My Healing Games

Chapter 705 The Prelude to the Awakening of the Great Calamity

The stone houses on the island in the middle of the lake have a history of over a hundred years. Legend has it that the lake god lives in the stone houses. If the villagers nearby have any difficulties, they only need to prepare three kinds of sacrificial animals and throw them into the pool in the stone houses, and the lake god will help them fulfill their wishes.

Such stories are told in the villages surrounding the lake, but in fact no one has ever actually seen the lake god; the deity may simply be a beautiful expectation.

Holding onto the rotten wooden ladder, Han Fei was extremely careful, paying close attention to every movement of his body.

The wooden ladder, whose construction date is unknown, was slippery and covered with light green moss. The part near the water was rotten, and fine tooth marks could still be faintly seen on it.

"Keep quiet and don't disturb him." Guan Miao gestured for silence, and he didn't even dare to breathe too loudly.

The stone house was extremely quiet. Everyone was holding their breath for Han Fei, watching his every move, hoping that he could complete the ritual of worshipping the lake god.

It didn't take Han Fei long to climb to the second floor of the stone house. The old, dilapidated wooden ladder seemed to be on the verge of collapse. The nails embedded in the wall were loose, and creaking sounds came from all directions. The ladder also began to shake, as if it might break at any moment.

Han Fei looked down and saw something rising in the bottomless pool. His heart began to race, and the strange feeling of impending death returned.

"It felt like something in the water was calling to me."

Some people, when standing at a high place, feel an urge to jump down. Han Fei was like that now. It seemed as if a voice in his mind was constantly prompting him to let go and jump into the pool below.

Shaking his head, Han Fei dispelled the strange thought and quickly climbed up the wooden ladder.

As Han Fei drew closer to the shrine on the roof, a faint sound suddenly came from beneath the calm water, and a few bubbles rose from the murky lake.

"Give me the flashlight." Yan Le's mother had a bad feeling. She took the flashlight from the lifeguard, took a few steps back, and slowly shone the flashlight on the water.

"Do you want to kill him?!" Guan Miao quickly shielded Yan Le upon seeing this: "The light might attract anything underwater, and you'll disturb the lake god!"

"I just wanted to see what was underwater, so that if there was any danger, I could get Han Fei down in time," Yan Le's mother explained.

“Climb the wooden ladder and return the lake god statue. The ceremony is in its final stage. If you give up halfway, the three of you will suffer the same fate as us, turning into half-human, half-fish monsters!” Guan Miao’s voice was low, but his tone was extremely stern. He could no longer hide anything. To tell Yan Le how serious the consequences of obstructing the ceremony would be, he took off his thick coat: “Are you going to suffer the same fate as me?”

The old man's thin body was covered with water ripples, and scale-like foreign objects grew out of those ripples. What was even more chilling was that when the old man became emotional and gasped for breath, those water ripples and foreign objects would open and close.

“No one in the village who participated in the ceremony escaped; this is our only chance to make amends.”

After seeing Guan Miao's body, Yan Le's mother stopped insisting. The lifeguard player next to her didn't dare to say a word. He pulled Yan Le's mother and turned off the flashlight.

Han Fei, on the wooden ladder, didn't care what was happening at the entrance of the stone house; his eyes were only on the shrine.

In his recovered memories, all shrines were set up on altars and the ground, emphasizing stability. This was the first time he had ever seen a shrine like this, suspended in mid-air with a pool of water beneath its base.

Something unusual must be going on. The closer he got to the shrine, the more uneasy he felt, as if something terrifying was locked inside.

Using both hands and feet, Han Fei gripped the wet and slippery wooden ladder tightly. Just as he was about to climb up to the third floor of the stone house, a black worm suddenly crawled out from the back of the badly rotten wooden ladder.

Han Fei wasn't too afraid of resentment or vengeful ghosts; he hated strange and unusual things the most: "Go, bite it to death."

The ugly cat seemed to understand Han Fei's words. It crawled out of Han Fei's arms and slapped the black insect into the pool.

The insect carcasses did not float on the surface of the water; they sank into the water in the blink of an eye, seemingly becoming part of the lake.

The air in the stone house became more humid, and the fishy smell grew stronger.

"You're quite useful."

