Chapter 271: Unwritten Plot
Fang Mu often wrote in his diary late at night; with each entry, the wrinkles on his brow deepened, his worry hard to dispel.
After finishing each diary entry, he would recall the clear memory of what he had once read.
The events recorded in the diary had all truly happened, and Fang Mu sometimes felt like he wasn’t writing a diary but rather scripting his own death sentence on a death warrant, which also made Fang Mu understand why Fang Lin’s diary was always disjointed and not always continuous.
The toad’s voice had gradually changed in tone; those voices seemed to have altered Fang Mu’s brain, causing his cognition of things to shift somewhat, leading him to sometimes be paranoid despite his extreme efforts to control his behavior, but his strange actions still drew his wife An Qin’s attention.
However, as a considerate and even somewhat indulgent wife to her husband, An Qin never probed into Fang Mu’s hidden secrets, always tolerating his inappropriate behavior, and even, after noticing certain details in life, strove to avoid exposing Fang Mu to his nerve sensitivity triggers.
Fang Mu naturally could also feel An Qin’s meticulous care; his heart was once tormented, wondering exactly what he should do to save his beloved wife.
Fang Mu suddenly urgently wanted to retrieve the nail hammer; with that nail hammer, he might have the magic power to confront the anomaly!
Thus, one afternoon after sending An Qin back to her maternal home, Fang Mu came to the police station where the nail hammer was stored, wanting to retrieve it, but he was very cautious and did not immediately reveal his intentions, instead inquiring indirectly about the whereabouts of the thing.
And his caution was indeed warranted; when he mentioned the nail hammer, the law enforcement captain who received him immediately showed a sensitive change in expression, his eyes sharp like an eagle’s.
Similarly sensing the abnormality in the atmosphere, Fang Mu immediately changed the subject without any hesitation, forcefully suppressing his horrified heartbeat, secretly clenching the sweat in his palms, and putting on a performance to hide his true feelings.
After scrutinizing Fang Mu, the law enforcement captain seemed to find nothing on him and reverted to a mild and friendly demeanor, as if nothing had happened earlier.
Fang Mu sensed something off about the law enforcement captain; he didn’t dare ask further about the nail hammer and soon found an excuse to leave after a brief chat.
In the days that followed, Fang Mu kept hearing sounds of something tracking him, his ears able to pick up those wet, bare footsteps.
Even though Fang Mu had never clearly seen the true appearance of those things, he was already certain that they were the Toad God’s offspring, the frog people who possessed physical abilities beyond humans and wielded eerie power.
After experiencing the great terror of being relentlessly pursued by frog people at midnight, Fang Mu realized he had investigated too deeply and had drawn the attention and gaze of the Toad God’s kin and believers in this era.
For his own and his family’s safety, Fang Mu had no choice but to temporarily restrain his obsession with uncovering the truth.
His forbearance was effective; at least when he quieted down, no longer pursuing matters related to the Toad God or searching for the nail hammer’s whereabouts, those footsteps hidden in the dark would stop at a certain distance and no longer approach.
Though the toad croaks were still incessant, Fang Mu endured, until he held it in so much that he developed a problem, uncontrollably sleepwalking and nearly jumping off the balcony.
That night, Fang Mu saw his wife An Qin break down in tears for the first time; even when he had once ruthlessly rejected and hurt her to escape their lover and spouse relationship, she had never cried so brokenly, leaving Fang Mu somewhat at a loss.
When An Qin finally couldn’t bear the pressure in her heart and pressed him repeatedly, Fang Mu had no choice but to lay his cards on the table with his wife.
Upon learning the truth, his wife did not think he was crazy but chose to believe Fang Mu’s account, hoping he would take the initiative to resolve the curse entangling their family.
Encouraged, Fang Mu gritted his teeth and agreed, deciding to return to Nong Mountain in the Guinan Region to seek a solution.
Arriving in Wenyatun of a different era, Fang Mu somewhat understood the sentiments in his diary, but separated by over twenty years of spacetime, the mountain village had undergone such earth-shaking changes.
Wenyatun in the 90s was indeed a veritable backwater, a mountain village almost isolated from the world, and entering it was not easy.
In this era, the Toad God believers in the Guinan Region had not died out, giving Fang Mu the opportunity to consult Wenyatun’s village chief, also the highly respected high priest among the believers at the time, about the problem happening to him.
Fang Mu asked the old village chief to help exorcise the curse on him, but unexpectedly, from the first glance, the old village chief looked at him with envious and greedy eyes, and meaningfully told him that this was not the “Toad God’s curse” but the “Toad God’s Blessing”; he was the blessed person chosen by the Toad God.
If Fang Mu was willing, he would lead everyone to recognize Fang Mu as the Toad God envoy of this generation, the deity’s spokesperson.
But how could Fang Mu agree; he had no fortune to enjoy Its blessing and was unwilling to bear it, insisting on exorcising the blessing on himself.
The old village chief was at a loss with the resolute Fang Mu, so he came up with a method; he asked Fang Mu to wait a moment, then went out alone briefly, and returned with a black paulownia wood box.
Fang Mu was very curious about what exactly was inside the black paulownia wood box; gently shaking the wooden box, he could feel some solid object moving inside.
However, the old village chief did not tell him what was in the box, only instructing him not to open the box, to take it into the Nong Mountain cave, and the precautions for the entire process of delivering the box.
Fang Mu was puzzled in his heart but still complied.
On the day he entered the mountain, Fang Mu felt uneasy in his heart.
It wasn’t his first time stepping into this human forbidden ground; thinking of his past encounters in the mountain, his psychological trauma grew as thick as the gloomy clouds and misty fog in the mountain.
At this time, no accidents had occurred in Nong Mountain; the path into the mountain was not exactly a broad avenue but at least smooth all the way, and the cave in the mountain used for worship was reachable by following one road to the end.
Entering the dark cave, Fang Mu heard eerie, ghostly sounds from the cave depths, the whispers of the Toad God’s offspring secluded in the deep mountains exchanging; they had noticed this outsider’s arrival.
One road into the darkness; Fang Mu looked back and could hardly see the light from whence he came, clutching the box nervously and moving forward.
Fang Mu knew very well that in the cave depths, at the center guarded by those Toad God offspring, dwelled a truly existing deity.
Raising his flashlight, he finally reached the core position deep in the cave, a vast dark space where the flashlight beam illuminated the stairs of an altar; he climbed up to the top of the altar and, following the old village chief’s instructions, placed the black paulownia wood box into the vessel on the altar used for sacrificial offerings.
After placing it, Fang Mu’s uneasy heart surged once more.
When the paulownia wood box was placed as an offering, the shadows in the darkness suddenly became angry, emitting a roar, followed by terrifying toad frog shrieks echoing all around.
Bang!
The paulownia wood box was knocked over to the ground, revealing its contents—that… was precisely the nail hammer that had crossed with him, later mistakenly kept as evidence by the local law enforcement officers!
