Chapter 272: Lingering Fear
Why is this nail hammer here?
Fang Mu was shocked and puzzled inside, but his brain automatically connected all the memories related to the Toad God and the nail hammer. He suddenly realized that the law enforcement captain’s accent at that time seemed to carry a bit of the Guinan Region’s accent, even though the other might have worked in other places for many years, his native accent remained unchanged.
So, that law enforcement captain was very likely a hidden Toad God believer himself!
But what exactly is the connection between this nail hammer and the Toad God, such that the Toad God and His believers would have such a huge reaction?
After the nail hammer fell out of the paulownia wood box, that being hidden in the darkness kept emitting roars expressing anger, while also seeming quite wary and not immediately attacking Fang Mu.
Fang Mu was doubly puzzled by this. If this nail hammer could make the Toad God feel pressure, then why did he suffer the other’s attack last time?
Could it be that the nail hammer now had some other change compared to before?
Fang Mu didn’t think much. He only knew that the anomalous things around now all feared the nail hammer, so he steeled himself, endured the pressure, picked up the nail hammer from the ground, held the nail in one hand and the hammer in the other, and his confidence suddenly doubled.
At Fang Mu picking up the nail hammer, those monsters hiding in the darkness all emitted sounds of resistance and anger, as if complaining about Fang Mu’s behavior.
A faint blue light suddenly flashed in the dark stone chamber, illuminating the black shadows in the stone chamber. Vaguely, a ferocious and terrifying bat face flashed by. That uncoordinated ugly face was on the body of a huge toad frog. Around the edges of the stone chamber, there was also a group of detestable frog people monsters with somewhat human-like body shapes lurking menacingly at him. Pairs of huge, pitch-black eyes filled with slaughter desire stared dead at him, as if they wanted to devour him alive with their gazes.
The light swept past, a roar sounded in the darkness, and swift footsteps immediately came from all directions.
Fang Mu’s facial expression changed drastically. He knew the angry Toad God had just given orders, telling His kin servants to no longer hold back and directly attack him. Those frog people also seemed to have been affected by the earlier flash, becoming extremely mad at this moment. Just from hearing the whooshing sounds of their large-scale and extremely fast limb movements in the darkness, he could imagine the exaggerated and violent actions of those frog people.
Fang Mu turned direction and ran, breathing heavily.
The flash that lit up earlier not only unveiled the veil of terror, simply giving him a fright. Fang Mu also clearly saw the structure of the stone chamber. He saw the direction of one of the exits in the stone chamber and ran toward that direction.
Just as the old village chief had said, don’t look at anything else, don’t listen to anything else, ignore everything, just run.
Gurok!
A frog croak sounded from Fang Mu’s side rear, and a swift figure pounced from the darkness, knocking Fang Mu to the ground.
Under the stimulation of death fear, Fang Mu erupted with strong will to survive. The nail hammer in his hand repeatedly stabbed and smashed madly at the darkness ahead. The strong monster pressing on him suffered heavy damage in moments and emitted a miserable wail. Its body spurted out foul-smelling cold bodily fluid, splattering Fang Mu’s face.
“Ah!” Fang Mu felt the nail hammer in his hand suddenly become as hot as magma, scorching as if it would melt his hands. He soon screamed and threw away the nail hammer, then scrambled onward in the escape direction.
Fang Mu panted all the way, ran all the way, his footsteps always speeding up, never slowing. He didn’t know how many times he bumped into walls, how many times he was hurt by sharp objects in the darkness that couldn’t be distinguished as stones or teeth, and he couldn’t feel that momentary pain at all, completely relying on instinct to dodge and escape.
This continued until his stamina finally gave out and he fell. As his vision slowly darkened and narrowed, Fang Mu looked back and saw that the weak and fatigued him had already escaped from that mist-surrounded woods.
Just before fainting, vaguely, he heard approaching footsteps. A pair of bare feet walked to in front of him. That was a pair of severely deformed monster feet, similar to human feet but flatter, with webbing connected between the toes.
