**Chapter 26: Altar and Recording [4K]**
“Ugh, it hurts…”
Accompanied by weak groans, Lin Kule opened her eyes, seeing a pitch-black environment. An indescribable stench lingered in the air, and her skin, in contact with the ground, felt a slippery and viscous sensation.
Where am I?
Lin Kule muttered to herself, propping her hands on the ground, trying to sit up. The next moment, a wave of severe pain seemed to ripple through her entire body, as if an invisible giant hand pressed her back down onto the ground.
The pain jolted her hazy consciousness into stark clarity, and fragments of memories flooded back from before she fainted.
A distorted face, almost pressed against her cheek from behind.
A heavy downpour and thick fog enveloping the labyrinthine alleys of Qixinggang, which seemed impossible to escape from, followed by the sudden feeling of her foot missing the ground, her body plummeting.
Wait, I didn’t fall into the sewer, did I? At this thought, Lin Kule suddenly felt the heat rise in her cheeks.
As a formal member of the Siye Society, it would be embarrassing enough to be scared away by a scary-looking woman who had no spirit energy fluctuations, but if it added the fact that she “accidentally fell into the sewer and got injured while escaping,” she might as well change cities to live.
Splash—splash!
Following the sound of water, Lin Kule struggled to lift her head and looked up, faintly seeing the weak light streaming in through the hole from which she had fallen.
Outside the hole, the rain continued to pour, and rainwater collected on the ground flowed into the irregularly shaped hole, creating small waterfalls cascading down, splashing onto the ground.
Staring at the hole for a few seconds, Lin Kule had a sudden flash of insight.
Her intuition told her she had not fallen into a sewer but into a secret air raid shelter that had yet to be discovered.
With the passage of time, such hidden air raid shelters had become increasingly rare in Shancheng, but they had not completely disappeared. From time to time, some secret shelters would reappear due to factors like building demolition, construction, a long period without maintenance, or ceiling collapses.
If it was an air raid shelter, there should be another exit. As long as she found the right direction and kept walking, she would soon be able to escape. Once she got out, as long as she didn’t tell anyone, no one would know about her embarrassing situation, right?
As for how to find the right path among the four or five branching paths within her line of sight, wasn’t that her specialty?
Thoughts racing, Lin Kule continued to rest for a moment until the pain in her body eased, then she leaned against the mossy, slippery wall and slowly stood up. She searched her body and found her phone.
The phone had broken its screen during the fall and had been soaked in the accumulated water for some time; it was now completely dead.
“d*mn this thing, it’s bound to give birth to an urban legend eventually!”
After fiddling with the phone and seeing it was completely unresponsive, Lin Kule cursed under her breath and, feeling annoyed, threw it on the ground.
They say people nowadays are heavily dependent on their phones, a notion she used to scoff at, but at this moment she realized that without her phone, even finding a light source for illumination became so difficult.
Breath of the Wild, uh, what was it behind me again?
“Dragons fought in the wilderness, grasses, boneyards, fanning…” “In the desolate wilderness, grasses, boneyards, let’s spark the wind…”
After attempting to chant spells eight or nine times, during which she accidentally bit her tongue once, Lin Kule finally succeeded in casting the spell 【Red Flame Flash】.
Watching the crimson warm glow of the flame rise in her palm, dispelling the surrounding darkness, she sighed in relief, only to immediately regret her earlier clever antics during the Siye Society spell training.
If it weren’t for the fact that during every assessment she relied on intuition to exploit minute loopholes amid strict scrutiny, she wouldn’t be struggling so much now to cast a spell with a single-digit serial number.
Ah—! What was that line from the poem? “Black hair knows not to study hard, white hair only regrets reading too late?”
After lamenting that thought, Lin Kule quickly shook off her guilt, steadied herself, activated the spirit patterns, and began to search for the right direction to leave this air raid shelter.
While activating the spirit patterns, she had even begun to plan that after leaving this cursed place, she’d head home for a hot shower and then find a nice restaurant for hotpot to ward off the chill.
Wrong, but she had no intention of changing her mind!
Anyway, it was too late to change it now.
As she activated the spirit patterns, it felt like a cold current surged through her body, the spirit energy rapidly spreading to Lin Kule’s limbs and further into her spirit perception, diffusing outward like a web, intertwining an invisible thread of perception that was undetectable to the n*ked eye.
If a spiritually powerful ability user or urban legend had been watching Lin Kule at that moment, they would have seen her resembling a giant glowing jellyfish, waving countless long tentacles.
Those perception threads gently floated in the air, their ends merging into the void.
It felt as though each thread was an independent and special sensory organ, capturing mysterious cues that existed beyond the five senses. The right direction, the right direction, the right direction.
Lin Kule tightly closed her eyes, muttering in her heart.
A few seconds later, one of the perception threads suddenly twitched. She instantly opened her eyes and instinctively followed that fortunate feeling’s guidance, raising the flame in her hand, turning left, stepping into the kind of semi-decomposed filth that would evoke numerous negative associations, and began to move forward.
In the narrow space, with the weak light of the Red Flame Flash, her feet making sounds on the slippery waterlogged ground, despite her intuition telling her she wasn’t in a sewer, she couldn’t help but recall some urban legends about the sewers of Shancheng.
It was akin to the urban legend of alligators in the New York sewers, originating from a fisherman who caught an underage crocodile in the Liangshui River.
Although it was later verified that the juvenile crocodile had been kept as a pet and then abandoned in the river, the urban legend could not help but spread wildly.
According to the legend, Shancheng also had a hermaphroditic adult crocodile, known for its violent and bloodthirsty nature. The authorities couldn’t find it because it hid in some corner of the complex sewer system for a long time and every year laid several offspring with genes similar to its own that swam into the river.
