Chapter 26
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Lu Haoxiu wanted to say he dared not, but under Lou Yan’s smiling gaze, he reluctantly walked up to Liu Kang, looking even uglier when he smiled than when he cried, “Uncle, don’t be afraid, I’ll be quick.”
Liu Kang’s legs shook like sieves, “Little brother, don’t shake your hands.”
Lu Haoxiu said with a mournful face, “Uncle, I can’t control myself.”
Li Sanxin turned his head, clenched his fist against his lips to suppress his laughter, and coughed, “Little Lu, can you get it out?”
“I’ll try…” Lu Haoxiu didn’t dare to promise too much.
He touched Liu Kang’s stomach and indeed felt a hard object in the shape of a phone. Lu Haoxiu couldn’t help but sigh. An anomaly’s methods really had nothing to do with science, but if anomalies adhered to science, it wouldn’t be an anomaly anymore.
Lou Yan asked, “Is it possible? Don’t force yourself if it’s not.”
Lu Haoxiu’s eyes suddenly became firm as he straightened up, “I can!”
It’s just a phone in the stomach, Brother thinks he can get it out, so he definitely can!
With that said, the air around Lu Haoxiu’s hand slowly distorted, and suddenly a black hole appeared. The black hole opened on Liu Kang’s belly, and Lu Haoxiu focused all his attention on reaching into the black hole. He reminded Liu Kang, “Uncle, don’t move.”
Liu Kang was already sweating profusely, so nervous that he didn’t even dare to nod, but instead squeezed his eyes hard to indicate that he wouldn’t move.
Lou Yan and Li Sanxin beside him were also watching this scene intently. Although they had witnessed many times Lu Haoxiu practicing the use of “Void Grab,” it was the first time they saw him applying this ability on a human body.
If this method really worked… Lou Yan suppressed his smile, thinking it might become a powerful weapon.
Lu Haoxiu was also nervous, but his hands were steady. After a few seconds, his expression suddenly turned joyful, and he withdrew his hand from the black hole. “Found it!”
Everyone’s gaze focused on his hand, only to see a smartphone, about the size of a palm, stained with mucus and grease.
Liu Kang collapsed to the ground, his legs turning to jelly. He grinned foolishly in relief, “Great, I’m saved! Yes, yes, big brother, this is the phone, and the photo of the red coffin is inside!”
Lou Yan put on a pair of transparent gloves from his pocket, stretching his slender fingers to fill every inch of the gloves perfectly. He took the phone from Lu Haoxiu’s hand and handed the bag of food to Liu Kang. “Go back to the graveyard, it’s better not to let people find you.”
Liu Kang nodded hastily and left without looking back.
Lou Yan frowned, wiped the phone clean with a tissue, and tried to turn it on, only to find that the phone was out of battery and shut down. He clicked his tongue in annoyance, “Let’s go back and charge it first.”
There were a few more young people in Old Tree Furniture Store, holding umbrellas and following Old Wang to look at the furniture in the courtyard. Lou Yan calmly went upstairs with the cover of Li Sanxin and Lu Haoxiu, entering a room.
“Cai Mo brought two people to stay in the room next to ours, the one closest to the inside, and he also brought a seven or eight-year-old girl,” Li Sanxin pointed to the adjacent room and whispered, “Apart from the little girl, he also brought several company employees. Those employees look like interns, young and without any guard, thinking innocently that Cai Mo brought them to look at the wood. But I think Cai Mo’s purpose in bringing them here is not so simple; he may use them as scapegoats.”
Lou Yan sneered, “This is something cultists would do.”
He found a charger to charge the phone, and the group sat down, waiting for the phone to boot up. Li Sanxin rubbed his chin thoughtfully, “Why would cultists come here? And why does Wen Yian want to kill Cai Mo?”
Lou Yan, who hadn’t eaten lunch, was starving. He grabbed a bag of bread and opened it, eating slowly, and casually replied, “We came for something, and they probably came for something too.”
