Chapter 269: White Path And Door
In extreme fear, Fang Mu followed instinct and made a choice, standing up and continuing to run toward the darkness depths ahead.
The darkness void ahead was not the light he pursued, but it was absolutely not the despair hell of disgust and hatred behind him either.
The roar suddenly stopped, followed immediately by radiating streams of brilliant light, from Fang Mu’s back, guiding toward Fang Mu’s front.
In that brilliant and ever-changing light, red light was the main tone of the varying colors, and every time before switching colors, it would first transform into blood-red light before changing to other colors.
The moment he was illuminated by the light, Fang Mu felt the temperature on his back drop suddenly a bit. When his gaze swept to the light projected from behind, he actually felt somewhat dizzy. Behind that beam of light seemed to be hidden some special power that could cause hypnosis effect. Even though Fang Mu was in a state of extreme terror at the moment, he was still affected by the light, physiologically uncontrollably getting sleepy.
Fang Mu tried hard to rally his spirit and confront the power of the light, but gradually, he terrifyingly discovered the anomaly of those lights.
These lights… actually could not find his shadow…
They were not light at all! But rather some tiny creatures that performed like light!
Fang Mu instinctively turned his head to look back. The scene behind him once again chopped at his tense reason like a sharp axe. He saw those seemingly colorful lights emanating from a massive toad-shaped shadow like mushroom spores.
That huge toad shadow was manifesting brightness, slowly revealing its true appearance hidden in the dark space.
The first sight that pierced into Fang Mu’s vision was the red light covering the huge toad’s body. As the dazzling red slowly receded, those wriggling and rotating living eyes emerged densely packed like barnacles on a turtle’s back.
When stared at by those eerie eyes one by one, Fang Mu only felt himself fall into a deep cold ice cave, his whole body itching, as if those eyes were also going to drill out from inside his body. He fearfully and horrified wanted to scratch his body, wanting to preserve his normal facade before he became abnormal.
Can’t look anymore!
Fang Mu exhausted his last reason, reclaimed sovereignty over his body, twisted his body back, no longer letting his attention be dominated by those terrifying beings.
Thud!
However, the human eyes that cannot see in darkness ultimately have limits. Fang Mu failed to notice that he had unwittingly stepped into a puddle in the cave. Perhaps tens of thousands of toads had lingered there before, their leftover body fluids oily and foul smelling, accumulated and blended into the water. The moment Fang Mu stepped on it, a strong out of control sensation came from under his foot. His sole suddenly slipped, and his whole person fell exaggeratedly on his back.
Crack!
Fang Mu fell heavily to the ground. In that instant, he seemed to hear a certain cracking sound from his brain.
He did not know what that sound was, nor did he want to guess what that dread-inducing cracking sound was exactly. His consciousness was slowly blurring, his vision gradually dyed by a swath of red, getting thicker and thicker…
In a daze, Fang Mu saw a door. He was standing naked on a white path, with a heavenly ladder leading all the way to a tightly closed door. On his left and right were terrifying beings that were indistinct yet constantly emitting sneaky whispers. Those beings faintly surpassed the Toad God he had just seen.
He felt his hand heavy; it turned out he was holding the nail hammer bought from the forest cabin.
Just as Fang Mu was at a loss and unmoving in place, behind that ancient heavy door, a large mass of abrupt fleshy blisters slowly emerged. They frantically split and reproduced around the door, squeezing away one by one the evil dark peeping beings distributed along the white path that were casting gazes toward him.
Soon after, atop that door perhaps leading to the ultimate of rationality, the limit of dimension, the transcendence of realm, a flesh blister swelled and split into three slits, dividing the surface of the flesh blister into three unequal parts. The flesh skin contracted, peeling open a huge eyeball. That eye was filled with anger and intimidation. The focus of its eyes almost instantly locked onto Fang Mu standing on the white path.
The instant Fang Mu was gazed upon, streams of obscure and incomprehensible language surged into his brain. It was a great being expressing endless anger toward him, wanting to punish him.
“No!” Before Fang Mu could say anything, as he just turned to run, he saw a blood basin mouth coming at him face-on, and a huge extremely long tongue shot toward him.
Facing such crisis, Fang Mu could only throw himself down to his side. However, from the fleshy blisters covering along the white path at his side, a black creature resembling a mantis squeezed out from the gaps in the flesh mass, shooting out at extreme speed, swinging sickle-like hand blades chopping down toward his head.
His whole body trembled, and Fang Mu completely lost consciousness.
……
He did not know how long the feeling of losing all sensation lasted, but for Fang Mu, it was just a fleeting moment. When his senses awakened, he surprisingly found himself lying in a foul-smelling alley full of sour fermented stench, with sewage seeping from garbage everywhere on the ground, and he was lying in it.
Familiar and lively voices faintly came from all around, those languages and sounds of social activity, like rain after a long drought, instantly moistened Fang Mu’s eyes, making him extremely nostalgic and fond of them.
“This is… where?” Fang Mu, covered in filth, crawled up from the ground, his body shivering from the cold.
Wind blew over the back of his head, cool and faintly stinging, and something was flowing out from the stinging spot at the back of his head. He sucked in cool air and gently probed the edge of the pain at the back of his head, touching a liquid with a texture not like the sewage on the ground. Bringing it to his eyes, he realized it was blood.
Once humans with excessive emotion realize their own vulnerability, their mind and body will collapse instantly like a broken defense. Fang Mu was no exception, sitting down on the ground with a plop, his consciousness wanting to detach from reality and enter that dark dreamland.
Falling to the ground again, Fang Mu’s eyes weakly rolling, his closing eyelids—when his eyes saw the thing fallen nearby—made him like a dying fish in desperate struggle. Suddenly, a burst of strength erupted inside him, supporting him to wriggle his body closer to the nail hammer dropped beside the trash can.
Once his hands got hold of the thing, Fang Mu felt like a child grasping his most beloved bedtime toy, his mind instantly settling down, as if all difficulties and fears were no longer problems.
When Fang Mu awoke again, he found the surrounding environment had completely changed once more. He was lying in an unfamiliar room, on an unfamiliar hospital bed, with a busy figure beside him.
Probably slept too long, his eyes had not yet adapted to the light, his vision somewhat blurry. He just felt that the shadow keeping watch beside him carried a refreshing fragrance that soothed the mind and brought peace.
That figure seemed to notice him, gradually approaching him. A delicate face unfamiliar yet moving him to tears entered his view.
“You’re awake.” The woman was very surprised.
This was the protagonist of the photo privately kept by Fang Lin in his diary, his wife.
