Before answering Lu Ban's question, Hongye realized something more important.

"It's getting foggy."

A faint mist wafted from the corpses.

This mist looked no different from mountain haze, but Lu Ban's intuition told him that it was very dangerous.

After all, it is very suspicious why the bodies of these people who died a month ago are still intact.

According to his meager knowledge of biology, after a person dies, the microorganisms in the body should begin to decompose the corpse. A corpse left in the wild, in such a humid environment for a month, would no longer resemble a human being if it had not been embalmed.

But the bodies were intact.

Lu Ban could only think that the microorganisms in these corpses and in the air were all dead.

So, is there anything that can do this?

The fog began to dissipate and drifted towards Lu Ban and Hongye with the wind.

"It's time to run."

Lu Ban immediately grabbed Hongye's wrist and dragged her out.

However, outside the shrine, thick fog seemed to be surrounding them as well.

"Try not to breathe in this mist, cough cough."

Hongye coughed and covered her mouth with her sleeve.

She and Lu Ban looked at each other, and seeing that the pure white mist was about to cover the road down the mountain, they rushed directly towards it.

Lu Ban also scooped the bottle into the mist and quickly put the cap back on.

The two entered the fog.

Different from normal fog, this fog does not appear moist. When it hits the face, it feels like a sandstorm with obvious granularity.

Even though he covered his mouth and nose, Lu Ban still inhaled a little mist. Suddenly, he felt a burning sensation in his throat and lungs. The tiny particles in the air combined with the alveoli, blocking the oxygen absorption channels. Instead, the mist flowed into the blood, giving rise to more qualitative changes.

Lu Ban's eyes were red, as if blood was about to flow out. He glanced at Hongye beside him. The eyes of this witch were also red, and the whites of her eyes were full of bloodshot. However, a faint light was emanating from Hongye's body, which seemed to form a barrier to block the invasion of fog.

"Is this the 'ritual'?"

The supernatural system of this world seems to be a ritual centered on the prayers of the shrine maidens, barriers and the like. Lu Ban and Hongye rushed out of the fog and returned to the mountain trail full of torii gates in a rather embarrassed manner.

The fog was still swirling around the top of the mountain like a wild beast. Lu Ban even saw the rise and fall of the fog like its breathing. However, most of the fog quickly gathered and soon disappeared.

The faint light on Hongye's body disappeared. She coughed for a while and spat out a few mouthfuls of dark blood. When she turned around, she saw Lu Ban lying on the ground.

"Cough, cough, cough, cough..."

Lu Ban kept coughing, and the sound seemed to tear his throat. The long and violent coughing was enough to cause the muscles in his back to cramp. He curled up into a ball. When Hongye approached, she saw that black blood was flowing from Lu Ban's eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.

"Erosion... the erosion of filth..."

Hongye didn't expect that the Wajima Shrine here had completely fallen, and even the priestess in charge had been killed. This meant that the shrine's practice on Utajima was completely paralyzed. Facing the influence of the filth on the sea, ordinary people on the island would have no power to resist.

No, perhaps she should have thought that when she saw the monster of flesh and blood rushing onto the street, Hongye should have understood that the island had undergone changes beyond imagination. It was just that the community officials who were responsible for the investigation at the beginning made her relax her vigilance. After all, as a shrine maiden of the Hedao Shrine, Hongye knew clearly how difficult it was to control a shrine on an island.

She could never have imagined, even in her dreams, that the Wajima Shrine, which she was so proud of, would be so vulnerable in the face of a mighty force whose true identity was still unknown.

But now is not the time to worry about faith. Hongye stretched out her hand and was about to use the purification technique to treat Lu Ban, when she saw that the man's cough turned into vomiting. He bent over and vomited a ball of dirty black stuff.

The thing was as big as a palm and so shocking that it made Hongye's eyelids jump.

If it erodes to this extent, I'm afraid Lu Ban's life will also...

When she took a closer look and tried to identify what internal organ it was, she found that the dirty thing was a bunch of grass.

Just like the grass ball that a cow eats and then regurgitates, that sticky and disgusting thing is really a ball of grass.

Lu Ban vomited out the second ball, and the third ball, until he vomited out the tenth ball. After coughing and vomiting, the violent shaking of his body subsided a little.

Hongye saw that Lu Ban's arms were pierced by thorns, and his body was covered with ivy-like plants. There were several branches in his mouth hanging at the corners like saliva.

"…Why are you retreating?"

Lu Ban asked when he saw that the witch suddenly took several steps back and became alert.

"Are you okay?"

Hongye asked in a deep voice, staring at Lu Ban with a little vigilance.

This appearance has far exceeded the level of erosion, and is no different from those humanoid monsters that have been severely polluted and mutated... If it goes further down, I'm afraid it will become real filth.

Hongye has seen her parents, the villagers she knew, and her familiar friends turned into monsters due to the pollution and erosion of the filth, and begged her to kill them in agony. After becoming a witch, she has also seen those people who originally had their own lives, their own dreams, and lived ordinary lives turned into irrational monsters because of the inadvertent passing of natural disasters.

Seeing Lu Ban's appearance at this moment, Hongye's heart was agitated, but it was immediately suppressed.

"No problem, it's a pity there's no sun right now, otherwise it would heal faster."

As Lu Ban spoke, he pulled the branches out of his mouth one by one. The branches were very long, and looked like fluid flowing back from his intestines, mixed with gastric juice and black blood.

"Don't worry, I'm just an ordinary person. These are my friends who help me digest food. You know, just like chickens eat rocks to help them grind their feed, and turtles eat rocks to help digestion. It's something like that."

He explained seriously.

"…You call this an ordinary person?"

Hongye glanced at the branches on the ground that were still trembling and crawling like worms.

"By the way...are you okay?"

Lu Ban remembered something and looked to the side again.

This made Hongye take another half step back, because there was no one beside Lu Ban!

"Who are you talking to?"

Hongye asked immediately.

"My air friend. Doesn't everyone have an air friend?"

Lu Ban asked back.

"…Who told you that?"

Cold sweat broke out on Hongye's forehead. She carefully considered her words and looked at the void around Lu Ban. With the power of the witch, she concentrated her mind and was able to see the empty thing.

It was the outline of a person, standing next to Lu Ban. He was not interested in the existence of the witch and just stood there.

"Air friends... In Hedao, they are a kind of filth that exists in strange stories. They usually come from one of the twins who died young, or the obsession left after the death of a close friend. Its existence itself is a kind of pollution!!!"

Hongye saw that the silhouette beside Lu Ban suddenly changed.

It seemed to turn its head and look at Hongye, then it grinned.

The mouth split from the shoulder, across the chest and abdomen, and ended at the other shoulder.

It noticed the red leaves!