A Night of Desperation

Chapter 37 – Secret (1)

The next day, in Baiqiu Village.

A warm breeze blew gently, and the sun was at its hottest around noon.

In front of the desolate houses of the village, a tall figure dressed in gray-black anti-stab clothing slowly walked along the gravel road, as though surveying the surrounding environment.

The figure wore a helmet and carried a black wolf-tooth club, its spikes glinting faintly silver in the sunlight, looking menacing.

After a while, the figure raised his head, revealing a pale, expressionless face—Yu Hong.

His footsteps paused as he stopped in front of a slightly larger, dark stone house.

Without a sound, he quietly took a bag from his back, opened it, and pulled out a palm-sized yellow wooden board.

Inlaid in the board was a jade circle with a Great luminous stone (Dahuishi) rune array.

He gently pressed the rune array board against the stone door and lightly secured it with nails.

Once his hands were free, he opened the door, looked inside at the dark, pitch-black interior, took a deep breath, and stepped inside.

Before long, his figure disappeared into the darkness, and silence fell.

Time passed slowly.

Five minutes later.

Bang!!

A figure suddenly shot out from the darkness, rushing toward the door.

It was Yu Hong.

His expression remained calm, but several spikes of the wolf-tooth club he held had already bent.

Hiss!

Behind him, a woman in black with her skull crushed in, rapidly approached, her pale, decayed right hand reaching toward his back.

Just as the woman’s hand was only a few inches from Yu Hong—

Suddenly, he lunged forward and rolled on the ground, just as the door creaked open a little, allowing him to escape, narrowly avoiding her grasp.

In the split second, the woman’s hand collided with the door that had been nailed with the rune array board.

Ah!!!

A sharp, invisible sound wave exploded, and the woman’s right hand turned translucent, distorting as if it were mist in the wind, about to dissipate.

Then, her entire body seemed to undergo intense interference, rapidly twisting, creating large ripples.

Poof!

Moments later, the woman vanished.

The rune array board on the door also turned completely gray-white, and the runes began to crack and break apart.

After the scream, everything returned to stillness.

Yu Hong slowly rose from the gravel road, his gaze fixed on the rune array board on the door.

“Surprisingly, the effect is even stronger than the regular Great luminous stone. It seems the power of both the luminous stone and the rune array is related to the specific area of the rune array.”

This wasn’t even the strongest silver rune array, just an ordinary Great luminous stone rune array, and a single piece was enough to repel a Ghostly Shadow.

After removing the nails and rune array board, Yu Hong carefully examined the area where the rune array had activated.

There was a faint gray-white circle around the board on the wooden door.

It looked like a chalk circle drawn around the rune array itself. This mark didn’t exist before, but it had appeared after the rune array and the apparition made contact.

Yu Hong gently touched it and confirmed it couldn’t be wiped away. It was already imprinted on the door.

He thoughtfully withdrew his hand and estimated the size of the circle—it was about three times the size of the rune array.

He quickly noted the data on a piece of paper and packed up his things, leaving quickly.

After walking a distance, he suddenly felt a chill blow from behind and quickly turned around, looking toward the stone house he had just left.

Inside the house, the wooden door was wide open, and through the shadows, a blurry figure of the woman in black—the apparition he had just dispersed—was standing.

It seemed the apparition was reconstructing, with her body gradually becoming clearer from the previous blur.

Yu Hong withdrew his gaze, quickly calculated the time, looked down to record the data, and then left in a hurry.

Soon, he left Baiqiu Village, collecting some dry firewood along the way, and returned to his cave.

He took out more Great luminous stone ink and repaired the broken lines of the rune array on the board. He then placed his hand on it.

The black lines flickered, and a countdown instantly appeared on the board: 45 minutes.

Once that was done, Yu Hong walked to the corner, took out a thin wooden board rune array that he had started making yesterday.

This rune array board was very thin, almost as thin as a mobile phone. He had made over ten of these and stacked them in the corner.

Ever since discovering Eve’s infection with the Black Handprint, he had been preparing to face the dark apparitions.

Regular Great luminous stones could no longer block them, which had already been tested. One Great luminous stone was only as effective as a bag of ordinary luminous stones. Given the mass death in the town overnight, it was impossible no one had tested bags of luminous stones.

The greater possibility was that the bags of luminous stones had no effect at all.

So, he needed a stronger solution.

The rune arrays were his trump cards.

Sitting in the corner, Yu Hong took one of the boards and drew the Great luminous stone rune array on it.

Crack!

At that moment, a faint sound of footsteps came from outside.

Crack. Crack.

The footsteps were slow and rhythmic, steadily approaching, stepping on dry twigs.

As the sound grew nearer, Yu Hong stopped drawing, placed the board down, stood up, and grabbed the wolf-tooth club in his hand.

His eyes grew vigilant, focusing on the door as the footsteps continued to approach.

The peephole in the door was covered, and he could only see faint sunlight streaming in through small cracks.

