Traces of blood retracted from Mo Yi’s face, leaving only a pair of dark gleaming eyes, akin to two cold stars in a blanketed sky of heavy snow.
Furrowing his brows, Mo Yi turned to look around the whole room, his gaze sliding past the group of stunned people behind him, and subconsciously murmured.
“This is… the last day of Solomon Grundy.”
The group let out an involuntary shudder at the reminder of the hint provided to them at the beginning of this instance.
As though it were overwhelmed too, several deep cracks appeared on the twisted and uneven ceiling. Grey particles rustled down along the walls and fell around the players.
Then, just like the chain effect from knocking over a single domino piece, the crumbling corner began setting off a vicious cycle of collapse. The deterioration spread rapidly across the whole house, dragging it irrevocably towards an abyss of destruction.
Even more sand particles scattered on the players, piling up thickly on their bodies and around their feet. The air seemed to be saturated with countless particles and each breath they drew felt suffocating.
Alarmed, the players subconsciously turned towards the only person in the team who they felt knew clearly what to do—just like how a drowning person would desperately search for driftwood, these nervous and panicking people inadvertently looked to the calmest person as a lifeline.
They turned to Mo Yi at the same time, asking loudly and urgently, “What should we do next?”
Mo Yi raised his eyes, casting a quick glance around the whole room, and mentally estimated the rate of collapse before decisively answering.
“We should leave.”
The state of this distorted house now was akin to a sandcastle which had been gently pushed by a child’s palm, and was inevitably collapsing in on itself. The ceiling was hanging precariously in mid-air, the walls were sloughing off like soil softened by water, and even the floor was changing into a sand-like texture, impeding everyone’s movements while they slowly sunk into it as if it were quicksand.
Mo Yi raised his arms to cover his head, preventing the loose sand trickling from the ceiling from obstructing his sight, then tried his best to break free from the quagmire under his feet before sprinting towards the open door.
But just when everyone was about to reach it, the door slammed shut in their faces with a bang!
Yu Ran took a big step forward and grabbed the doorknob. She shook it vigorously, yet the steadily collapsing door and its frame seemed to have been welded together into an indestructible wall and refused to budge at all.
Gritting her teeth, she took a few steps back and ran towards the door, trying to smash it open with the momentum of her body, but it had no visible results other than covering her in sand.
Looking at that impenetrable door, everyone’s hearts sank slowly to the bottom of the valley, enveloped by a momentary despair.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Ktlr tberf lcafcvfv ab yegs atfw jilnf!
Degslcu atfw lc atf ugbecv obgfnfg, pera ilxf atja Vbibwbc Xgecvs!
Zb Tl oeggbkfv tlr ygbkr, agslcu ab xffq tlr wlcv mifjg ja atlr mglalmji qblca bo ilof jcv vfjat. Lf regnfsfv atf kjiir bo atf tberf, agslcu ab olcv j ygfjxatgbeut.
Ccv ja atlr nfgs wbwfca, tlr fsfr ila eq.
The whole house was turning into sand. This one wall was certainly no exception too—nearly half of the window frame on the inner side had already been turned into sand. Several shards of dirty glass had fallen out too, and the resulting gaps between them revealed a faint and eerie red light on the dry and barren land outside.
Mo Yi’s breathing stuttered, and he found his body acting before his brain could process the sight.
He quickly stepped in front of the window, striking and shaking the half-collapsed window frame, trying to find weak spots in the wall which he could exploit.
Seeing Mo Yi’s movements, several others also came forward to help, desperately hitting the seemingly vulnerable wall with the weight and momentum of their bodies. Dense sand fell copiously with each collision, sprinkling all over their heads and faces, and choking them into breathless wheezing coughs.
The sundries and wooden shelves overhead dropped onto the shoulders and backs of the unsuspecting players, causing unbearable pain on impact before they crumbled into sand. The sand then trickled down along the bodies to the ground and accumulated around their feet.
Before they knew it, the height of the piling sand had risen from their ankles to their knees. To move, they would now have to exert an insurmountable amount of effort to first lift their legs out from the sand, only to then plant them back in again.
Still, the players continued their relentless attack on the wall despite the difficulty to manoeuvre their bodies within the sand.
However, their plan did not come to fruition. No matter how hard they tried, the crumbling wall still stood strong, as though there was some malevolent force preventing them from breaking it down.
—it was as though the scenario within the first nursery rhyme was being reproduced.
The only difference being that previously, it was the players outside who wanted to come in. But now, it was the players inside who wanted to leave.
Despair crept onto everyone’s faces. Their bodies and arms were already trembling from overexertion, yet just like an ant trying in vain to shake a large tree, they found themselves helpless in the face of this indomitable hurdle too.
Mo Yi pursed his lips and slammed his clenched fist against the broken window with all his strength. Piercing pain shot down the palm of his hand, but it did nothing to dispel the restlessness in his heart.
The sand had risen to thigh-level.
