The cold wind poured in from the gate. Reading at zero o'clock

A snow-white light pierced through the thick black fog, turning the church hall white, and the distant thunder sounded lowly, lightning flashed in the distant sky, and a storm was approaching.

I looked around at a few people standing around: Cheng Cheng was standing on my left side, blood was still oozing from his chest and arms, the old knife was carrying one of Li Yi's arms, barely helping him to stand, Li Yi's face became a little pale because of blood loss.

In the same way, each of us held one hand to our chest, holding a small pool of water in the palm of our hand that shimmered with a silvery white light.

It is the holy water in the altar of the church, that is, the "water of the yellow spring".

I said, "Start?" ”

Cheng Cheng and Lao Dao both nodded: "Let's start." ”

The four of us tilted our heads and drank the silvery liquid we were holding.

The liquid was slightly cool and quite viscous, but as soon as it touched his lips, it instantly slid down his throat and into his stomach.

"Wow, it's so bitter!"

Before Li Yi's words fell, we had already noticed that everything in front of us seemed to have changed......

The altars under our feet and the walls of churches are gradually becoming translucent, and then the walls are melting and disappearing like ice cubes......

A subtle roar seemed to be coming from the depths of the earth far beneath our feet.

Then, a violent vibration came from under our feet, almost making us unsteady!

The whole church has now become a transparent glass body, and in the violent vibration, it fell apart in an instant!

Ceilings, chandeliers...... A rush of brains fell on a few of us, and the thick black fog outside the church finally poured in, enveloping us in it at once.

Everything in front of me turned into pure darkness.

……

"Hmm-"

When I opened my eyes again, I found that I seemed to be sinking into the water, and I was filled with water from a pipe of water in one mouth.

Fortunately, I grew up in a water town in the south of the Yangtze River, and I played in the river and lake since I was a child.

I quickly held my breath for a moment, then pushed aside the water in front of me and looked around.

The bottom of the water was dark, with only a small amount of light shining overhead.

I only saw that there seemed to be a figure sinking not far away, so I quickly swam over to take a look, it was actually Li Yi!

This kid couldn't swim at all, and at this time he had fallen into a semi-comatose state, and the water "gurgling" into his mouth and nose, I quickly swam behind him, holding Li Yi's back, and struggled to swim towards the shining water......

The distance of just a dozen meters made me feel as if I had climbed to the top of Mount Tai in one breath at this time, and when I carried Li Yishuang out of the water, I felt like I was in a different world.

"Aggie! This way! ”

I heard the voice of the old knife, and when I turned my head, I saw that the old knife had already waded towards me from the river beach, and Cheng Cheng was kneeling on the river beach not far away, holding the ground with his hands, and it seemed that he was tired.

The old knife dragged me and Li Yi ashore, I couldn't care about anything, and I lay down on my back on the river beach, and the whole person was completely out of strength.

But I still didn't forget to tell the old knife: "Li Yi, he is drowning...... Old knife, hurry up...... People, artificial respiration! ”

The old knife was the same as me, panting like a dead dog, and when he heard me say this, he pointed his finger at himself: "Me? ”

"I can't even move a finger at all, hurry up, the stinky fish are in a coma - they're all men, what are you afraid of!"

"It's just that the man is wrong, okay?!"

Although he said this in his mouth, and there was a look of reluctance on his face, the movements of the old knife's men were very fast, and they were doing cardiopulmonary resuscitation and artificial respiration.

After tossing for more than a minute, Li Yi finally coughed and woke up.

"Ahem—"

Li Yi coughed a few times, opened his mouth, and spit out a big mouthful of "wow", among which there was a small fish jumping around.

"Aren't we in church? Why did you suddenly fall into the water—uh—"

Li Yi was halfway through his words, and vomited several mouthfuls of water in a row, and he reached out and buttoned it in his mouth, and got out a crayfish.

"Your ancestors are on board!" Li Yiqi shook his hand angrily and threw the lobster into the distance.

Cheng Cheng also came over - crawling over: "I look here, it seems to be very familiar...... Look, is it by the Luochuan River? And you look at the ...... on the shore."

We all looked towards the shore and found that our two BAIC Warriors were parked not far from the riverbank!

Before he could be stunned, he heard the old knife suddenly reach out and point to the river, shouting, "There are still people in the river!" ”

Sure enough, in the forty or fifty-meter-wide river, the bodies of two people were sinking and floating in the rushing water...... Judging from the clothes, it looks like Liu Haijun and Zhou Ou.

