Chapter 164: Asking For Help
Jinma Mountain was sealed off, and Mysterious Group members, guided by the information provided by Li Duojin, arrived at the underground cave that Li Duojin and Chen Xiaolin had once visited together.
However, eerily, the giant skeleton, the several corpses waiting to be drained of flesh and blood by the giant skeleton, and the countless dry bones in meditation that Li Duojin and Chen Xiaolin described had all mysteriously disappeared without a trace.
However, the Mysterious Group did not suspect that Li Duojin and Chen Xiaolin were lying; they did indeed discover frozen blood and traces left by some bones of unknown origin that had been fixed in place for a long time in various spots in that empty stone chamber. Additionally, there were several huge claw scratch marks in the stone chamber that probably did not belong to any known animal.
All these phenomena indicated that some anomaly factor had indeed existed in this stone chamber not long ago.
“The magnetic field here is very chaotic; it’s entirely possible, as Li Duojin said, that a passage to another dimension was once opened here.” A Mystic Investigator responsible for surveying the magnetic field reported to Yu Lianyun.
Yu Lianyun nodded; others might not know about the “intimate relationship” between her and Li Duojin, but she had never doubted his words from beginning to end.
Because they were both people with the same destination, and they had already met face-to-face several times in the forest cabin, it was no problem to call them friends rather than just acquaintances.
Therefore, Yu Lianyun was not concerned with confirming whether an anomaly event had occurred here; what she truly cared about was the whereabouts of those corpses.
Li Duojin had said that when he arrived at the forest cabin, he had seen Boss Lin using the bones from those corpses to feed the “strange octopus” in the small shop and the “Lycoris radiata” on the table. He had asked Boss Lin if he had taken Kong Mo’s shell, but Boss Lin denied it, saying the bones were actually brought back by his family’s cat and that he had not left the small shop.
“Is Boss Lin wanting us humans to solve this thing on our own this time too?” Yu Lianyun thought upon hearing this.
In her impression, Boss Lin might provide some magical items like “blessed magic tools” to guests in the shop or sell some special ability to intervene in events, but he would not take the initiative to step in; once he gave the items or skills, how to choose afterward was up to the people involved themselves.
The reason Boss Lin did these things was simply that he expected to see all sorts of reactions from humans when they faced powers beyond human strength after gaining abilities that could shake desperate situations, watching the eerie changes in the situation evolve into all sorts of results.
Boss Lin said that when watching ordinary people, he only felt they were like stagnant water; only when seeing those moments could he feel the pulse of life.
Yu Lianyun was actually very curious about what kind of being Boss Lin was, but her curiosity was limited to that; she did not want to delve into the answer at all, preferably never knowing for the rest of her life, until she took the secret of the forest cabin to her grave.
“Kong Mo’s shell is gone, but we can’t find its existence; could it fly?” Yu Lianyun thought to herself as she walked out of the stone chamber, looking at the sunlight and greenery of the trees beyond the sinkhole.
As for what kind of being Kong Mo was, even flipping through the Mysterious Group’s database yielded little relevant information; ancient books described Kong Mo like this: Kong Mo, Molter, the strongly desirous grower…
These were all its names; its entity had not been described completely or clearly, only that when its entity appeared, one would see a black light orb surrounded by a deep blue crystal ring encircled by several regularly arranged ones. Beyond that, there were no records, because anyone who looked more closely went insane or died. Normally, Kong Mo hid in the shell it created, moving through the shell, and only revealed its true form when necessary.
Kong Mo was obsessed with the growth changes of living things, but it itself seemed like the shells it created and did not grow, so it could only complete the process of “growth” by recreating shells and changing shells, its behavior like a snake molting, which was probably the origin of the name Molter.
Kong Mo rarely manifested in the world, so textual records of it were naturally even scarcer, and its action patterns were completely unpredictable.
The current situation was like a monster even worse than a fierce tiger escaping from its beast cage and hiding in the human world in some unknown way, making Magic City, this world metropolis, fraught with crisis; no one knew when, in some corner of the city at night, an innocent life would be hollowed out from the inside, silently becoming a lifeless shell.
“The situation in Magic City now is no better than Cui Zhu’s two years ago…” Yu Lianyun thought.
……
“Celebrating your survival; this ‘Goddess of Fortune’ is on me.” Drake pushed a freshly mixed cocktail toward Chen Xiaolin.
Chen Xiaolin’s expression was strange, her gaze complex as she looked at him; after a long while, she hesitantly raised her glass and drank, savoring the wine’s aroma on her lips and teeth, her voice slightly hoarse as she said: “Thank you for letting me know again that it wasn’t a dream that time, Brother Season.”
“The feeling of being alive is better than anything, isn’t it?” Drake laughed.
Chen Xiaolin did not immediately agree; after a few seconds of silence, she spoke: “It’s like that thing’s shadow has been carved into my mind now; as soon as I close my eyes, I seem to see its outline. It’s not clear, but the longer I look, the clearer it feels. Only when I stay awake can I escape it; I’m starting to feel like I’m being driven crazy…”
“Maybe it’s just psychological trauma; it’ll fade with time.” Drake comforted her. Although he did not know about Chen Xiaolin and Li Duojin’s experiences, he resonated with some of her emotions.
“Brother Season, can you help me with something?” Chen Xiaolin took a deep breath. “I’m not here today just to have a drink or reconfirm my eerie experience with you; I also want to ask for your help.”
“Tell me.” Drake did not refuse Chen Xiaolin’s request right away; his attitude toward her was clearly much warmer and more enthusiastic than last time, like a caring senior colleague in the workplace patiently looking after a pretty new female colleague.
Chen Xiaolin: “I want you to help me find an organization.”
With that, Chen Xiaolin pulled a note paper from her pocket with its clean back facing down and slowly pushed it toward Drake.
Drake took the note paper, flipped it over, and saw a symbol composed of a triangle and several unknown hieroglyphs; his brows twitched a few times as he asked seriously: “What does it mean?”
He was very familiar with this symbol because the bar’s signboard, including the wall behind him now, was engraved with it.
