Before everything goes out

"Wait, I think I know this person!"

Upon seeing the blurry figure inside the cocoon, Niu San's expression changed slightly, and he moved closer.

He imitated Li Fei, pressing a flashlight against the cocoon and examining it from different angles.

After looking around a few times, he swallowed hard, his eyes filled with shock.

"This is Liu Qi!"

Upon hearing this, She Qingqing's expression changed, and she quickly stepped forward.

After she also circled around twice, Li Fei immediately confirmed from the expression on her face that Niu San had not made a mistake.

Judging from the figure, it is indeed a man inside.

However, this man was missing some organs and had some things that shouldn't be there.

It's not clear through the outer shell; we can only determine its high degree of variation.

"Liu Qi? Who?"

Li Fei was a little confused.

"The village chief's son, two years younger than me, left the village many years ago, not long after the disaster. I thought he had died in the mountains, but I never imagined he had turned into a monster and was hiding underground..."

Niu San took two steps back, moving a little further away from the cocoon.

Li Fei took out his flashlight, just about to examine it further, when he heard She Qingqing's voice beside him.

"Look..."

Turning his head, following She Qingqing's gaze, he swung the flashlight forward.

There are more cocoons.

Along this underground river, along this strange thing called Tai Sui, there are even more cocoons in this spacious cave.

"Woof!"

Ertong shouted and ran forward.

Following behind it, the three of them passed through cocoons, using flashlights to illuminate the way.

"This is Awen, his dad is a carpenter..."

"That's Sister-in-law Zhou, she left the village five years ago..."

"And the Russians, Egghead..."

Niu San stared in disbelief, unable to contain his amazement.

The villagers, who should have disappeared from the village, have now appeared here, transformed into monsters curled up in cocoons.

The further they walked, the more silent the three of them became.

Twenty, thirty.

There were fifty or more; the three of them couldn't even count them all.

"It turns out that those people weren't turned into dogs by Liu Yongxiao, but were all turned into cocoons and hidden here."

Li Fei's pupils trembled, and his mind was in complete chaos.

However, he quickly corrected this idea.

Liu Yongxiao was very powerful, but he didn't think he possessed such magical abilities.

All of this seems to be thanks to the Tai Sui (a deity associated with the planet) standing nearby.

Connecting the fragments of memory in his mind, he quickly pieced together everything that had happened.

First of all.

What is certain is that the villagers have undergone some degree of mutation...

Or, as the Rings would say, it's corruption.

The villagers, who should have decayed into monsters, continued to live as normal people.

This is illogical and requires a specific condition.

These conditions were beyond the comprehension of even the ringleaders, at least those few team members couldn't understand them...

Therefore, those conditions were probably only known to Liu Yongxiao.

Only Liu Yongxiao knew the true nature of Tai Sui.

In other words, the two overlap...

"Eat the flesh of the Tai Sui".

Although the underlying principle is unknown, this is likely a necessary condition for inhibiting corruption.

This confirmed the fact, coupled with the bitter expression on Liu Yongxiao's face when he spoke with the rings earlier.

In addition, Liu Yongxiao deliberately concealed everything underground.

In addition, there were Liu Yongxiao's stray dogs that patrolled at all times.

"I see."

Li Fei sorted out his thoughts and slowly stopped walking.

The various clues pieced together in his mind, pointing to a single possible truth.

"Liu Yongxiao knew that his fellow villagers had long been corrupt, and he also knew that eating the flesh of the Tai Sui could inhibit corruption, and even knew that this inhibition would eventually have its limits."

He arranged for local dogs to patrol the village so that they could spot people who were at their limit as soon as possible and move them underground.

He moved each one he found, until the entire village of over a hundred people was reduced to less than half of its current size.

Shocked.

Under the shocked gazes of the two people beside him, Li Fei stated his reasoning.

Although some details cannot be verified, this is roughly how it happened.

"Now that you mention it, it turns out that sometimes Dad goes out in the middle of the night, not to go into the mountains, but to find the village chief. He says he's actually going to help with this..."

She Qingqing quickly recalled more details.

Niu San frowned, and after sorting things out for a moment, asked:

"Why didn't the village chief just tell us directly? Many people in the village are saying that he turned all the missing people into dogs, even my mother thinks so."

"What am I telling you? That sooner or later everyone will turn into monsters? That you'll survive by eating monster flesh?"

"Oh, that makes sense."

Niu San scratched his head.

If I were to tell the villagers about this, they would definitely not be able to make a living.

People need something to look forward to in life.

