448: Three hundred and five.
Human Head Balloon 448: Three hundred and five.
Human Head Balloon The blood rain fell in torrents, shrouding the entire small town.
The decrepit town glowed with a bloody light, and the mottled bloodstains covering every corner made it look like innards.
Whispers rose in the dark corners, creepy crawlies scurried across the streets, and the shrill cries of flapping wings circled the sky.
These sounds echoed in Lu Li’s ears.
Human Head Balloons danced in the wind, the oppressive Night Devils lingered in the air, and black silhouettes behind unlit windows spied outside.
Lu Li’s dark eyes reflected everything on the street.
A breeze blew past, tilting the blood rain’s silky threads.
The Human Head Balloons on the street swayed and turned elsewhere, the wandering Night Devils flew off into the distance, and the black silhouettes behind the windows shook and vanished.
A pair of rain boots stepped out, stepping into a puddle.
Lu Li, who had been observing the street from a dim alley, now stepped out, followed by Jojo and Fran hurrying along.
Fran crouched, trying to make himself inconspicuous, but he soon realized that Lu Li held his back straight, like a gentleman in a hurry rather than someone sneaking away.
Under his influence, so did Jojo, though he looked around nervously as they crossed the street.
The quietly moving Fran fell behind and had to straighten up and jog to catch up with Lu Li’s figure, whispering urgently, “Shouldn’t we be moving more stealthily?”
“The street is in plain sight; even a stone crossing the road would draw attention.”
So Lu Li’s method was to quickly cross while the Followers around them were not paying attention to this area.
The unpredictable winds made the nearby Human Head Balloons swirl and spin in the air.
Suddenly, one of the balloons stopped spinning, its face, with a half-smile, turned towards the three people in the middle of the street.
Then more faces turned around.
Jojo, who was keeping an eye on the situation, was the first to notice the floating heads and tugged at the meat wings Lu Li was wearing.
“Don’t make eye contact with them!” Fran reminded them at that moment.
Jojo quickly turned his head, only observing from the corner of his eye.
Lu Li no longer suppressed the noise and started running towards the houses on the other side.
Jojo and Fran followed closely, their footsteps echoing on the street as they ran through the puddles.
The door of the café across the street swung open by itself, revealing pitch-black insides.
The three runners charged into the café, and behind them, the door closed automatically, and the latch fell into place.
Having dodged into the café, Lu Li and the others distanced themselves from the door, fixing their gazes on it as they caught their breath and listened to their racing hearts—
The sudden light knocking on the door startled Jojo, who blinked.
They couldn’t come in.
Fran moaned in pain, “I…
I saw Aunt Sofia among them…
Has she turned into one of these things too!”
After his parents passed away, Aunt Sofia, the neighbor, often helped him.
Lu Li surveyed the café’s ground floor, where the outlines of tables and chairs in the dimness looked as if veiled with a light gauze, long-unused and dust-covered.
“Are these balloons the townspeople?” he asked Fran.
I saw how they turned into those monsters…” Fran didn’t want to recall that awful memory, but he told Lu Li anyway, “I saw Old Joson, turned into a balloon, drift towards his neighbor and his son Little Joson.
The neighbors ran away in fright, leaving only Little Joson staring at his ‘father,’ that sorrowful head.
Little Joson reached out to cradle his father’s head, but Old Joson dodged away, and the ‘string’ hanging from the balloon wrapped around Little Joson’s neck, and then…
Fran’s eyes widened with terror, his body shaking uncontrollably, “Little Joson’s head started to float up, his spine turning into the silk string of the balloon…”
For an ordinary person, witnessing such a scene would be enough to shatter all their reality-based perceptions, causing their sanity to collapse.
After the disaster struck, many townspeople went mad with screams upon seeing horrors beyond common sense and were killed by strange beings that came upon hearing the noise.
After Fran finished speaking, he noticed Lu Li avert his gaze to the side.
At that moment, Jojo gasped audibly.
A sense of utmost unease rose in Fran’s heart, and as he followed the direction of Lu Li and Jojo’s gazes, he saw the scene that chilled his soul.
Outside the café’s door window, Human Head Balloons were crowding, peering inside with eerie, almost smiling faces.
One of them, a female head with a face full of sorrow, quietly looked at Fran through the window.
Fran involuntarily walked towards the window, his approach stirring the balloons like agitated imps.
But the next moment, Fran stopped his advance, retreating deeper into the café and shaking his head in denial of it all.
“No, she’s dead already, what’s outside now is just using her shell!”
The “Aunt Sofia” outside the window made no response, just a wooden sorrowful observation.
“You’re right, she’s dead, and what’s outside now are just monsters,” Jojo comforted Fran, who was retreating backward with tears streaming down his face.
The Human Head Balloons outside the café window suddenly withdrew, leaving the window, including “Aunt Sofia.”
Fran paused, his swollen eyes looking outside.
“Have they given up…?” Jojo whispered.
Traces of Human Head Balloons reappeared outside the café’s side windows.
Jojo realized instantly and looked at Fran standing in the middle of the café: “They’re following you…
Do they recognize you?”
Lu Li said and took off his flesh wings, handing them to Fran.
Fran caught them instinctively, coming back to his senses with a start, and draped the flesh wings over himself like Jojo had done.
A new situation arose.
The Human Head Balloons swarmed again, this time gathering at the window closest to Lu Li, and this time, the sorrowful expression on Aunt Sofia’s face had disappeared, merging into the same eerie half-smile as the other Human Head Balloons.
Human Head Balloons and Night Devils wouldn’t attack each other; they belonged to the same Evil God.
Having confirmed this, Lu Li continued to deduce.
The Followers of the Mother of the Marsh showed unnatural behavior after touching the Night Devil’s flesh wings.
Combining this with the battle between the two Evil Gods, it could be inferred that the Human Head Balloons and Night Devils were Followers of an unknown Evil God.
Six-legged Monsters and Shadow Figures were entities active in Shadow Swamp and belonged to the Mother of the Marsh.
The Faceless Figures were unknown, and the existence of other yet-to-be-seen Followers was unknown.
The Human Head Balloons gently hit the window and suddenly were swept away by the wind, disappearing above the window.
Jojo sighed with relief, feeling uncomfortable being watched by a crowd of heads, even if they had never noticed him.
Lu Li didn’t think so; he looked up, his eyes focused on the dark ceiling as though seeing through the wood into the second floor above.
As if in response to Lu Li’s speculation, a heavy thud came from the second floor.