Except for Li Yi, the remaining three of us jumped into the icy river again, but we ended up dragging only two bodies ashore - Liu Haijun and Zhou Ou, who had been drowning for a long time.

And when we look around, we are surprised to find that not far away is a big banyan tree, under the big banyan tree is a flat land overgrown with weeds, and further away, is a deserted village full of ruins, in the center of the deserted village, there is a very tall tree, but it has long since died, there are no branches and leaves, only a bare trunk.

We're back in Big Locust Village!

Since we left Jinguan City, we have encountered extremely strange and inexplicable events along the way: a hearse on the road, a strange big locust tree village, and finally the terrifying place of Heishui Town......

And now, we're actually back from the finish line to the halfway point?

The four of us looked at each other, and we couldn't tell whether all this experience was real or unreal.

However, the two cold corpses lying on the ground remind us that all this is not just a nightmare, whether we experience real or unreal, the fait accompli is that Liu Haijun and Zhou Ou have indeed left us.

In addition, my satchel is still on my body, and there is a blood-red book of "The Bloodline of the Netherworld" lying quietly inside, which reminds us coldly by its own existence that everything we have experienced is not entirely an illusion.

We loaded the bodies of Liu Haijun and Zhou Ou into the car, and at the same time inspected the car and found that everything was in good condition.

At this time, a bell rang, but it was the car phone ringing.

That's when we remembered the phone we had on us

Cheng Cheng picked up the phone, paused for a few words, and said to us: "It's the phone number of the Tangludong District Police Bureau." Then continue to answer the phone.

"Uh-huh, uh-huh......"

"Right...... It's that Blackwater...... What the? ”

……

“…… Okay, trouble. ”

Cheng Cheng turned off the phone, his face a little ugly: "People from the Tangludong District Police Bureau told me that they contacted the traffic management department to check the section of the road from Tangludong to Erlangqiao, but there was no traffic accident where a tanker truck and a bus collided on that section of the road. Moreover, they also said that that Blackwater Town should be a deserted city now. ”

"Deserted city? What do you mean? The old knife spoke in a slightly higher tone.

The old knife has a reason to be emotional.

The road from Tangludong to Heishui Town, after crossing the Erlang Bridge, is a winding mountain road, since the local police bureau and traffic management department have gone to check, then we will completely regard the ghost car as an illusion, but it can barely accept it, but if the entire Heishui Town is a deserted city ruins......

Could it be ...... How many of us experienced it in Blackwater Town, but it was also a hallucination?

But the two bodies of Liu Haijun and Zhou Ou are still lying in our car!

Cheng Cheng's face was also ugly, and he said in a deep voice: "They said that Heishui Town does exist, but because it is deep in the mountains, the traffic is very inconvenient, so 3 years ago, the city came up with a plan and moved as a whole, and it should be uninhabited now, and the people we met, what Cai Zhiheng, He Jun, Chunzi, Niu Chunhua, etc., can't find these townspeople at all, not even a person with the same name and surname." In the same way, even if the town is empty, how can there be a bus to go there? So, they don't believe me at all. ”

"It's no wonder, after all, not everyone can believe that there are many possibilities outside of science in this world without experiencing unknown events firsthand." Lao Dao and I helped Li Yi into the car, and I patted Li Yi on the shoulder, "Let's just talk about this kid, obviously I am also old friends, but if it wasn't for him coming this time, I'm afraid I would have always suspected that I was bragging." ”

Li Yi sat in the passenger seat with his injured leg covered, bared his teeth and said, "Partly, partly suspicious...... Brother Ji, do you think my trust in you will be so low? You and Brother Dao, I treat you as a brother. ”

Lao Dao sat in the driver's seat, took out half a pack of cigarettes from the storage compartment, lit one, and then stuffed it into Li Yi's mouth: "Shut up, don't fucking disgust Lao Tzu." ”

Then the old knife said to me and Cheng Cheng: "I know that you two are still unwilling - in this way, I will send the stinky fish to the hospital in Tangludong District first, and you can drive another car, go and go back quickly." ”

Cheng Cheng and I glanced at each other, the expression on Cheng Cheng's face said everything, and I thought about it, this incident should be over now, even if we divide into two ways, we will not encounter danger, and nodded in agreement at the moment: "Okay, you pay attention to safety." ”

The bodies of Liu Haijun and Zhou Ou were also on the old knife car, and after the two of us drove along the dirt road in the mountains to the road outside, we parted ways - we went to Heishui Town, and Lao Dao and Li Yi rushed to Tangludong District Hospital.

We woke up at 9 a.m., and the date was rewind a day, back to the day we escaped from the village of Big Locust Tree.

