CHAPTER 330: CHAPTER 9: ROUTE 4218

Sun Hang suddenly remembered something. He hurried outside and examined the bodies of the "town people" on the street one by one.

Sure enough, each person had similar "holes"—either somewhere in the esophagus or directly opened in the stomach...

For these "town people," the food they ate would leak out from these holes... No matter how much they ate, they couldn’t alleviate their physical hunger...

But then why did these eerie beings, including the storekeeper, get into fights over food? That middle-aged woman even risked offending the storekeeper, who could easily kill her, just to snatch that bait block.

Sun Hang couldn’t help but think of a satirical poem he saw online: "What’s the sorrow like, dear friend? It’s like a group of eunuchs visiting a brothel."

For them, food was like the women in the arms of the eunuchs—they could look, they could touch, but nothing substantial could happen.

Ever since entering this small town, Sun Hang felt that these "people" were quite abnormal.

They had an almost fanatical obsession with "food," physically embodying what it means to "die for food"—literally "dying for food."

Yet, they couldn’t digest the food, which made their frantic behavior seem meaningless. From Sun Hang’s onlooker’s perspective, it was both laughable and tragic.

"That old woman... she probably isn’t one of the town people from Maoyun Town, is she?" Sun Hang mused.

She was extremely generous... She gave away precious food so easily, the fifty cents she slipped to Sun Hang was a significant sum...

If the old woman lived in Maoyun Town, she’d definitely be a local tycoon, wouldn’t she?

Sun Hang looked up and scanned his surroundings. He noticed that all the previously open shops had now closed, and many of the originally lit windows on both sides of the street had dimmed... However, the brightness on the street didn’t decrease; instead, it became even brighter.

At some unknown time, a bright round moon hung in the sky.

The moon was very large, giving the impression it was very close, as if one could reach out and touch it.

"The moon?" Sun Hang frowned, "Is there a moon during the eternal night?"

He took out a mirror.

The streets reflected in the mirror were equally bright, but unlike what Sun Hang saw with his naked eyes, the entire street was enveloped in an eerie red glow.

Sun Hang adjusted the angle of the mirror, aiming it at the moon in the sky.

The round moon was blood-red, exuding an uncanny and ominous aura.

"Oh, it’s a blood moon, then it’s not surprising." Sun Hang closed the mirror.

Today happened to be the sixteenth, the day of the month when the moon is the fullest.

In the regions covered by eternal night, whenever it’s a full moon night, the blood moon will inevitably appear—currently in Shuzhou, as soon as the middle of the month arrives, the Investigation Bureau and Public Security Bureau become tense... During this period, a strict curfew is enforced, and even government officials, when not on duty, are forbidden to go out on their own.

The aim is to prevent the punctual appearance of the blood moon every full moon night.

"I wonder if Mr. Wang will still be affected by the blood moon..." Sun Hang murmured softly and returned to the house.

He used the mirror to examine the ragged items the "storekeeper" was selling one by one. These things looked almost the same as they did to the naked eye, the only difference was that they were all more or less stained with some dried blood.

As for the broken rattle drum that once appeared in the young girl’s hand, it was entirely dyed red with blood, as if it had been soaked in a blood pool... Sun Hang was uncertain whether these blood stains were originally there or if they came from the "deceased" "storekeeper."

Like the town people outside on the street, the storekeeper’s body also started to rapidly decompose and break down—this matched Sun Hang’s basic understanding of eerie beings: most of them quickly decompose after the mimetics within their bodies perish... Like large eerie beings such as Tai Sui, their remnants eventually degrade to just pieces not much bigger than an eggshell, a process that takes less than a week.

Song Yarong had told Sun Hang that the power supporting the physique of these eerie beings, defying physical laws, all came from mimetics. Once the mimetics vanished, these bodies that inherently shouldn’t exist in the world would naturally collapse quickly.

If these town people were all victims from the Surrendered Area back then, logically, their remains should have already turned into bones... It was under the influence of mimetics that they could survive in the form of flesh monsters, and now with the disappearance of mimetics, their fate was to turn to dust and soil.

Sun Hang searched the "storekeeper’s" house, the second floor was a living area, but neither the wardrobe nor the bed had been used for a long time, covered in a thick layer of dust. In the desk drawer, Sun Hang found some small-denomination coins, totaling only two or three dimes altogether.

Sun Hang pocketed these coins. Then, in the corner of the innermost side of the drawer, he found a notebook.

It’s a ledger, recording the purchases and sales of goods. Most of the ink had blurred, but from the few legible characters, it could be determined that the owner of this ledger seemed to have been in the timber business, and by the standards of that era, although not extremely wealthy, they were at least well-off.