A black arc of the moon slashed down, and with a whistling sound as it broke through the air, it opened up a piece of slightly muddy soil.
Lu Ning's extended weapon quickly retracted into her cuffs, and there was no one behind her. It was as if the feeling just now was just an illusion caused by being too nervous.
But that's certainly not an illusion.
There was still silence all around, and there was only moisture and putrid smell in the air. She realized that she might be looking in the wrong place, but maybe she was in the "right" place.
While alerting her surroundings, Lu Ning reached out and pulled up the clothes on her shoulders slightly. With the demon's vision, she could clearly see that a blue handprint on her shoulder was slowly disappearing under her body.
She sank directly into the shadow and appeared on the other side of the cemetery. Only now did she realize why this place had never attracted attention.
There is a wall in the east direction of the town.
To the north of Baihu Town is a group of mountains that cross the terrain. The terrain begins to become gentle closer to the town. This wall is actually built against the mountains. If it is seen from the town side, it looks like a piece of stone to prevent wild animals from drilling. The gap in the mountain that has been blocked by the enemy can only be found from this side. All the blocked positions form a high wall.
The entire west side of the town is sealed by this wall, and continuing to the south side begins to turn into a mixed agricultural, forestry, and animal husbandry farm, gradually transitioning to a farm. In other words, people coming from the north will be blocked by the mountains and cannot see here, and the south is blocked by the large farm area. It is easy to subconsciously think that the area going deeper will be similar.
A blind spot that is visually and psychologically well done.
Boom.
While Lu Ning was thinking, a knocking sound suddenly came from not far away. She was startled and looked around. The direction where the sound came from was just a wooden house that was not unusual here.
Boom.
The second sound, like someone's knuckles slowly tapping the surface of wood, was enough for Lu Ning to hear clearly.
She calmed down and started walking towards the wooden house.
Could there be other forces hiding in this scene besides the demons? Is this the power of the witch? Or some other third party force? Why does this cemetery, isolated from the town, exist like this?
When the seventh knock sounded, Lu Ning was already standing in front of the wooden door. She raised her right hand and pointed it at the door. She was fully prepared, and if anything went wrong, she would immediately transform into a demon prototype.
"call……"
“Is that~ over there~ Nannan~?”
There was no eighth knock in the room, but a direct question. Lu Ning almost transformed.
She glanced at the line of words daubed above the door frame.
[The child, the child, can’t be found alive. 】
How dare she answer this?
Perhaps after waiting for a while and not hearing any response, the voice in the room became a little louder.
"I'm asking you~"
Lu Ning still didn't make any answer.
"Don't answer? You~repay me~"
The five fingers of his hand suddenly stabbed out, turning into five sharp blades and nailed directly into the wooden door. Lu Ning's golden eyes blinked, and with one move of his five fingers, he cut the wooden door into several pieces!
"Give me back my child!!!!"
An insubstantial, foggy black shadow rushed out of the wooden house. A gap that could barely be called a mouth bit down on Lu Ning's head, but it was shattered at the moment of contact.
"Exactly what I thought..."
Lu Ning restored his hand to its original position and stepped directly into the broken door. A putrid smell of death came from the house. There was a pile of black "nests" in the corner of the house, and some rotten bones could be seen. Various objects were mixed in the thick, sticky-like body of the nest, and on the top of this indescribable thing, a strange-looking flower grew.
It has four long, sword-shaped leaves. The stem in the middle is twisted in a spiral shape with thin veins like blood vessels. At the top is a bud, with wrinkled outer petals stacked up to tightly wrap the inside. , only a small hollow tube as thick as a toothpick protrudes from the center above, and the overall shape resembles a heart.
"Witch's Heart?"
Lu Ning got a little closer. When she approached the flower, for some reason, a very strong recognition appeared in her mind.
[This flower is dead...it has no value. If you want to revive it, you must replant it and make it come alive. 】
Such thoughts kept rising in his mind in a very tempting way. Lu Ning could even see everything he could get after cultivating "living" flowers, and he could also see that as a demon, when the cultivation was successful, The huge advantage that can be achieved is as if the moment the flower is planted, victory is at your fingertips.
"Well!"
She took a step back and shook her head vigorously.
At this moment, the resentful voice sounded from behind her again.
"Do you want to hear a story about death?"