Along the way, the steep winding mountain road and the surrounding scenery were all the same as before, but this time, the sky above us was as blue as the ocean.

The people from the local police department are not lying, Blackwater Town is indeed deserted.

The houses in the town have two architectural styles, European-style western-style houses, churches, and traditional Chinese-style houses similar to Hui architecture, but all of them have been abandoned.

The roof of the house has tilted and collapsed, revealing broken furniture, and the portrait photos hanging on the walls have also faded and deformed due to the sun and rain, and the portraits on them look weird and terrifying.

The foundations of the low-lying houses had seeped water, and the basement inside the house was flooded.

The town's bluestone pavements are covered with moss, and the crevices of the stone slabs are overgrown with weeds and dead trees, and the low-lying areas are waterlogged into small puddles, and there are even small fish in them.

There is garbage everywhere, mostly plastic products and discarded furniture and electrical appliances, just littered outside the house......

But to our shock, the two of us knew everything about Blackwater Town very well!

These streets and buildings are all what we hallucinate to look like.

We quickly found the right way to the Catholic church, which had been used as a makeshift police station, and we broke down the door and entered, only to find that it was also the same as the one we had seen in our vision, but we couldn't find the altar.

The place where it was supposed to be an altar was turned into a pulpit.

The church also has no back door, let alone the small two-story building behind it—in the illusion, where the "director" Cai Zhiheng works.

We spent three hours wandering around the abandoned town, but we still didn't find anything suspicious.

……

Due to the timely treatment, Li Yi's injuries were fine, and after a few weeks, he was alive again - only one thing was very strange, in his wounds, no bullet was found, and he obviously suffered a gunshot wound on his thigh, and even the leg bone still had a dent that the bullet penetrated...... However, even if Li Yi was examined with a full-body CT examination, the warhead could not be found.

While Li Yi was recuperating from his injuries, we attended the funerals of Liu Haijun and Zhou Ou.

Seeing the grief-stricken appearance of the family members, several of us felt very uncomfortable.

The most uncomfortable thing is that we still haven't heard any news about Qiao Zhenbang, he seems to have disappeared from the world, his life and death are unknown, and his whereabouts are unknown.

Shen Tangzhi's investigation proved that Qiao Zhenbang did not know about his wife and son's cheating until the showdown between Qiao Yu and him in the end, and those large insurance policies were actually subscribed by Qiao Yu, and the beneficiary signed Qiao Zhenbang's name.

Because Shen Tangzhi found a lawyer who came forward to deal with the claim after Qiao Zhenbang's disappearance, after Shen Tangzhi's "interview", that person confessed that this was Qiao Yu's order, because Qiao Zhenbang didn't know the existence of these three insurance policies at all, how could he entrust a lawyer to settle the claim?

Originally, I thought that this was another unsolved case, but unexpectedly, it didn't make us wait too long, and the case took a turn.

Three months later, the hot summer came, and the Luochuan River basin also entered the dry season due to the decrease in rain.

We received another call from the Tangludong District Police Bureau – they received a report that someone was swimming and found a car sinking at the bottom of the Luochuan River, with a dead body rotting into a skeleton in the car.

The car found at the bottom of the river was the Chrysler Jeep Wrangler Wrangler Rubicon that Qiao Zhenbang drove when he absconded, and after DNA testing, the body in the car was Qiao Zhenbang himself.

The place where the body was found was only 3 kilometers away from the river where Liu Haijun and Zhou Ou drowned.

This case, because Qiao Zhenbang's body was found, on the bright side, it can be regarded as a perfect conclusion.

But the confessions and transcripts of our people were all sealed as classified documents, and we were told that it was forbidden to disclose the details of the case at will.

Perhaps, the truth of this big case that shocked Jinguancheng may never be declassified.

However, I knew that this case would change my fate forever.

Because the tattoo on my back was still there, and it hurt faintly every now and then, and whenever the horrible black snake tattoo started to hurt, the blood-red book of the Netherworld glowed faintly red—but I couldn't find a way to open it.

In the days that followed, I often remembered the story of the wrinkle—the woman who was sacrificed, the obsession and bond between the living and the dead, the resentment and pain on the road to the Yellow Springs, and the door of life and death that could transcend the boundaries of life and death......

In my heart, there seems to be a voice that has been screaming silently at me in the dead of night—

"Go and find—

Quiet!

Dark!

Earth!

Palace! ”

The sound was like the roar of an ancient beast, and it shook my soul.

["The Black Town of the Eternal Night", end.] 】