novelraw Chapter 386: We Are the Victims
Chapter 386: We Are the Victims
The light from the oil lamp pierced the basement, frightening away the cloying darkness. It receded, lurking at the edges of the illuminated space like a bottomless abyss.
The lamp illuminated only a small patch.
Unable to call out, Lu Li saw no other choice but to descend himself.
He withdrew his hand, and the darkness instantly flooded back, filling the cellar once more. But just as quickly, Lu Li looped the lamp's handle over his wrist, turned, gave JoJo a brief glance, and started down the ladder.
JoJo looked like she wanted to say something, but remembering the prohibition on speaking, she clamped a hand over her mouth.
Step by step, Lu Li descended into the gloom. The lamp’s faint glow lit only the upper half of his body; everything from the waist down remained swallowed by the murk.
Crack.
The sudden sound of splintering wood echoed in the quiet. Lu Li, who had been descending smoothly, abruptly dropped, catching himself on a rung just in time to keep from falling.
JoJo nearly cried out. Alarmed, she began to gesture wildly, trying to ask if he was all right.
The situation looked perilous, but that was only a first impression.Thanks to Anna's invisible protection, Lu Li could have even let go and floated gently to the floor without injury.
Steadying himself, Lu Li gave JoJo a sign that all was well, stepped over the broken tread, and continued his descent.
A few seconds later, Lu Li reached the bottom of the cellar.
The cellar was about four meters high, its floor covered with dry straw.
He turned, about to look around, when he saw that JoJo was climbing down as well.
Lu Li quietly kicked the broken board aside and raised the lamp, keeping JoJo bathed in its light so she wouldn't slip into the darkness.
The raised lamp tracked JoJo's movements. When only a couple of rungs remained, she hopped down, landing lightly on her feet.
“You shouldn't have come down after me,” Lu Li whispered to JoJo as she straightened up.
JoJo looked in confusion at the man, his silhouette sharply defined by the lamplight. “What do you mean?”
Lu Li didn't answer. He narrowed his dark eyes and looked up at the entrance to the cellar, through which the bloody rain was falling.
For some reason, the man was still up there, his head bowed, watching them from the shadows.
Sensing something was wrong, JoJo waved at him. The man responded by pulling something from his trouser pocket.
“What is he doing?” JoJo had never seen the object before, but noticing the reverence with which the man held it cupped in his palms, she suddenly felt a surge of alarm.
Lu Li, his intuition sharpened by his lowered Mind Level, felt it even more acutely.
He sensed something sinister and mysterious drawing near.
The man was invoking some entity.
At that moment, Lu Li suddenly called out to the man above, “Are you a follower of the Mother of the Swamp, or of that unknown evil spirit?”
Lu Li no longer made any effort to speak quietly, and his voice was heard clearly by both JoJo and the man.
“Heretic, don't you dare speak my master's name!” the man above suddenly swore, but then he cut himself off abruptly. Terror flashed across his face, hidden in the shadows. “How dare you—”
He never finished the sentence. An icy chill enveloped him from behind.
Before Lu Li and JoJo's eyes, a faceless shadow materialized behind the man, and the moment he turned in terror, it tore his face off.
Seeing this, JoJo hastily adjusted her fleshy wings.
The man made no sound; he had no time to do anything. The last thing he heard was the dull thud of his body hitting the floor.
The sinister presence that had been trying to manifest vanished abruptly with the man's death. The mysterious aura dissipated. The object he had been holding rolled to the edge of the hatch, struck the ladder, bounced off, and clattered to a stop on the floor.
It was a fist-sized wooden statuette depicting some kind of creature. To be precise, it was an effigy of the Mother of the Swamp or the unknown evil spirit.
The lower part of the statuette resembled some kind of beetle, while the upper part was the torso of a woman. It looked like a centaur from mythology, only with the body of an insect instead of a horse.
Click, click, click.
Suddenly, the Contamination Detector on Lu Li's wrist began to click.
Lu Li stepped back, pulling JoJo, who had frozen while staring at the statuette, along with him.
Only when they were more than three meters away from the evil spirit's effigy did the clicking stop.
“He was going to sacrifice us?” JoJo came to her senses, breathing heavily. “I felt like... when I looked at it, my soul was being pulled inside... Is that the evil spirit? How terrifying... It's just a statuette...”
“It's that we are too weak,” Lu Li replied, then addressed Anna. “Bring the body down and close the hatch.”
Anna complied, bringing the man's body into the cellar and shutting the wooden hatch behind her.
The ominous sounds from the surface faded.
The body was placed where they had just been standing. Lu Li and JoJo found two more lamps on the wooden shelves, lit them, and returned to the corpse.
The sight of the mutilated face was horrific; a scrap of tongue, still twitching, protruded from the bloody ruin.
JoJo couldn't bear to look at it. Taking her lamp, she went off to explore the cellar.
Lu Li wasn't afraid of the sight of blood, but he knew it could have a negative psychological impact, so he asked Anna to turn the body face down.
The yellow uniform, soaked by the bloody rain, had turned a dingy brown. Lu Li searched the man's pockets but found only candy wrappers.
Lu Li's gaze fell to the man's feet. He was wearing sandals that didn't match the uniform, and his trouser legs, far too long, were rolled up to his ankles.
This man was no police officer. He was likely a local resident who had sought refuge, or a cultist who had taken shelter in the police station and changed into a uniform.
Standing up, Lu Li surveyed his surroundings.
The cellar was dimly lit. While Lu Li had been examining the body, JoJo had lit every lamp and candle she could find. Now, the darkness had retreated into the deepest corners.
JoJo was standing by the shelves, looking for anything useful.
Lu Li walked over to her with his lamp and told her what he had found.
JoJo was more concerned about something else. “Did you know about this from the start?”
Although Lu Li was inscrutable and always maintained a calm expression, JoJo had a feeling that he hadn't just been pretending not to notice—he had genuinely known beforehand.
“It was just a guess,” Lu Li replied, indirectly confirming her suspicion.
JoJo sighed. “And you still followed him, and even went down first...”
“Like I said, we had no choice,” Lu Li answered.
The only way to find Oliver is to ask the survivors.
Searching for a missing person in a city swarming with an evil god's minions? Cooperating with the evil spirit itself would be more reliable.
“Of course, I understand...” JoJo sighed, silently thanking Lu Li for his help. She raised her lamp, illuminating shelves stacked with food.
“At least we didn't come here for nothing. There's plenty of food, and we're safe from the surface. This is a good place to hide.”
As they stood by the shelves, neither of them noticed a trickle of blood seeping from the shadow cast by the man's body, snaking its way toward the evil spirit's statuette under the ladder.