I built a safe house in the eerie night.

Dark and cold.

Jiang Ning's consciousness was like sinking into a deep abyss, struggling to gather together, his memories hazy and unclear.

Where am I? In the hospital? At home?

Jiang Ning tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids felt like they were made of lead, and his body felt like it was being crushed by a heavy mountain, making him unable to move. Before his vision returned, strange noises pierced his eardrums.

"Ho...hoaaaah—!!"

Twisted and grotesque, indescribable, like several lumps of sticky flesh being torn apart, with sharp, scraping metal pieces interspersed within, so close it felt like it was right next to my head.

Jiang Ning was enveloped in a chilling aura, and his breathing suddenly stopped.

This is not a nightmare! This is not sleep paralysis!

He struggled to open his eyelids, breaking free from his drowsy state.

What came into view was an old, withered face, its wrinkles as sharp as knife-cut bark, appearing blurry and terrifying at such close range.

Jiang Ning felt a tightness in his throat and instinctively wanted to scream.

"Sh-!"

The old man in front of him stopped Jiang Ning in a very low whisper and stared intently in the other direction.

Jiang Ning was struck hard, because even in the pitch-black darkness, he saw the almost tangible fear in the old man's eyes.

He followed the old man's gaze and turned his head away little by little.

First, there's the room I'm in right now. It's cramped, with no light source, only outside the window... no, there's no moonlight either, only a deeper darkness.

In that surging darkness, right outside the window paper and wooden door of this room, twisted and eerie shadows were darting and thrashing about erratically.

Jiang Ning's mind went completely blank.

What is this...?

Before he could comprehend what was happening, with a bang, a flat object was suddenly slapped onto the windowpane, pushing the oil paper inward to create a bulge that outlined the shape of a human head.

At the center of the protrusion, the outline of a bloodshot eyeball was pressed down, spinning wildly, as if trying to pierce through the thin barrier and peer into the room.

Almost simultaneously—

"Bang...bang!!"

The wooden door was slammed shut with a loud bang, followed by a terrifying, bizarre, inhuman "hoarse" sound.

Every sound reverberated in Jiang Ning's heart. Fear gripped his throat, rendering him unable to utter a sound. He could only curl up helplessly on the inside of the bed.

The old man by the bed stirred slightly, lowering his dry, hoarse voice.

"Young master...don't make a sound, they'll be gone soon..."

The banging outside the door became more urgent, mixed with more rustling scraping sounds and terrified shrill laughter, as if more and more things were being attracted and surrounding the house.

Jiang Ning's chest heaved, but his pupils, which had been trembling and unfocused with fear, refocused.

At the same time, a flood of fragmented memories rushed into his mind and quickly merged into a part of him.

The dimly lit, dilapidated wooden house, the piled-up farm tools, the stale smell permeating the air... everything felt both familiar and strange.

He also recognized the old man by the bed.

"Uncle Fu...?"

Jiang Ning uttered two words uncertainly.

The old man nodded, signaling him to be quiet, and then continued to stare intently at the wooden door that seemed ready to break at any moment.

Jiang Ning closed his eyes and gradually made everything clear.

The old man's name was Wang Fu. He was the bodyguard of this body and was banished to this ghostly place deep in Changyin Mountain along with his young master who had made a mistake.

The original owner shared the same name, Jiang Ning, and came from Danhua City, the Jiang family.

A spoiled brat, not highly regarded within his clan, got into trouble in the city and angered a powerful figure. As a result, he was sent to this Hundred Pages Village by a single document.

They were called "garrison commanders," but everyone knew that it was a disguised exile. They were just there to supervise the villagers to complete the harvesting of "Tai Sui" on time and in the required quantity.

The so-called Tai Sui.

Just uttering those two words evokes images and knowledge from Jiangning's memories, along with a chilling cold that seeps into his body.

No one knows how the "Tai Sui" was originally created. One day in ancient times, it suddenly appeared in the mountains and forests, like a strange tumor growing on the earth.

What followed was a dramatic change in the entire world. The once glorious and prosperous cultivation civilization, and its proud method of absorbing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, became completely ineffective and discontinuous within just a few decades.

The spiritual energy between heaven and earth has become polluted, no longer nourishing, but deadly poison.

Arriving alongside Tai Sui, or rather, appearing alongside the anomalies of heaven and earth, is an even more direct and terrifying calamity—

"Strange".

They roam freely in the darkness, endlessly multiplying in the shadows, taking on countless forms and defying description. Their only commonality is their insatiable greed for living beings, especially the flesh and soul of humans.

They have no origin and no end. As time goes by, they have not only not been eliminated, but have become more and more numerous and stronger. They have become the masters of this despairing land, and the festering sores and nightmares of this terminally ill world.

Human beings are weak in cultivation, yet their power is unpredictable and elusive; to confront them head-on would be like throwing an egg against a rock.

But people always manage to find a glimmer of hope even in dire circumstances.

"altar".

Human pioneers, through endless trials of blood and tears, developed an "altar" constructed of special stone, inscribed with ancient protective runes, with "holy blood" burning at its core.

That was not true holy blood, but rather a strange fuel extracted from certain Tai Sui.

The aura emitted during combustion can greatly interfere with and isolate most low-level eerie perceptions, like a fragile lighthouse in the night, providing temporary shelter for the settlement.

Just like in Baiye Village, the small stone platform in the center of the village is the altar.

It was because of this altar that the villagers were able to huddle in their humble homes after sunset, praying to get through yet another anxious night.

altar......

Jiang Ning suddenly remembered something.

If there is an altar burning holy blood, then why is there a strange creature frantically banging on the door outside?

They should be kept out of the village, like sharks outside the glass of an aquarium, only able to wander around in vain!

Memories gradually pieced together a more brutal truth.

A few days ago, the original owner left Danhua City with an appointment document and a team of guards, including enough holy blood to keep the village altar running for three months, and headed to this remote Baiye Village.

However, while traversing a treacherous mountain path in Changyin Mountain, they were ambushed.

When he woke up again, he had already been found by the villagers at the village entrance and carried back, but all the holy blood resources he had brought with him had disappeared.

The sacred blood stored in Baiye Village was already nearly depleted, and the protective effect of the altar had weakened, allowing the strange creature to infiltrate the village.

Five days later, the holy blood burned out, and the runes fell silent.

This village, along with its sixty inhabitants, will be completely exposed to the boundless, eerie darkness of the night.

Become food on the chopping block, to be devoured by the strange...

After clearing his mind, Jiang Ning felt his heart sink, each beat accompanied by a suffocating pain.

Outside, the sticky outline that had been sliding along the window paper paused slightly, as if listening to the fear emanating from inside.

The impact outside the door and the strange "hoarse" sound also eerily paused for a moment.

Dead silence.

A deathly silence, even more chilling than the previous clamor.

Then--

"Squeak..."

An extremely faint, yet perfectly clear, scraping sound came from... the thatched roof above.

Jiang Ning felt a chill run down his spine and suddenly looked up.

There was a hole in the thatched roof, and a face hung down upside down.

Behind the face, a shadowy mass of inhuman slime and several thin, twisted limbs, ending in pale white fingers, clung tightly to the beam, staring at Jiang Ning with a ferocious grin.

What infuriated Jiang Ning even more was that the face was Wang Fu's face!

The wrinkles, the eyes, the grinning mouth—they're all exactly the same!

Jiang Ning felt as if all the blood in his body had frozen. He stiffly turned his head and looked at the bedside.

In the darkness, Wang Fu remained with his back to him, facing the wooden door, completely unaware of the movement above him.