NOVEL NEXT Chapter 185: Lady, Are You In Kindergarten?
The patches on the stitched-face woman's face twitched slightly at Feng Fan's words, but her calm expression didn't change.
"Follow the rules and play the game to leave the village," she replied.
Feng Fan shook his head. "Lady, are you in kindergarten? I don't want to play games—I'm leaving."
After saying this, Feng Fan flew in the opposite direction of the village, with Xue Qiang, Su Xiaoli, and Huang Xue close behind.
But after flying for half a minute, they found themselves right back in front of the stitched-face woman. She stared at them blankly.
"Follow the rules and play the game to leave the village," she repeated.
Feng Fan didn't respond immediately. Instead, he activated his spiritual qi vision and scanned the area.
At first, he thought an illusion array or something similar was trapping them. But that idea didn't hold up for long.
There were no traces of arrays, but he sensed something familiar—Dao laws!
Feng Fan's expression shifted. Even though he had an idea of what was trapping them, there was nothing he could do about it.
'The suction force trying to drain my life force after I lied to her must be connected to this,' he thought.
"Feng Fan, maybe we should listen to her first," Xue Qiang whispered, noticing his troubled expression.
Feng Fan glanced at her and nodded, then turned back to the stitched-face woman.
"Lady, tell me more about this game of yours…" Stay connected through My Virtual Library Empire
The woman didn't answer. Instead, she began walking toward the village, which was shrouded in thick fog.
"Let's go. She's probably telling us to follow her," Su Xiaoli said, trailing after the mysterious woman.
Huang Xue and Xue Qiang followed without hesitation. Feng Fan rolled his eyes.
'Kids these days follow any strange person they meet. Didn't their mothers teach them not to talk to strangers?' he thought, but he followed them anyway.
Inside the village, the group of five moved through desolate streets, their footsteps muffled by the thick fog creeping over the ground.
The wooden houses that lined their path stood in silence, their warped frames and rotting beams whispering of decades of abandonment. Some doors hung open, swaying slightly, as if something had left in a hurry—or never truly left at all.
With each step, the fog grew denser, curling around their ankles like unseen hands reaching from below. It thickened unnaturally fast, swallowing the street beneath them until Feng Fan could no longer see his own feet.
A chill ran down his spine. The mist didn't just obscure—it felt alive, shifting and pulsing with an ominous presence.
By the time the stitched-face woman finally stopped, the world around them had almost vanished into a swirling sea of gray. Feng Fan's breath came slow and steady, but his instincts screamed.
The deeper they ventured, the more the village felt like a place that had forgotten time—a place that had no intention of letting them leave.
The force trying to drain his life energy and cultivation was stronger than ever, pressing down on him like invisible chains. But as long as he continued circulating his suppression qi, it was powerless against him.
When they finally stopped in what appeared to be the village's main plaza, Feng Fan's eyes narrowed. Dozens of figures stood motionless in the thick fog, their eyes hollow and lifeless. Their bodies were rigid.
'If I hadn't broken the trance, we'd probably be just like them right now,' Feng Fan thought.
He strained his vision through the fog, but the swirling mist obscured much of the plaza. Still, even at a glance, there were at least fifty people trapped in this eerie state—possibly more.
"Where is that woman?" Huang Xue's voice cut through Feng Fan's thoughts.
Snapping out of his trance, he scanned the area. The stitched-face woman was gone—vanishing as mysteriously as she had appeared.
"Stay close," Feng Fan warned. "It's too easy to get lost in this fog."
The four pressed their backs together, forming a defensive stance.
Then, a harsh, rasping voice echoed through the plaza.
"Ah… the lost lambs have arrived. Now we can begin."
As if responding to the voice, the dense fog abruptly receded, pulling back like a curtain to reveal the scene before them.
The first thing Feng Fan noticed was the ground. The soil beneath his feet was deep red, as if soaked in blood.
Then, his eyes landed on the figure approaching them. A hunchbacked old man hobbled forward, his twisted form wrapped in tattered robes. He leaned heavily on a cane, and with each step, the cane sank slightly into the soft red earth, making a sickly, squelching sound.
Trailing behind him were the stitched-face woman and an entire horde of grotesque figures.
Compared to them, the stitched-face woman might as well have been a goddess.
These creatures looked like nightmares made flesh—misshapen bodies, limbs that didn't belong, faces that had been stretched, stitched, or fused together in unnatural ways. Some bore extra arms, others had faces where no face should be, and a few were little more than walking abominations of flesh and bone.
But the most unsettling thing wasn't their appearance. It was the overwhelming vitality radiating from them—thick, pulsating life force tainted with something vile.
The powerful vitality felt strange, interwoven with the chilling energy of death. Two opposing forces that should repel each other somehow coexisted within the same body.
And the worst of them all was the hunchbacked man.
Feng Fan's instincts screamed at him. This was no ordinary old man; he was the strongest among them.
The cultivators who had been in a trance just moments ago snapped out of it when the horde arrived.
"Ugh, where is this?"
"Where… am I?"
With the fog finally gone, Feng Fan was able to see how many people had been in a trance. There weren't just fifty as he initially saw, but a whopping two hundred of them!
"My good lambs," the old man said, addressing the crowd of cultivators with a creepy grin.
"Welcome to my humble village," he continued. "There are a few rules here that must be followed without fail, or else…"
"Shut up, old man!" one of the cultivators, who seemed to be from an evil sect, snapped, cutting him off.
The cultivator charged at the hunchbacked old man, a flag filled with screaming souls in his hands.
"Hey, that's Soul Demon Zhang Jing. I heard he trapped over a thousand children's souls to make that weapon," one of the cultivators in the crowd said, recognizing the attacker.
The hunchbacked old man didn't seem bothered by Zhang Jing charging at him. His smile only grew wider as he waited for the attack that was meant to kill him.
But what happened next shocked everyone. Just as Zhang Jing's flag was about to strike the old man, Zhang Jing suddenly froze.
His body seemed to deflate like a balloon, and agonized screams—this time coming from Zhang Jing himself, not his soul flag—echoed across the plaza.
His life energy and cultivation drained from his body in an instant. He had no time to react, only feeling pain as his life slipped away.
What was left of his body crumpled to the ground, lifeless.
The life energy and cultivation taken from him seeped into the ground, vanishing from sight.