After receiving Han Fei's praise, the ugly cat was a little excited, but it quickly returned to its aloof demeanor. However, its act of scouting the way for Han Fei revealed its true feelings.

"This wooden ladder can't withstand much strain, jump slowly."

The higher you go, the more and more scratches appear on the wall, most of which were dug out with fingernails.

Before Han Fei could figure out the meaning behind those carvings, he heard even more eerie sounds.

crunch...

Strange sounds emanated from both the back and the middle of the wooden ladder, as if fine needles were constantly pricking the ladder.

The ugly cat that was crawling forward stopped, meowed at the front, and its fur stood on end.

"That's not good."

A black insect crawled out from the crack in the wooden ladder, and then more and more black insects crawled out. They occupied the wooden ladder and the upper part of the stone house, and even built a nest under the shrine.

The stone house was dark, and the insects, which were entirely black, were hidden in the darkness.

If it were someone else, they would probably have been eaten beyond recognition and fallen into the pool.

As he pulled the red string, Han Fei, though reluctant to admit it, did feel a little flustered.

It wasn't a fear of death, but rather a bodily instinct that produced a sense of disgust.

“These insects vary greatly in appearance, a bizarre collection of all the ugliness in the world. They are not the same species, yet they all build their nests under the shrine. This is enough to show that they originated from the same thing.” Han Fei did not dare to move rashly. He carefully observed the ugly cat and the poisonous insects and soon discovered something very interesting.

All the black insects make strange noises when they are in the presence of the ugly cat. They are not afraid of the ugly cat itself, but rather the nine black stripes on its body.

Those nine black lines seemed to house beings just like them, except that, unlike these defective creatures, that being's aura was inherently overwhelming.

After hesitating for a moment, the ugly cat, who was pretending to be powerful, continued to crawl forward, and the ugly black insects actually gave way to it.

The ugly cat, unaware of the importance of showing mercy, immediately launched an attack as soon as it saw the other party back down.

Nine ghostly lines crawled across the stitched-up skin. All the insects that the ugly cat touched fell off, and their bodies quickly shriveled up, their most evil and darkest aura being absorbed by the nine ghostly lines.

Black "corpse rain" fell from the sky, and what was the most difficult part of the journey for others, Han Fei walked with great ease.

He followed behind the ugly cat, but his gaze swept over Guan Miao at the door.

With these black insects around, almost no one can successfully open the shrine and put the statue back in its place. It can be said that every year, people who go to deliver the statue die here. However, the custom passed down in the village is to find an orphan who has been raised by many families to deliver the statue.

Han Fei only heard Guan Miao say that the orphan was to deliver the statue, but he didn't hear Guan Miao say whether the orphan would be able to return alive.

In villages that value blood ties and clans, even if an orphan without parents or relatives goes missing, few people will care about him.

"No wonder they invite the gods every year. This shrine might just be a front. The three sacrificial animals are offerings, and the orphans who bring the statues are also sacrifices! They are performing a living sacrifice!"

Han Fei glanced at the carvings on the wall again and immediately understood that those carvings and scratches were left by the orphans before they died; they were the traces of their last struggle.

Some orphans are kind-hearted. Even as they are being gnawed by insects, they want to warn those who come after them. They manage to carve some words on the wall.

Unfortunately, all the writing was too far from the ground, and by the time later climbers reached the spot and realized something was wrong, it was already too late.

Seeing the shocking marks on the wall, Han Fei didn't immediately go looking for trouble with Guan Miao; he continued climbing upwards.

Upon reaching the third floor of the stone house, Han Fei saw familiar human cocoons beneath the shrine. Human faces were engraved on the black cocoons, which were made from the souls of living people.

"These black insects are the ugliest and most disgusting things in the world, but they are the very embodiment of the mutated human heart."

Han Fei was only two meters away from the shrine. The wooden ladder at the top, hollowed out by worms, could break at any moment, so he took every step with extreme caution.

Compared to Han Fei, the cat was exceptionally bold. After absorbing the evil energy from the black insect, it set its sights on the insect nest beneath the shrine.

Before Han Fei could stop it, the ugly cat did something extremely risky: it leaped off the wooden ladder and jumped onto the insect nest.

The suspended shrine was secured to the roof of the stone house by several chains. The shrine door seemed to have never been opened, as if it had grown into the shrine itself.