Li Sanxin pondered, “Do they also want to fuse?”
“Either they want to fuse or to offer sacrifices,” Lou Yan recalled the arrogance and madness of cultists in his past life. Now thinking about it, many people in the cultist group possessed strange powers. “Things in Liushu Village are not simple. I suspect that among Cai Mo’s group, there is not only him as a cultist, but they also must have the ability to deal with that thing. Perhaps, they even have a way to find that thing…”
Duan Zege had been flipping tarot cards all along, suddenly smiling upon hearing this. Lou Yan turned to look at him, swallowed the bread in his mouth, and took a sip of water from the bottle beside him. “What’s so funny?”
Duan Zege’s fingers were long and covered with various small and large wounds, and there was a hideous burn spreading from the inside of his palm to the back of his hand. However, strangely enough, it did not affect the flexibility of his hands. Hearing Lou Yan’s question, he smiled faintly and said with the most indifferent tone, “Mr. Lou, did you forget that I also have the ability of ‘divination’? I can also find out where that thing is.”
Lou Yan raised an eyebrow and chuckled, “Of course, I didn’t forget.”
He hadn’t forgotten, but Lou Yan was still somewhat wary of Duan Zege in his heart and didn’t want to develop a habit of relying solely on Duan Zege’s “divination” without using his own brain. However, since Duan Zege brought it up voluntarily, he wouldn’t be polite.
Lou Yan reached out and beckoned Duan Zege over, “Come here and help me see where it is now.”
Duan Zege walked over to him leisurely and sat down beside him. Lou Yan turned on the phone, tapped into the photo album, and saw the first photo of the red coffin.
The photo was taken when the red coffin was just salvaged from the river. A group of people surrounded the muddy shore, with rain falling lightly. Ten or so strong men were pulling the coffin tied to ropes buried in the mud. In the crowded scene, the red coffin laid half on the ground and half submerged in water, its vibrant color standing out among the crowd like a sudden burst of red in a black-and-white world.
The coffin was seven feet and three inches, and it seemed to be about two meters and three or four centimeters. The coffin was entirely red, showing no signs of aging. It had square corners, was tall and thick, with no signs of insect bites or paint peeling from rain and wind. It looked like a newly made coffin.
Lou Yan zoomed in on the coffin to see the patterns on it. Instead of the traditional carvings of pine and cypress trees, cranes, and peonies found on coffins, the patterns on this one were chaotic, as if they were scribbled by a child. There were no discernible patterns, but one could see a large “double happiness” character carved in the middle.
At first glance, it seemed ordinary, but once the coffin was taken in, a sense of unease and fear arose in the heart, making one feel unlucky and scared.
Duan Zege suddenly pointed to a part of the coffin’s pattern, circling one area. “Do you see here? Does it look like an eye? And here, does it look like a skull? When you connect the entire thing, does this pattern resemble a demon?”
He gestured lightly, and Lou Yan nodded in agreement.
With green faces and sharp teeth, distorted facial features, the more one looked, the more it looked like a demon. Lou Yan looked at the other patterns with the same gaze. These terrifying, chaotic lines turned out to be other terrifying demons.
Whether male or female, old or young, each demon’s face was different, but all were extremely terrifying. Moreover, the more one looked, the more it felt like these demons were lifelike, as if they were alive, as if they were moving… The lines began to sway, and the demons gradually turned their faces to look at Lou Yan. They came closer and closer, as if they were about to crawl out of the screen and stick to Lou Yan’s face!
A hand suddenly covered the red coffin in the photo, and Duan Zege whispered softly, “Lou Yan?”
Lou Yan snapped back to attention abruptly. He immediately checked his mental power and realized that it had unknowingly dropped by 3 points.
“Spiritual contamination…” Lou Yan murmured, raising his suspicion of the danger posed by the red coffin. The chaotic patterns on the coffin also made Lou Yan particularly wary.