At this moment, a rhythmic tick-tock cut through the noise of falling sand, and a surprised Mo Yi stared down at his palm.
The hideous wound inflicted by the broken glass was stretching from the back of his hand all the way to his pale palm. Large rivulets of blood were gushing out from the wound, sliding down his thin wrist and splashing onto the slowly crumbling wall.
And as soon as the bright blood came into contact with the sand, the particles seemed to come alive, eagerly sucking the drop of blood into itself. The rounded bloodstains shrunk at a speed visible to the naked eye, leaving a small void in the wall in its wake.
Mo Yi’s eyes lit up with a gleam. He raised his head to look at Yu Ran, and shouted loudly:
“Give me the knife!”
Yu Ran was startled by his words, but she still reached over to her backpack to retrieve the heavy kitchen knife, and handed the cold blade to Mo Yi.
Mo Yi took the handle of the knife and weighed it in his hand, before gritting his teeth and slicing across the centre of his palm.
The hideous wound widened in an instant. Even more fresh blood gushed out along the wound. A strong odour of rust pervaded the air immediately. The bright blood contrasted sharply against his fair skin, and the strong visual impact made the onlookers avert their gazes involuntarily.
Mo Yi pressed his injured palm harshly against the crumbling wall, and the blood-thirsty sand instantly rushed towards his palm, leaving a huge conspicuous void behind.
By now, the sand in the room had reached the height of their waist, and it was still steadily rising.
Everyone’s eyes lit up instantly, just like a cornered person who suddenly saw a rope stretching down in front of them.
They grabbed the kitchen knife in Mo Yi’s hand and slashed at their own palms too, hastily pressing their injured hands to the two sides of the wall. More and more sand was lured away by the scent of blood, creating a large hole in the wall at once.
In the face of renewed hope, everyone’s gloomy eyes finally brightened up.
They didn’t dare to dawdle, and crawled through the big hole in the wall one by one with the fastest speed they could muster.
Mo Yi withdrew his palm which had been pressing against the wall. His pale face had become nearly transparent from blood loss. Pressing his lips together into a thin line, he then followed suit and pushed his thin body through the hole without exerting too much effort.
And the very moment he left, the house behind him crumbled all at once and collapsed with a bang.
A cloud of sand particles rose up into the air.
All that was left behind was dark red barren soil. Even the crumbling porch had collapsed along with the house. Everything was turned into grey sand, which settled into a mix with the dark red soil.
Everyone stood panting in the open space in front of the house, their bodies covered in sand and specks of blood, looking every bit as battered and exhausted as they felt.
Mo Yi grabbed a roll of bandages from his backpack and wrapped it sloppily around the wound on his palm.
Excessive blood loss had caused his lips to lose their colour. On his almost transparent face, his eyes now seemed even deeper and darker, and the frightening light in them was too intimidating.
Mo Yi frowned at the scattered sand.
There were several walls which have yet to crumble. They remained standing firmly in the centre of this area, seemingly scattered and irregular, but there had to be a pattern to it.
Mo Yi moved his feet and tried to examine the structures from a different angle.
Then, he inevitably froze up for a split second.
Among the dark red soil, there was a piece of land which was particularly eye-catching. The soil atop it was a pure bright red, as though it were soaked in fresh blood, and in the middle of that piece of blood-coloured soil were two small, simple stone monuments.
Mo Yi was shocked—those must be Erica and John’s tombstones.
He took two steps back involuntarily, his breath hitching. He stared at the wall before him which had yet to collapse, then whirled his head around to look behind as well.
A vague suspicion formed in his heart.
Those withered trees, that crooked path, the twisted and uneven walls, all of those now slowly aligned into a complete image in his mind.
It was all essentially a replica of what he had seen inside the tomb, that deformed inverted pentagram and the goat skull—it was an enlarged replica which had been replicated onto this entire piece of land!
And that blood-red soil was the centre of this whole pattern!
Right at this moment, a soft and fuzzy nursery rhyme filtered through the air. The innocent and melodic child’s voice was beautiful and euphonious, as if it was singing the sweetest tune in the world.
Yet now, that same voice could only cause shuddering fear in the deepest recesses of the listeners’ hearts.
I feel like fool, because I can’t imagine this picture in my mind to understand the map
Thank you for your translation 💚💚💚💚
I’ll search if the author made a drawing! It was a little confusing in the raws too, but my understanding was that all the remaining walls, trees, paths, formed an array (a bit like those transmutation circles in Fullmetal Alchemist lol) when seen from bird’s-eye view.
Thank you so much for your concern for me!
That’s how I visualized it too!
In my idle “what to do if buried alive” thoughts (just stomp on the dirt as it comes down, don’t wait motionlessly to be buried by it) I never considered dry quicksand. Most sand alone would be fine! But a supernatural instance can clearly insist on the sand’s staying loose enough to swallow people if it wants ahh
Thank you so much for translating! <3