Since all these rules and superstitions are outdated, what's wrong with me indulging in some me

Lu Changsheng and Rex, one after the other, stepped into this valley soaked in despair and madness.

The air was cold, viscous, and suffocating, thick with the stench of decaying iron and a sweet, cloying sweetness. Visibility was less than five steps; all that could be seen was churning gray-white and the dark red, slippery ground beneath one's feet.

The chaotic whispers, cries, and wriggling sounds around my ears were amplified countless times. They were no longer background noise, but had become physical pressure, trying to squeeze and penetrate in from all directions.

With a thought, Lu Changsheng felt the spiritual energy in the jade pendant circulate, forming an invisible barrier around him, isolating him from the most direct spiritual erosion.

Rex followed closely behind, gripping his greatsword tightly and walking steadily. However, Lu Changsheng noticed that his breathing was faster than usual, and his grip on the sword was too tight, causing his knuckles to turn white.

Although the armor directly isolated some of the influence, the omnipresent mental pressure and chaotic sounds continued to assault his will.

The two walked along the rocky cliffs and ravines of the valley, their feet resting on hard, loose rocks.

Before they had gone fifty steps, something strange began to happen.

The fog ahead suddenly tore apart in an instant, like a shattered mirror.

Rex's breathing became noticeably heavier beside him.

The breathing coming from the gaps in the armor was suppressed and rough. Lu Changsheng glanced over and saw that the knight commander's brows were furrowed into a knot, and the blood vessels in his gray eyes were spreading at a visible speed.

"Can it hold on?" Lu Changsheng asked.

“Report to my god…” Rex’s voice was squeezed out from between his teeth, “These sounds… they are seeping into the gaps in the helmet.”

Lu Changsheng didn't speak, but simply raised his hand slightly. The spiritual energy of the jade pendant flowed again, and an invisible barrier spread out from his body, enveloping Rex as well.

The knight commander's breathing noticeably eased.

"Thank you, my God."

This time, the voice carried less respect and more genuine gratitude.

Lu Changsheng nodded, his gaze returning to the depths of the valley.

The inhuman singing continued in the distance, its pitch fluctuating, as if a group of people were trying to sing a hymn with distorted voices, but every syllable was off-key and landed in a position that made people feel uncomfortable.

This sense of disorientation made Lu Changsheng's temples throb, as if someone were sawing his skull with a blunt knife.

After advancing about a hundred paces, outlines began to appear in the fog.

First, there are rocks.

But the shapes of those rocks were wrong. Normal weathering of rocks, no matter how bizarre, would never produce such...organic curves. Lu Changsheng approached a protruding rock face and reached out to touch it.

The texture doesn't feel right.

It wasn't the cold, hard feeling one would expect from stone; instead, it was warm, with a faint pulsation, as if something was slowly flowing inside the rock.

He withdrew his hand and looked down at his fingertips.

A very fine layer of gray powder adhered to it, and when you smelled it up close, it had a faint sweet and fishy smell.

It smelled exactly like the church.

"My God..." Rex's voice came from behind, trembling with suppressed emotion, "These stones... have patterns. Like... like veins."

Lu Changsheng looked in the direction he was pointing.

Indeed, the veins protruding from the rock face, a darker shade of red, almost black, were a deeper color than the surrounding rocks, winding and twisting, truly resembling the vascular system of some kind of organism. And—

They were pulsating slightly.

Each pulsation is accompanied by a very low and deep murmur, emanating from the depths of the rocks, like the heartbeat of this planet.

Lu Changsheng took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.

He had seen many auspicious feng shui sites, but the situation here had exceeded the normal scope of feng shui.

This isn't a problem with the flow of the earth's veins; it's that this land itself is becoming some kind of living thing.

He recalled the illustrations on the handscroll in the library.

Those distorted human figures, mountains covered in eyes, tentacles reaching out from the ground... at the time I just thought they were exaggerated expressions of some kind of religious art, but now it seems that those illustrations may be realism.

"Keep going."

Lu Changsheng suppressed the chill in his heart and stepped forward.

At the forty-seventh step, a figure appeared in the mist.

Not a living person.

It was actually... a soul.

