Chapter 400 - 360: You Must Feed Lord Mountain God Well
It was a power immense enough to splinter a great tree,
so why were they completely unfazed now?
’I’ve escaped!’
The young man’s face, which had been taut with tension and fear,
broke into a faint smile at the very moment he was about to cross the boundary.
The smile was like a glimmer of dawn in the darkness;
faint, yet it brought a rare sliver of hope and relief.
But this relief was short-lived, as fleeting as a shooting star in the night sky.
Before the smile could fully form on his face,
it froze at the corners of his lips. He was completely paralyzed, as if struck by an Immobilization Spell.
The reason was simple: the foot that was about to take a step toward freedom
was now hanging bizarrely in mid-air. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t touch the solid ground.
An invisible force was stopping his escape.
Immediately after, an indescribable feeling of suffocation washed over him like a raging tide.
His body began to struggle instinctively, his hands subconsciously flying to his neck.
His fingertips touched a strange, unprecedented texture—rough, yet slightly elastic.
It was as hard as ancient tree bark,
yet it also held the soft vitality of a new sprout.
The sensation was utterly foreign, unlike anything he had ever known.
A powerful fear surged through his heart, and he began to pull at it with all his might,
trying to break free from this terrifying restraint.
But the thing wrapped around his neck seemed to have a life of its own.
It held him fast, refusing to budge.
Not only that, but as he struggled, the thing only tightened its grip,
like an invisible net woven by a Demon, dragging him step by step into an endless, dark abyss.
As the thing continued to constrict, his breathing became extremely difficult.
Every gasp for air was like a heart-pounding race against the Death God.
His chest heaved violently as if it were about to burst,
and his face instantly turned crimson, as if scorched by a blazing fire.
His eyes bulged, filled with terror and despair—
the primal fear of death.
His feet, which had barely been supporting his weight,
were now like rootless duckweed.
They slowly lifted off the comforting support of the ground, dangling and swaying helplessly in mid-air.
He was like prey caught by a hunter, powerless to resist, waiting to be slaughtered.
The young man mustered all his strength to laboriously raise his head,
his gaze struggling to pierce through the thick, ink-black darkness.
Finally, he found the source of this evil.
A hemp rope descended silently from the depths of the endless sky.
Like a viper hidden in the shadows, it was silent yet radiated a chilling aura of death.
The rope was cinched tightly around his throat. With every fractional tightening,
it severed another fraction of his final connection to this world.
It was like the legendary Soul-locking Rope, meant to capture souls,
mercilessly dragging him, bit by bit, toward that unknown and terrifying dark abyss.
As his breathing grew fainter, his body
was also lifted higher and higher, farther from the ground, farther from hope,
until it seemed he would break free from the shackles of reality altogether,
becoming a lonely, helpless, and desperate presence in the gloomy night sky.
In this moment, the stench of death was so close. The young man’s heart filled with indignation and endless fear.
He knew that before long,
he would become another tragic victim in this bizarre scene,
vanishing forever from this cursed land filled with evil and horror,
becoming a forgotten, painful memory.
"BWAHAHAHA..."
Chang Bailin shot up from the ground.
His face twisted into a hideous, terrifying mask,
his features looking as if they had been warped and pulled by the hands of a Demon.
The laughter that erupted from his mouth was exceptionally vicious and sinister,
like a sharp sword stabbing directly into everyone’s eardrums.
In such a terrifying and bizarre environment, he was laughing wantonly without a care in the world.
"Run! Go on, run!"
His voice was shrill and crazed, like a roar from the depths of Hell. "The moment you stood before the great Mountain God,
the moment the sacrificial ceremony officially began,
all of you were already destined to become the Mountain God’s food.
I was originally worried about how difficult it would be to gather enough offerings for this sacrifice,
but I never expected
that you bunch of clueless youngsters would deliver yourselves right to our doorstep!
Talk about a godsend! This is truly a gift from the heavens!
This time, you’d better feed the Lord Mountain God well! Bwahahaha..."
He laughed wildly as he spread his arms,
as if welcoming a grand and wicked carnival.
He looked as if he could already see the beautiful sight of the Mountain God, sated by these offerings,
bestowing its blessings upon Xia Shui Village.
He was completely immersed in a twisted, perverse joy that was chilling to the bone.