Nanxi kept a certain distance from the child to avoid being discovered.

soon.

She then noticed a familiar figure following her, and Li An exclaimed in surprise, "Is that the child from this morning?"

He hadn't seen it clearly until now, and only now did he recognize it.

Nanxi nodded: "He doesn't seem like a bad person. Let's see what he's up to."

The moonlight was bright and clear.

Although the child looked young and was covered in dirt, he moved very nimbly and skillfully throughout the village, soon arriving at the backyard of an abandoned house.

Nanxi climbed over the wall and saw the child looking around warily before actually opening a wooden plank on the floor of the room, revealing a passageway inside, and walking in.

【cellar?!】

[This place even has a cellar?]

[The live stream footage just now looked like it was about a stalking detective; it was quite interesting.]

[No way, if a village like this has cellars, I suddenly thought of a terrible possibility... I just hope it's not like that.]

What exactly is it?

[Riddler, get off this planet!]

"Many villages do indeed prepare a cellar for convenient food storage." Li An was surprised that he hadn't thought of that before.

While he was still in shock, Nanxi had already climbed over the wall and quietly reached the cellar.

The cellar entrance is quite large; you can see what's happening inside just by standing at the entrance.

The child was very young, and after carefully checking everything along the way, she no longer suspected that someone was following her. She walked down into the cellar and headed towards the dirty haystack on the ground.

Just as Li Anzhen began to suspect that there was something in the haystack, she saw the child dig through the haystack and a head pop out.

She was a pale, weak woman, so thin she was just skin and bones. Her eyes were deeply sunken, and she looked at the child with a terrifying expression, revealing a deathly smile.

Li An fell silent for a moment, but his expression changed when he saw what happened next.

"Mom...no one's coming after us. Don't be afraid...take a break."

The child struggled to speak and continued to pull at the straw under the woman's head. Without the straw to cover it, one could see that the woman's neck was almost a human skeleton, with no hands or feet at all.

【! ! ! 】

What the hell?!

[What the hell is this? How could I see such a mind-numbing scene in the middle of the night?!]

[Is this woman the child's mother? What did you mean by saying no one chased after them? Did the child hide the woman with straw when he went out during the day to prevent being discovered?]

Even if you killed someone, you don't deserve to torture them like this!

"Eat something sweet."

After the child finished his work, he opened the candy he had received that day and put a new candy into the woman's mouth. She took out the candy that was wrapped in a leaf, licked it, and then wrapped it up again.

The woman's mouth was stuffed with sugar, and her terrifying expression seemed to momentarily daze as she murmured, "Sugar...this is sugar."

"Candy?" the child asked, puzzled.

The woman, with candy in her mouth, shed tears: "This is candy. I've eaten it before. Before I was abducted to this village, when I was still a little girl, I could eat it every day... But after I came here, my leg was cut off, and I've been locked up every day..."

Thinking of those painful days, her expression became even more frantic.

"mom."

The child panicked and didn't know what to do, so he could only hug the woman's head with both hands, trying to convey some warmth.

The woman slowly came to her senses, forcing a bitter smile: "Nannan, don't be afraid. I only hate them, I don't hate you. If it weren't for you, I probably wouldn't have survived. They hate that you're a girl, but I'm just glad you're a girl, because that's how you rescued me from that family."

These few short sentences contain a wealth of information.

Li An prided himself on having seen many grand occasions, but even after seeing and hearing these things, his face didn't turn ashen, and the veins on his forehead bulged, as if he was trying his best to endure something.

If he weren't worried about alerting the enemy, he would have already started cursing!

Li An was furious and looked to the side, but Nan Xi remained expressionless and continued to look at the situation below.

Inside the cellar.

Seeing the woman smile again, the child, still bewildered, picked up the half-moldy steamed bun that had been hidden nearby and stuffed it into the woman's mouth: "Mom, eat."

This was their only remaining food supply.

"You eat it."

As the child swallowed the last piece of steamed bun, the woman smiled, but tears slowly streamed down her face.

She's practically dead already; she might as well save this food for the children.

And all of this is because of this village, because of that man!

The woman's eyes suddenly turned vicious, each word seeming to be uttered with venom, as she repeatedly instructed, "Nannan, after I die, bring my body to the ancestral hall. You know the ancestral hall. You must, you absolutely must bring me to the ancestral hall, you must!"

The little girl had obviously heard this before. She nodded, but suddenly heard a faint, crisp sound.

"Click."

That sound seemed to be coming from the cellar entrance; someone must have accidentally stepped on something.

The little girl suddenly became fierce, threw down the moldy bun and rushed out, only to find that it was empty outside and she couldn't see anyone.

Her eyes became blank again.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

"I'm so damn angry!"

"So this is what this village does. No wonder I noticed something was off about the villagers' eyes on the first day; it really was all about you girls!"

"Isn't locking them up enough? Even if they're locked up, they still have hands and feet. They can't escape in the mountains. Why be so cruel!"

"..."

On the way back, Li An kept cursing and swearing, unable to calm down from the shock he had just experienced.

A horror-themed dungeon?

Horrifying scene?

Seeing what these villagers were capable of doing was truly terrifying, sending a chill down my spine.

Having experienced so many instances, Li An had never felt this intensely before.

Nanxi, who was standing nearby, spoke up: "Do you remember the strange noises coming from that villager today?"

Li An paused for a moment, then remembered what the villager Er Niu had said, and suddenly felt a chill run down his spine.

—It's really nothing, the animals in the house just ran out of their enclosure.

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