Lu Ning's index finger suddenly stretched out and peeled off the heart-like bud directly from the stem. The wrinkled petals shattered and broke, and five or six shriveled seeds fell down and were transformed. Caught from mid-air by giant clawed hands.
"Plant."
Her hand returned to its original shape. Looking at the inactive seeds, Lu Ning sneered: "It's impossible to plant this kind of thing, right? What exactly is the Witch's Heart?"
"It is~ the witch's heart."
The dark mist enveloped Lu Ning from behind and whispered softly in her ear.
"Then what are you?"
A shrill laugh came from the fog, and the sound made Lu Ning's ears extremely uncomfortable. She waved her hand to disperse the fog, and she was basically sure that the demon would not be too affected by this place.
But what about humans?
Lima definitely did not know the name Witch's Heart from this weird cemetery. In the email he sent to himself, he clearly mentioned that he had discovered this plant and learned that its name was Witch's Heart. If he learned about it under such strange circumstances, it would be absolutely impossible to continue to investigate the properties of the medicine with a research mentality.
In other words, there are other ways to obtain the Witch's Heart. There is someone in the town who knows the true name of this thing. That person...may have been to the cemetery.
What was the man's purpose in tempting Lima to study this plant? Maybe this is a deliberate arrangement? Is there a hidden witch force in the town? No matter what, a considerable number of people should be aware of the existence of this cemetery. If they were to be excluded from this area, there would be too many people.
Lu Ning couldn't learn the method of planting the Witch's Heart from here, so this method must still be in the hands of someone in the town, or in the hands of some people.
"Who has been here before?" She tried to ask Kurogiri.
"A boy~"
"what happened?"
"He~ listened to our stories~ gained knowledge~ knew the facts~"
The black mist swirled and fell back into the pile of "nests".
"Dead~dead~he died~became one of us~just like you~just like everyone~"
"He went to plant the witch's heart?"
The shrill laughter sounded again, but this time there was no answer. Lu Ning felt a strong sense of rejection in the room. Although it was not enough to drive her out, it was enough to express her intention.
So, she exited the house.
The moment she walked out of the door, the surroundings returned to silence. The door in front of her was once again sealed by tattered wooden boards, but there were still some newer scratches on it, which were exactly the same as the lines she had cut through the door before.
Lu Ning exhaled, activated Shadow Leap and returned to Baihu Town.
This night's experience was so weird that her thoughts were still a little confused until she returned to the RV. The appearance of the cemetery forced her to keep an extra thought out of her plan. If there was any design in the scene where the two towns were actually reflections of each other, all her plans would be ruined.
In order to confirm his thoughts, Lu Ning took out all the letters Lima sent to him and read them again. There were no dried herbs in these envelopes, and the letter paper was mediocre, but the same could not be said for the ink.
Lu Ning scraped a little powder off with her nails and put it on the tip of her tongue like Ning Yeyi did.
It was as if an electric current penetrated her entire body, and her mind suddenly became clear. Sure enough, Lima mixed the extracted substance of the witch's heart into the ink, and the demon's feeling for this substance was quite obvious.
But why would he do this?
There was nothing wrong with the wording or sentences in the letter. Even if Lima wanted to lure Lu Ning into trouble, the analysis report alone would be enough. If the witch's heart is the cause of Lu Ning's transformation into a demon, then it would be too easy to turn into a demon just by smelling the smell.
There is also a hint of "silencing Lima" in the secret mission of Lu Ning's human identity. It would be fine if this was a mission based on Lu Ning's identity. If it was a God's perspective mission given to tourists by the distribution center, it would mean that Lima's disappearance was not that he died, but that he was still alive and continuing to be a witch somewhere. The study of the heart?
Lu Ning put down the letter in her hand, accidentally turned her head, and saw someone passing by the window of her RV.
She opened the car window and called out to the man.
"Mr. Tachikawa?"
"Doctor Lu." Seeing that he had been noticed, Tachikawa Ryo walked back to the window and bowed slightly to Lu Ning, "I will come here this time to ask for care for those two girls."
"Sugiyama and Inahara? Do you already know each other?" Lu Ning asked.