Lou Yan asked Duan Zege, “Did you feel the spiritual contamination it brings?”
“My hair was in the way, I didn’t see clearly,” Duan Zege brushed his hair aside, “I didn’t feel anything either.”
Lou Yan pursed his lips and sighed lightly, “This red coffin, I doubt I can handle it.”
Lu Haoxiu and Li Sanxin also came over to look at the photo of the red coffin, but Lou Yan only allowed them to glance at it briefly, fearing that they would also be affected by the spiritual contamination of the red coffin.
Although they didn’t see anything special about the coffin, after hearing Lou Yan’s words, Li Sanxin couldn’t help but worry, “If it’s really dangerous, let’s forget it and just take care of Cai Mo and leave?”
Lou Yan chuckled, “Aren’t you worried about the villagers here suffering?”
Li Sanxin was a good person in the colloquial sense. He was the kind of person who would help an elderly person who fell down, intervene when a woman was being bullied, and scold minors for playing dangerous games and urge them to go home.
Li Sanxin fell silent, and after a while, he said, “It’s better than you dying here.”
He couldn’t stand idly by and watch the villagers die, but if it meant Lou Yan risking his life to deal with the red coffin, he would rather Lou Yan leave immediately.
“What about your skin?” Lou Yan grabbed Li Sanxin’s arm, rolled up his sleeve, and saw that the square piece of skin on Li Sanxin’s forearm had already covered his entire arm. Lou Yan stared at the skin with cold eyes, suppressing his anger, and said again, “If you don’t integrate the anomaly, you’ll become a ‘ghost story’ puppet soon.”
Whether it was to prevent the anomalies in the village from being swallowed by Fu Xuezhou, or for Li Sanxin’s sake, or for the villagers who were still alive in Liushu Village, he couldn’t just ignore the red coffin.
Lou Yan was the kind of person who wouldn’t cry until he saw the coffin. Whether he could kill the red coffin, he had to try to know. As long as there was a thirty percent chance of success, he dared to take the risk.
“Duan Zege,” Lou Yan said calmly, “help me divine where the red coffin will appear.”
Duan Zege, with his head bowed, shuffled the tarot cards and eventually drew three cards from the deck.
“The divination tells me that tonight at midnight, on the river, there will be a surprising discovery,” Duan Zege said with deep meaning. “It also tells me that the most dangerous place may offer you the opportunity to achieve your desires.”
Lou Yan pondered, “Is that so?”
It seemed that he would have to go out at midnight tonight.
“Late at night?” Li Sanxin frowned, about to suggest going together, but then saw Lou Yan’s refusal in his eyes.
Lou Yan looked at him for a moment, then turned to Lu Haoxiu. His gaze was unmistakable, and his meaning was clear: he wanted to go alone.
No one here had more experience and ability to deal with the anomaly than him. If Lou Yan couldn’t handle the red coffin, then these people going would just be sending them to their deaths.
If one life could be saved, then it was worth it.
“I’ll catch some sleep.”
With only a precarious 17 points of mental power left, Lou Yan quickly finished the bread, threw himself onto the bed, and prepared to rest.
He needed to restore his mental power in case of a major battle tonight.
After he closed his eyes, Duan Zege suddenly said, “Lou Yan, don’t let your mental power drop below 5.”
Lou Yan didn’t open his eyes. His voice sounded lazy as he asked, “Why?”
“When your mental power reaches 0, you’ll immediately transform into an anomaly,” Duan Zege said. “But when your mental power approaches 0 but isn’t exactly 0, you’ll enter a state of madness. At that time, you’ll lose human reason and will come dangerously close to becoming an anomaly, and you may never wake up again.”
Lou Yan breathed lightly, but Duan Zege knew he wasn’t asleep yet, just quietly listening to his words.
