Chapter 197

Lin Hui moved along the Boundary Wall.

He started by heading left, running until he reached the shore of the Jade Sea. The black Boundary Wall extended all the way into the water.

Standing by the green waves, Lin Hui hesitated. He ultimately decided against testing his swimming skills in unknown waters, turned around, and sprinted in the opposite direction. After running for some time without seeing a gate, he stopped.

He simply pressed one hand against the Boundary Wall, vaulted up with a pulse of Internal Force beneath his feet for leverage, and flew effortlessly over it.

The instant he crossed the Boundary Wall, a chill prickled his skin. It was as if he had stepped into a different world, the temperature plummeting in a single stride.

It’s clearly still the edge of the Jade Sea, so why does the temperature change so drastically just by crossing a wall?

Lin Hui landed steadily and surveyed his surroundings.

Within the protective cavity formed by the Tranquil Incense, he could clearly see that the soil beneath his feet was pitch black. No weeds, no insects—it was a land of death. Beyond the barrier of his incense, he saw nothing but roiling gray-white Mist.

He marked the Boundary Wall to confirm his entry point, noting that the massive structure looked identical no matter where one stood. He then set out perpendicular to the wall, venturing deeper.

As the mist churned, Lin Hui noticed the fog outside his incense cavity shifting in color. It was becoming a dusty, ashen gray.

Time passed in silence. Just as he wondered at the emptiness, a ruined stone wall emerged from the gloom, its gray-white surface marred by deep gouges.

The wall stood about three meters high and was incredibly thick; faint remnants of colorful paintings were still visible on its exterior. Lin Hui approached and realized it was part of a roofless stone house.

The structure stood solitary in the mist, its walls of varying heights bearing heavy marks of destruction. Lin Hui reached out and touched the stone.

It was cold. Not just cool, but icy to the touch.

He sniffed the air. Beneath the metallic scent of the Mist, he detected a faint, inexplicable stench of rot—like meat left to spoil for too long.

He squeezed through a breach in the wall. Inside, he found tables, chairs, bookcases, wardrobes, and a bed—all carved from stone. Slumped against the bed was a desiccated, blackened female skeleton. She wore a rotting white cloth skirt and a gray-brown headscarf. Her bony hand gripped a specific spot on the bed frame tightly, as if she had died enduring immense pain.

Lin Hui prodded the remains with his sword. There was no movement. He rummaged through the room but found nothing; the drawers and cabinets were empty, appearing as though they had been looted long ago.

Leaving the house, Lin Hui had only taken a few steps when another stone structure loomed ahead.

He approached. This time, the door was intact. He stepped inside to find an empty room, save for a rough stone statue in the center. The carving remained unfinished, as if the sculptor had fled in haste, never to return. A sculpting hammer and chisel lay nearby, coated in a thick layer of dust.

He exited and moved forward again. One by one, more stone houses appeared in his field of vision. The area seemed to be a small village built entirely of stone.

But for some reason, there was no one here.

Just as he planned to leave, a barely audible inhaling sound came from the Mist behind him.

The noise was faint—imperceptible to an ordinary Mist beast, perhaps—but to a master like Lin Hui, whose senses were honed to a razor's edge, it was as loud as a whisper directly in his ear.

Lin Hui vanished.

In the blink of an eye, he reappeared in the corner of a stone house, right at the source of the noise. His Internal Force surged, stirring up a breeze that swept away the dust on the floor to reveal a dark brown circular wooden trapdoor.

"Who's inside? Come out," he transmitted his voice into the hole.

There was a pause beneath the floorboards, followed quickly by a response.

"Are you... human?"

The voice spoke with a rusty Taisu accent and sounded like a young child.

"Of course I am. Come out, and we can talk," Lin Hui replied.

The voice fell silent.

Lin Hui didn't rush him; he could sense the hesitation below. After several full minutes, under Lin Hui's patient gaze, the wooden door was slowly pushed upward.

A child wrapped in thick, mismatched gray-black cotton clothes, sporting a messy bird's-nest hairstyle and a pair of small, shiny black eyes, stared at Lin Hui with high vigilance.

"Are you really human?"

"Of course. At this point, there's no need for me to lie to you," Lin Hui said. "I just arrived in this area. Are you a local? Can you tell me about it?"

The child stared at Lin Hui for a long time, looking at him as if he were a god. Then he spoke.

"This is the Miyin Village Ruins. You dare come here knowing nothing?"

The shock in the child's tone made Lin Hui feel as if he had committed a grave error.

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

"Why? You ask why? It’s common sense that the outside is dangerous, isn't it? What leaves me speechless is that you actually ran into this place without preparing anything..." The child looked at him in disbelief.

