Did you discover anything?

Liu Jingyu curled up her fingers.

In the room with its doors and windows tightly shut, she felt as if she could sense the chill of a wind blowing past her. The dim candlelight illuminated a small area, and in Liu Jingyu's peripheral vision, countless figures seemed to sway silently in the thick, unlit darkness.

She held the jade pendant and continued reading.

In the image, thousands of people silently approached the tower. They didn't kneel, but instead entered in an orderly manner. Inside, they walked in the darkness, ascending flight of stairs. When they reached an unknown floor, the stone door in front of them opened, revealing a faint blue candlelight, like a ghostly will-o'-the-wisp, quietly glowing deep within.

The space inside the gate was vast, seemingly without boundaries. Thousands of people marched through the gate like a protest, circling the space again and again.

Everyone's eyes were fixed on the altar in the center of the space. Their expressions showed neither sadness nor joy, yet they inexplicably made people feel an overwhelming and intense madness.

The vision recorded by the jade pendant was getting closer and closer to the altar. Liu Jingyu held his breath unconsciously, his eyes wide open, staring without blinking, as if he didn't want to miss any details.

The vision within the jade pendant shook. On the three-tiered circular altar built of gray-white stone bricks, a white figure lay quietly in the center of the altar amidst the trembling earth and sky.

In the glowing blue light——

Long black spikes pierced the figure's limbs, dark red blood clotted on the white patches, yet it remained as lifeless as a being, its furry, mountain cat-like face expressionless. A pitch-black spike was driven into the top of its skull, and its orange-yellow cat eyes, which took up a third of its face, remained open, unblinking. It lacked the instinct to struggle of any living being, like a grotesque specimen pieced together from various parts.

“!!!”

The eyelashes fluttered rapidly, Liu Jingyu was horrified, and her heart was raised with caution.

The scene in the jade pendant continued, and the view moved away from the altar. Everyone walked out of the door in unison. With a "bang", the stone door behind them closed.

In the darkness, everyone silently descended the stairs, exited the tower, and returned to the street under the pale moonlight. The street was crowded with people, and everyone was returning home. From time to time, someone would break away from the group and go home. In the jade pendant's field of vision, Liu Jingyu could be seen walking back to the inn by herself, and sitting down at a wooden table in the inn lobby...

Soon, one after another, fluttering sleeves of clothing fell beside the table, and the scene recorded by the jade pendant did not move again until dawn.

Liu Jingyu sat on the edge of the bed, her shoulders leaning against the wall, holding the jade pendant tightly in her hand. In the dim light, she lowered her eyes with an unclear expression for a long time, and it was unknown whether she was thinking about something or had already fallen asleep.

call--

The only warm yellow candlelight in the room went out at some point. In the darkness, Liu Jingyu's eyelashes trembled slightly. She raised her eyes, glanced at the darkness around her that was as thick as substance, and then lay down on the bed slowly.

“Wow—”

“Wow—wow—”

In the desolate mountain city, like a dead town, the full moon casts a pale light, and a strange blue color spreads throughout the city.

Sometimes far away, sometimes near, a sharp and eerie howl pierced the night sky, like a wild cat howling at the top of its lungs at night, or like a baby in the wilderness crying for help at the top of its lungs.

Liu Jingyu, who was lying on the bed, heard the cries, but her expression remained calm and she closed her eyes, ignoring them. Even as the wailing outside the window grew closer and piercing, Liu Jingyu, with her eyes closed, remained oblivious.

The bleak wind woke up this ancient and dilapidated mountain city. The sun and the moon alternated in the sky, and the faint sunlight sprinkled on the earth.

The girl in a pink dress was sitting on the bed, her exposed skin flushed red. She closed her eyes and couldn't open them. Her mouth was slightly open and she was breathing rapidly.

Liu Jingyu felt like she was drowning, or like she was being roasted in a furnace. She felt hot and cold, until she couldn't even tell the difference. She just felt chest tightness and shortness of breath, almost suffocating.

Her eyelids felt like they weighed a thousand pounds, and despite all her might, Liu Jingyu could only manage to open them a crack. Her mind was a hazy mess of sleep, as if she could fall into a deep sleep at any moment.

Liu Jingyu frowned, her jaw tightened, and she bit down hard on her tongue. Blood filled her mouth, and she took advantage of this brief moment of clarity to pull out a dagger and slash it across her left arm—!

“Cough… cough cough…”

Her body trembled, and she was like a drowning person who suddenly breathed in a lot of air. She coughed and breathed greedily in big gulps, tears oozing from the corners of her tightly closed eyes.

"call……"

Liu Jingyu raised her hand to wipe her eyes. When she opened them again, her pupils were as cold and piercing as a drawn sword. She supported herself on the bed, and dark red blood splashed out onto a branch of wintersweet. She stood up and quickly walked out of the room.

With a sweep of his long legs, he kicked open the wooden door of the next room. Liu Jingyu walked in quickly, pulled up the people on the bed and walked out of the inn.

As the faint sunlight fell on them, they shivered and suddenly opened their eyes to wake up.

"Are you all right?" Liu Jingyu saw that the others had stabilized themselves, so he withdrew his hand and asked, "Did you encounter anything unusual last night?"

The people in front thought for a moment and shook their heads.