Despite the bright, warm sunlight, a strong, bone-chilling coldness slowly rose from within Yu Hong’s heart.

Crack. Crack.

The footsteps were almost upon the door.

Finally, the sounds stopped.

The person outside seemed to hesitate, considering whether to continue.

Yu Hong also reached the back of the door, holding his wolf-tooth club in one hand and two large luminous stones in the other, gently pressing them against the door.

One minute.

Two minutes.

Three minutes.

There was no further movement outside.

Yu Hong’s tense nerves slowly began to relax. He glanced at the luminous stones behind the door.

The luminous stone had quietly consumed half of its energy and had now stopped, returning to silence.

Sigh.

He let out a quiet breath, reached out to open the peephole, and looked outside.

It was bright and sunny, with the wind calm, the area empty, and nothing in sight.

Seeing this, Yu Hong sighed in relief. He replaced the luminous stone behind the door and closed the peephole again.

Bang!!!

At that moment, a pale face suddenly pressed against the iron net of the peephole.

With a loud crash, the decayed face pushed hard against the net, causing it to creak and almost break.

The face glared at Yu Hong, then pushed with more force.

To Yu Hong’s horror, the face squeezed through the iron net and broke through the peephole!

Buzz!!!

In an instant, the luminous stone behind the door turned to white powder. The two other stones in Yu Hong’s hands shattered as well.

These luminous stones could not block the face’s entry.

At that moment, the silver rune array on the door suddenly lit up with a flash of silver.

The higher-level rune array, which had taken two days to complete, suddenly emitted an intense, pure, invisible wave.

The wave spread like ripples, covering the entire door and even the stone walls of the cave surrounding it.

With the spread of the wave, the decayed face flickered, like a phantom, and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Everything immediately fell silent.

The iron net of the peephole remained damaged, but the face had completely vanished.

Yu Hong stood rigid, his body frozen as he realized the gravity of what had just happened, breathing heavily.

He hadn’t been able to move at all!

It had all happened so suddenly.

The pressure from the attack had been so overwhelming that he had been stunned and hadn’t reacted in time to deal with it.

When he finally regained his senses and prepared to act, everything was already over.

‘Wait!! There was some special force that had paralyzed me!’ Yu Hong recalled. Logically, by now, he shouldn’t have been as vulnerable as he had been when he first arrived in this environment, and even if he were scared, he wouldn’t have been completely frozen.

But that feeling, the overwhelming fear, made him feel like a newcomer again.

That terrifying sensation.

He looked down at his body, noticing a faint gray-black handprint on his jacket’s chest that was slowly fading away.

“Was it the withered Maiden?” he wondered.

Compared to the apparition, the strength of that attack had been far greater.

If it hadn’t been for the silver rune array activating, he likely would have been caught and faced an unknown danger.

He bent down and carefully inspected the silver rune array, noticing that the silver had faded slightly, indicating some of its power had been consumed.

“Tomorrow is the high surge period. Looks like I won’t be able to leave casually after this.”

Yu Hong checked the damage to the peephole and stretched out his hand to reinforce it, but then remembered there was still something in countdown. He could only wait for now.

So, he grabbed a chair, sat down in front of the door, and started recovering his strength.

Not long after, when the countdown ended, he began to repair the broken iron net.

It didn’t take long to fix it, and then Yu Hong began to replenish the silver rune array’s consumed power.

After two hours, the silver rune array was back to normal, looking as it had before. However, inside, Yu Hong had gained a rough estimate of the strength of the withered Maiden and the apparition.

*

*

*

nside the Jenny cave.

Eve was frantically scrubbing at the black handprint on her hip with a wet towel, but no matter how much she rubbed, the handprint remained stubborn and pitch black.

Her face was filled with panic, and she seemed agitated. When she couldn’t get rid of it, she immediately grabbed a knife, intending to cut the mark off herself.

Bang!

A stick swung from the side and struck her hand hard, knocking the knife to the ground.

The stick was held by Jenny, her face cold, a hint of panic in her eyes as she kept a tense watch on their surroundings.

“Don’t do something pointless! You’re not dead yet, there’s still hope! Don’t give up!”

“But Mom!” Eve said, her face pale, her eyes already swollen from crying. “Even Old Yu is dead… I can’t escape…”

“Go to the isolation room. Now!” Jenny barked.

Eve was startled but gritted her teeth and quickly made her way to the wall in the bedroom.

She moved aside a bear skin hanging on the wall to reveal a silver metal door beneath.

Pushing the metal door horizontally, Eve crawled in and slammed it shut behind her.

“From now on, you’ll stay in there. Do you understand?” Jenny said solemnly. “Until the handprint disappears completely. Understand?”

“I understand.” Eve’s voice came muffled from inside the silver metal door.

“Tomorrow is the peak period. I’ll go out and figure something out for you,” Jenny said as she put down the stick, pulled the bear skin back into place, grabbed a bag of glowing stones, glanced at the clock, and quickly left the cave.

(End of Chapter)