The snow-white pages were stained with flesh and blood, and the black handwriting was a little faint, and it took a lot of effort to make out the contents:

[I am Jolo, and before drinking the water of the Yellow Spring, I wrote these words.

At last...... Last words.

Or, as a prophecy of rebirth.

To my soul, the two are not really that different.

This town is not hell, real hell, has always been in my heart.

I have to admit that it was I who painted every plant and tree in this demonic garden, giving the devil imagination, claws, fangs, whispers, and nightmares......

The darkness from the Netherworld became a serpent perched on my skin, and the soul-gnawing pain caused it all to come to an end before I knew it.

So, the words flowed on the blank paper, and I wrote the Book of Demons.

Yes, they control my life, my poor wife and children, and I willingly let the serpentine crawl all over my body, sacrificing my life for the opportunity to resurrect my wife and children.

Therefore, the first thing I wrote was the story of "Tattoo".

I used the pattern to meet my wife and children...... However, this ability began to creep in and out of control.

The people of the town were dragged into my dreams, but instead of realizing the disaster, they felt that it seemed good to be able to meet the dead they were missing.

Soon after, however, the bodies of some of the townspeople were found—they had never been able to wake up after meeting the dead in their dreams.

Funeral songs spread throughout the town, for months, and the cycle of weeping and death hung over the town, and the burnt smell of burning paper and a faint smell of corpses permeated the morning fog for a long time.

Father Cai told me that the townsfolk arrived at the Yellow Springs in a dream to meet the deceased, and with a strong longing, followed the deceased across the Lethe River to the underworld, never to return.

However, the consequences of this will not only make the living sleep forever, but more serious is that the strong longing between the living and the dead will be entangled on the road of the Yellow Spring, and the longing will gradually turn into resentment and pain in the entanglement, and accumulate in the encirclement of yin qi and darkness, which will eventually lead to all this breaking through the Yellow Spring and overflowing to the world.

At that time, the boundary between life and death will be blurred, and once the door of life and death is opened, the order on earth will cease to exist.

In order to save all this, I came up with a solution.

I wrote the second story, the story of the "Tomb Ghost".

As a result, people in the town began to use this rather cruel method to save the living who had fallen into eternal sleep.

The method is to find a woman whose birth date is the lunar year, break her tendons and tendons, nail her hands and feet with locust stakes, and then summon a "tomb ghost", use her flesh and blood as a guide, let the tomb ghost gnaw it, and then the woman who is sacrificed will fall into a painful sleep.

In this way, the mourning of the deceased can be transferred to the minds of the sacrificed, and the pain of the townspeople will be transferred to the body of the sacrificed, and the sacrificed woman will dream of the sorrow of others forever in an endless sleep.

In this way, the obsession and fetters between the living and the dead will be cut off, and the resentment and pain that continue to breed and swell on the road of the Yellow Spring will be purified, so that the boundary between life and death will be clear again, the door of life and death will be closed again, and the place of the Yellow Spring will be calm.

But......

A new problem arises, and the awakened townsfolk seem to be very wrong, they are infected with the plague of death in the Yellow Springs...... Gradually turned into a living corpse.

I had no choice but to start writing again and wrote a third story: "Dead Dead".

But it was far from over—or rather, after I was seduced by the obsession in my heart and voluntarily accepted the devil's invitation, there was no end to it.

So I continued to write the story, and it was in this way that the whole Taiping Town was "recreated" by me.

When I realized that everything had become quite horrible, there was no going back, but I was still going to make a final struggle, and I wrote the most special story - "Black Town".

At the end of this story, as soon as I enter the netherworld and find the water of the Yellow Spring to drink, I can completely forget all the stories I have ever written, and all my illusions will disappear.

Now, I've made it.

When I wake up again, everything will start over and the nightmare will no longer exist.

Good luck to me. 】

After reading it, the four of us didn't speak for a while.

This paragraph is very informative.

It not only explains the origin of the whole event, but also points us to a way out.

The old knife carried the wind lantern, walked to Yu Yashi's corpse and squatted down, checked the limbs of the corpse, and turned back to us: "It is indeed the same as written on the fragment, Yu Yashi's tendons and tendons have been broken, and there are traces of piercing by wooden stakes on the palms and insteps......

If it weren't for the fact that she had turned into a monster called a zombie, Yu Yashi would not have been able to move at all, and it was no wonder that her crawling posture was so strange and weird.

