Chapter 613: Chapter 17: Eerie

The eerie nursery rhyme was like a cold, venomous snake coiling around Lynch’s nerves. The crisp and sharp child’s voice sang “knocking bones,” “burning souls,” “clay in the furnace,” each word like a small hammer striking the depths of the soul, resonating disturbingly with the silent, gray space around.

The hollow-eyed gaze of two children swept over Lynch and Kong, yet seemed to penetrate them, as they ran straight past, disappearing at the mouth of another alley, leaving only the chilling song echoing in the silence.

“This place… is extremely unsettling.” Lynch murmured, his brows tightly furrowed, as the glow of the Absolute Barrier instinctively solidified further. The intuition brought by the Eye of Death God warned him intensely, alerting him to dangers far beyond his expectations lurking here.

Kong’s silver-gray eyes watched the direction where the children disappeared, her voice ethereal yet slightly probing: “The song is a real soul wave, carrying intense pain and… prophecy? Pointing to the core.”

“Let’s go in and take a look, find someone to ask.” Lynch suppressed the chill in his heart, deciding to make proactive contact. The two remained highly vigilant, stepping onto the only dirt road in the town.

An illusion of bustle greeted them. Farmers carrying rusty, blunt hoes walked past them with completely identical strides and rhythm, their empty eyes staring straight ahead, ignoring the two out-of-place outsiders.

Women with empty baskets, lips moving at a fixed frequency, had rigid, frozen “smiles” on their faces, “talking” to neighbors with equally frozen expressions. Men gathered at the doorway of the blacksmith shop raised and lowered their arms with flawless precision, pointing to the same gray void inside the shop.

Lynch attempted to stop the farmer carrying a hoe.

“Excuse me, what place is this?” He tried to make his voice sound calm.

The farmer stopped, moving like a rusty machine. He slowly turned his head, his gray-white face showing no change in expression, lips mechanistically opening and closing: “Gri Town.”

The voice was flat, without fluctuation, like a poor-quality recording.

“Gri Town? Belongs to which Kingdom? Who is the Lord?” Lynch pressed further.

“Gri Town,” the farmer repeated, his gaze still empty, as if he could only utter this one sound.

“How to get to the nearest town?”

“Gri Town,” the farmer answered for the third time, then ignored Lynch and resumed the precise steps along the predetermined route, continuing to the end of the street, disappearing instantly, then reappearing at the starting point, beginning a new cycle.

Lynch and Kong exchanged a glance, seeing the gravity in each other’s eyes. They tried asking the “smiling” woman and a man beside the blacksmith’s shop, but the result was exactly the same.

“Gri Town.”

“Gri Town.”

“Gri Town…”

No matter what they asked, the only, flat, informationless response they received was this. Their actions, expressions, and reactions were like preset programs, firmly locked into the role of “Gri Town residents,” responding to external stimuli with only the most basic, mechanical “Gri Town.” This update ıs available on NoveI~Fire.net

“Gri Town…” Lynch mouthed the name softly, his brow furrowing tighter: “This name… Have I seen it somewhere before? Historical records? Or a record from some ruins?”

He quickly searched his memory. As someone who survived the Beast Tide era and established a large adventurer guild, he had encountered an enormous amount of information.

But “Gri Town” was just too ordinary a name, like a grain of sand in a sea of sand, hard to pinpoint for the moment.

“The soul imprint is too deep,” Kong spoke faintly, her fingertips pointing at a passing “resident.”

“Their existence remains with only this ’name’ and fixed ’behavior.’ Memories, emotions, self-awareness… all have been completely obliterated, serving as ’fuel’ to maintain this domain. Asking questions is meaningless.”

“Looks like we’ll have to find it ourselves,” Lynch gave up on communicating with the townspeople. Unbeknownst to them, the sky “turned darker,” and the sense of being watched and cold hunger emanating from the core of the domain seemed to intensify. The warnings from the Eye of Death God continued stabbing at his nerves like needles.

“Let’s find a place to stay first,” Lynch suggested. Kong had no objections.

The town was small, and they quickly found a building with a crooked wooden sign, etched with a blurry image of a wine glass – an inn. Pushing open the creaky wooden door, a mix of dust and aged mildew smell greeted them. The hall was empty, with a few dust-covered wooden tables set around.

A similarly gray-clad, hunched “innkeeper” “walked” out from behind the counter. His movements were slower and stiffer than the farmer outside, like a puppet on strings. He walked up to Lynch, raised his gray-white face, and his lips quivered: “Stay… inn?”

The voice was dry, sounding even more sluggish than the farmer’s.

“Yes, two rooms,” Lynch said.

“Gri Town…” the innkeeper replied flatly, then slowly turned, with an inhuman sluggishness, leading them up the creaking staircase. He stopped in front of two adjacent room doors, pointed at them, and then stood still as if his power source had been cut off, no longer moving.

Lynch pushed open one of the doors. The room was small and simple, with only a hard board bed and a broken wooden table. The window was thick with dust, letting in little light. The air was stuffy and cold.

“Be careful,” Kong’s voice came from the next room; she had already entered the other room.

Lynch nodded, then closed the door.

He moved to the center of the room, closed his eyes, and tried to expand his Space Domain outward to explore the structure and energy flow of the entire town. Silver light emanated from him, spreading outwards like ripples.

However, at that moment, a sudden change occurred!

As the domain power attempted to extend beyond the room walls, an unimaginably strong sense of stickiness and suppression descended abruptly!

Space felt like it had turned into solidified, heavy mercury, making the expansion of the domain extremely slow, with every inch of extension multiplying the consumption of spiritual power! Eventually, the silver domain light was tightly suppressed within less than a three-meter radius, forming a small circle barely covering Lynch.

“The domain is suppressed?” Lynch suddenly opened his eyes, his brows furrowing tightly.

“Or rather…”

“Does the domain not work here?”

When he had just expanded the domain, he distinctly felt as if his domain was trapped in a quagmire, completely immobilized.

“What is going on?”

Lynch frowned, studying it carefully.

Time passed bit by bit.

Outside the window, the last weak ray of light also disappeared. The town sank into a depth of darkness deeper than the day. Absolute silence descended again, but this time, silence brewed a storm.

“Dong! Dong! Dong!”

Suddenly, the sound of a clock tolled, low and muffled.

Accompanying this clock sound, an indescribable sensation suddenly assaulted from all directions.

This was upon the soul, icy and piercing, harboring endless resentment and hunger.

Lynch’s pair of Eye of Death God immediately started throbbing intensely.

Everything seemed to be a harbinger,

Something was about to happen.

Sure enough!

“Bang!!!”

At that moment, Lynch’s not so sturdy wooden door was violently shattered from outside by a forceful impact! Wood chips flew everywhere!

At the doorway stood exactly the innkeeper who had led them earlier!

But his current appearance was enough to make any sane person scream in terror!

His hunched body had expanded, his skin turned a bluish-purple, covered in cracked lines, from which viscous black gas seeped out.

His hollow eyes now burned with two ghostly green soul fires, filled with pure, mad malice and pain.

His mouth tore open, revealing fangs, emitting a silent but soul-piercing shriek! His withered hands’ nails grew violently, transforming into pitch-black claws, tearing through the air with a whistle, aiming fiercely at Lynch’s head!

Dead Spirit! And a powerful Dead Spirit full of malice, driven by the core will of this place!

This Dead Spirit turned its blood-red eyes, quickly locking its gaze on Lynch, its mouth opened wide, letting out a hysterical roar

“Roar!”

Then it fiercely lunged directly at Lynch!

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