The sky over the rivers and lakes is very clear - Chapter 90
A scream was about to escape her lips, but she tightly closed them and forced it back.
No...don't scream! My mother always said that when you encounter someone worse than us, whether they're pretending to be tough or just acting tough, you can't back down. If you do, you'll be completely at their mercy!
Besides, someone like me can't even handle one ghost. What if I shout it out and attract even more ghosts to feast on me? Wouldn't that be even worse...?
Desperately trying to control her fear, Zhu Huihui pretended to be slow and spun around a few times to numb the ghost. She mustered her courage and called out "Hua Hua" twice, but her voice trembled like a candle in the wind, making even herself feel sorry for herself.
The ghost was probably really confused by her, and didn't move for a long time.
Zhu Huihui's heart, which had been pounding, finally began to ease a little. Although she really wanted to run away, there was no sign of Ben Huahua. Ben Huahua had more meat than her, and it would be more satisfying for the ghost to gnaw on it...
She steeled herself and started walking back the way she came, but after a few steps, she cried out in her heart, "Oh no!"—this desolate mountain forest had no paths to begin with, and she had just rushed out in a panic, completely disoriented. After going around in circles, she only felt surrounded by trees, and she couldn't tell where she had come from.
The forest was very dark. Although there was a faint starlight, it couldn't penetrate the dense foliage overhead. In the hazy light, all the trees looked exactly the same, each one with its own menacing, claw-like appearance, which looked quite eerie.
Zhu Huihui frowned, hesitated for a moment, then reached into her bag and pulled out a flint, steel, and tinder. Although ordinary fire starters sold in the general store weren't expensive, she was so poor that she didn't even have the money to buy one. This set of fire-making tools was something she had stolen when she went to pick up Huahua from the village chief's house in Qingfengya after being chased away by Mr. Beikonggu Chen and Mrs. Wan!
Thinking of his wife and husband, he immediately thought of their daughter, Mu, and then naturally of Feng Xuese. A bitter feeling welled up in his heart, and he suddenly felt a sense of despair. "Forget it! I might as well be bitten to death by a ghost. Anyway, no one in this world misses me!"
Despite her thoughts, she touched her neck and still couldn't bear to do it!
"Tap! Tap! Tap!"
He struck the flint and steel together a few times, and the tinder ignited, lighting a small, weak flame. Just as he raised it a little higher to try and find where he had been, his eyes suddenly caught sight of a figure under a tree beside him.
The person seemed to have been there the whole time, completely covered from head to toe in black cloth, blending into the tree trunk like an invisible man. Although she was only three feet away from Zhu Huihui, she hadn't noticed him at all, and couldn't even hear him breathing. If it weren't for his empty and ferocious eyes, she probably wouldn't have known it was a person even with their noses touching.
Zhu Huihui's hand trembled, the fire went out, and his forehead was covered in cold sweat.
Men in black!
For Zhu Huihui, the man in black was far more terrifying than a ghost! At that moment, half of her soul had left her body. She threw down the flint and other objects, covered her head, and turned to run. But before she had run more than ten steps, a rope suddenly appeared around her neck. Before she could even cry out, the rope tightened, pulling her up into a tree.
Zhu Huihui felt as if her neck bones were about to break, unable to breathe, her blood rushing to her head. She managed to grip the rope with both hands, kicking her legs wildly in vain, but it was all in vain. Soon, she felt her limbs go weak, her head spinning, and her ears ringing. In her dazed state, she seemed to feel her body lighten, and she found herself flying into the air, coldly looking down at the figure hanging from the tree—it was over, her soul had left her body, and she would be a hanged ghost from now on…
Just as his life was about to end, with a "bang," the rope above his head suddenly snapped for some unknown reason.
Zhu Huihui fell heavily to the ground, her back still embedded in a protruding tree root, the pain making her vision blur and nearly causing her to faint. She desperately tried to suppress a groan, lying on the ground for a while until the dizziness and tinnitus finally subsided. A sliver of joy rose in her heart: "Heh heh, thank goodness the rope wasn't strong enough, I'm not dead!"
Then I thought again, it's too early to be glad now. If those old men of darkness were here, I might not even be alive!
