Chapter 92

Chapter 92

“It’s all your fault… Everyone else is dead… What are you still doing alive…?”

The voice seeped from the deepest fissures of her consciousness, bringing suffocating pain with every word.

Qingshui tried to stand, but her body felt impossibly heavy. Every time she attempted to push herself up, her muscles rebelled.

The voices continued inside her head, buzzing and chattering incessantly like flies swarming over a festering wound.

“Shut up…”

She screamed inwardly, clenching her teeth so hard they creaked and the metallic taste of blood filled her mouth. “Shut up… Just shut up…”

She couldn’t stop here… She couldn’t…

But the voices only grew louder, taking on a vicious delight.

“Li Wei’an died so horribly! Hahahaha! If you weren’t her, why would she have died? If you hadn’t sent her to investigate… It’s all your fault!”

Qingshui shuddered violently. Her throat was so dry, it felt as though something had lodged inside it and sealed it shut.

“An Xiaolin… She fell, remember? You caught Chen Yuhui, but you didn’t catch her…” The voice changed again, turning hollow and distant, as though it were drifting up from the bottom of deep water. “She was looking at you at the end… Where were you looking?”

“They’re all dead. All of them… There’s no one left in this world who will ever call you ‘Qingshui’ again. No one will ever know who you are, where you came from, or where you’re going…”

“That’s the kind of person you are. You came from nowhere, and you have nowhere to go. Like water? Hahaha, what a joke. Water can nurture life. What have you brought? Nothing but death… No one truly cares about you. Hehehe… No one did before, no one does now, and no one ever will…”

“Ugh…”

A pained groan escaped Qingshui.

She jerked her head from side to side, trying to shake off the voices, but it only brought on a fiercer wave of dizziness and pain. Her consciousness seemed to drift atop cold, murky water.

She had no idea how long she had lain in that dark, freezing cellar. Her clothes had been soaked through by the river and then partially dried, leaving them clinging to her skin in a cold, clammy mess.

At this rate, she would develop a fever.

Qingshui trudged mechanically through the dense, terrifyingly silent mountain forest as the vicious voices continued to hiss inside her head.

“You’re always like this… You’re always the one who survives… Why are you the only one still alive? Tell me.”

The wind sweeping through the treetops sounded like the voices’ whispers amplified. The trembling in her body grew harder and harder to control.

Her fever had begun.

So damn annoying. Shut up.

Shut up.

“Hehehe, no one knows you anymore. Not in your last life, and not in this one. No one will ever love you again.”

Shut up! Shut up, shut up, shut up!

Suddenly…

The laughter in her mind stopped dead.

Before Qingshui could even feel relieved, her body reacted on instinct.

A bone-chilling sensation crept silently up her spine, and alarms exploded through her mind.

Then the wind carried a faint trace of blood into her nostrils.

Something was coming.

Qingshui instantly went rigid. Every chaotic thought was forcibly suppressed, leaving behind nothing but the pure instinct to survive.

She quickly surveyed her surroundings.

She stood on a relatively open slope in the forest, where the trees were spaced far apart. The undergrowth was thick but barely reached her knees, nowhere near tall enough to conceal an adult.

Worse, the bushes grew unevenly, leaving plenty of gaps with clear lines of sight. Hiding among them would be nothing more than self-deception.

Run?

In her current state, she would probably be caught before she made it very far.

Her gaze darted around until it abruptly locked onto the space above her.

The trees.

Competing for sunlight had made the trees here grow exceptionally tall.

Their trunks were thick and straight, and even the lowest branches were ten to thirteen feet above the ground. Higher up, dense canopies overlapped in layer upon layer. Branches and leaves from different trees intertwined in the air, forming a deep-green forest suspended overhead.

Mottled specks of light filtered through the gaps, while most of the canopy remained shrouded in deep shadow.

She might be able to hide up there.

Assuming she could climb high enough, then remain perfectly still without making a sound.

There was no time to hesitate.

The scent of blood was growing stronger, and the wind now carried the faint sounds of laughter and approaching footsteps.

Qingshui drew a deep breath, suppressing the metallic sweetness rising in her throat and the tremors wracking her body. Her gaze settled on a large tree with relatively rough bark and plenty of cracks.

The climb was even harder than she had expected. The fever had drained much of her strength, leaving the muscles in her arms and legs weak and aching. Her fingertips quickly went numb from the cold and exertion, while her damp, clammy pants and slippery shoes severely hampered her movements.

She had no choice but to rely on her arms and core, inching her way upward bit by bit.

The coarse bark scraped her palms and cheeks, leaving thin, bloody scratches.

Every upward movement tugged at her wounds and aching muscles. Cold sweat rolled down her forehead and into her eyes, stinging them and blurring her vision. She gritted her teeth, her chest heaving violently, but she did not dare breathe too loudly.

She couldn’t stop.

Whatever was down there… was almost here.

At last, she reached the lowest sturdy branch. Using the final dregs of her strength, she hauled herself onto it. Without pausing to rest, she continued upward, climbing toward the highest and thickest part of the canopy.

