Chapter 568, Contaminated Zone 4 (Part 9)
Just a few hundred meters from the bamboo forest, a winding path leads to the eaves of the earthen house.
Xie Tu, who was at the very front, suddenly stopped.
Yun Zhao stopped and looked towards the courtyard.
They had already bypassed the walls of the house, and with their view unobstructed, they could clearly see the scene in front of the door.
The earthen house has no walls and is a typical rural Chinese building, facing south.
In the very center is a main hall, with a side room on each side. Faded Spring Festival couplets are pasted on the lintels, and the words "peace" can be vaguely discerned on the tattered red paper.
At this moment, the wooden door of the main room was wide open.
A figure sat quietly on the threshold.
The young man, in his early twenties, wore a faded plaid shirt and jeans, looking like an ordinary college student.
His face was so pale it was almost transparent. He was looking down at the courtyard with a strange gaze. The shadows under his cheekbones made his face look particularly gaunt.
I followed his gaze.
In the courtyard, Fire Phoenix stood on a dilapidated bamboo stool, staring at "him" with her feathers standing on end.
"It can see the fire phoenix?" Xia Mingang asked curiously.
In the quiet night, the sudden sound of voices seemed particularly abrupt.
The person sitting under the eaves heard the noise and slowly raised their head.
His eyes were pitch black, without any reflection, like two rounded black pebbles embedded in their sockets, staring straight at him.
Xia Mingang cursed under his breath, his finger silently pulling the trigger.
No wonder he reacted so strongly.
After nightfall, the villagers returned to normal, but the so-called village chief seemed eerie in every way.
It should be noted that, apart from the gatekeepers, only the sentries and guides can see the spirit entities.
Xia Mingang was convinced that the village chief was problematic and was highly suspected of being the gatekeeper.
He wasn't the only one who thought this way.
Fu Yu and Jiang Mu moved half a step without making a sound, their muscles already tense, ready to attack at any moment.
The group stared at each other in silence.
Yun Zhao noticed that the young village chief's strange gaze was fixed on the iron box in his arms.
"You recognize this?" Yun Zhao picked up the box and waved it in front of him.
The dark figure sitting on the threshold reacted, its black eyes following the rotation of the box, and then it slowly stood up.
Its movements were so light that its footsteps were almost inaudible, as if it had no weight at all.
The moonlight shone on him, but the shadow he cast was fainter than that of an ordinary person, with blurred edges, as if it might disappear into the night at any moment.
It opened its mouth.
"Old Li's son is back. He's on that mountain. You can take him home."
The answer was irrelevant.
Xie Tu's eyes flickered slightly, but he slowly sheathed his knife at that moment. "Old Li? That old man?"
They decided that the old man who would be staying with them that night was surnamed Li.
"yes."
The young village chief's voice was hoarse, as if he hadn't spoken in a long time, and he turned his head stiffly, "You didn't come here to see him?"
Jiang Mu raised an eyebrow, loosened his grip on the knife, and casually asked, "Which mountain?"
"have no idea."
The village chief stared intently at the iron box, a slight upturn at the corners of his mouth. His entire face was stiff like a wax figure, which was very eerie.
Yun Zhao frowned and raised the iron box in his hand again: "You recognize the things in your cellar, right?"
There's only one family living nearby, so the cellar must belong to them.
"I don't know him."
The young village chief shook his head. "Go quickly, find him, and take him home..."
As it spoke, it hunched over like an old man, crossed the threshold, and disappeared from the five people's sight.
The dilapidated wooden door had been neglected for years, and a dim, yellowish light shone through the cracks. The light was very weak, flickering every now and then, like an old-fashioned light bulb with unstable voltage.
The people outside exchanged glances, pondering the meaning of this conversation.
"Should we rush in and take it down?"
Fu Heng said it casually, "Better to kill the innocent than let the guilty go free. The village chief is definitely suspicious."
If he's the goalkeeper, it's good to take him out.
If not, since it has been living in the gatekeeper's domain in the form of a monster, controlled and unable to escape, it might as well help it break free.
Xia Mingang: "..." With a cute girl face, she's always fighting and killing.
"I don't think it's the gatekeeper."
It was Jiang Mu who said this, and he said slowly and deliberately: "Everyone has seen the old man's son's photo. His face has been shaved off, obviously because he doesn't want people to see what he looks like."
Fu Heng pondered the connection and after a long while said, "Even if it's not, we still need to deal with the village chief."
"If it can see the fire phoenix, then it must be either the gatekeeper or the mutated sentinel. We cannot allow the danger to flow outside."
"There's no rush yet."
Yun Zhao held the box, staring at the dim light shining through the crack in the door, completely puzzled. "I'm more curious about why they're interested in what's inside the metal box?"
The crystal is the key to opening the sealed compartment; no one else can open it except for her and Yun Jue.
And the badge...
Are they looking at badges?
But as the young village chief just said, it doesn't recognize it.
I don't recognize you... so why are you staring at me like that?
When Yun Jue landed here, did the contaminated area form?
If it forms, and he lands directly in the contaminated area, will the mutants in the village recognize him or have any clues about him?
Everyone was also thinking about this issue.
"What do we do now?"
Xia Mingang couldn't stand the atmosphere and asked for their opinion, "Are we really going to go up the mountain to help the old man find his son?"
Yun Zhao snapped out of his daze and looked at the others.
The fire phoenix had already flapped its wings and returned, landing on its own shoulder and chirping away.
After hearing its words, Xie Tu turned around and slowly said, "Go, the old man's son is very likely the gatekeeper."
Fu Heng squinted slightly. "It just said something like, 'Aren't you looking for him?'"
Clearly, the young village chief knew very well that the 5S team was looking for a gatekeeper.
Xie Tu nodded: "It's giving us clues."
"What if it's a trap?"
Xia Mingang felt it was a bit risky.
This place is surrounded by mountains, which are densely packed with mutant species. Even if they are S-class, they may not be able to escape unscathed after entering.
After all, people get hurt and get tired; they can't compare to tireless monsters.
"It should be true."
Jiang Mu looked at the bamboo forest behind him and said, "Now that I think about it, the arrival of that S-class mutant was too coincidental."
"The goalkeeper is deliberately testing our strength."
The young village chief seemed to be reminding them.
It's a pity I forgot to ask Wei Xu how he broke into the bamboo forest and found the cellar, and whether it was also related to the village chief.
Did it deliberately let outsiders discover what was in the cellar?
"There's something that doesn't make sense."
Fu Heng asked, "Why isn't the village chief under the control of the gatekeeper?"
The villagers were immersed in their own world, forgetting the disaster and everything that had happened in the dark apocalypse, living a life of working at sunrise and resting at sunset.
Unfortunately, the village chief has an extremely high level of self-awareness.
If the speculation comes true, it may even be deliberately guiding outsiders to discover the truth.
"There's a phenomenon called habitual obedience," Xie Tu said, stopping short of commenting.
Everyone present was intelligent, and Fu Yu instantly understood the reason.
Just like a tiger tamed from a young age, even if it has the power to tear its owner apart when it grows up, it dares not resist because of the conditioned reflexes formed over a long period of time.
The village chief and the gatekeeper may also be in a similar state of contradiction.
The gatekeeper's control over the villagers is profound, much like a tamer's long-term domestication of wild animals.
The village chief retained some self-awareness, but the gatekeeper's subconscious was still instilled with an inertia of "insurmountable" thinking, so the gatekeeper did not suppress it at all times.
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