"Unexpectedly, Yu Yashi's death is reversed." Old Dao sighed, "She endured such torture, not only to torture the whereabouts of the most critical pages she stole from Cai Zhiheng, but also to perform a ritual and sacrifice her." ”

Li Yi smacked his lips and said, "She was smeared with plasma and dog food, and it was actually to lure those devils to eat flesh and blood...... Cai Zhiheng, this bastard, is too fucking bloody and perverted! ”

The effect of my heart and blood plasma should be like this, yes, but those wet dog foods may be the old fox Cai Zhiheng, and his purpose is now clear, that is, to prevent us from thinking about Yu Yashi's death as an evil ritual, but we must use a vulgar story to make this case an iron case on our side.

However, for some reason, the sacrificial ceremony ultimately failed, Yu Yashi died during the ceremony, and later turned into a dead body, and Cai Zhiheng's wishful thinking was not achieved.

The old knife asked me, "Aji, what do you think?" ”

I expressed my bold conjecture: "I suspect that the protagonist of "Black Town" Qiao Luo, the owner of this small bungalow Qiao Luo, the man in this portrait in this living room, and the horror writer Qiao Zhenbang, these four people are probably the same person. ”

"What?" Li Yi's face was full of astonishment.

Cheng Cheng asked me: "I can still figure out Qiao Luo and Qiao Zhenbang, but what is the connection between them and the man in this painting?" ”

Lao Dao followed me through many more supernatural events than the two of them, and he just frowned at the moment, tentatively guessing: "Reincarnation? ”

"Not necessarily." I put away the three pages on the ground and sandwiched them directly into the "Black Town" in my hand, "Qiao Luo said that the so-called 'Taiping Town' should be the same place as the 'Blackwater Town' where we are now, you don't have any doubts about this, right?" ”

Several people nodded, indicating that there was no objection, Cheng Cheng was still entangled in the painting on the wall, I asked him to calm down, I will definitely explain clearly.

I sat back on the couch and continued, "The text we just saw said that the main character, Jolo, was about to drink the 'Water of the Yellow Spring', and then there was no more follow-up - do you think he succeeded in the end?" ”

Li Yigan laughed twice: "Brother Ji, it's boring for you to do this." If he succeeds, what will happen to us now? ”

The corners of my mouth also raised slightly: "That's right, then guess what's going on after Qiao Luo?" ”

Li Yi rolled his eyes at Chaotian: "Okay, Brother Ji, won't I interrupt you?" ”

"Team Cheng, Lao Dao and I have both seen an illusion about this portrait in the living room."

I told Cheng Cheng and Li Yi about the strangeness of this portrait, and when I said that there were burning villages, locust tree spirits, and those headless people in the background of the portrait, the two of them were finally moved, and at the same time understood why Lao Dao had always mentioned this portrait before.

"The person in the portrait, in the illusion that I saw with Lao Dao, is clearly also a 'living zombie'. And I can make an even bolder guess - Jolo in the story, after drinking the water of the Yellow Springs, did not wake up from the nightmare, he failed, and became one of the monsters of the town. ”

However, his efforts were not entirely fruitless. After he transformed into a monster, the dark forces temporarily loosened their grip on him, so he did another artistic creation - do you remember? The description of the protagonist Jolo in "Black Town" is more than just a home! ”

"I remember!" Li Yi replied first, "Qiao Luo is still a painter!" ”

"Painters? You mean......"

Lao Dao and Cheng Cheng both showed incredible expressions, their eyes also involuntarily looked at the huge portrait hanging on the wall of the living room, fortunately, everything was normal, and the frightening illusion did not appear again.

Both of them understood what I meant, but they just thought it was incredible.

"There's nothing surprising about that, it's actually the same principle. Why can Jolo create so many monsters in the way of writing, then, of course, it is also feasible for him to use painting to change reality! And the facts are in front of our eyes - Jolo succeeded! ”

"The town seems to be controlled by a mysterious force, which Jolo calls 'darkness from the netherworld', and I tried to analyze how this 'darkness from the netherworld' works......"

I explained to you that the so-called "darkness from the netherworld" is a powerful and terrifying force, and I will give it a name for the time being—the power of the netherworld.

Netherworld forces have many miraculous things, one of which is that they can concretize imaginary things.

However, it also has an inherent flaw: no imagination, let alone creativity.

Without imagination, the Netherworld Force cannot unleash itself, nor can it exert its evil power.

Therefore, it needs imaginative people to supplement its shortcomings, especially imaginative artists. And both the writer and the painter of the dual identity, has become a good target - the writer is an artist with rigorous thinking and figurative thinking, and the painter is an artist who has the fantasy in his mind directly visual modeling, Jolo has both, his imagination and creativity, can be shown with words, but also with graphic visual art as the carrier, he undoubtedly has a unique advantage.

