There are several gabions on the ground in the courtyard, arranged in an unknown geometric shape. That kind of shape looks like the constellation position in the sky, which Shen Mingde has never seen before, maybe it is a disorderly arrangement at all. The gabion emitted a blue-white light that was fueled by an unknown amount of light, reflecting the strange and gloomy surroundings. The muffled chant stopped when a man suddenly stood up. The man turned his back to the two men who were observing the courtyard outside the wall, and knelt down a few more times in the direction of the lake. He was different from other prostrate prostrate worshippers who wore robes and hats on their heads. His body was covered by a black robe, and he looked tall and slender. He wears a strange golden crown, which is a bit like the helmet worn by a military general in Peking Opera, a bit like a pagoda. The outside of the helmet seemed to be covered with golden sequins, shining in the light of the fire. Although it is different, it also seems pompous, cumbersome, and even a little ridiculous.

The man in the strange hat stood up again, raised his arms above his head, and stretched out in the direction of the lake. He began to chant, interrupting Shen Mingde's thoughts. “…… Walk...... Extinction...... Yes...... The Great Messenger in ...... ...... of those who have eternal life." This recitation seems to have been going on for a while, but due to the sound of rain and some distance, the words were torn apart by the wind and rain, but it is probably a eulogy to worship the gods of heaven and earth. The tone of the words fluctuates, the tone is low, the tone is abrupt, and the thick local accent is mixed in, which seems extremely funny and terrifying.

The man in the hat had finished speaking, but he still held his arms up. There was silence all around, as if nothing had happened. Maybe they've been abandoned by the gods, or maybe the god they've just praised is still napping. Nothing seemed to be answered, except for the crackling of falling raindrops, and the burning fire. Shen Mingde looked at the man with his arm raised in a difficult way, and he felt his arm ache for him. The man kept raising his arms in the air, glancing back a little, a little awkwardly. He seemed to be waiting for a response from the hat-bearers who were prostrating on the ground behind him. It wasn't until a moment later that a man in a smeltle slowly stood up. He was thin and not tall, but he raised his fists high into the sky. He didn't speak, didn't make any sound, raised his fists high, and slowly spun around in place. The momentum is like a victorious boxer, showing his glory to the surrounding audience. When he was done, he also faced the direction of the lake, as if he were facing the back of the man in front of him with a hat and helmet. Then he slowly lowered his fists, and in a moment, those fists were quickly raised again. When he raised his fists, Shen Mingde could clearly see that there was a dagger tightly held in his right fist. He swapped the dagger from his right hand to his left, and then back again, as if to signal to the crowd. Then, suddenly, the dagger flipped in the air, and he held the dagger with both hands, the tip of the knife pointed at him, making an arc in the air, and stabbing directly into his chest. At this moment, Shen Mingde was stunned, and saw that the man's back arched, and his feet began to stumble, and then he turned to the right side and fell down. The people in the vicinity of the fallen seemed to turn to the side, making way for the fallen ones. But they remained as they were, bowing their heads and bowing down, without screaming or making any superfluous movements.

The man lay on his side, curling in pain, his legs twitching, but his hands did not relax in the slightest. He didn't seem to dare to relax his hands, as if once he relaxed, all the pain he had suffered just now would be in vain. He stubbornly let the blade of the knife insert deep into his body little by little, as if he were injecting the drug from the syringe into his body as if he were injecting it into his body. It seems that this process has lasted for a long time, as if it is long enough to turn a forest into an oil field. Shen Mingde's facial muscles twitched a little and began to stiffen. He blinked violently, stepped back, and sat with his back against the outer wall for a moment. He rubbed his eyes and cheeks with his hands, hoping to wake himself up from his dream. However, when he turned again and continued to look into the courtyard, the nightmare did not pity him, and the man lay in the courtyard, bleeding profusely.

The group of people in the courtyard remained silent, prostrate and bowed. When the black-robed man wearing a hat and helmet slowly lowered his arms, Shen Mingde also breathed a sigh of relief for him. Then the man fell to his knees in his robe, and their movements were extremely humble and reverent, and his chest and face seemed to be pressed to the ground. He was prostrate in this position, and suddenly the courtyard became noisy. The people in the robes who had been kneeling suddenly jumped up, roaring, crying, laughing, and dancing in an orderly manner. They perform like clowns, mixing the sound of rain with the "crackling" of a campfire to create a hellish picture. Shen Mingde had exhausted almost all the words he could imagine, and he couldn't describe the chaotic scene. They were like a bunch of clowns, trying their best to make their master laugh. Their master, however, was in the water.