"Can you explain? What exactly is dangerous about this place?"

Lin Hui sized up the boy. His clothes and pants seemed cobbled together from unknown sources; the jacket was too big, the pants too short.

"The most numerous and dangerous things in Miyin Village are Phantom Sounds, and... here they come!"

The child's expression twisted in terror. He abruptly shrank back, retreating into the tunnel and pulling the trapdoor shut, vanishing from sight.

Lin Hui was left standing alone, inexplicably looking up at the sky.

Amidst the roiling Mist, a pale male face slowly protruded from the fog. The face appeared to be that of a man in his thirties, wearing an expression of profound sorrow, its mouth muttering unintelligible gibberish.

All of that might have been considered normal for the Mist, except for one thing: the face was too large. It was fully over a meter wide, with a stiff expression and eyes that were dim and lifeless.

"Finally showed up." Lin Hui breathed a sigh of relief and slowly drew his sword.

Shing.

Ruyi flashed, drawing a silver-white line that slashed vertically through the center of the face. The lightning-fast sword speed gave the entity no time to dodge. With a ripping sound, the giant face split in two, fell to the ground, and rapidly faded into nothingness.

This time, Lin Hui felt a slight resistance. Clearly, the creature's durability was higher than the monsters inside the Boundary Wall, though he couldn't yet determine how it compared to his own full power.

He frowned and returned to the child's tunnel entrance.

"You can come out now. The monster outside has been dealt with," he transmitted.

Creak. The wooden door pushed open, revealing the child's bird's-nest head.

"I heard it. It's not as simple as you think." The child gasped for breath, eyeing Lin Hui. "You must be an important figure from the city, right? Only people from the city would dress so neatly."

"You said 'not that simple.' What did you mean?" Lin Hui asked.

"Turn around and look, and you'll know," the child sighed.

Lin Hui paused, then turned his head. His expression shifted slightly.

Behind him, at the dilapidated window of the house, numerous meter-wide, bloated faces were now crowded into the opening, staring sorrowfully at him.

Ka...

A faint sound emanated from Lin Hui.

The ground beneath his feet began to bulge rapidly, the earth rising to wrap around his legs as if attempting to encase him completely.

Whoosh!

A burst of subtle, invisible airflow swept through the room.

The child shivered inexplicably and looked around. Finding nothing wrong near himself, he drew his attention back to Lin Hui—and his eyes went wide. He watched in horror as the giant faces crowding the window vanished instantly.

The child stared, stunned. He had seen with his own eyes how these monsters flooded the village, slaughtering everyone and turning it into a ghost town. Even the so-called martial artists and Called Ones were utterly fragile before these things. The village elders had called them "Weeping Faces." They possessed immense strength, extreme speed, and bodies as hard as ore.

Seeing Lin Hui's inquiring gaze fall upon him, the child jolted. It occurred to him that he could ask this person to take him away from this hellhole.

"You're so strong! But if you want to completely deal with these Weeping Faces, you have to go to the center of the village and destroy a wooden door there! Otherwise, if the door isn't destroyed, these Weeping Faces will get stronger and stronger, and their numbers will increase over time."

"Wooden door? Can you lead the way? In exchange, I can take you with me when I leave," Lin Hui said, seeing through the boy's intent.

"Deal!" The child's command of the Taisu language became more fluent as he spoke. He climbed out of the hole and stood before Lin Hui. He was only as tall as Lin Hui's thigh, looking about seven or eight years old.

"Where to?" Lin Hui gestured.

"This way, follow me." The child walked out the door, moving with familiarity toward a specific direction, completely unaffected by the surrounding Mist.

The two walked slowly, one after the other. Lin Hui took the opportunity to ask the child about the situation and how this primal mist zone differed from the safe Mist zone.

"I haven't been to your safe Mist zone, but I hear people regularly clear out the monsters there, so the threat is much smaller. But over here, no one goes out of their way to clear monsters because, one, they can't beat them, and two, they can't kill them all, so it's pointless."

The child paused, then asked, "My name is Xia Si. What's yours?"

"My name is Bajiao," Lin Hui replied, casually picking a codename.

"Bajiao. You should know how to handle a Wooden Door, right?" Xia Si asked.

"Wooden door? What do you mean?" Lin Hui blinked.

"Don't you have Wooden Doors over there?" Xia Si asked in surprise. "It's a mysterious wooden door that appears randomly anywhere at any time. Its appearance has no pattern at all. Every time it appears, it either brings wealth and treasure... or huge calamity and danger."

"...Never heard of it." Lin Hui shook his head.