"We have supported each other so far. They have pure natures. Although they have experienced the ordeal of the scene, they will still be bound by their general sense of morality and miss opportunities." Ryo Tachikawa said with a hint of worry, "Therefore, I am not satisfied with the judgment of life and death in a moment. Tomorrow's trip , if Dr. Lu can have a free hand, I hope he can take care of the two of them."
"In terms of fighting ability, I can't compare to those two girls. But I will not abandon them to the best of my ability. You can rest assured on this."
"Thank you."
"With all due respect, does Mr. Tachikawa already have a candidate for Majin in mind?"
"I am stupid. Although I have doubts, I dare not be convinced." Ryo Tachikawa shook his head, "If Doctor Lu has doubts and leads to the demon's true form, I will take the lead and slay the demon to clear himself."
Lu Ning had a thought in her mind, and then said: "Mr. Tachikawa, when I left the restaurant today, I saw Miss Fujii coming back in a hurry and going back upstairs. I wonder if she has been to the restaurant since then?"
"From the time Dr. Lu left until I left the restaurant around 8:30 p.m., I never saw her coming."
"Thank you, and good night."
Lu Ning nodded and closed the window. She made some calculations in her mind and found that she left around 6:30, so it would take about two hours. Looking at Fujii's appearance, he seemed to have discovered something. So where is the place where the paper is burned? People in the town...
The customs and habits of this town do not include burning sacrifices for the dead. It can even be said that there is such a cemetery in the whole town that looks weird in Lu Ning's eyes. She roughly sketched the topography of the cemetery area on paper according to her memory, then took the map of White Lake Town and compared it.
Baihu Town is obviously larger, but this is because many new buildings were built later. If the roads dividing the small houses in the cemetery are slightly compared according to the directions, it can be easily seen that the cemetery is basically Baihu Town. A miniature landscape of an area of town.
All the places Lu Ning had visited before, including the Taylor's house, the blacksmith, the carpenter, the tin-plated jug, and the grocery store were all within this overlapping range, and the special house with the words [He saw it, she came back] corresponded to white The house in Lake Town happens to be...
Hermann House.
It's a pity that the time for today's demon transformation has almost been used up. Lu Ning doesn't want to go there unprepared. The attitude of the Herman family is completely unclear. There are also deeds of the witch hunting leader in his ancestors. It is obviously not a place to investigate casually. .
Lu Ning lay down, thinking about corrections and adjustments to her plan, and gradually fell asleep.
At this time, in the hotel, Shen Lishu was sitting at the table in his room, and Fujii Yukine was sitting opposite. There was a half-burned paper doll on the table between them.
The shape of the doll is very simple, but only one face is painted lifelike. It is not difficult to tell that that face is Sally. The remaining torso can also be vaguely seen using simple brushwork to draw what she was wearing when she died. clothes.
Shen Lishu held a black regular dodecahedron in his hand. As the muscles of his hand slowly rubbed, the dodecahedron slowly rotated and made a rattling sound. This was the only sound in this quiet room. the sound of.
"The Witch's Clothes."
Fujii Yukine broke the silence.
"I see... you have noticed this, and that's why you came to see me with this."
"The direction of the secret has been made clear, and I can't let the situation develop like this. Now that I have made it clear and honest, and I confirm your identity as a human being, can't you still accept joining forces with me?" Fujii frowned slightly.
"Hehehe, but I can't confirm you." Shen Lishu reached out and picked up the paper man, "Did you really get this thing from the coffin?"
Fujii Yukine nodded.
"But have you found the Witch's Clothes? This alone won't convince me."
"I didn't find it, but I have a guess." Fujii Yukine said helplessly, "It's a kind of magic."
"Spell?"
Shen Lishu's hand shook slightly, and the dodecahedron rolled out of his hand. He turned it over twice on the table, and a delicate oval bamboo piece fell out from a small hole.
"That's not a good thing... there's magic involved in a scenario like this."
"We all understand this kind of thing."
There was another brief silence, and finally, Shen Lishu nodded.
"Okay, let's cooperate for the time being."
Fujii Yukine breathed a sigh of relief, stood up and said goodbye and left the room.
Ye Chuqing, who was outside the house, quickly returned to the room.
"Professor Shen?"
Shen Lishu did not look at her, but stared down at the bamboo piece. The six lines of three yang, two yin, and one yang on the bamboo piece were clearly distinguishable.
"On the 25th, the sky is thundering without warning. It's worrying, it's worrying..."