It was a grayish humanoid figure, and you could vaguely see that he was in a prayerful posture with his hands clasped together, facing the depths of the valley with his head bowed.

The clothes on his body had long since rotted away, revealing the skin underneath.

Lu Changsheng turned his gaze over, and he could vaguely make out the expression on the wronged spirit's face:

It was not fear, not pain, but a kind of almost ecstatic devotion.

It was as if, in the last moments of his life, he saw something that brought him immense satisfaction.

Rex paused for a moment.

"These are... pilgrims." His voice came from behind the armor, carrying a complex emotion that Lu Changsheng had never heard before—

It wasn't fear, but more like a forcibly suppressed...sense of familiarity.

"Pilgrims?"

“Before the Silent Era, believers would come to Echo Valley on pilgrimage every year.” Rex’s gaze fell on the skeleton that remained in a praying posture, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “They said that Echo Valley was the place where the voice of God was clearest. If you prayed here, you would be heard by God.”

"And the result?"

Rex did not answer.

Lu Changsheng no longer needed to answer. The answer lay scattered throughout the valley—the ubiquitous grayish-white powder, the human skeletons embedded in the rock walls, and the charred, blackened scratches on the ground, as if burned by intense heat.

They continued walking.

More and more figures appeared in the fog.

"My God..." Rex's voice tightened, "There are more and more people here..."

That's definitely too much.

Lu Changsheng could feel the oppressive feeling of being watched growing exponentially. The figures that were originally just blurry outlines were now becoming clearer.

They emerged from the mist, surfaced from the rock face, and crawled out from the cracks in the rubble beneath their feet—

One, two, ten, a hundred.

Densely packed.

They wore clothes from different eras. There were the oldest styles of miners' uniforms, coarse linen stained with coal dust and blood; there were monks' robes from the heyday of the church hundreds of years ago, with rotting faces under the hoods; and there were more recent civilian clothes, patched upon patched, which, along with the lingering gray stains on their bodies, told the story of Blackwater Town's suffering over the past century.

But they all have one thing in common—

Everyone was watching Lu Changsheng.

It wasn't the gaze of a believer looking up at a god. It was something far more complex: expectation, fear, despair, and a hint of... an ineffable plea.

"They...were all people who died in Echo Valley?" Lu Changsheng asked in a low voice.

"Yes." Rex's voice came from behind the armor, trembling with suppressed emotion. "In the Church's three-hundred-year record, there are 437 people who entered Echo Valley and never returned. But that's the official number."

He paused.

"Actually, there are many more. Many civilians sneaked in and never came out again. The archbishop said their souls were swallowed by the valley and became part of the echo."

Lu Changsheng walked forward in silence.

The vengeful spirits did not stop them, but watched silently, like two rows of mourners, or like history books that had been opened but no one could understand.

After walking about three hundred more steps, the terrain began to descend noticeably.

The valley path became steeper, and the gravel underfoot turned into soft mud, making a dull "plop, plop" sound when stepped on, as if walking on some kind of rotting organic matter. The sweet, fishy smell in the air grew stronger and stronger, almost to the point of being nauseating.

Rex's breathing became heavy again.

"My God..." His voice began to tremble, "This smell... it's seeping into my armor... my skin... feels a little itchy..."

Lu Changsheng stopped and turned to look at Rex.

Several very faint gray spots appeared on the skin of the knight commander's neck and wrists.

It's small, about the size of a pinhead, and very light in color; you can't even notice it unless you look closely.

But Lu Changsheng's pupils suddenly contracted.

— Gray spots.

Exactly the same as those on the miners.

"Have you been to Echo Valley before?" Lu Changsheng asked.

"No," Rex shook his head. "This is the first time. According to church law, a knight commander can only enter Echo Valley when God himself gives the order."

"Did you have those gray spots on your body before?"

Rex looked down and saw the gray spots on his wrist, then froze.

"No." His voice was a little hoarse. "I... have never had this disease."

"Now you have it."

Lu Changsheng's tone was calm, but Rex felt a chill run down his spine and up to the back of his head.

"My God... what does this mean?"

"It means that what's in Echo Valley is changing you."