When Fang Mu woke up again, he was already back in the room of the household where he was staying. He sat up in shock, panting heavily. His eyes full of terror nervously scanned the surroundings. Cold sweat like a spring soaked his clothes and bedding. Only after seeing the environment clearly did he finally breathe a long sigh of relief.
Fang Mu lightly rubbed his brow, his temples throbbing. His brain replayed nightmare-like images: the huge toad shadow in the cave, red eyes, man-eating toad… and those frog people wearing human clothes…
Hiss…
Fang Mu’s senses were slowly recovering. A stinging, stiff, sticky feeling came from his hands. He looked down and saw that his hands were gripping very tightly, probably because they hadn’t loosened since he fainted, making it hard to open them now. At the same time, the skin surface was severely burned, with exaggerated burn blisters, looking just like… just like toad skin.
Fang Mu recalled that when the old village chief handed him the paulownia wood box containing the nail hammer, the other’s hands had also become like his own. He thought it was probably because both of them had touched the nail hammer.
That eerie nail hammer now possessed some terrifying mysterious power that even the Toad God was extremely wary of, not daring to act against him while he held the nail hammer, but instead letting kin servants do it.
His waking commotion attracted the attention of people nearby outside the room. Soon the door was pushed open. It was the daughter of the host family, a cute-looking little girl who came in carrying a face basin and towel.
Seeing Fang Mu awake, the little girl was also very happy. “Uncle, you’re awake.”
“What time is it now?” Fang Mu forced an ugly smile. He still remembered this little girl’s eerie behavior in her home courtyard, where she collected his hair and nail scraps to feed the toad.
Before crossing, Fang Mu had heard from Mo Guangning’s uncle about some ancient customs of the old Toad God believers.
If they really liked an outsider and had strong goodwill toward that outsider, they would collect things from that outsider’s body, preferably directly related body parts. Hair, skin flakes, and nails were all fine. Of course, if none were available, fabric from clothes the person had worn would also do. In the end, they would feed these things to the “household toad” raised by Toad God believers. Those “household toads” as the Toad God’s envoys would convey their intentions to the Toad God, and then the Toad God would provide protection to that outsider.
But Fang Mu could hardly withstand the inexplicable “Toad God’s Blessing” he got. How could he afford this “Toad God’s protection”?
Perhaps this little girl didn’t realize the result her behavior would bring, simply unable to distinguish right from wrong due to long-term cultural influence. She still purely thought she was helping others, not harming them.
The little girl explained with a smile: “It’s already past seven in the morning, almost eight.”
“How long did I sleep?”
“It’s been two days since you were carried back from the forest.”
“What day is it today?”
“March 5th today.”
Fang Mu fell silent. He entered the mountain on February 28th, which meant he wandered in Nong Mountain for 3 days before coming out.
“When we found you, you looked terrible, covered in wounds everywhere. But luckily they were just superficial injuries, nothing serious. The deadly part was that you were poisoned.” The little girl placed the heavy face basin on the stool by the bed, soaked the towel on the basin edge into the water, and skillfully soaked, washed, and rubbed it.
Seeing this, Fang Mu hurriedly wanted to say he’d do it himself, but upon looking down at his hands, he couldn’t help but hesitate.
The little girl smiled sweetly: “It’s fine, let me do it. Dad said to take good care of you.”
While helplessly accepting the junior’s care, Fang Mu asked the little girl who was carefully wiping his face: “Where’s your dad?”
His sensitive ears told him there was no one else at home now. To be precise, there were very few people in the entire village. He could hardly hear the sounds of villagers’ activities.
The little girl smiled and explained: “The adults all went to the village meeting.”
“Where to, the village chief’s house?”
“No.” The little girl shook her head.
“Nong Mountain?” Fang Mu’s eyes flickered.
The little girl who was wiping Fang Mu’s hand back slightly raised her eyes. Those eyes showed an expression far beyond her age, revealing an eerie smile, but she didn’t answer further.
Seeing this, Fang Mu already had the answer in his heart.
After helping Fang Mu finish his morning wash, Fang Mu sent the little girl away temporarily on the pretext of changing clothes. He locked the room door and returned to the bed.