Initially, everyone thought that legend was preposterous, until someone spotted a giant crocodile over five meters long in the river.
Since then, the agents of the Siye Society had managed to catch a juvenile hermaphroditic crocodile almost every year in the Liangshui River, but the adult crocodile from the rumors had yet to be captured.
Lin Kule absentmindedly thought about this. When she regained her focus and looked ahead, she found that the path had ended, leaving only a severely rusted iron door standing against a wall covered in stains.
Taking a step closer, she attempted to turn the doorknob, and upon finding it unlocked, she pushed the door open without any hesitation and walked in.
She always believed strongly in her instincts, which had never betrayed her.
In her eyes, if her intuition told her this way was the correct escape route, it could not possibly be wrong! However,
As she passed through the iron door and beheld what lay beyond, she was not only frightened but also for the first time doubted her instincts.
Behind the door was a completely enclosed massive space, with several dimly lit candle lamps hanging from the ceiling.
In front of her was a bare area of several square meters, the ground covered in a black, strange substance that looked like wet hair.
Immediately in front of that space was a nearly one-meter high platform, where under the dim yellow light of the candles stood a gigantic statue, occupying almost the entire end of the enclosed space.
The upper body of the statue depicted a dignified and beautiful woman, lying sideways on the platform, with one hand propping her head, exposing her chest; her body’s curves freely exhibited the inherent allure of a female.
However, from the central area of her chest downward, it immediately morphed into a mass of twisted tissue resembling countless stacked tumors—swollen, grotesque, pathological; shapes defying description, every possible shape of organ malformation recognizable in human knowledge could be found mirrored in that mass.
In the flickering candlelight, that twisted mass seemed to writhe, grow, and spread at all times. Surrounding this statue, which melded elegance and extreme pathological ugliness, lay numerous corpses; those corpses, not only had they decayed extensively but seemed to have exhibited deformities and abnormalities even in life.
Lin Kule had to rely on her instincts to ascertain that those were distorted shapes, oozing with foul-smelling slime; they had once been living humans.
Beside one of the corpses lay a clean stone slab, strangely contrasting with the surrounding scene, inscribed with the words: “In the fog, pain and growth are eternal; that is our king.”
Lin Kule stood straight, frozen in place, sensing a pair of icy eyes seemingly watching her from all around.
At the same time, her intuition suddenly surged to life, sending her a dangerous signal. This was an altar, worshipping some extremely dangerous urban legend.
“d*mn it, why did my intuition lead me to this cursed place?
Could it be that being entangled in this event means I have no chance to escape, and instead of continuing to suffer, I might as well confront the final boss and d*e quickly?
Wait, that altar wouldn’t have been built by that terrifying woman, would it? Am I now in her lair?
At this thought, Lin Kule shuddered, her hair standing on end, terror crashing over her like a tidal wave. She felt her hands and feet grow ice cold, and her breathing became rapid, like ice being shoved into her lungs.
Just then, a light sound of “ding!” resonated from the dark, as if some mechanism had been triggered, followed by a woman’s voice echoing through the enclosed space.
The soft voice echoed in the huge space, creating a bizarre sensation as if the sound were emanating from that statue itself. “February 26, the day after the Lantern Festival. I hadn’t had the chance to rest properly before that d*mn boss of mine called me back to work.
This year has been terrible, but my boss seems to be doing even worse. The moment I arrived at the studio, he inexplicably exploded with anger at me.
d*mn, am I his punching bag? I hope that urban legend eats him soon!”
Lin Kule froze for a moment until the woman’s voice quieted down. Only then did she realize that what she had just heard seemed to be a diary-style recording.
Following that, before she could locate the source of the sound, she heard the “ding” sound signifying the recording had started playing again.
“Today is March 3. Recently, my boss, who has a bit of talent, seems to have gone through something; it feels like his mental state is a bit off.
I feel like he’s always secretly observing me, and even follows me during my commute. Should I find a new job soon?
Before that, I think I need to leave something behind, in case something unexpected happens! It won’t! But things still need to be left behind, like a diary recording, etc.?
It would be best to add a segment starting from that damned boss calling me back to work.”
Listening to the voice resuming, Lin Kule stood in front of the eerie statue, terrified, wrapping her arms around herself. Her instinct urged her to flee this cursed place, but her intuition, which she had always trusted explicitly, kept insisting that these recordings were useful and that she must listen to them all before leaving.
“Ding!”
“March 25. I was right; my boss has truly gone mad.
His recent behavior has been so strange, constantly asking me if I feel any discomfort in my lungs. Once, he almost grabbed me directly.
What a lunatic! I’ve never smoked nor lived in a heavily polluted area; how could my lungs feel unwell?
Moreover, every time I come to work, he always locks himself in the innermost room, seemingly tapping on something. While it’s not unusual for a painter who moonlights as a sculptor, his room always carries a faint scent of bl**d…”
A few seconds later, the “ding” sound echoed again.
“April 9. Recently, I’ve been feeling very unwell; yesterday I went to the hospital for a check-up…” At this point, the woman’s voice suddenly paused, and about ten seconds later, it resumed. “I’ve been diagnosed with lung cancer! [Crying]
How could I possibly get such a disease?
It has to be that damned man’s doing! It must be him! I’ve discovered his secret, so he wants my life!
In that innermost room, he found a basement; there seems to be something hidden in that basement…”
“What are you doing?” A man’s furious roar suddenly interrupted.
“How did you get in my house? You, how did you get in?” Along with a voice filled with fear, the recording abruptly ended.
—Dada—!
Before Lin Kule could process the recording, a sneaky and chaotic sound of footsteps echoed in her ears. She froze for a moment, twisting her stiff neck to look behind her and saw the woman crawling on all fours, a horrible visage.