Therefore, the Netherworld Force tries to lure and force Jolo to write a book, to make it more powerful according to reasonable imagination, and to make it more real and concrete in the way of painting.

Jolo did not disappoint the Netherworld, and he created a town of demons shrouded in darkness - Taiping Town.

But the Nether's Power was not satisfied, and it wanted to use the darkness to control the wider territory - and then, at this point, Jolo began his own rebellion.

Qiao Luo's resistance started with the "Black Town" in my hand (there are two copies of this book, one is in my hand, and the other is in Cai Zhiheng's hand).

In order to harness Jolo's imagination, the Netherworld Power must give Jolo the ability to create embodied objects, so in "Black Town", Jolo left himself a way to live, that is, to enter the "Netherworld", obtain the water of the Yellow Spring, and once he drank it, he could forget all his memories - he was also freed from the control of the Netherworld.

My finger pointed at the armrest of the sofa: "So, now you know, why did Cai Zhiheng have to find the three pages that were stolen by Yu Yashi, right?" ”

Li Yi began to scratch his head again: "Isn't it to hide the content on the page of the book?" Once you are seen, you know the key information about escaping from the town. ”

"That must be part of the reason...... Old Knife pondered, his eyes suddenly lit up, "could it be—he actually wants us to destroy both copies of Black Town?" If the three pages stolen by Yu Yashi can't be found, he can't use our hands to destroy all two copies of "Black Town" at once? ”

The old knife's guess was very close to my train of thought.

I tried to draw a rough timeline according to which countless events were connected, and when they were correctly connected, I was given a chance to see the whole picture.

There is a way, a leopard in the tube, which can be seen. Looking at the leopard from the small hole in the bamboo tube, we can only see a single markings on the leopard's body, although it is not complete, but it can still be slightly obtained, and we can infer the whole picture of the whole incident from the part we have observed.

Jolo's purpose in writing "Black Town" was to use the embodied power of this book to find a way to survive for himself, but the power of the Netherworld would not let Jolo get his wish.

Jolo eventually fails and becomes a dead body.

But Jolo didn't give up, he painted a self-portrait, created the Great Locust Tree Village, and made the self that had become a zombie trapped in that painting forever - to be exact, one of Jolo's stand-ins.

Because after that, Qiao Luo has been constantly creating his own stand-ins - the owner of the Qiao family's old mansion, the protagonists in the two "Black Town", and even Qiao Zhenbang, are all stand-ins created by Qiao Luo himself, and they have made various attempts, leaving various foreshadowing and hints in the realm shrouded in darkness, hoping that a certain self in the future can finally win the battle with the power of the netherworld.

It's not Taiping Town (or Blackwater Town) that Jolo is saving, what he needs to save is his soul.

Unfortunately, I think his soul was already like a cocoon, entangled in layers of worm lines, trapped somewhere in this town.

Along the way, the copy of "Black Town" in my hand has been giving me guidance and hints, and in various illusions, there are constantly people prompting me to finally destroy "Black Town", and even Qiao Zhenbang himself appeared - but Qiao Zhenbang had become a member of "Night Shadow" at that time, and I would not completely listen to him.

The two copies of "Black Town" are our last reliance, and fortunately, the power of the underworld cannot destroy these two copies of "Black Town" written by Jolo, but with the help of outsiders, they will be destroyed by some special method.

The reason why Yu Yashi came to Blackwater Town is probably also the arrangement of the Netherworld's power, but she didn't make the Netherworld's wish come true.

Now, it's a few of us.

After listening to my explanation, everyone's faces were stunned, but Cheng Cheng still had doubts on his face: "Since you want to destroy two copies of "Black Town" with the help of our hands, why doesn't Cai Zhiheng let us get another copy of "Black Town"?" ”

Now there is no suspense, Cai Zhiheng (and even He Jun) may be a servant of the Netherworld's power, but I really didn't see anything unusual about him before, because he is still fundamentally different from those monsters.

Faced with Cheng Cheng's doubts, I smiled and said, "It's too easy to get, how can you cherish it?" It is to make us feel that it is not easy to get, so that we will be convinced of the saying that 'destroy books to be saved'. If I'm not mistaken, forcing us into this small western-style building is probably part of the Netherpower's plan. ”

"The second copy of "Black Town" is in this building?" The old knife reacted quickly.

I didn't answer him, just raised my head slightly.

My gaze was fixed on the huge portrait hanging on the wall of the living room.