There can't be a Harvest Moon in the RimWorld.

If it is, it should be able to help me leave this space!

I ripped open my clothes, revealing the memetic branding on my body. The bizarrely shaped branding instantly became scalding hot, almost melting into lava that flowed from my body, but I gritted my teeth and suppressed the urge to run away, facing the God of Light before me without taking a single step back.

Mr. Rhodes twirled an old ring on his hand, instantly stirring up a strange, decaying, and chilling wind. The wind smelled so unclean that it evoked terrifying beings born from darkness and chaos, lurking amidst the cataclysmic events of the deep sea.

The light that filled the world trembled unsteadily under the unclean sea breeze, seemingly hindered in its progress by the evil wind. However, the writhing light quickly spread, transforming into a vast, all-encompassing net, ready to seize any gap in the swirling wind and completely penetrate this space.

As Mr. Rhodes turned the ring, its color grew increasingly dull, and layers of visible copper powder peeled off the ring, turning into dust in the air.

The light drew closer and closer, until finally one ray touched our location and quietly wrapped around our legs.

But the next moment, a dark and pure wormhole bloomed before us like a black rose, revealing a silent and vast unknown space. It frantically devoured the light in this space, tearing everything in sight without mercy. Its attitude seemed determined to devour all the dregs of this world, leaving only a song unknown to anyone, quietly singing to its end.

"The song of Aldebaran is unheard"

The king's tattered clothes fluttered in the wind.

The song silently faded away there.

The dimly lit Kalkasa

My soul can no longer sing.

My songs are like tears that no longer flow.

Only dryness and silence remained.

The Lost Calxus

Chapter 404 From Beginner to Madness

The absurd singing seemed to still linger in my ears, but the scene before me had returned to a cold, empty, and gloomy church, with only the cold wind and rain outside and the mess inside complementing each other perfectly.

The priest lay motionless on the organ, presenting a gruesome scene of utter destruction. Although his body was still relatively intact, the area above his neck had vanished, turning into a pool of thick, foul-smelling, rotting matter, unevenly smeared in the corners of the church, with the highest part even splashing onto the chandelier on the ceiling—he had burned himself out as efficiently as a firework.

Most strikingly, inside the hood hanging down his back, a yellowish-black mark splits, recombines, and dissolves in different places, eventually turning into a hazy mist that rises from the headless corpse and evolves into a long, slender, and ragged strange figure that slowly rushes toward us.

I was lying on the side of a church pew, the burning sensation on my body slowly subsiding, and my consciousness pulling me out of the dazzling illusion, but I was still experiencing severe dizziness, which made me struggle several times but I was unable to get up.

The ragged, thin, and eerie figure underwent a violent chemical reaction with the rain and mist in the air. Tiny frictional burning phenomena appeared around its body, like a cigarette being slowly inhaled, leaving only a dim light, less than one ten-thousandth the brightness of the illusion just now.

The burly man had already stood up, his left hand, adorned with a ring, was covered in blood. The wound was delicately distributed on his ring finger, a cut of unknown depth made by the ancient bronze ring.

He stretched out his bleeding left hand and gently blocked the tall, thin figure, completely churning this unknown entity—a mixture of reality and illusion, matter and spirit—into a dark, indistinct mass that vanished into the cold air of the church.

Mr. Rod exhaled, recited a prayer of rest, then pulled me up and looked with regret at the priest's bizarrely dead body.

"His death may not have been peaceful."

I stared speechlessly at the man in front of me and whispered, "Are you really Mr. Rhodes? Why is the plot different from what I expected?"

Mr. Rhodes slapped me on the shoulder with displeasure, pushed me out of the church door, and ran into the rain once again.

"This isn't the place to talk... Follow me, we're going back to the tavern..."

I hastily pulled up my hood to reduce the salty rain from obstructing my vision. As I brushed aside the stray hairs blocking my eyes, I noticed a strange shadow slowly climbing the church roof, struggling in the downpour.

"What is that?!"

I quickly asked Mr. Rhodes, but he kept his head down and walked ahead, replying briefly, "That's the flower of Calsac."

Amidst the torrential rain and thunder, I saw a grayish-white, rotting, unidentified substance staggering on the roof. It had neither head nor feet, and its shape lacked any basic front or back, inside or outside distinctions. The bizarre body continuously vomited its internal contents, thus moving forward in a strange, cyclical motion without the need for hands or feet.

This thing doesn't even deserve to be called a flower?