She dared not move, lying on the ground pretending to be dead, her ears perked up, listening to the sounds around her.
There was no movement around.
Even the sound of the wind, the rustling of branches and leaves, and the chirping of night insects could not be heard!
If Zhu Huihui could still feel her heartbeat, she would almost suspect that she had just been thrown into hell.
"Tick-tock!"
A drop of liquid landed on Zhu Huihui's forehead. Just as she thought it might be the night dew, she smelled the stench of blood. A chill ran through her—blood!
"Tick-tock", "tick-tock", "tick-tock".
The blood dripped faster, landing entirely on Zhu Huihui's forehead, emitting a pungent, unpleasant stench. Even while feigning death, she couldn't help but stealthily shift to the side. Her foot accidentally kicked something, and before she could react, a dark shadow fell to the ground with a thud, hitting her squarely.
This thing was like a small mountain. Although it was soft, it was extremely heavy. Zhu Huihui was hit so hard that he couldn't catch his breath for a long time, and his eyes rolled back. He suppressed a string of curses that were about to come out of his mouth, reached out to push it, but touched his hand with blood. Then he heard a "crash" and a fleshy head fell off the person's neck.
She froze. This head, I ripped it off? Bah! I don't have that kind of ability!
A scene flashed through my mind: a gleaming longsword slashed down from the sky, a man with a mangled head flying through the air and crashing into the river. A man in black kicked the headless corpse down, and blood dripped from the blade...
The severed head, coupled with the glimpse of the men in black earlier… Zhu Huihui was utterly terrified! Her mind went completely blank, and only one thought kept repeating in her mind: It's them! It's them! This time it really is them!
Those men in black who committed murder on the riverbank, the men in black the hero searched for for a long time, the men in black who never appeared again after the Yanhe Pagoda incident…
What a coincidence! I couldn't find them anywhere before, but as soon as I was alone, they appeared!
Zhu Huihui could no longer pretend to be dead. She crawled on the ground for more than ten steps before she thought of standing up and running away. However, she was so frightened that her legs were extremely weak. She tried for a long time but could not move her feet. She had to reach out and hold onto the tree to move forward.
Startled and dizzy, Zhu Huihui hadn't gone far when she bumped into something. Just as she felt something soft that didn't seem like she'd hit a tree, the object swung away and then quickly swung back, knocking the slow-witted Zhu Huihui flat on her back.
Normally, her reaction would be to immediately scramble to her feet and unleash a torrent of curses. But in this situation, the only thing she dared to do was lie motionless on the ground, her eyes darting around to scout the situation.
The object that was hit swayed a few times before slowly coming to a stop. Zhu Huihui could see clearly that it was a person hanging from a height, and that the clothes covering him from head to toe were clearly visible.
There was no need to even look at the color of the clothes; just by looking at the style, Zhu Huihui instinctively clutched her head, her heart pounding wildly. Black, black, a man in black.
The man in black wasn't hanging very high; his toes were less than two feet off the ground, and his head drooped limply, as if his neck was broken. A ray of starlight shone through the gaps in the trees, illuminating the rope around his neck.
It was a thin, soft rope, gray in color, with a dull luster under the starlight.
Zhu Huihui pressed her pounding heart, secretly relieved that the man in black was dead! Damn it! If he's dead, fine, but he had to hang him from a tree to scare her, how despicable... Ouch! Luckily, the rope that had been holding her up wasn't strong enough, otherwise she would be hanging from the tree like that man in black, swinging on a swing!
But did the rope really break on its own? Is this the same man in black I just saw? Did he have any accomplices? Who hanged him?
The more Zhu Huihui looked at the corpse, the more familiar the soft rope hanging from its neck seemed. Sitting on the ground, she stared at the black-clad man's body for a long time, trying to figure it out, but she felt more and more that she absolutely couldn't stay in this awful place. So she got up again and groped her way forward.
As the saying goes, when bad luck strikes, even drinking cold water can cause problems. Zhu Huihui is currently in that situation.
Because it was dark in the forest and visibility was poor, she groped her way forward. After taking a dozen steps, her fingertips suddenly touched something cold and soft. She instinctively squeezed it; it was springy.
This thing is... Oh no! This is bad!