Chapter 1 What's Going On?

"What... what's going on?" The fatty stared wide-eyed in shock. "Water, where did all this water come from?"

Li Bai leaned against the wall, barely managing to keep her balance. The scene outside the window was more shocking than seeing a ghost. "No, it's not water! It's the sea, we... we're in the middle of the sea!"

Looking out the window, Yao Shunyu was also speechless. In the pouring rain, the surroundings were a black expanse of water. White waves frequently surged, crashing against the buildings, only to be torn to shreds the next moment. Everything had changed. The buildings and streets they had passed on the way were gone. It wasn't just being swallowed by the water, but... but the building they were in! It was the building that had changed!

What kind of terrifying force could have moved this building out of nowhere and dropped them into the ocean, on this insane rainy night?

No, not the ocean, a lake. They were currently in a lake, Chun Shen Lake!

Along with the waves came clumps of water plants tangled together. Jiang Cheng immediately recognized them as the same species he had seen at the Fu'an Inn during the day, the fragrant beauty (meiren xiang) unique to Chun Shen Lake.

No wonder there was so much water at the Fu'an Inn. Judging by the looks of it, the building they were in was floating on the lake, gradually sinking in the waves. It was only a matter of time before it was completely swallowed by the lake.

As more and more water poured into the room, the lake water was already ankle-deep, submerging their calves. The icy water brought an indescribable sensation, and their bodies shivered uncontrollably as the chill seeped into their bones.

"No, we have to get out! If we stay here, we'll all be trapped!" Yao Shunyu roared. The sound of the storm and the waves mingled together, and a sense of despair spread to every corner.

A gust of wind and waves rushed in through the window, slamming into Li Bai. Her slender body staggered, barely managing to stand still. She wiped her face and shouted at Jiang Cheng and the others, "Not yet, don't forget, none of the people before were drowned, they were all bitten to death by those things!"

The fatty's heart skipped a beat. He remembered the wounds on those people vividly. Perhaps if they left the room now, they would be entangled by those things.

In the end, Jiang Cheng made the decision. He forcefully closed the window, then went to the door and kicked it open. "We're going out, to find the others."

The corridor was also full of water. Strangely, the building, which should have been pitch black, was now emitting a cold, fluorescent glow, making it possible to see with some effort. But what truly made the fatty and the others' blood run cold was that the doors of the other rooms were open, and they were all empty.

"Where are the people?" The fatty waded through the icy lake water, his fear growing.

"Don't talk, let's go downstairs and see," Jiang Cheng warned.

The sound of the wind and rain had subsided a little. The group held onto the side of the stairs, struggling to walk down. The steps were slippery, and one wrong step could send them tumbling.

Even now, the fatty's mind couldn't calm down. He couldn't understand how they had woken up in Chun Shen Lake, with the entire building floating on the water.

The water downstairs was also getting deeper, but strangely, the downstairs wasn't completely submerged as they had expected. The water level was almost the same as upstairs. At the same time, a beam of light caught their attention.

The light was outside the door, and because of the dim environment, it seemed particularly dazzling. Two figures were silhouetted on the already soaked paper door.

"The two soldiers guarding the night watch, they didn't leave?"

The fatty stared at the two figures, suddenly feeling unreal. But the next moment, he felt a chill. Something was wrong here. The building was on the verge of collapse, and the lake water was constantly pouring in. No matter how you looked at it, the two soldiers on night watch shouldn't be calmly continuing their duty. At the very least, they should have come to warn them, or shouted something.

The only thing the fatty could think of was that these two people were already dead, or that they had been replaced by ghosts, waiting for them to walk into their trap.

Li Bai looked around, not seeing any of her other teammates. It was as if only the four of them were left here, along with a building floating on the lake, about to sink.

"I didn't see any corpses, and those who can survive until now are definitely not ordinary people, they won't die so easily," Yao Shunyu reminded.

The fatty was so nervous that he could hear his own heartbeat, like a drum. His lips trembled as he asked, "Then where did those people go? Did they swim away, or... or did they never come here at all?"