The only thing that truly lives up to the name "Flower of Calsak" is the solid, fleshy organ on its top, which stretches high above its body, guiding itself upwards, like a strange plant in bud!

If I'm not mistaken, that thing was the pineal gland that had grown in the priest's brain.

So this strange creature must be the mutated brain tissue that escaped from the priest's body...

Mr. Rhodes sighed, “His brain probably didn’t realize he was dead, so he desperately climbed to a high place in an attempt to receive divine guidance.”

…………

On the way back to the tavern, I keenly noticed that after the strange events at the church began, faint, low roars started to emanate from the rain-soaked town. From the houses we passed, I could hear sounds of people banging on buildings and dragging furniture. But when I looked closely, the houses were eerily quiet.

Mr. Rod led me through several turns, seemingly trying to evade some unknown pursuers, before finally returning to the tavern's entrance. He then locked the tavern and added two bolts to the door.

“I know what you want to ask…” Mr. Rhodes was also in a sorry state in the rain, his clothes were soaked, and his trousers and boots were covered in mud, but his demeanor was as firm as a rock. He sat down at the bar and stared at me with his dark eyes, like a lecturer waiting for a student to ask a question.

"Mr. Rhodes, what happened at the church?" I stubbornly asked my question.

"The Lord of Light has descended. Although I know his true name is not this, and his authority is not so simple... In this alienated land, the church was originally the only remaining place of lawlessness, but unfortunately it collapsed because of your appearance..."

"What do you mean... I don't understand at all..."

"You don't need to understand."

Mr. Rhodes said in a low voice, then reached out to stop me from asking any more questions, “You won’t get a clear answer if you keep asking. Let me explain it to you in my own way.”

He tapped the table with his fingers, creating ripples in the empty space, and spoke slowly.

“I’ve had a strange ability since I was a child. Wherever I go, I can trigger some bizarre events that are plausible but illogical. Because of this, I never had any friends until I was admitted to Miskatonic University and formally studied history and archaeology, which is when I found my direction in life.”

"My return this time was purely by chance. On the ship, I ran into Thomas and Dart, whom I hadn't seen for many years, which surprised me greatly. I was the first to board, so I had observed all the passengers beforehand and didn't see my two old neighbors, nor were their names on the tickets."

"So I found Dart, and we had a... well... unusual conversation. Of course, if he hadn't tried to bite my throat with his fangs, I wouldn't have smashed his head with a crowbar and found an unmarked navigational notebook on him."

“At that moment, I knew that something was wrong in the town, and it was a big problem that I had been worried about for many years. There are many other details along the way that I don’t want to go into too much detail about, such as encountering an underwater black storm, getting lost in the Starless Zone, and the cruise ship turning into a ghost ship. When I finally set foot on this land, I still believed that someone had polluted the town’s residents and tried my best to stop these alienations from spreading.”

"Unfortunately, apart from Popuri, I was unable to stop the corruption of the others."

At that moment, I saw Mr. Rod's expression turn ugly. He unconsciously stroked the old ring on his ring finger, his gaze pulling away from his deep memories and landing on me.

"Until I saw you..."

At that moment, a low, hissing sound also echoed from the second floor of the tavern, as if someone was frantically pounding on the door. The sound was too jarring in the empty environment, reminiscent of a rotting corpse suddenly awakening, pounding its gruesome limbs on the stone slabs of a deep underground tomb, producing a terrifying echo that reverberated throughout the cemetery.

Chapter 405 Grave Digging

In the darkness, Mr. Rod's eyes, after dimming, shone with an astonishing light. He picked up a crowbar that had appeared out of nowhere from the bar and said to me.

"It's not safe here anymore, we have to find another place. Let's go out the back door."

When that horrifying roar erupted, I knew something was wrong. Poppy was the only person on the second floor of the tavern, and now that inhuman roars were coming from upstairs, the possibility was quite clear.

"Mr. Rhodes, have all the townspeople turned into monsters? Why did Poppy also suddenly..."

The so-called back door doesn't actually exist; it's just a barely passable passage created by Mr. Rhodes breaking the tavern's back window.

Mr. Rhodes, brandishing a crowbar, said solemnly, "Publi's corruption is irreversible... The priest and I barely managed to stop her corruption by working together, and we even gathered the residents in the church to stop its continuation. Now the church is gone, and a terrifying entity is about to land. We don't have much time left..."

I don't know how this father managed to suppress his pain and admit that he could no longer save his family. But I believe he didn't choose to give up, but rather chose to preserve the last hope of salvation.