Liu Jingyu breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed that her guess was correct. She raised her eyes and was about to say something, but suddenly fell silent.

In front of her eyes, two lines of scarlet blood flowed from the bottom of the noses of five people.

She gathered herself and was about to speak when she saw the people in front of her staring at her with wide eyes. Liu Jingyu understood what was going on and slowly wiped her nose with a handkerchief before saying calmly, "We can go to the city gate now."

"Yes!" Upon hearing this, several people could not hide their excitement.

Early morning on the fourth day after the city gates were closed.

By the time Liu Jingyu and the others had made their way through the bustling crowds and reached the western city gate, the sun in the sky had already begun to blaze brightly, its warm rays dispelling the chill. On the street, everywhere they looked was a golden glow.

When the group of six saw the closed city gate from afar, they also saw dozens of figures wandering at the city gate. They were talking, and after Liu Jingyu and others took only twenty or thirty steps forward, an argument broke out among them.

Liu Jingyu and the others had no idea what was happening to them. As they walked over, they heard someone cursing, "What a bunch of cowards! There's no one guarding the city gate, we can just push it open!! We're cultivators, what are we afraid of?! At worst, we can just climb over the wall and leave!!!"

As soon as he finished speaking, he ran towards the city gate angrily, and from a distance he stretched out his hand as if to push the gate.

None of the dozens of people gathered at the city gate tried to stop him, and no one even said a word of dissuade him. Everyone was watching quietly. They also wanted to know what would happen if they rashly approached the city gate, and each of them was waiting to see the consequences of this man's recklessness.

The man ran and cursed, rushing straight towards the vermilion city gate—

The verbal abuse suddenly stopped.

The people behind only saw the brown figure in front flying towards the city gate. When one hand touched the vermilion city gate, his whole body trembled for a while, and then his body fell down as if all his bones and muscles were pulled out in an instant.

The man fell to the ground in a twisted posture, his head facing the sky. Dark red blood silently flowed from his eyes, mouth, nose, and ears. His eyes rolled back and opened wide.

He actually died with his eyes open.

The crowd watching this scene fell into dead silence. After a long time, two or three people began to speak, and the depressing atmosphere eased a lot.

Everyone turned their backs to the corpse at the city gate and resumed their discussion while waiting for someone to arrive. However, this time, their tone was very calm, no longer impatient.

"In the end, he was stupid, stupid and reckless, and he thought others were as stupid as him. Relying on his title as a cultivator, he insisted on knocking on the city gate. Didn't he see that those who had higher cultivation than him didn't say anything? Now he is dead because of his own fault, and he can't blame others..." Almost at the same time, these words popped up in everyone's mind.

The more they thought about it, the more at ease they felt, and they no longer avoided the twisted corpse at the city gate.

What's more, seeing the brown-clothed corpse, some people couldn't help but think, "It's a good thing to bring a fool to explore the way. If it weren't for him doing this, no one would be willing to try to approach the city gate! Now that we know the consequences, we can be more careful."

"It seems that our only option is to kill the 'Bobcat'," someone said.

As soon as these words were spoken, everyone's different thoughts were interrupted and their attention was focused on that person.

Another person frowned and said, "But we don't know if we can leave here after killing the 'Bobcat'. Besides, the 'Bobcat' is not that easy to kill."

"Even if the condition for leaving is not to kill the 'Bobcat', it is definitely related to the 'Bobcat'." The person at the beginning was not angry when being questioned. She did not explain or refute, but just continued to follow his words.

The man frowned and stopped talking. His expression changed several times and no one knew what he was thinking.

"Then are we going into that tall tower?" someone asked.

Someone nearby responded, "Of course! I had this idea the moment I saw the tower at the celebration. There's clearly something wrong with that tower. We have to go find out!"

Liu Jingyu and a few others stood at the edge of the crowd, never saying a word. They listened and watched the strangers coming in from a distance.

The tower was indeed their only potential breakthrough point, but everyone hesitated. Finally, one person, seemingly impatient, spoke sternly, "It's the fourth day now. Everyone who's made it here must have noticed something's wrong with their bodies, right?! What are you still dithering about? Do you really think you can make it to the fifth day?! Waiting is death, so why not take the initiative and seek a chance of survival?"

She said impatiently, "I'm putting this out there. Those of you who are willing to go to the tower with me, come along. Those of you who just want to wait for death, just wait!"

Suddenly, the crowd became agitated. Someone glared at her fiercely and said, "If you want to kill me, go now! This is such a crucial matter, and you don't even have time to discuss it?!"

"Ha." The man sneered and replied bluntly, "What can you possibly come up with? You're hesitant about whether to go or not, and you can't make a decision for a long time. At this rate, when will you be able to figure out how to enter the tower and find the 'Mountain Cat'? I'm afraid you wouldn't be able to figure it out even if I gave you ten days or a month!"

"you--!"

"Hey, hey, hey, alright, alright." Another person stepped in to smooth things over, raising a hand to appease both sides. "Now's not the time to argue about this. Let's quickly discuss how to infiltrate the tower! It's already this late, we all have to go. Everyone's just a little worried. Let's quickly make a plan and minimize the risks."

After he said that, both sides sneered, rolled their eyes and said nothing more.

Just as everyone started talking about how to enter the tower, someone suddenly asked, "Did you discover anything?"