Great! I'm surrounded by villains!-Chapter 435 - 354: The Revival of the Dead

Duan Mingyuan felt that Jiuyue suddenly seemed a lot more professional, and she articulated many theories in an orderly fashion, coupled with her confident demeanor, she unusually inspired a feeling of trust in him.

The two of them followed the trail of memories, stopping beneath the abandoned construction site’s building.

The journey from the high school entrance to this place was just the appetizer; what lay ahead was the essential "battlefield".

When Duan Mingyuan realized that changes to his subconscious could affect history, he stopped exploring his "deep memories". The farthest he had gone in this particular memory had been up to this point.

This meant that even he himself didn’t know what might happen inside this abandoned construction site.

However, in his "shallow memories", after crossing the Barrier, the scenes inside were shocking to the eye.

He saw his high school self opening a notebook once again. The last piece of news showed that the last person to explore this place was a blogger from a niche supernatural website. The blogger had announced to his few followers that he would explore this legendary spot after midnight, only to never be heard from again.

The two surveyed the periphery of the construction site. The black car that had blended into the night had vanished without a trace, and it seemed that there was no sign of the Royal Hunting Court’s Hunters.

As they ascended the vaguely familiar stairs, the iron handrail, already mottled with rust, had become a sinister rust-brown color, reminiscent of blood at a glance.

The reasons for the construction site’s abandonment varied widely online.

Most people believed it was because the property investors suddenly pulled out and vanished, leaving behind an unfinished building. A small number of "informed sources" revealed that ever since construction began, bizarre incidents kept happening, which caused panic among the workers. The disappearance that happened one night became the final straw that broke the camel’s back, causing the workers to abandon the place and flee.

Jiuyue, on the other hand, thought that Blue Star, known as the land of evil spirits, was never short of such legends. She observed very carefully along the way, much more earnestly than Duan Mingyuan had on his first exploration here.

This staircase was famous on the supernatural websites. Some called it the staircase to death, believing that the rust-red substance on the handrails wasn’t rust but dried blood, which coincidentally emitted a somewhat similar odor.

Just as the urban legend described, after reaching the third floor, the scenery in the stairwell changed.

A red viscous liquid trickled down the handrail, and from above came a deep and muffled sound.

Following the direction of the sound, they found its source at the corner of the fourth floor.

The ground beneath them had changed again. Concrete was covered with a thick layer of bloody tissue, and the sound originated from underneath one of the egg-shaped tumors.

At that moment, Duan Mingyuan from his high school days demonstrated remarkable bravery.

A normal person who saw this would have been scared witless and run away, but he took out tools from his backpack and cut into the still-wriggling tumor.

Ink-like corrupted blood spurted out from inside. The seasoned Duan Mingyuan was prepared; he stepped aside to dodge, then used the tools to pry open the tissue on the tumor.

Jiuyue was grateful that this was a fragment of Duan Mingyuan’s memory—the disgusting odors were not replicated, and neither the corrupted blood nor the bits of flesh would stain them. Otherwise, she would have to go through the trouble of thoroughly cleaning her body again.

Especially the tail—taking care of it became particularly troublesome after entering places like this.

Inside was half an incubated corpse, completely unrecognizable from its original form, along with a broken video camera scattered among a pile of disgusting flesh-mush.

The object revealed the fate of that missing niche blogger.

This action seemingly enraged the evil spirit nesting in the abandoned construction site, as an angry roar came from above.

After the roar, the ground paved with blood and flesh began to tremble violently, hands burst through the tissue, rising from the ground.

The creatures that emerged from beneath the blood and flesh were no longer human but distorted beings pieced together from human tissues, appearing utterly random in their construction.

All of these were victims who had died here.

The staircase leading to death was followed by the resurrected dead.

The deceased who had disappeared and died here since the beginning of the construction site’s building were awakening in this manner.

Faced with such a twisted and horrifying scene, Jiuyue suddenly revealed an expression of realization.

"The Revival of the Dead" originates from a horror short story set in an abandoned construction site, recounting the encounters of four university students who broke into the site after nightfall.

With that thought, Jiuyue looked behind her.

The way back had already changed, with flesh extending along the staircase all the way down, covering the entire corridor.

The story mentioned that when the students realized something was wrong and wanted to escape, they despairingly found that the way they had come had been replaced with a tree-like tumor blocking their exit.

In their subsequent exploration, they gradually discovered the secrets hidden in this construction site.

Before its development and construction, this place had once been a sacrificial site for a cult organization, which lured unsuspecting people here, murdered them, and then offered them as sacrifices to the mother goddess they worshipped.

Apart from the monsters assembled from the limbs of the dead, the students trapped here also encountered the deranged cult followers of bygone days.

Years earlier, the cult’s ritual was ultimately exposed, and before they could be rounded up, they cut open their own throats or bellies with knives, sacrificing themselves to the mother goddess—police who arrived on the scene only found a group of corpses with gruesome deaths.

In the story, the four university students ultimately failed to escape, they were captured by the evil cult followers transformed into malevolent spirits, and like the residents who had mistakenly entered before them, they became objects of sacrifice.

For the university students in the story, every second here was torture, but before Duan Mingyuan, it was a different scene.

The twisted creatures and the cultist ghosts lurking in the shadows were no different from the little monsters beside the road to him; he simply brushed past those ferocious monsters, and they would instantly be turned to dust.

Duan Mingyuan’s story was much more straightforward and brutal.

Upon encountering twisted malevolence at the abandoned construction site, he fought his way up the floors, smashing the heads of malevolent leaders.

It sounded like one of those games that used horror as a gimmick but was actually just a hack-and-slash combat thrill ride.

But precisely this meant that Duan Mingyuan’s memories of the abandoned construction site had indeed been rewritten, replaced with some scenes he had seen in ghost stories and novels.

He was experiencing the encounters of those fictional characters.

"This is content written about in ’The Revival of the Dead,’ with human remains stored as food within the tumor, and twisted creatures assembled from limbs," she observed.

Jiuyue watched the high school student Duan Mingyuan boldly moving forward, "Mr. Mingyuan, I have a thought."

"Hmm?"

"Maybe you never actually came here that night."

It was precisely because he had not been here that he knew nothing about the situation in the abandoned construction site, and so he could only fill in his experiences here through the descriptions in the story.

"Where did you go that night, and where did you leave your backpack?"

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