The roars of decay all around grew stronger, as if a terrifying new life was blossoming from the rotten earth, transforming like a pupa breaking free and becoming another, more cruel and cold creature.

Therefore, Mr. Rhodes and I ran in a direction that was undoubtedly far away from this alienated land, towards the southwest of the town, until we came to the bank of a wasteland covered with silt, where we silently gazed at a turbid torrent of water.

Along the muddy, swampy riverbank, I saw many pits with regrettable shapes. They looked like crudely dug pits, most of them covered with a layer of mud and humus, the inside and outside of which were completely different colors of silt, clearly showing their special significance.

These pits, large and small, are scattered along the riverbank. Judging from their sheer number, it's clear that this is the result of years of repetitive, day-to-day work.

Mr. Rod led me to the edge of a pit and stood there silently in the cold rain.

At this point, I didn't even need Mr. Rod to say anything; I knew what he meant. After all, there was a hole in the ground, a shovel beside it, and the construction was incomplete. He couldn't possibly expect me to dig a hole and bury myself, could he?

With questions in mind, I picked up a shovel, quickly drained the mud and water from the pit, and began digging, shovel by shovel, until I soon touched something in the pit.

The cold rain pounded on the object in the puddle, revealing a blurry outline. Beneath the mud and branches, the edges of clothing were still visible, slowly emerging as the rain washed them away…

"A corpse?"

I turned to ask Mr. Rhodes, but he shook his head and pointed to the corpse in the pit, saying, "Take a closer look."

Could it be a familiar resident?

This is clearly a riverbed left by a flash flood and subsequent mudslide, and its location in the southwest of the town suggests that the deaths here are definitely related to that mudslide. One resident was swept away by the mudslide and buried under the mud and rubble, and it wasn't until Mr. Rod dug day after day that the body was found.

Could it be that the dead person in this pit is someone Mr. Rod is searching for?

...Could it be Lady Lilia?

My heart tightened, and I quickly expanded the digging area along the perimeter of the pit, trying to avoid damaging the body inside with the shovel. After struggling for a long time with the rainwater seeping in and the silt collapsing, I finally managed to completely excavate the body lying face down on the ground.

The first thing I noticed was the mud-stained clothing on the body, its original color no longer discernible; all I could tell was that it was a long outer robe. On the back, where the body lay face down, I could see a tree branch piercing the chest, entering from the left rib and exiting from the right shoulder, causing a cruel and fatal wound.

In this position, the deceased's mouth and nose must have been filled with mud and sand, and it's unclear whether he died from suffocation or external injuries. But one thing is certain: the body belongs to a young man, not Lady Lilia as I had imagined.

Although the deceased had his back to me, he seemed strangely familiar, as if I had seen him countless times, yet I couldn't match him with the townspeople I remembered.

"..."

I silently jumped into the pit, not caring about the mud and water splashing up. With one hand, I broke off a branch that was sticking out of my body, and with the other hand, I grabbed the shoulder of the already cold and stiff corpse, dragged the lifeless body out of the pit, and turned it over to lay it on the ground.

The deceased not only had a very familiar outer robe, a very familiar hairstyle, and very familiar arm armor, but also a very familiar face.

A face so familiar I could hardly believe it.

"Mr. Rhodes...this is...me?"

I pointed at myself in disbelief, repeatedly comparing my appearance with that of the dead man on the ground, and finally asked the question.

Although one face was distorted and the other was lifeless, there was no doubt that the two faces were absolutely identical.

Mr. Rhodes nodded slowly and said in a low voice, "I searched for Lilia here for five days without finding any clues, only digging pits of various sizes along the riverbank. Just when I was looking for another opportunity, I dug up your body here..."

"You were probably swept away from the pasture by a mudslide, carried to this downstream riverbank, buried under the silt, and lost your life."

"The priest kept telling me about the oracle he received—the Lord of Light would bring the dead back to life and restore their glory. I thought you were confirmed dead, so the one the oracle predicted would rise again must be Lilia. But that very night, you appeared in the tavern..."

Suddenly, the image of Mr. Rhodes's surprised and shocked expression when he heard me call him Marcus flashed through my mind that night, and I suddenly connected the events before and after.

So I... am really dead?

No… I came here from the wasteland, I’ve always been alive…

Then why is the dead person in front of me also me?

What did the priest mean by resurrection?

Am I the resurrected version of myself, or the version sent back by two old men?

“Mr. Rhodes, you must know more. Is there something else you’re hiding from me?” I suddenly looked up.