Nightmare Light

Chapter 298 Blood Cult Underground Facilities

The group began their descent down the mountain.

During this process, Cang raised his tentacles and cast several divine spells on everyone.

"A mental protection spell. It can protect you if there is pollution or illusionary attacks below," He said.

Actually, Lin Wang didn't need these divine arts, but Dog Brother (the mercenary who stayed in the car to wait for them) and Tian Taozi did.

He nodded to Cang: "Thank you."

"No need to be polite." Cang waved his tentacles, then suddenly made a "thinking while stroking his chin" gesture with one of them. "Hey, could I take this opportunity to cure your aesthetic problems...?"

"Don't treat it!"

As they talked, they entered the small village—a village with obvious signs of habitation.

The roads were swept clean, and food scraps could be seen in the garbage dump at the village entrance. Even in the small cart next to the garbage pile, there was some damp mud.

The roofs of some houses were even smoking.

Strangely, from the time they entered the village until they had walked a certain distance through it, they never saw anyone come in or go out.

These traces of human habitation, and the smoke rising from the rooftops, seem like a static set, but without any actors.

"I feel goosebumps," Tian Taozi said, hugging her arms. "This place looks really creepy."

“Indeed, it would be fine if it were just ruins, but this place…” Dog Brother muttered to himself.

Lin Wang pondered for a moment, then walked directly to the door of a house—the kind with smoke coming from its chimney.

He yanked the door open.

This is a typical northern-style rural home—after opening the door, there is a simple courtyard with some farming tools, a small stone table, and wooden tables and chairs.

There are several rooms around it.

The group went through all the rooms in the courtyard and opened all the doors—but the place was still empty.

Even the firewood was still burning in the kitchen stove, but the person was nowhere to be seen.

"I found this in the room." Tian Taozi walked out of the homeowner's bedroom, holding a black and red robe in her hand.

"The robes of the Blood Cult... This place really is inhabited by cultists," Dog said.

Lin Wang frowned.

He walked to the stone table, picked up a small wooden figure from the ground beside it—not a ritual implement used by a cult, but the kind of "stick figure" that children play with—and said to the crowd, "Are there children among those cult members?"

Everyone frowned – judging from any common sense logic, there should not be a group of “children” among a group of crazy cult members.

Because children represent uncertainty.

Moreover, the time and cost required to educate a child into a cult member is far greater than that required to directly convert an adult—adults are literate, can communicate, and are inherently capable of working.

The cultists in this village are theoretically just some cultists disguised as villagers, pretending to be villagers here. Why are there children here?
Dog said, "Boss, could it be that these cultists have lived here for a long time... and had children?"

"That is indeed a possibility."

They explored several more rooms in the village—all showed signs of life, but were empty.

Furthermore, traces of children were found in several of these households.

Lin Wang's brows furrowed even deeper. What exactly is going on in this village?

With the help of the Mountain King, they found the entrance to the lower level beneath the floorboards of the ancestral hall in the village.

Beneath the tarpaulin covering the offering table in the ancestral hall is a staircase passageway.

The group walked down the stairwell, and before they had gone far, they could smell the strong stench of blood in the air.

Lin Wang and his companions exchanged glances and immediately assumed a defensive posture.

A mountain-like expanse of starlight appeared in Qianlan's hand;
Dozens of T-shaped philosophical lights appeared on Cang's tentacles;
Dog Brother picked up a pair of stilts.

Tian Taozi took out a chicken leg, looked at it from left to right, then put the chicken leg back and took out a hand grenade.

They walked a short distance into the underground passage—a very old-looking facility. Judging from its architectural style and materials, it was clearly not built in recent years—it was at least a hundred years old, and the materials used were not those of modern architecture.

"How long ago did these cultists build this facility?" Dog Brother's eyes widened, and he gripped the stilts tightly.

“The history of the Blood Cult is very long—they were active as early as the Three Sovereigns period, and…” Cang poked the wall next to him with his tentacle and said, “Many times, they don’t build these facilities themselves, but instead find abandoned ancient buildings or underground facilities and modify them for use.”

He tapped the wall twice more: "This building has a long history, but I don't know if it was built by the Blood Cult or by someone else."

"Hiss... Just thinking about these cultists running this place for hundreds of years gives me the creeps," Dog muttered. "I wonder how many bad things they've done down here."

As they were talking, Qianlan suddenly stopped and gestured to interrupt their conversation.

Something's not right up ahead.

Qianlan stepped aside, gesturing for her companions to look ahead.

Everyone looked in the direction she was pointing—and then, they all gasped.

Except for Cang, He cannot breathe.

As people saw deeper into the passage, the walls built of ancient rock gradually began to change their appearance—interspersed among the metal walls and conduits were numerous twisted and bizarre runes.

With Lin Wang's current knowledge, he was able to identify some of the runes—most of them were related to blood, as well as calming and refreshing the mind.

But what truly sent chills down people's spines wasn't these things, but rather—as they saw, a little deeper into the passage, between the rock crevices, metal walls, and pipes, a large number of…

flesh.

Blood vessels and swollen flesh trembled and writh, growing rampantly between rocks and metal, eroding the original space of the building. And between these fleshy lumps and blood vessels, one could also see some indescribable twisted limbs, growing wildly and haphazardly.

Those limbs would occasionally tremble unconsciously.

"My God... what happened here?" Dog exclaimed, his whole body trembling.

“It seems that this is the main reason why the villagers above disappeared—the outbreak of flesh and blood devoured all the villagers, or rather, all the cultists,” Qian Lan said, then narrowed her eyes. “It seems that one of our old friends… has gone mad.”

"Should we continue?" Dog Brother's face turned pale. "It looks like there's no one left alive in this place."

Lin Wang pondered for a moment and nodded: "We must move forward—our goal is not to find these cultists, but to ensure that the 'mad being' inside does not threaten the mortal world."

Just then, he suddenly heard a piercing howl coming from the end of the passage, and amidst those howls, everyone clearly heard a logically structured shout—

"Intruders! Engage them!"

(End of this chapter)