn’t laugh thinking back on it.

Two years into the apocalypse, human civilization had been destroyed. People lived in constant fear of being killed by Weirds every day—where was there time for movies?

“Watching movies and eating fried chicken” had been just two years ago, yet it felt like an eternity.

In the pitch-black cramped space, the usually carefree Li Yulin rarely felt a pang of sentimentality when a sudden crashing sound came from outside the room!

With the cabinet door closed, they didn’t know what was happening outside, but the sounds were chilling enough.

It was unnaturally chaotic—besides impacts and thuds, there were animal noises. Gnawing, chittering, and shrill “hisses” filled the air endlessly, like all the animals in a zoo breaking out in desperate roars.

There was a gap in the cabinet door. Li Yulin mustered his courage and peered through it.

The room door had already been smashed to pieces. Outside the door, a group of snakes of various sizes were locked in combat with a massive red-eyed monster!

He looked closely. That red-eyed monster was actually an Eight-Legged Spider!

The Eight-Legged Spider was enormous, its compound eyes blood-red. But the most terrifying part was that in the middle of one pair of compound eyes grew a human face!

Li Yulin hadn’t seen that face before. It looked ancient and withered, like dead tree bark, long devoid of any human vitality.

The Eight-Legged Spider’s legs bristled with barbs, its combat power fierce. With one swipe of a leg, it killed several snakes.

But the snakes were numerous and fearless, charging at the Eight-Legged Spider one after another. The two sides were evenly matched, locked in a stalemate for the moment.

“That’s pretty fierce!” Li Yulin blurted out subconsciously. The Eight-Legged Spider seemed to notice the cabinet and looked his way.

Li Yulin nervously clamped his mouth shut. Fortunately, the spider was busy fighting the snakes and had no time for him.

The three held their positions, waiting for the battle to end. As they waited, a wave of drowsiness hit, and they barely managed to fall asleep in that uncomfortable posture.

Li Yulin woke again to a full bladder.

He peered through the gap. It was dimly bright outside, and the battle outside the room had ended. The ground was littered with snake corpses.

In the end, it seemed the snake group had won. The Eight-Legged Spider lay dead in the courtyard, several of its compound eyes bitten out, its legs mangled and incomplete—a gruesome death.

“It looks like it’s over. We can go out now,” Li Yulin said, holding it in uncomfortably. “I can’t hold it anymore.”

Fu Wuxuan and Yun Xueqing were woken by his voice.

Not having slept enough, Fu Wuxuan was in a foul mood, his tone sharp. “Hold it.”

They still didn’t know the situation. It was safer to wait until full daylight.

Li Yulin couldn’t care less. “I really can’t hold it. My bladder’s gonna explode!”

Fu Wuxuan: “Let it.”

Li Yulin: “…You don’t want me peeing in the cabinet, do you?”

Now it was Fu Wuxuan’s turn to look unpleasant.

Li Yulin scored a point and suppressed his smugness. “I won’t leave the room. I’ll just pee by the cabinet. I won’t go far.”

Fu Wuxuan didn’t want to talk to him anymore and waved him off in disgust.

With permission, Li Yulin darted out like a rabbit.

In his urgency, he ran too fast and forgot to close the cabinet door.

Unbeknownst to him, a small snake slithered in through the cabinet gap.

Yun Xueqing had just woken when a cold slimy sensation brushed his hand.

The feeling of a soft-bodied creature crawling was utterly disgusting. Yun Xueqing instantly sobered and was about to warn Fu Wuxuan when a sharp pain stabbed his hand.

He had been bitten by the snake.

The snake venom ignited like a spark along his veins, setting his whole body ablaze. He felt as if he were in flames, scorched by fire. His body burned hot, but his consciousness blurred. Double images appeared before his eyes, his vision faded, and his mind turned to chaos.

He forced out a “Be careful” before passing out.

When Yun Xueqing woke again, he found himself in a new place. It was like falling into an illusion—surrounded by fog, unable to see or discern directions.

The scene before him didn’t feel real. He tried to figure out if he was dreaming or trapped in a nightmare.

A small snake appeared at his feet. He warily stepped back, and the snake seemed to glance at him before slithering off in a certain direction.

Yun Xueqing hesitated for a moment but followed.

The fog gradually cleared, and he arrived before a temple.

But it wasn’t the snake-painted temple—it was the old monk’s temple!

The old monk couldn’t see him. He was like an outsider, observing everything.

The temple wasn’t as desolate as usual; a few visitors came to burn incense. The old monk wasn’t yet very aged, and his eyebrows hadn’t grown to drag on the ground.

He was chatting with an old man, a faint smile on his face.

The angle wasn’t good. Yun Xueqing shifted for a better view.

Only then did he realize that the person talking with the old monk was none other than Thicket Village’s village head!