After a period of repeated flexing, Fang Mu felt his tightly gripped stiff hands loosening. With willpower, he tried to reopen his hands. Fine sweat soon beaded on his freshly wiped face again. The feeling of this process was sour and spicy pain. The palms were the skin parts directly touching the nail hammer, so the burns here were the most severe. Making the motion to open the palms also meant tearing open the wounds.
Foul-smelling bodily fluid mixed with blood scent flowed from the wounds. Fang Mu closed his eyes and took deep breaths, his whole body trembling uncontrollably.
Then he slowly immersed his hands into the earlier face-washing basin. The warm water stimulated the wounds, further stimulating the wound nerves. Fang Mu endured the fierce intense pain but remained silent.
After a while, Fang Mu seemed to have adapted to the pain. He took his hands out of the now turbid basin water. At this point, his hands had regained some flexibility, and the wounds were much cleaner.
While checking the wounds, Fang Mu suddenly had a new discovery. He found that the wound in his palm was stuck to a piece of deep blue fabric, with half of the fabric adhered to the split skin. He endured the intense pain again and tore off that piece of black cloth.
He poured a cup of water on the table and soaked the black cloth in the cup to wash it.
After reapplying medicine and bandaging his hands, Fang Mu went back to look at the deep blue fabric. It had almost finished washing. Upon picking it up to check, he felt the material and color of this fabric seemed somewhat familiar.
Close to noon twelve o’clock, Fang Mu finally heard the sounds of people activities and communication surging back in the village. The little girl’s parents had just returned.
Seeing Fang Mu awake, the little girl’s parents also looked very happy, saying they would kill a chicken for him today to let the freshly recovering big injury patient eat something good.
Fang Mu smiled and accepted, but felt an indescribable chill in his heart.
They were all very good to him and took good care of him, but… not one of them asked what happened to him in Nong Mountain.
No need to ask? Not curious?
Could it be… they were already accustomed to the consequences for those who entered the mountain, or… they already knew very well what he experienced.
In the afternoon, Fang Mu went to visit the village chief again, but upon arriving at the village chief’s house, he found the village chief was not home. The one receiving him was the village chief’s wife, whom he hadn’t met last time—an old lady received him.
Fang Mu wanted to ask where the old village chief was. The old lady explained to him in broken Mandarin. He listened carefully and roughly understood.
It turned out the old village chief’s son had died. The old village chief went to bury his son, so he wasn’t home today and wouldn’t receive guests for the next few days.
Fang Mu understood, then suggested: “The old village chief helped me a lot this time. Your child passed away, I should light a stick of incense for your child. Please don’t refuse.”
With words said to this extent, the old lady didn’t refuse. She nodded silently and led Fang Mu to the ancestral hall behind the house.
Entering the ancestral hall, when Fang Mu saw the black-and-white posthumous portrait illuminated by the red candles’ firelight in the dim room, all his muscles instantly tensed up. Then he quickly lowered his head, covering his shocked and terrified eyes.
It was him! That law enforcement captain! He… he was actually the old village chief’s son!
Fang Mu’s brain received a huge shock, his facial expression somewhat hard to control. He forcibly suppressed his changing emotions, pretended not to recognize the person in the posthumous portrait, solemnly lit a stick of incense, then silently returned to his stay all the way.
Only until returning to his room and closing the door did Fang Mu slump against the door exhausted, sliding to the ground, breathing heavily, his mouth dry.
He dry-swallowed a mouthful of air and took out the deep blue fabric stored in the hidden pocket inside his jacket. His mind flashed to the scene in Nong Mountain cave where in the darkness he fought a frog person that pounced on him.
He recalled personally using the nail to poke the person full of holes, then using the hammer to smash the person’s head into a puddle of mush. The other’s spraying blood and morsels of meat drenched him. During this struggle, he tore off a piece of the other’s clothes fabric, which had stuck to his wound afterward. Because of nervously gripping tight, he never relaxed it from beginning to end, and it wasn’t discovered.
Now examining this familiar fabric, Fang Mu felt his head about to split open.
The fabric of this cloth wasn’t exactly the same as the uniform of law enforcement officers in the Shenzhou Region?