Han Fei moved his body little by little, carefully maintaining his balance. He was already very careful, but the wooden stairs on the third floor of the stone house still made a cracking sound.

From the very beginning, the people who built the wooden ladder never intended for anyone to get close to the shrine; this last section of the path was a dead end.

The moment he realized there was something wrong with the wooden ladder, Han Fei decisively jumped toward the shrine. He grabbed the chain with one hand and used his arm strength to pull himself onto it.

Holding tightly to the iron chain, Han Fei looked back and saw that the wooden ladder he had come up with had completely collapsed, with large chunks of wood falling into the pool.

The murky lake water splashed everywhere, completely shattering the silence.

The three people standing at the door had different expressions. The lifeguard was full of worry and fear, Yan Le's mother seemed thoughtful, with doubt and relief in her eyes, and Guan Miao's expression was complicated, but her clenched hand slowly loosened.

Taking a deep breath, Han Fei lay down on the chains, wanting to see what was inside the shrine.

Reaching out to the shrine, Han Fei forcefully pulled open the shrine's door.

Withered cocoons fell from the sky, and a pungent stench emanated from the shrine. Inside the dark shrine sat a human head that had rotted so badly that its features were no longer recognizable.

The human head was facing away from the opening of the shrine's gate, directly opposite a mirror inside the shrine. The back of the head was covered in cracks, forming a giant butterfly exuding an aura of death.

When Han Fei opened the shrine, his face was reflected in the mirror. The rotten head instantly changed, and its appearance in the mirror was rapidly restored, with its features and appearance slowly becoming the same as Han Fei's!
"Lake God!"

Guan Miao, standing at the door, suddenly shouted towards the shrine, muttering in the local dialect. However, he only managed a few words before Yan Le's mother pushed him to the ground: "Han Fei! Watch out underwater!"

Yan Le's mother acted quickly, but it was still too late.

A force was gathering in the pool beneath the stone house, causing the water to ripple, and a huge black shadow was growing larger underwater!
Han Fei sat before the shrine, his attention completely drawn to the head within: "Mirror, shrine, head—is this the fourth resurrection ritual of the dream? But who is it resurrecting?"

Having destroyed the insect nest, the ugly cat could no longer suppress the power within it. Its nine ghostly markings went completely out of control, and its patched-up body was torn apart, swelling continuously amidst blood lines and bone fragments.

The ugly cat's ghostly markings seemed to sense something. Its sharp claws gripped the bottom of the shrine, easily tearing it open, and then violently pierced through the butterfly pattern on the head.

The rotting skull and the mirror shattered together, and hidden in the back of the skull was a blood cocoon that beat like a heart.

The blood cocoon was small, but it was engraved with the names of countless souls, and the aura it emitted far surpassed any cocoon Han Fei had ever seen before.

Just as the Ugly Cat was about to break the blood cocoon and absorb it, the water beneath the stone house suddenly burst open, and an enormous figure leaped out of the water!
Everyone present was deeply shocked by the sight of that enormous and terrifying body.

"Is there really a water monster in my mind?"

The monster resembled a fish and a snake, with wailing human faces on every scale. Countless water ghosts swirled behind it, and its frenzied aura was like a lake bursting its banks.

"The fourth ritual that the dream prepared for itself—it doesn't want to resurrect humans, but rather the monster that has lived in this lake for who knows how long?"

The cocoon has always had two completely opposite directions of mutation. One is like a butterfly, gathering all the beauty in the world, stealing the good in human nature, and becoming the most perfect human in appearance; the other is like a great evil, gathering all ugliness, misfortune and death, and becoming the most terrifying monster in the world.

This fourth ceremony should be a backup plan that Dream left for itself. If the ceremony of becoming a human cannot be successful, then it can only settle for second best.

At that moment, Han Fei also thought of the enormous cocoon resembling a canyon beneath the Dead Building. In the end, the dream seemed to have become a combination of monster and human. He could not be considered a success, nor a complete failure.

Drawing the Rebirth Slaughtering Blade, Han Fei placed his feet on the chains. As the master, he was willing to risk his life to buy time for his pet.

"Having eaten so many people, it should be considered a butcher tainted by the sins of killing, right?"

(End of this chapter)