Some people seem overwhelmed. Some are still repeating the action, rolling, crying and laughing, and some are quiet and meditative. Suddenly, a man rushed towards the man in the cloth who had fallen to the ground by suicide. He quickly drew the dagger stuck in his chest, then slashed his forearm twice, raising his bleeding arm above his head. In an instant, someone reacted, snatched the dagger, and did the same to themselves. All of a sudden, the person who grabbed the dagger began to harm himself, and the person who grabbed the dagger scuffled. Shen Mingde turned his face away, he really didn't want to watch the performance of this group of crazy people anymore. Suddenly, Yang Guangcheng looked very excited. Shen Mingde somehow continued to watch. Some of the mantles were torn, and some of the hats were knocked off. And it was among these people that he saw things that he didn't know whether to call "people" or not. He saw the face of a wolfdog, it was definitely not a mask, it had sharp eyes, canine teeth interlaced in its mouth, and it was struggling to bite another man's arm. The owner of this dog-faced dog has a normal human body. He also saw the exposed feet of another man, torn from his robe, which I should say were the feet of the elders, but had been replaced by the hooves of deer, or oxen, or other ungulates. Could it be that they have been watching a performance by a group of monsters? Shen Mingde couldn't help but think. But most of them are still human. At this time, Shen Mingde also noticed the arm of one of them, no, it was not an arm at all, there were several hemp ropes in the place where the original arm should be. No, the hemp rope squirmed, like a snake, but there was no snake head, was it the tentacles of an octopus? Suddenly, the tentacles ejected like lightning, wrapping around the neck, arms, and legs of the other person. Shen Mingde saw the so-called "tentacles" glowing with flesh-colored light, and the wriggling appearance reminded him of earthworms. Oh my God, countless earthworms are growing on my body, wriggling and wriggling. Shen Mingde's scalp tingled when he thought about it. And he suddenly recalled the silhouette he saw on the surveillance that day in the hospital, the night Yang Chuan was killed. He immediately turned his head to look at Yang Guangcheng, only to see that his fingers had been deeply embedded in the dirt on the ground, and a spark of revenge burst out of his eyes. Shen Mingde put his hand on the shoulder of the big brother who was about to jump out and fight this group of monsters. Yang Guangcheng seemed to gradually come back to his senses, and the two sat side by side on the ground of the wall, calming his complicated feelings.

There was a lot of noise in the courtyard for a while. I don't know what happened, but the noise quickly subsided like boiling water that had been extinguished by gas. They looked into the courtyard again, and the monsters seemed to have turned back into humans. No, that's not people, after witnessing the scene just now, Shen Mingde really didn't want to call them "people". Those weird bodies are still so weird. It's just that human nature has replaced animal nature and taken over the body anew. The things stood in silence with their heads bowed. Whether it's a dog's head, or a man's head, or whatever, they all bow down, looking so humble and religious. The man in the hat got up and walked slowly towards the main entrance. Then four of them, carrying the suicide man on a rudimentary stretcher, followed the hooded one. The others lined up in columns and took up torches and followed behind the four stretchers. They walked silently, still with their heads bowed, without words, without laughter, not even the sound of footsteps. Before I knew it, the rain had stopped, and the firelight reflected their shadows, one by one, swallowed up by the darkness in the doorway.

Shen Mingde and Yang Guangcheng sneaked forward, quietly following behind the team. Probably from the brawl just now, or maybe from old wounds from the past, most of them seemed to falter. The procession was extremely slow, slowly moving out of the courtyard, out of the village, and through the woods to the lake. A hazy moon hung high in the sky, and the hazy moon halo glowed reddish. Shen Mingde followed Yang Guangcheng around to their rear and disappeared in the woods by the lake. The procession stopped on the shore of the lake, lined up along the edge of the lake, and bowed down again. The four stretchers walked into the lake, threw the body into the lake, and then returned to the shore and knelt down with their companions. They kneel in a position similar to that of a courtyard, with their heads very low, their foreheads pressed against the ground, and their arms outstretched to embrace the earth. It seems to be waiting for a noble king to pass by, and these pariahs have no right to peek at it.

Once again, there was a dead silence. Shen Mingde, who was in this silence, became uneasy, and he began to look around. He looked back at the village, which was still quiet, except for the fire at one end of the village through the woods. The two of them seemed to have been waiting with them for a long time, and the thin clouds in the sky covered the waning moon again and again, and the sight of removing the veil made Shen Mingde seem to see the proof of the flow of time. Suddenly, the sound of paddling came from the direction of the lake, alerting the two of them. Immediately afterward, bubbles tumbled in the lake, and the water splashed everywhere, as if it were a pot of boiling soup. Immediately, several slender vine-like things rushed out of the water, and then swayed and shook at a height of more than ten meters above the lake. The tips of those vines were like lipsticks, spinning and twisting and spitting out something like a bud, and the "bud" twisted in a spiral, unfurling the four-petaled "flower" in an indescribable way. Shen Mingde stretched out his hand very excitedly and grabbed Yang Guangcheng's clothes next to him, but the other party did not react. Shen Mingde seemed to want to say something to Yang Guangcheng, but he didn't make a sound. The huge "petals" swayed with the vineman, like a python making an offensive posture. However, the prostrate ones on the edge of the lake, who did not notice the sight because they bowed their heads and bowed, or whether they had been deprived of their souls by terror, remained in their original positions. The "petals" pass over their heads, as if they are choosing their prey, and when they are chosen, they swallow them and hold them up into the air. When several prey were swallowed by the "petals", they all submerged into the lake, and only a few bubbles emerged from the calm surface of the lake, and then burst instantly.