Hearing the fatty's question, everyone was unusually silent. Jiang Cheng had also thought about this question. This world was obviously abnormal, and the weirdness defied logic. He suspected that the remaining teammates hadn't come to this distorted world, but were still in the previous building, in the quiet courtyard on that street, sleeping peacefully.

Just as everyone was thinking about their next plan, suddenly, the door to the front hall opened. The fatty's eyes widened. He saw clearly that it was opened by a pale, white hand.

"Holy shit!" The fatty was very close to the door. As he retreated, he tripped over some debris submerged in the water and almost fell.

After the door opened, a figure appeared. Zhang Qizheng, soaking wet, looked at them. Because he was standing against the light, the old man looked particularly eerie.

Jiang Cheng and the others quickly became vigilant, distancing themselves from the suddenly appearing Zhang Qizheng.

"Come out, it's not safe inside, we've found some clues." Zhang Qizheng's voice was hoarse and trembling, as if he was frozen by the cold lake water.

Jiang Cheng and the others didn't say a word, coldly staring at Zhang Qizheng. In this situation, there was little chance that he was human. Moreover, they didn't know Zhang Qizheng at all, so there was no reason for him to suddenly appear to save them.

If they were ghosts, then Zhang Qizheng would be screwed. There was no need for that, and it shouldn't be happening.

Seeing the cold attitude of Jiang Cheng and the others, Zhang Qizheng frowned, then took a step, stepping into the front hall. "I'm human, not one of those things. Hurry up and come out, I don't want to say the same thing twice."

Seeing this scene, Yao Shunyu hardened his heart. He pulled the fatty, who was closest to Zhang Qizheng, back, and then followed Zhang Qizheng out the door, leaving a sentence, "You guys wait here for me, I'll go with him and see."

Jiang Cheng turned his head to look at the increasingly violent water, a trace of hesitation flashing in his eyes. Finally, he chose to follow behind Yao Shunyu. Li Bai and the fatty also took the opportunity to leave the front hall.

As soon as Jiang Cheng stepped into the courtyard, he noticed something strange, but he couldn't put his finger on it. The entire courtyard was swaying in the wind and waves, giving him the feeling of being on a huge ship.

There was a cluster of flames in the courtyard, propped up high in a blackened basin so they wouldn't be extinguished by the lake water.

Two soldiers stood on either side of the flames, unmoving. When they got closer, everyone finally saw clearly that they were clearly straw men wearing soldiers' uniforms, fixed to the ground with bamboo poles, just like the scene they had seen behind the city gate last night.

"That's how I found it. There are no soldiers here, they're all fake." After Zhang Qizheng said this, he waved to the darkness on one side. Soon, several figures walked out, Gao Yanqing, who was in the same room as Zhang Qizheng, as well as Tang Qisheng and Zhu Jie. Everyone was disheveled and soaking wet. Zhu Jie didn't know what had happened, but his shoulder was injured, and blood was constantly seeping out.

"We ran into each other while searching, but we didn't see Lu Qin and Shao Tong. Their rooms were empty," Zhang Qizheng said. Obviously, Gao Yanqing and the others didn't trust Jiang Cheng and his group, so they sent Zhang Qizheng to scout the way.

Although that's what he said, Jiang Cheng keenly noticed that things weren't that simple. Scouting the way was very risky, so risky that one wrong step could cost you your life, and Zhang Qizheng was clearly not a reckless guy.

"What are the clues you're talking about? These two straw men?" Jiang Cheng buried his doubts in his heart. Now they had more important things to confirm, which would determine whether they could survive tonight.

"Of course not, come with me."

Wading through the water, which was now up to their knees, the group groped forward and walked to a small room in the courtyard. Jiang Cheng had noticed this room when he first arrived in the afternoon. It seemed unremarkable, built with a mixture of thatch and adobe, with a thick chimney outside, like a kitchen.

At this time, the adobe house was soaked in lake water, and there were already large cracks in the walls. It was a dilapidated house, as if it could collapse at any time.

