Chapter 258: Wooden Cabin (9)
“Chi-chi… ge-ge-ge…”
As the roaring flames erupted, the corpse at the center of the ritual array suddenly reacted as though it had come alive. Its previously closed eyes and mouth snapped open, producing a series of bone-chilling, grotesque sounds.
At first, Everly thought the corpse was “screaming,” but she quickly realized she had misunderstood.
Dees’s eyelids and lips had actually been stitched shut. Now, as his body convulsed, the rigid sutures turned into something like blades, slicing through the fragile eyelids and lips. They peeled open like torn curtains, soft and sagging.
Beneath the irregular, shredded skin, empty eye sockets and a hollow mouth were revealed. From within his body, countless black vines writhed wildly like living tendrils, scrambling and surging outward as if trying to escape the corpse.
The vines seemed to fear the fire intensely.
The moment they emerged from Dees’s body and touched the blazing flames, their surfaces began to bubble violently, like wet firewood in a furnace. They hissed and crackled in agony until, unable to withstand the heat, they suddenly exploded and disintegrated into the fire, dissolving into thick plumes of black smoke.
Yes—those strange cries had not come from the corpse at all, but from the vines being purified by the flames.
As the vines burst apart, the scene before Everly’s eyes collapsed like a burned stage backdrop.