Chapter 109: The Human Skin Drum (13)

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It seemed that the others had met with rather unfortunate fates.

“Tang Mu!” A woman covered in blood suddenly burst from the shadows. Her expression was frantic as she seized Tang Mu and began pulling her toward the darkness from which she had emerged. “So many people have been killed. But a few of them are still alive. If you can save them, that would be wonderful!”

Although the woman concealed it well, when she turned sideways, Tang Mu clearly saw several strands of flesh floating in midair beside her neck. Those strands made an already bizarre scene even more horrifying and unnatural.

“What are the names of those people who survived?” Tang Mu asked, pretending to be casual.

The woman could not answer, so she tried to bluff her way past the question.

“I don’t know them. I only saw that they were injured, so I was desperate enough to seek help from anyone.”

“Then how did you know my name?”

Tang Mu began to voice her suspicions. “Since entering this instance, apart from a few people close to me, I don’t think I’ve ever revealed my name to anyone else. Even if someone had heard of me, they wouldn’t necessarily be able to identify me in person.”

The monster’s heart tightened at once.

Tentatively, she said, “You’re so conspicuous that it would be hard for anyone not to know you.”

She thought Tang Mu would never believe such an excuse and would simply kill her with a single stroke.

Instead, Tang Mu nodded with sudden understanding. “I see.”

The monster: “...?”

Tang Mu had actually believed such an absurd explanation. That was utterly ridiculous.

Still, she had successfully lured Tang Mu to their destination.

The destination was a gigantic cemetery resembling a mass grave. Yet calling it a cemetery was not quite accurate. It would have been more fitting to call it a colossal pit.

Most of the corpses had been buried hastily.

On some of the mounds, even the hands and feet had not been completely covered with earth. They lay blatantly exposed to the air.

“Some of these corpses look as though they’ve been dead for several years, while others still seem fresh.” Tang Mu nudged a fresh corpse with her foot, using the sole to test the softness of the body. Yes, it had only just died.

It seemed these mutated villagers still possessed a bit of conscience. After killing people, they had realized that they could not simply leave the corpses exposed in the wilderness, and had thoughtfully covered them with soil.

The silence earlier had probably been because the mutated villagers were busy looking for shovels, digging pits, and burying these newly dead bodies.

“Dig them all out.”

The monster: “What?”

Normally, shouldn’t Tang Mu have screamed and fled as quickly as possible?

“No, that isn’t what I wanted to show you. It’s...”

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“Dig the people out first. Then we’ll see what you wanted to show me.”

Tang Mu’s tone was casual, but left no room for argument.

The monster was completely unaware that Tang Mu had already taken control of the situation with her words. Almost instinctively, she began obeying the commands of the person who was supposed to be her prey.

“All right, then.”

The monster went among the earthen pits, found a shovel, and began digging in a steady rhythm.

Tang Mu took one casual glance and immediately understood. “He was strangled. There’s a ring of bluish-purple marks around his neck. The bruising looks quite fresh.”

“What about the others? Why don’t you dig them out too?”

The monster: “...”

For some inexplicable reason, she felt as though she had been reduced to a beast of burden.

Perhaps it was not merely an illusion.

“What are you waiting for?” Tang Mu instead questioned her. “Didn’t you say that your group was attacked by monsters? If we don’t investigate properly, how will we know the method the monster used to attack people? As players, wouldn’t it be especially strange if we weren’t curious about that?”

All right, then.

To keep herself from appearing suspicious, the monster had no choice but to follow Tang Mu’s instructions. One by one, she dug up all the corpses that had just been buried.

“Hmm. They all seem to have been strangled. Judging from the thickness and direction of the marks, as well as the points where force was applied... there was only one killer.”

“That killer was you.”

The monster: “...?”

Before she could react, a red-thread bell pierced straight through her heart.

When the red thread withdrew, it left a gaping hole in her body.

The monster was stunned. “How... how did you know?”

The foolish look on the monster’s face irritated Tang Mu so much that she could not even be bothered to explain.

“You’re too stupid. I don’t even want to waste my breath.”

Tang Mu waved her hand, and billions of red threads pierced the foolish monster’s body at once, reducing her to ashes.

Only after dealing with the foolish monster did Tang Mu leisurely survey the entire graveyard.

So this was the place the monster had been trying so desperately to lure her toward: the very center of the mass grave.

A great many red spider lilies had been cultivated there by human hands. They glowed with a dazzling, blood-red hue. Under the moonlight, it was even possible to see the blood essence of the surrounding corpses continuously being drawn beneath the earth, where the flowers grew.

These gorgeous blossoms fed upon the blood essence of every corpse. They were beautiful, uncanny, mysterious, and profound, yet from top to bottom they radiated an aura of danger and murderous menace.

For the sake of caution, Tang Mu seized a fresh corpse and threw it into the field of red spider lilies.

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Almost the instant they touched flesh, the gorgeous flowers went mad. Countless strands of flesh rapidly emerged from them, climbing over and coiling around the corpse. In no more than a few seconds, the fresh body had been drained of its blood essence and reduced to a withered skeleton.

No wonder that monster had been so determined to lure her into this field of red spider lilies.

So this was the ultimate reason those villagers had mutated.

Tang Mu opened the shop.

She switched to the miscellaneous goods section.

Then she selected a lighter and gasoline.

The purchase cost three thousand five hundred points.

The moment the gasoline and lighter appeared in her hands, she bent down, opened the fuel can, and began pouring gasoline around the perimeter of the flower field. Only after not a single drop remained in the can did Tang Mu toss the lighter, its small flame already burning, into the flowers.

The flames roared and surged upward.

As the strange red spider lilies were consumed by the blaze, they began emitting angry and mournful sounds, like soft sobs and rustling cries.

It was almost as if they truly possessed human emotions and feelings.

“Ahhh!”

At that same moment, sharp howls and cries of pain began rising throughout the village, one after another.

Yet compared with the horrific suffering of the red spider lilies, the villagers controlled by the red flesh threads were clearly in even greater agony and rage.

“Who? Who touched our Flower of Life?”

He received no reply.

The players he was about to attack, however, were left utterly bewildered.

“I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! Ahhh...” Before he could finish even three threatening sentences, the red flesh threads inside his own body began tormenting him again. Their retaliatory power was extraordinarily potent. Whenever their own lives were threatened, they would exhaust every resource at their disposal simply to survive.

As for the host’s life—compared with their own existence, what did it matter?

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