"No wonder Lin Wen said I was afraid of the dark. It turns out it wasn't me who was afraid, but her and everyone in Shuanghe Village who wasn't afraid."

Li Fei recalled.

He was puzzled when he first arrived in Shuanghe Village.

The kerosene lamp was so dim that it even triggered the alarm on the wristband, but Lin Wen felt nothing at all; she didn't experience the same agonizing itching he had.

It turns out that it had long been corrupted, thus gaining resistance to darkness.

and also.

No wonder when Ma Zi and A Ji died the first time they went into the mountains, they immediately turned into walking corpses.

At the time, he couldn't understand why it took the rooster two whole days to turn into a zombie, while the much larger human only took a few seconds...

He's figured it out now.

If we consider corpse transformation as a form of corruption, then Ma Zi and A Ji would have already accumulated a large amount of corruption value in their bodies.

Once dead, the body loses its vitality and immediately undergoes mutation.

"So now there's only one question left: what exactly is Lin Wen's child...?"

Li Fei kept walking and strode forward.

The two people beside them also had solemn expressions, their heads bowed, deep in thought.

It is not easy to accept that "one has already become corrupted, but has not yet mutated."

She Qingqing didn't react much, but Niu San's face was already scrunched up, and he didn't say a word for a long time.

In the somber atmosphere, the three continued forward.

"Woof!"

After walking for a while, Ertong's call briefly pulled the group out of their somber mood.

The three of them looked up at the same time, and at the intersection of the three beams of flashlight, on the writhing riverbed, was a huge lump of flesh.

The growth was pink and larger than the cocoon.

The outer skin is also thinner, and even from several meters away, light can pass through it when a flashlight is shone on it, and it seems to be filled with water, with hair-like things floating in the water as well.

As they got closer and saw what was inside, their expressions froze instantly.

"This is a baby..."

Niu San's eyes widened in surprise, his eyeballs almost popping out.

There was a baby inside.

There was no mutation, no corruption; it was just an ordinary human baby.

On its round belly, an umbilical cord is attached to the bottom, connecting to the riverbed, and it sways gently with the movement of the Tai Sui.

Like a cradle.

Seemingly startled by the flashlight beam, it jerked twice, stirring up the surrounding liquid, which startled the group, who immediately moved the flashlight away.

"So this fibroid is the uterus of the Tai Sui..."

Li Fei swallowed hard.

The moment he saw the baby, he immediately thought of Lin Wen's children.

Bai Xiaowu, Mantou, Axin, Erya, Xiaodou...

That's how Lin Wen's child came to be.

That's why Liu Yongxiao said that those were all children of the Tai Sui.

"A uterus? So, Teacher Lin's child was born from a river?"

She Qingqing stepped forward.

Bold as she was, she stepped directly onto the riverbed and gently poked at the surface of the callus with her hand.

As she poked, one of the babies even turned up the corners of its mouth and smiled.

"Um."

Li Fei nodded.

Slowly, he recalled the various details from before and began to speak.

"I had a strange feeling before that Bai Xiaowu and his gang of Tai Sui kids looked somewhat like the villagers, and now it seems that it wasn't just my imagination."

The reason for hanging the image is that Tai Sui (the Grand Duke Jupiter) gives birth based on the appearance of the villagers; it knows what we are thinking.

"Just like Grandpa Tree, can Tai Sui read minds?"

Niu San slapped his forehead, realizing what was happening.

Looking back on that night, Grandpa Tree also created a large group of tree people based on their imaginations.

If Grandpa Tree can read minds, then Grandpa Tai Sui probably can too.

"That's right, but compared to Grandpa Tree, Tai Sui's behavior isn't like mind reading, it's more like..."

Li Fei frowned slightly.

I recall Bai Xiaoyan's highly mutated corpse.

Their fear stemmed from the first five deformed children who died of illness.

"I feel that this is more like an involuntary imitation. At first, this imitation was not very skillful, so the children born were not healthy and were deformed children who died young."

For example, Bai Xiaowu's older brothers and sisters are all such failures.

Later, after continuous attempts and training, and numerous failures, it finally succeeded in giving birth to its first healthy child, Bai Xiaowu.

"I think I understand..."

Niu San's tightly furrowed brows gradually relaxed, and he nodded repeatedly.

"My older brother said that mutated animals can mimic human actions."

My second uncle's family had a pig like that before. When they found out it was going to be killed for the New Year, it actually knelt on the ground and begged for mercy. Later, they found out it had mutated long ago.

So it's not just animals that imitate humans, this river does too...

...