CHAPTER 980: CHAPTER 173: XENOPHOBIC LOCALS

The air was infused with a fishy smell even stronger than seawater.

All around the outskirts of the town were collapsed outer walls and dilapidated ancient houses, uninhabited. There were no traces of residents, as if the figures gazing from the sea had all hidden away.

Ophelia suddenly stopped, a dark red glow emanating from the cracks in her body.

"Something... is warning... me."

As a vengeful spirit, Ophelia was repelled outside the town, while Lu Li, being human, was unaffected.

"You wait here."

"No..."

"I’ll need your support once I’m out."

Lu Li checked the items he carried. The Spirit-Calling Gun and silver-plated bullets, a canteen and canned food, an oil lamp and fluorite, some shillings and a few pieces of strange currency, pills, and a monocular telescope were all with him.

"Wait... wait."

Ophelia rasped softly.

"I... have something... to tell... you, about... Anna."

"What."

"She’s... still alive, right by... your side."

Lu Li’s dark gaze was steady on Ophelia, her flat, charred face without features giving away no expression.

It was something Lu Li had considered, that Anna had sacrificed herself to save him.

For instance, why Lu Li returned after a long twenty-four years, the cryptic "you will die after seeing the wound" from Friday, or when Socrates said "she’s right beside you, never left you."

But like other possibilities, there was no evidence.

"I can... feel her... feel... the hostility towards me, feel... the burning... love."

"Why tell me now," Lu Li asked.

He thought of the frequent visions of Anna emerging after his low Sanity Value.

"I... cannot see... the desire to live on... in your eyes, I don’t want... you to die... inside."

The hoarse voice, like a chill wind in a cave, seemed to carry her sincerity.

"Trust me..."

Lu Li said nothing, just gave her a slight nod, and turned to step into the gloomy town shrouded by dark clouds.

As he entered the intact parts of the town, Lu Li saw the local residents.

They were indeed human, but with notably abnormal features, such as the lack of hair, gill-like folds on the skin beside their necks, and bulging, seemingly never-blinking eyes like those of a fish.

These features appeared to become more pronounced with age. Children and young people had almost none, while middle-aged folks had more or less some.

Interestingly, the town was all children, young, and middle-aged people, with no elderly present.

Lu Li’s appearance made the townspeople whisper among themselves, filled with wariness and hostility towards the outsider, as if they were the strange ones.

Yet, in some way, they were rather amicable—after all, this was the Lord of the Deep’s domain, and a welcoming sacrificial ritual seemed more logical.

This wariness kept Lu Li from approaching the locals; even general stores and shops were unwilling to serve him. Yet there were no suspected heretics or monster minions causing trouble.

After crossing a spacious circular plaza, they saw a massive pillar church standing at the street corner.

The church’s wall paint had long peeled away, and on the faded, weatherworn pediment was written the church’s name: Daqi Esotericism.

Could this be the Lord of the Deep?

Lu Li indeed sensed a nightmare-like aura from the depths of the sea emanating from the church’s depths, but the townsfolk were indifferent to the church’s decrepit state, as if they didn’t worship the deity represented by the church.

One could faintly glimpse a dark, heavy nightmare-like outline. Lu Li did not linger or stare, passing by like a tourist.

After traversing several more streets, Lu Li found a clearly non-local inn: Home of the Vayaan People.

The Vayaan People were once native inhabitants of the Ailen Peninsula, and those local-run shops had no signs.

As he pushed open the inn door, the silhouette behind the counter confirmed Lu Li’s guess.

It was an old man, without the abhorrent features of the locals. He was surprised by Lu Li’s identity as an outsider, yet allowed him to stay.

Because they had not had guests in a long while, the first floor of the inn was cluttered with daily sundries, and the old man placed Lu Li in a second-floor bedroom.

In front of the window was a pot of lush fern, facing a bay in the distance with surging waves, and the light smoke from factory chimneys blending into the clouds.

With the door closed, and after the sound of the old man descending the stairs faded, Lu Li shifted his gaze from the pot of ink-green broad-leafed ferns on the windowsill and took out a monocular.

Creak—

The single bed beside him seemed to sag, and a girl’s voice questioned in bewilderment.

"Why come to such a desolate, decayed place?"

Lu Li’s action of drawing out the monocular paused.

"Do you like her or something?"

Sitting on the bed, swinging her legs, the girl continued to ask.

Lu Li pointed the extended monocular towards the bay.

Around the rugged, decrepit factories, figures moved, their skin or clothing akin to sludge mixed with seaweed juice.

At the edge of the port was a plaza laid with wooden planks, standing indiscernible, seemingly either a stone sculpture or merely the silhouette of a column.

As Lu Li stared at the plaza too long, the distant sound of the waves suddenly roared near, water stains appeared like a mist on the houses, with a stench of black filth as if from seabed sludge soaking through the ceiling, wetting his hair, seeping into his skin...

"You didn’t speak, so I guess you agreed..."

The lost whisper by the ear brought Lu Li back to his senses, moving the monocular away.

He had almost fallen into the alluring, twisted frenzy of the cult... but was saved by the delirium.

"I just unwittingly communicated with the hallucinations."

Lu Li no longer used the monocular to spy on the harbor.

It clearly related to Katerina’s whereabouts, but getting close required finding a way to counteract the contamination.

Lu Li reached a hand to touch his still cold scalp, touching a piece of cold, slimy, scale-like object exuding a fishy smell.

It grew with the scalp, as if it were a part of the skin.

Lu Li reached out to take some pills, tipping a few flattened yellow-brown pills into his mouth to swallow.

This was medicine developed by Laina Medicine to suppress delirium caused by low sanity.

The pills quickly took effect, and Anna’s illusion on the bed disappeared.

Lu Li reached out to touch his hair; the scale was still there beneath the black hair.

Not an illusion, not delirium; the scale was an aberration akin to that of Puxiu.

Thump—Thump—Thump.

Outside the room, slow footsteps could be heard ascending the wooden stairs, and soon there was a knock at the door.

Lu Li put away the medicine bottle, smoothing over his parted black hair, and opened the door.

The friendly old man had brought crispbread and fish soup.

"I come from the outside and want to know something about this place."

Accepting the food he didn’t intend to eat, Lu Li spoke.

The old man’s face, full of wrinkles and furrows yet starkly different from the locals, lost its smile.

"Do not inquire about the town’s secrets, do not engage with the locals, do not approach the coast."

He clearly knew something.

"Why."

Before the old man could continue, from the living room beneath the floorboards came a slow, creeping knocking sound.