Chapter 275: Opening The Eye Aperture
Swollen gray, red vertical lines, those are the toad frog’s eyes.
Messy black lines, vast shadows, that is the mysterious ancient underwater palace.
Unclear horn sounds, heavy chilling murmurs, that is the music welcoming Fang Mu!
All the bizarre, hideous eerie figures “cheerfully” sending him to the dark profound slumber abyss, the depths of the darkness slumber palace, the dwelling where the toad god slumbers.
After crossing the gas sac enveloping the palace, Fang Mu regained his breathing ability, and under the escort and urging of a group of frog people, he arrived at the dwelling of the palace master.
Fang Mu remained silent, his calves trembling, fumbling his way into the towering deep brown door ahead.
“Why did I suddenly come here? Am I dreaming?” Fang Mu felt that after calmly going to his death, he had lost some memories. No… he lost memories every day, but this time the strangeness of the memory loss was more pronounced.
Thump!
The door behind him suddenly slammed shut. Fang Mu turned back abruptly, only to see the light surging into the door slowly clamping shut in front of him. He wanted to reach out and grab it, but felt his life was so weak and powerless.
Fang Mu could only hang his head and continue forward. He couldn’t see his own appearance, but he could imagine how pale his facial expression was. The fear-induced discomposure was fully exposed in the eyes of the great giant creature in that darkness.
Perhaps his eyes had adapted to the darkness, or maybe under the influence of some unknown factor, a physiological mutation had occurred in him. In any case, he gradually began to see the scene in the darkness clearly.
It wasn’t all darkness here; faint light still existed. Shallow purple light struggled desperately ahead, projecting onto the outline of some giant creature.
The outline of that giant creature became clearer the closer he got. The more the purple light illuminated, the more distinct the appearance of the giant creature in the darkness became.
It was a black giant creature in deep slumber, covered in black long fur all over its body, pot-bellied, crouching ferociously. Even though still slumbering with steady regular breathing undulations, it unconsciously emanated terrifying pressure outward, making one unable to help but fear and want to commit suicide on the spot after just one glance. Perhaps only death could make one forget the fear of that visage.
Fang Mu stood before that giant creature, unable to move, his eyes fixed fixedly on the other, unable to even blink, as if his eyes were magnets sucked in place.
Suddenly, that giant creature awoke, but the first eyes to awaken were not on its face, but at the roots of its two atrophied thighs—blood-red fleshy eyes rotating, then suddenly locking onto Fang Mu. Immediately after, that lazy giant creature squeezed out eyes one after another from the black fissures all over its body, scarlet gazes quickly turning toward Fang Mu.
“Don’t look at me, don’t look at me…” Fang Mu shouted madly in his heart. He felt his whole body itching terribly, as if some terrifying thing was about to burrow out from inside him, and yet those eyes mercilessly stared at him, as if appraising.
Motionless, Fang Mu saw the giant creature’s body in the darkness faintly deform and split. Its body tore open into slender flesh-and-blood tentacles, some with teeth, some with eyes, all different, approaching and surrounding Fang Mu.
Immediately after, another pair of tentacles extended from the darkness, each holding a thing: a large iron nail and a hammer, exactly the two things Fang Mu had lost, now appearing before his eyes.
Fang Mu watched wide-eyed as the nail appeared before him, its tip aimed at his pupils. At the peak of his rapid breathing frequency, the hammer smashed down ruthlessly.
A heart-wrenching scream swept away the silence between darknesses, and before the screamer could catch his breath, the next strike followed closely.
Clang!
The second scream was even more painful. Breaking free from fear’s rigidity, the intense pain made Fang Mu roll on the ground. While convulsing, he felt his soul detaching.
Clearly in pain himself, yet like a bystander he could see himself writhing on the ground. Looking back at the black giant creature behind, its eerie appearance was as clear as daylight—this was also the first time he clearly saw the toad god’s full form, no longer some blurry shadow.
The head resembled a bat’s skull but even flatter, mouth wide and thick, tongue like a snake’s flicking in and out of the mouth continuously. On that thick belly was a huge orifice exposed to the air, seemingly an ovary or uterus, where unidentified human-sized giant embryos developed and grew. Some creatures inside individual embryos seemed to possess consciousness; they perceived Fang Mu’s presence, deformed frog faces pressing against the fleshy membrane, revealing ferocious and eerily distorted figures.
This mad scene nearly broke Fang Mu several times. His head furiously hammer-smashed the ground; the intense pain and sanity-shattering scene made him want to die.
However, Fang Mu hadn’t expected his flesh to exhibit such tenacious vitality.
Fang Mu… or rather the soul peeled from the flesh, watched wide-eyed as his body smashed his own head to pieces like a watermelon exploding. His headless bloody pulped corpse still mechanically repeated the motion of head-smashing to death over and over, with no intention of stopping the kowtowing or the pain.
Until the toad god issued a few meaningless thick whispers toward him, then the toad god calmly closed all the eyes on its body again. Fang Mu’s body finally stopped obediently like a lowly dog fawning over its master, life withering and halting instantly.
Fang Mu watched himself die wide-eyed, able only to feel pain and nothing else. He silently turned his head back for another look, but before he could glimpse the toad god’s appearance again, a black giant mantis-like figure suddenly flashed in, slashing down on him with another strike.
……
Fang Mu startled awake abruptly, instinctively sitting up straight, only to awaken in the center of some icy pond.
He was completely naked, like a newborn infant, arms crossed hugging himself, body curled up instinctively for warmth, trembling uncontrollably, eyes full of bewilderment looking at this unfamiliar environment.
Could everything just now have been a dream?
He had been brought by frog people to the mysterious underwater ancient palace, to face the frog people’s leader, the toad god.
Upon seeing him, the toad god showed no anger at all; instead, eerily picking up that nail hammer—clearly the other had feared and dreaded it so much last time, but now used it in reverse as a weapon or some punishment tool, inflicting incomprehensible punishment on him.
Fortunately, the pond water wasn’t deep or wide. Fang Mu shivering, walked himself ashore, flipping over several times on the way, relying on powerful willpower to resist cramps and cold, finally struggling out of the water.
After crawling ashore, Fang Mu could no longer hold out, collapsing on a small dirt road. His sensitive ears hazily heard a tractor’s sound; that tractor seemed to carry along some antique-brand radio, the radio emitting poor-quality sound: “Dongfanghong I, launch successful!”