Duan Zege’s gaze shifted from the tarot cards to Lou Yan, “I calculated that when your mental power drops below 5, you may enter a state of madness.”
Lou Yan’s voice came from the pillow, “Okay.”
He still looked calm and steady, as if everything was under his control: “I understand.”
***
At eleven o’clock in the evening, Lou Yan was awakened by the noise next door.
He opened his eyes to find the room pitch black. Duan Zege was sitting at the table writing something, Lu Haoxiu was lying on the sofa, and Li Sanxin was lying on the other side of the bed. Both of them were breathing steadily, already asleep.
Lou Yan wiped his face, tiptoed to the window, and gently lifted the curtain to look outside. Before long, he heard the sound of the door in the neighboring room, and three adults with a little girl passed by their door, heading quietly downstairs.
The leader was neither tall nor short, looking in his forties, with a big back-combed hairstyle and glasses, giving off an air of a refined middle-aged professor. He should be Cai Mo.
Lou Yan slowed his breathing, listening to the footsteps of these people from the second floor to the first floor. After a while, there was movement downstairs.
The voices of the three young interns rang out, surprised and delighted, “Boss, are we going to see the wood so late?”
Cai Mo chuckled, his tone gentle, “A batch of good wood just arrived. Since you’re all still awake, let’s go take a look. I’m worried it’ll be gone if we’re late.”
The three interns replied immediately, “Okay, boss, let’s go get a flashlight.”
After a while, these people walked out of the Old Tree Furniture store.
Lou Yan’s brows furrowed deeply. Without much thought, he could guess the fate of these interns. His disgust for the cultists was almost ingrained in him. Lou Yan expressionlessly checked the time on his watch under the moonlight. Seeing that it wasn’t yet midnight, he planned to follow Cai Mo to see what these cultists were up to.
He equipped himself with defensive weapons, knowing that these weapons wouldn’t pose a threat to the anomaly, but they would be effective against humans.
Finally, Lou Yan turned to look at the three people inside the house, gestured to Duan Zege, and quietly stepped out of the door.
Passing by the room of the young couple, Lou Yan paused his steps and knocked on their door.
“Who’s there?” Liu Cheng came to the door, his eyes wary as he looked at Lou Yan. “Do you need something from us?”
Lou Yan pulled down his cap and said lightly, “Don’t believe anyone’s words. It’s best for you two not to separate. Leave Liushu Village as early as possible tomorrow morning.”
After saying that, he didn’t even look at Liu Cheng’s reaction, and quickly walked down the stairs.
Liu Cheng frowned as he watched his figure, “Nuts.”
And he slammed the door shut.
A few minutes later, his door was knocked on again.
Huang Xin nudged her boyfriend, and Liu Cheng impatiently put down his phone, “Who the h*ll is it now?!”
Opening the door, he saw the three friends who had just left, standing at the door, blocking it tightly.
Li Sanxin and Duan Zege were both tall, and Lu Haoxiu’s stern face could be quite intimidating. Liu Cheng took two steps back in fear, feeling uneasy. “What are you… planning? Want to fight?”
Li Sanxin glanced at him indifferently. “My friend kindly reminded you, you better remember. Take good care of your girlfriend tonight. You two better not separate, or else…”
He sneered, his words carrying profound meaning, and Liu Cheng’s face instantly became frightened, thinking they were going to harm him and his girlfriend.
Duan Zege also said calmly, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Can ordinary people like you take advantage of the cheap furniture in this village? If we see you still here tomorrow, it won’t be as simple as coming to talk to you tonight.”
Lu Haoxiu also snorted coldly, pretending to be fierce as he raised his fist. “Got it? Separation means a beating!”
After showing off their power, the three turned around and left. Liu Cheng stood alone at the door, wiping the cold sweat, “D*mn, a bunch of lunatics.”
But he was scared after all, quickly retreating into the room and locking the door, deciding not to open it to anyone tonight.
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