After saying this, Lu Changsheng didn't explain further. He took out a talisman from his system inventory, his fingers flying as he quickly folded it into a complex shape—a pattern that Rex couldn't understand.

"Here you go." Lu Changsheng handed over the folded talisman. "Place it inside the armor lining, close to your heart. Don't lose it."

Rex took the tightly folded yellow paper; it was slightly warm to the touch, as if it had just been picked up from the sun.

"My God, this is—"

"A protective talisman," Lu Changsheng replied succinctly. "It can temporarily stop that thing from corroding you. But it can't completely eradicate it. You'll need to apply a topical medicine after you get back."

Rex didn't ask any more questions. He quickly stuffed the talisman into the lining, pressed his palm against his chest, and felt the small patch of warmth.

The spread of the spots has visibly slowed down.

"Keep going."

Lu Changsheng turned around and continued downwards.

As the terrain became steeper, numerous carvings began to appear on the rock walls on both sides of the valley.

It's not the simple prayer texts and rough patterns of the past, but a true relief sculpture.

Densely packed, layer upon layer, stretching from the ground to unseen heights, appearing and disappearing in the mist.

Lu Changsheng stopped and carefully examined the nearest painting.

It was a huge narrative relief, carved in a rough and powerful style with deep lines, possessing a certain primitive beauty.

The first scene shows a group of people emerging from ruins, dressed in rags, with their families in tow, trekking towards a towering mountain in the distance.

Lu Changsheng stopped and carefully examined the nearest painting.

It was a huge narrative relief, carved in a rough and powerful style with deep lines, possessing a certain primitive beauty.

The first scene shows a group of people emerging from ruins, dressed in rags, with their families in tow, trekking towards a towering mountain in the distance.

The second scene shows them reaching the foot of the mountain and beginning to quarry stone, fell trees, and build. A structure appears in the scene—no, not a structure, but an altar. A massive altar made of huge stones, exactly the same shape as the one beneath the church.

The third scene: The altar is complete. A group of people kneel before the altar, gazing up at the sky. In the sky, there is a huge, luminous circle, like the sun, or like an open eye. The circle's light shines on the altar and on the people.

The fourth scene: The circle begins to change. It is no longer a complete circle, but... it cracks. From the crack, countless twisted, unrecognizable lines emerge, like tentacles or light, falling down and enveloping the entire altar and everyone present.

The fifth scene: Those people fell. Their bodies began to melt, transforming into something somewhere between human and object. Some turned into stone, some into trees, and some into—nothing at all, leaving only a puddle on the ground.

The sixth scene: The circle has disappeared. The altar is empty, except for a new group of people dressed differently, kneeling in the same spot, worshipping the altar with devout expressions on their faces.

Then—the scene repeated itself.

From the first group to the sixth group, they are exactly the same.

The only difference is that people's clothing changes in each cycle, from the oldest coarse linen to woolen cloth, and then to cotton cloth in the last few hundred years.

Lu Changsheng stared at the relief sculpture, something rapidly piecing together in his mind.

This is not "history".

This is the "cycle".

The history of Blackwater Town isn't a straight line, but a circle. Every so often, a new group of people comes here, builds an altar, summons that thing, and is then devoured. Then new people come, worship the now-empty altar, and repeat the same mistakes.

Sisyphus pushed the boulder uphill, and it rolled down. He pushed it again, and it rolled down again.

Round and round.

"My God..." Rex's voice came from behind, tinged with obvious unease, "These paintings... I have never seen them in any church records."

"Because someone doesn't want you to see it."

"Who?"

Lu Changsheng did not answer. His gaze fell deeper—at the end of the misty valley, a huge outline could be vaguely seen.

It's not a door.

It is an altar.

An altar exactly like the one on the ground floor of the church.

But bigger, older, more...

live.

Just then, a voice sounded behind him.

It was not a murmur in the mist, nor the weeping of a vengeful spirit.

It was a clear, gentle, and smiling voice, as if someone was greeting him.

"You've finally arrived."

Lu Changsheng turned around abruptly.

A man stood a dozen steps away.

He wore the same platinum robe as Lu Changsheng, and the same thorn emblem, both magnificent and heavy.

His face—

He looks exactly like Lu Changsheng.