“Whether or not you succeed in obtaining the Relic, I won’t be waiting for you at the base of the mountain all the time.”
“After you have completed this event and come down the mountain, you need to walk back to the previous highway. I will wander there from time to time, for up to ten days. Good luck to you all.”
The Coachman left these words mechanically and drove the carriage away.
The three of them didn’t rush to start their climb; they first made a series of observations on the situation at the base of the mountain.
After standing in the forest area covered by the Grey Zone for five minutes, they neither encountered any attacks from animated trees nor met the rabbit creature that had blocked their path before.
The area that should have been dangerous was unusually quiet.
“The Pathological creatures in the forest at the foot of the mountain, whether or not they are conscious, are instinctively afraid to come near here.
According to the data recorded by the survey team, any animals that come close to the Pilgrim are either blinded or have their eyes gouged out. Perhaps that’s why nearby creatures dare not approach this Pilgrim’s path.
We’ll temporarily set our climbing order ,
They kneeled on the ground, their bodies leaning forward, their heads completely touching the ground, forming a triangular worshipping posture.
There was no need for verification to ascertain that these pilgrims had already died, belonging to those who were eliminated early on, those too weak to even undergo the transformation.
Their corpses were neatly lined up along the ascending mountain path, with one every two or three meters, extending into the dense fog of the mountainside, making it uncertain whether there was an end in sight.
“Little Grape, help me out.”
Trying to approach one of the pilgrim corpses, Yi Chen let Little Grape slowly lower itself down while clinging to its tendrils, like a worker suspended by a safety rope, to peek at the buried face of the pilgrim.
However, the vision returned was quite eerie, making Yi Chen furrow his brows,
The deceased pilgrim’s eyes had been gouged out, which was expected, but he still bore a smile.
This smile was not one of pain or distortion, but a heartfelt relief, even describable as ‘excitement’—as though his pilgrimage had not failed at all and was still ongoing.
Yi Chen observed several more deceased pilgrims, all wearing that same expression.
While he was observing the fifth corpse,
Reagan, at the end of the team, picked up on something unusual and quickly shouted out, “William, watch out for the corpse’s back!”
Almost at the same moment he shouted, the back of the corpse indeed started to move.
Hidden beneath the tattered cloth, it was unclear what exactly was moving, only that there were many, all of different sizes.
Yi Chen didn’t retreat but instead retracted Little Grape, who was ‘suspended in operation’… letting Little Grape alone observe the strange movement on the back while Yi Chen chose to close his eyes.
Meanwhile, with a hand gesture downward toward his teammates on the mountain path below, Yi Chen suggested that they wait and see if they need to help based on how the situation unfolded.
The back of the corpse continued to maintain its granular movement, without further change or threat, as if it was just waiting for someone passing by to unveil the old cloth covering the moving area.
With one hand holding the axe, and the other grabbing the corner of the cloth, Yi Chen slowly began to pull.
As the rag slid off the back, a densely packed scene of discomfort was observed by Little Grape’s lone eye and transmitted back to Yi Chen’s brain.
The corpse’s back was covered with grapes of varying sizes from various mountain creatures, notably lacking the eye structures of humans… these eyeballs might have been related to what the pilgrims ate before their deaths.
Right as the rag fell,
All the granular eyes turned their gaze toward the ‘unveiler’, a spiritual pathogen rapidly invading the thoughts of Little Grape.
The spiritual shock from the Lake Bottom Giant Eye reversed its course.
The feeling was quite like ‘counter-waves’, only this clash of mental realms was invisible to the naked eye.
Crackling~ As if someone was setting off firecrackers in the mountains, all the eyes on the back of the corpse burst simultaneously, not a single one surviving.
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