novelraw Chapter 139: The "Actor's" Skin
Chapter 139: The "Actor's" Skin
That administrator, resembling a walking patchwork monster, spoke with the polite words of an eviction notice, but his eyes held madness and killing intent.
The threat contained within his gaze was something anyone could decipher.
The joints of William's right hand gripping the Winchester tightened with force. He was confident that if Lin Jie gave the order, he could turn this troublesome fellow's head into pulp with a single bullet before the other could attack.
But Lin Jie calmly shook his head at William.
Now was not the time to act. Unknown dangers were still hidden within the surrounding eerie display cases of mannequins. More importantly, there were other town residents inside the exhibition hall. Once conflict erupted, they would likely face attacks from all directions.
"Of course, sir."
Lin Jie forced an apologetic smile onto his face. "We were simply overwhelmed by these great works of art and forgot the time. We will leave now."
As he spoke, he naturally turned around, leading William with an unhurried pace towards the main entrance of the Theater Museum.
The stitched-face administrator stood silently in place, his scrutinizing eyes fixed motionlessly on their retreating backs until the two figures disappeared into the light of the doorway.
When Lin Jie and William walked out of that theater filled with oppressive and deathly air and returned to the sunlit streets of the town, both of them involuntarily let out a long sigh of relief, feeling as if they had just returned to the world of the living from a foul-smelling tomb."That thing is absolutely related to the UMA we're looking for."
William's voice was full of disgust. "I can feel the intense spiritual aura on it, mixed with death and a morbid creative desire. That is definitely not something a human could possess."
"Correct."
Lin Jie nodded, his face written with gravity. "And it's smarter and more cautious than we imagined. It didn't attack us immediately, which means it either fears our identity as hunters, or it's waiting for an opportunity to wipe us out in one fell swoop."
That evening, Julian also concluded his battle of wits and disguise in the archives, returning to the inn with information about the vanished fifth name. The three clues from different channels but pointing in the same direction were finally pieced together completely.
The missing I.A.R.C. consultant, the foreign travelers treated as raw materials, a Town-class UMA using human limbs as its paintbrush for artistic creation, and a model town guarding a secret and collectively excluding outsiders.
All the bloody, bizarre fragments of clues together constructed the dark truth hidden beneath the light of the fairy-tale town of Oberammergau.
"This is no longer just a UMA hunting incident."
Julian's expression was grim, his face showing disgust and contempt for the evil of human nature. "This is a symbiosis, the most filthy and depraved symbiosis built upon bloody sacrifice and collective lies! What is their goal?! Aren't these townspeople afraid of becoming the next mannequin?"
The room fell into a long, oppressive silence. The enemy they faced was not just a powerful UMA, but the UMA and the hundreds of ordinary people willingly acting as its accomplices.
"Their belief system has been twisted."
Julian's voice was sorrowful. "This afternoon in the town hall archives, I also took the opportunity to look up the origin history of Oberammergau's *Passion Play*. And then I discovered an even more horrifying detail."
He tore a page from his notebook and handed it to Lin Jie. "According to official records, the play was born out of gratitude to God for helping the town survive the Thirty Years' War and the Black Death plague in 1633. The townspeople swore an oath that as long as God let them survive, they would perform the most devout Passion Play for Him every ten years."
"But," Julian's eyes flashed with intelligent light, "in the footnotes of some older church archives, I discovered a suspicious record deliberately erased from the official history."
"Before the outbreak of that plague in 1633, the Oberammergau region was once the center for the most prevalent bloody sacrificial rituals dedicated to the ancient Germanic Forest God in all of Bavaria!"
"The core content of that pagan ritual was that whenever disaster struck, the tribe's priest would select a foreign traveler as a sacrificial offering, dismember them, and then use their limbs and blood to nourish the forest, praying for the protection and forgiveness of that capricious Forest God!"
Julian's discovery cut through the fog.
"The *Passion Play* is not gratitude. It is a disguise, a substitution!"
"When the Christian faith spread into this valley, those ignorant and cruel human sacrifice rituals naturally could no longer be publicly held. So, the town's ancestors used a clever method to perfectly wrap that bloody pagan core within the civilized, sacred religious cloak of the *Bible*!"
"They were no longer sacrificing to the Forest God;
they were reenacting the Passion of Jesus!"
"Those killed were no longer innocent travelers, but the Son of God who atoned for the sins of the world!"
"This instantly transformed their cruel, selfish, sinful actions into something sacred, solemn, and filled with the lofty sense of sacrifice and faith!"
"And that *Limb Collector* is very likely the 'Forest God' itself, secretly worshipped by the townspeople for centuries!"
This final deduction froze the air in the room.
"We must find that thing's lair and destroy it before their next sacrifice begins."
William's voice was resolute.
"Correct."
Lin Jie nodded. "And its lair is one hundred percent inside that theater. But the place is full of townspeople, and that administrator has strong perception. The three of us moving together would be too big a target and easily discovered ahead of time."
"So tonight," Lin Jie's gaze finally settled on William's face, "someone needs to infiltrate it again, to scout out the true personnel deployment inside and the real location of that UMA's base."
It was an extremely high-risk mission, and a mission only William, a top-tier *Tracker*, could complete.
William did not hesitate. He stood up from his chair and began meticulously checking various silenced equipment.
His actions were themselves the most direct answer.
When the midnight bell tolled through this deathly silent fairy-tale town, a shadow darker than the night itself leapt nimbly from the second-floor window of the inn, performed a deft roll in the air, and landed soundlessly with both feet on the soft lawn below.
William's figure melted into the dark labyrinth of shadows formed by the town's houses.
Lin Jie and Julian followed closely behind, each holding their weapons. In Lin Jie's hand was the *Serene Heart*, while Julian held his unremarkable blackthorn wood cane.
Their task was to provide external support and vigilance. If William's infiltration was exposed, they must immediately launch an attack to create an opportunity for William's retreat.
Time passed minute by minute.
Inside the theater area, William's infiltration operation unfolded with cold precision.
He did not choose the heavily guarded main or side doors. Instead, he patiently lay prone in the shadows of the abandoned flowerbed behind the theater, observing for ten minutes. His gray eyes, enhanced by the eerie purple glow of *Zulu's Gaze*, took in the entire defensive deployment around the theater's perimeter.
He saw four townspeople "patrols" armed with old-fashioned hunting rifles maintaining watch along a fixed and flawed route around the theater, and saw the faint, anxious orange-red emotional echoes they emitted due to tension.
He also saw something more dangerous: several motionless "sentries" lurking in concealed professional sniper positions like the bell tower window and behind rooftop statues. The *spiritual trails* emitted by these "sentries" were not the fluctuating "orange-red" of emotion, but a cold, deathly pure black.
They were mannequins!
William's heart sank. Those were the UMA's real "eyes." They didn't tire, they didn't get distracted;
they were more reliable and deadly "surveillance cameras" than human sentries.
He abandoned the plan to infiltrate from above. His gaze locked onto a rainwater and wastewater *drainage channel* beneath the theater, covered by rusted iron bars.
He moved silently through the patrols' blind spots to the entrance of the foul-smelling drainage channel. Using his tools, he professionally cut the rusted chain and slipped into the darkness filled with sludge and the stench of decay.
After navigating the maze-like, pitch-black underground drainage system for a quarter of an hour, relying on battlefield direction sense and the faint sounds of stage rehearsals from above, William found a maintenance shaft directly below the theater's backstage, used for pipe inspection.
He carefully pushed open the heavy iron manhole cover. A pungent odor, a mixture of formaldehyde, fresh blood, and unknown chemicals, instantly surged down from above.
William knew he had arrived.