Chapter 201 - 201 Fifty-eight

Words : 1380 Updated : Sep 23rd, 2025

201: Fifty-eight. Waiting before leaving 201: Fifty-eight. Waiting before leaving The running slowed, and the crisp sounds of stepping on dry branches and vines dissipated. Lu Li halted and furrowed his brow. It was a large tree that starkly contrasted with the withered ones around it. The baseline of Shadow Swamp lacked vitality, dead and dreary, a swath of dim despair, a dead swamp. But this tree radiated a completely opposite vitality. Though it bore no green buds and its branches were extensively damaged by the hurricane, this strange feeling still persisted, as though it was still alive, still breathing. “Is that... a human arm extending out of the tree hollow?” Anna lowered her voice as if afraid of awakening this bizarre tree. She had the same feeling, even stronger than Lu Li’s. Perceiving no malice from the tree, Lu Li’s hand moved away from the Spirit-Calling Gun, his gaze fixed on the tree hollow. The tree hollow was dark and impenetrable, the interior unclear. Only an arm draped with fabric stretched out from the depths of the hollow, reaching forward. “I’ll go check...” Anna suggested, but Lu Li was already walking towards the peculiar tree before she did. The arm was highly decayed, with severe rot revealing white bones in the hand. The arm stretched straight forward, palm facing upward, as if trying to grasp something. Approaching within about five meters, Lu Li stopped, lifted the oil lamp, but this distance did not allow him to see clearly inside the hollow, so he moved closer. “Be careful...” Anna softly cautioned Lu Li as he continued forward, spreading her energy around him, ready to deal with any potential emergencies. Half of Lu Li’s attention was on the tree that was getting closer, and the other half was on the surroundings–there were several more strange trees like this one in the forest ahead. It seemed that Lu Li had stumbled into their habitat, or perhaps such things were ubiquitous in the depths of the swamp. These large trees all shared one characteristic: they possessed spacious tree hollows that could hide a person. As for what the hollows were used for... Lu Li again stopped in his tracks. He was now less than two meters from the trunk of the large tree, within reach. Under the oil lamp, the decaying corpse inside the tree hollow was fully revealed before his eyes. “This is...” Anna’s eyes narrowed, somewhat startled. There lay a body, curled up in the tree hollow, severely decayed, dressed in a dirty long skirt that did not belong in the swamp. Her head drooped low, with one right arm stretching out from the hollow. “Our target, she’s already dead,” Lu Li answered. A thread, nearly invisible, of red line fell on the back of the corpse’s head, the Blood-Colored Tentacles residing within her brain. Just like the one inside Lu Li’s head. The head suddenly twitched eerily, and the next moment, a writhing tentacle emerged from the hair at the back of her head. Before Lu Li could act on the corpse, the Blood-Colored Tentacles sensitively reacted to the presence of living beings. But Lu Li was not the kind of ordinary person who would scream and flee at the sight of Blood-Colored Tentacles. Before it could leap up and touch Lu Li, Anna controlled it, suspending it in midair. With almost no effort, Lu Li once again took out the Spirit-Calling Gun, swung it forward, and smashed the Blood-Colored Tentacles into dispersing phantoms, vanishing into thin air. It was somewhat comical that such a fragile entity now resided in Lu Li’s brain like a time bomb, urging him onward. The Blood-Colored Tentacles dangling from the sky began to fade and disappear. It seemed this ordeal would likely make Richard particularly agitated. Moving his gaze away, Lu Li looked towards the Eye of the Hurricane. At this moment, the swamp under his feet was no longer at the center of the Eye of the Hurricane. Soon, fierce winds and heavy rain would descend again. Withdrawing his gaze and intending to leave, Lu Li suddenly thought of something, took a step back, and looked towards the direction that the extended arm was reaching. Vines and severed branches covered the rotting leaves and dirt. As his shoes scraped these materials aside, a faint glint of metal sparkled through the soil. Lu Li bent over to pick up the metallic object. As the surrounding leaves shifted, he pulled out a gray-silver pendant. It was a photo pendant. His thumb wiped the dirt off the pendant’s casing and he pried open the cover, revealing a thumbnail-sized black-and-white photo. Limited by the current technology, the photo was quite blurry, and there was a line of small text underneath. [Edward & Louise] His gaze shifted from the pendant to the arm reaching out from the tree hollow behind him, as if trying to grasp something. Lu Li said nothing; he squatted down and placed the pendant in the highly decayed palm. “Let’s head back the way we came.” As he stood up, Lu Li walked away from the large tree without looking back. Anna floated behind Lu Li, glancing back worriedly, her eyes suddenly widening. She saw the outstretched arm suddenly retract into the darkness behind the tree hollow, vanishing from sight. Anna stared blankly, following Lu Li as they gradually moved away from that strange large tree. Whether it was her imagination or not, the tree’s vitality seemed to grow more intense. ... The Eye of the Hurricane was moving away. The brief drizzle resumed, and a light breeze began to stir around them. The sky turned a deep, ominous shade of dark red, casting a blood-colored layer over the already gloomy Shadow Swamp woods. Lu Li calculated the time it would take to reach Marsh Road and realized that they couldn’t make it before the storm returned. This meant that Lu Li would need to return to the cabin, and it was very likely that he would have to spend the night there. That was not a good thing. In just a few hours during the day, Lu Li had encountered numerous strange events. After nightfall, the oddities would only increase in frequency. What was worse, if the hurricane moved away by then, without the severe weather as a barrier, Lu Li might face even stranger dangers. Twelve minutes into their return journey, a clearing with stumps and the faint outline of a cabin emerged in front of the woods. They were back. At this moment, Lu Li had already figured out his next move. “The corpse is gone!” As they emerged from the woods, Anna noticed that the praying corpse at the cabin door had disappeared. “Don’t worry about it. The storm is coming, and the hurricane will take care of it.” As long as it has a physical form, it will be treated equally under the natural disaster. The rain started to intensify, and the dense, dark purple lightning surged within the overcast sky that now covered most of the heavens. Anna went to the woodshed to carry firewood, and Lu Li suddenly remembered the brief encounter with the figure in the Bird Beak Mask. Was she hiding somewhere, waiting for the hurricane to pass? It would be absurd if that powerful, mysterious person were to die in the hurricane. The wind blew the hair in front of her forehead as Anna, holding the firewood, floated into the cabin. Lu Li walked to the door, raised his head for one last look at the eerie dark purple sky, and after observing quietly for a few seconds, he firmly closed the door. “Right now, we are in the Eye of the Hurricane; the western part of the hurricane will soon engulf us deeper. I plan to wait until this phase is over and we reach the outer edge of the hurricane, then leave the cabin and head for Marsh Road,” Lu Li told Anna in front of the fire. Once his goal was accomplished, Lu Li had no intention or desire to stay in Shadow Swamp a minute longer—it was no different from dancing with wolves. “So we’ll leave before it gets dark.”

Chapter 201 - 201 Fifty-eight

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