The prostrategists on the shore of the lake leapt to their feet and began to cheer. Almost at the same time, from behind the two of them, from the direction of the village, there was the sound of wooden sticks striking against the basin, and the sound was disturbing. Immediately afterwards, the thing that worried Shen Mingde the most happened. He heard the sound of the wooden doors of the houses in the village behind him opening, one, two, and several. In an instant, it was as if the people of every household had been "transformed", and the village, which had not been as lively as a grave just a moment ago, became full of people. They lit their torches and quickly ran towards the place where Shen Mingde was hiding.

When he came back to his senses, Shen Mingde had already seen two or three people passing through the forest in their distance, cheering, desperately running towards those worshippers by the lake. One person suddenly fell while crossing the woods, and the other two did not stop, but continued to run on their own. The man who had fallen did not hesitate to suffer from the pain, and after moving his hands and feet forward for a short distance, he struggled to get up again, facing the direction of the lake, stretched his neck long, endured the pain of the wound, and staggered forward as fast as he could. In an instant, he was overtaken by a few people who walked through the woods behind. These people behaved like a group of beggars running through the night to a relief station where free food was being distributed in order to survive. As soon as the scattered "vanguards" ran through the woods to the lake, they could hear a large number of men and horses rolling in the direction of the lake. "Hold your breath, lie down, and keep your head against the trunk." Shen Mingde, who was already at a loss, did so without any scruples after hearing this order. He covered his head with the grass beside the tree, his right face against the ground, the back of his head against the trunk, his left hand to protect his head, his forearm to cover his left face, and his right arm tightly around the tree. He smelled the smell of dirt and rotten wood that made him a little nauseous, and he felt the tremor of the earth grow rapidly on his right cheek, which was pressed against the ground. In an instant, gusts of wind swept over his bare head and hands. Suddenly, a bare foot appeared in front of him and disappeared in the blink of an eye. A cold snap stirred through his stomach, and it tingled. Then, the stinging pain rushed to his chest and lower abdomen in two directions. A sudden pain came from his right leg and back, and with a roar and groan, a galloper rolled forward. Shen Mingde closed his eyes tightly, and even felt that the muscles in his face were like folds in a bun, pinched, gathered, and twisted. He prayed for another favor from the god of luck. It wasn't until a long time later that he heard Yang Guangcheng whispering near him: "It seems that they have all run over, let's go, leave this place." ”

Those were the words he felt most comforting about tonight. Shen Mingde wanted to leave this place, he had enough. Leave the disappearances and murders to others, and leave the anxiety of your disappearance after being kidnapped by those monsters to worry about tomorrow. and Xiao Jing, Shen Mingde really doesn't think it's worth taking two more lives to rescue her now. The two of them slowly got up, moved their hands and feet and turned around. I saw a big man looking at them not far away. He was a fat wrestler, like a sumo wrestler in Japan. I don't know if the face is wearing a mask, or if it is a sketch of the face on the Peking Opera stage, it looks hideous and terrifying at the moment. Sumo's thick left hand holds a torch, while his right arm is shriveled up like a dry branch. The two sides were at a stalemate for a long time, and the thing suddenly let out a hiss on its back. It was definitely not the language of man, but the roar of a beast. The voice and its shape must have been very abrupt, and its pitch was high-pitched, piercing the night sky, piercing the eardrums, and startling a flock of birds in the woods. The two were unprepared for this sudden terror, so they had to obey their instincts and run. Fortunately, they did not lose their sense of direction in the midst of the panic. Shen Mingde remembered that he could bypass the village by running down the grove, and then burrow into the mountain forest full of "gnats and cages", and then find a small dirt road to get back to the road. However, things don't go your way. The flickering light of the fire had stolen from the woods, blocking their path. Shen Mingde's right arm was suddenly pulled suddenly. The force made him change direction suddenly. His body followed Yang Guangcheng uncontrollably and ran straight towards the village.

They gasped for breath behind an old house. After that, he played a game of "catch and seek" with his pursuers in the village. However, the village is unconventionally built, with two rows of opposite houses running east and west along a street. The street stretches to the entrance of a large courtyard built on a gentle slope in the westernmost part of the village. As long as the villagers placed a team of people on the street and behind the houses on the left and right, they had nowhere to hide. In a hurry, the two climbed onto the roof of the old house, only to see those guys in groups along the street to investigate. Moreover, more and more fires gathered through the lake and the groves of the village. A squad is about to come to their hideout. The two decided to quickly escape through the hole in the roof and then quickly climb up to the roof when the searchers entered the house. But at this time, Shen Mingde was already physically exhausted. When he climbed into the house, he stumbled and fell off the beam, causing a loud noise. Yang Guangcheng exclaimed softly: "Calm down." But before he could finish his words, Shen Mingde had already rushed out of the door in horror, and his reason had passed away in fear and exhaustion.