Zhang Qizheng didn't avoid it and pushed open the wooden door. It was indeed a kitchen, with a stove, tableware, and bowls, but the layout was a little strange. There was a large wooden board here, like an old wooden door that had been taken apart and pieced together. The wooden board was propped up, and squatting down, you could see stones under the murky water.

Even stranger, there weren't any large items on these wooden boards, but a few scattered pieces of white, wrinkled cloth.

Seeing these pieces of cloth, Jiang Cheng and the others suddenly had an ominous premonition, because they had seen these cloths not long ago, in the backyard of the Fu'an Inn. At that time, these cloths were covering corpses.

Jiang Cheng reached out and grabbed a piece. The cloth was very large, with some black mud stuck to it. Jiang Cheng leaned over and smelled it, and an unpleasant smell hit his nose. Jiang Cheng was sure that these cloths were the ones that covered the corpses, but now the cloths were still there, but the corpses were gone.

"It's the burial cloth from the backyard of the Fu'an Inn." Tang Qisheng was still calm at the moment, his eyes still bright in the dim environment. "But I didn't expect those guys to move the corpses into the courtyard where we live, and our meals tonight were brought out from this kitchen."

The fatty immediately thought of the strange food, and the so-called crane soup (he geng tang) with placental capsules (ziheche). Although he also thought that Shao Tong was unreliable, he completely trusted Shao Tong on this matter. It was a strange feeling.

Could it be that those people were using these corpses to feed them...?

The fatty didn't dare to think about it anymore.

"It doesn't matter what we ate for dinner now, what's important is these corpses. Where did these six corpses go?" Green veins appeared on Gao Yanqing's forehead. "We didn't see the corpses when we came, and I'm sure these six corpses are near us, I can feel it!"

"Don't be so loud, we know, you're not a newbie anymore, calm down," Zhang Qizheng casually reminded, but his tone was like an elder scolding a younger generation.

Gao Yanqing, who didn't have a good temper, didn't refute, just snorted coldly, his eyes passing over everyone, and then looking back into the darkness outside the window, as if something was watching them there.

Zhang Qizheng withdrew his gaze and continued to stare at Jiang Cheng and opened his mouth, "Have you noticed that these wooden boards also have problems? They are pieced together with very old door panels. I think those people used these door panels to carry the corpses here."

Using door panels to carry corpses, Jiang Cheng had heard of this saying. The door panel is the gateway to a family, and it has the saying of warding off evil spirits, especially this kind of old door panel, which has experienced countless years of wind and frost. Generally, corpses that need to be carried with door panels are some corpses that died in an evil way, and they are very likely to become zombies.

Jiang Cheng seemed to think of something, squatted down, lifted the door panel, revealing the bricks underneath for support. The fatty approached to take a look and immediately recognized that these were actually tomb bricks taken from the tomb chamber.

"What do we do next?" Zhu Jie clutched his injured shoulder. "Should we go find Lu Qin and Shao Tong? The two of them are missing, I'm worried about them..."

"Don't worry about others, take care of yourself." Tang Qisheng's voice followed. He took a breath. "The night watchmen aren't so easy to die, and that Shao Tong is unusual."

After speaking, Tang Qisheng looked at Jiang Cheng, seeming to know that he was the leader of the fatty and the other three. He pulled out his leg stuck in the stagnant water and stomped down heavily, as if to remind Jiang Cheng, "You should have noticed the strangeness under our feet, right? This is no longer our previous courtyard, at least not now."

Hearing this, Jiang Cheng frowned, and then immediately squatted down, reaching into the water, as if feeling something. Soon, he stood up, and at the same time, the doubt buried deep in his heart also had an answer, "There is only a thin layer of silt under our feet, and there is wood under the silt. This is not in our previous courtyard, we are now on a boat, this is the hold!"

Hearing this, Yao Shunyu raised his head and looked at the top, suddenly realizing: "No wonder I always feel like something is missing, because there is no moon, no starlight, and no rain falling here. It turns out that this is the hold, we... we are on a boat, a very big wooden boat!"

"A large wooden boat that is gradually sinking in Chun Shen Lake!"