She found a spot where the leaves grew especially dense and carefully curled herself into a ball, pressing as deeply as possible into the shadows among the branches. Even her breathing slowed to the faintest whisper.
Almost the instant she steadied herself–

A distinct rustling came from the woods below.

Three figures staggered up the slope.

Their clothes were in tatters, and both their faces and exposed skin were smeared with dried and fresh blood.

In their hands were long poles fitted with crude fishing line and iron hooks, like makeshift fishing rods.

As they walked, they let out peals of manic laughter and jabbed at one another with their poles, their behavior frenzied and erratic.

Qingshui’s heart rate shot through the roof. She pressed herself tightly against the trunk and stared down through the gaps in the foliage.

Without warning, the Madmen in front stopped dead. It raised its head and sniffed rapidly at the air like a dog. A flicker of confusion crossed its clouded eyes, followed by even greater excitement.

“Hee-hee-hee…” It let out a grating laugh. “Why does it… smell like… a little piggy around here?”

Qingshui stopped breathing. Every muscle in her body tightened to its limit as she held her breath and remained perfectly still, as though she had truly become part of the tree trunk.

Time crawled by in agonizing silence. Every second felt as long as a century.

The Madman was still sniffing the air, its gaze wandering aimlessly among the surrounding trees.

Just then–

Drip.

The sound was almost imperceptible, yet terrifyingly clear amid the silence. It came from Qingshui’s direction.

Her heart plummeted. Moving only her eyes, she looked stiffly down at her feet.

A tiny droplet had gathered on the toe of her right shoe, where the fabric was still soaked through. Pulled by gravity, it silently fell.

Drip.

A second drop.

The ears of the Madmen sniffing the air twitched sharply.

The confusion vanished from its face, replaced by twisted ecstasy. Grinning, it turned to its two companions and laughed excitedly.

“Heh-heh-heh… Did you… hear that dripping…?”

Thump, thump. Thump, thump. Thump, thump…

Qingshui’s heart hammered wildly in her chest, so loudly that she almost believed the Madmen below could hear it. Blood rushed to her head, then swiftly drained away, leaving behind an icy numbness and even more violent dizziness.

The world began to spin.

Was this it? Had they found her?

She had even begun wondering whether to jump down and fight to the death or stay curled up and await her fate when–

Something unexpected happened below.

The two Madmen that had been questioned glanced at each other, their crazed smiles instantly twisting into something even more grotesque.

Then, before Qingshui’s incredulous eyes, they lunged at their companion without warning!

“Hee-hee-hee-!!”

“Of course… we heard it-!!”

One of the Madmen sank its teeth into the left side of the other’s neck. The second bit into the right side at almost the exact same moment!

“Aaaahhh-!!! That feels so damn good! Harder! Heh-heh-heh-heh!!!”

The Madmen being bitten erupted into shrill, hysterical laughter, its body convulsing as though it were experiencing the height of pleasure.

Blood gushed like a fountain from the wounds torn open on both sides of its neck!

The crimson liquid splattered the other two Madmen’s heads and faces and sprayed across the surrounding trunks, leaves, branches, and ground.

“Hee-hee-hee… There’s your dripping sound… Hee-hee-hee…” one of the Madmen mumbled indistinctly around a mouthful of flesh, greedily sucking down the hot blood pouring from the wound.

“Got bait now… I’m gonna go fishing… I’m gonna go fishing…”

The other Madmen released its bite and shrieked through a mouthful of blood, then began tearing at its companion’s body with its bare hands. It wrenched off a piece of limb with skin and flesh still attached and crudely tied it to the iron hook on its “fishing rod.”

The two Madmen lost themselves in an orgy of cannibalism and boundless violence.

The sounds of ripping flesh and chewing mingled with satisfied grunts, deranged laughter, and shouted curses.

Qingshui stared fixedly at a leaf in front of her, not moving a muscle.

Her body grew colder by the second, and her trembling became increasingly violent. It took every scrap of willpower she had to keep it under control. Her teeth dug deep into her lower lip, filling her mouth with an even stronger taste of blood.

Her vision darkened. Waves of dizziness crashed over her, each stronger than the last. The world swayed, and beneath the horrific sounds from below, a low ringing began in her ears.

She felt like a dead leaf clinging to the treetop, liable to be blown loose at any moment and dropped into the bloody feast below.

She had no idea how long it was before the sounds gradually subsided.

Perhaps the revelry had exhausted the two Madmen, or perhaps they had finally finished making fishing rods that satisfied them.

Dragging the mangled remains of their companion behind them, they staggered toward the other side of the slope and gradually vanished into the depths of the forest.

Qingshui waited for what felt like another century. Only when even the faintest footsteps had completely disappeared, leaving nothing but the wind and the occasional chirp of insects, did her taut nerves dare loosen by the slightest degree.

Even then, she did not move.

Her body was as rigid as stone, cold and numb.

The feverish haze battered relentlessly at her consciousness.

Curled up in the shadows of the canopy, caught between icy shivers and burning vertigo, she remained perfectly still.