webnovelfull Chapter 742 The Truth
Chapter 742 The Truth
"rustle."
Suddenly, a familiar sound of arthropods rubbing against each other was heard from the road ahead. Chen Yile froze in place and found a few strands of silver spider silk hanging at the end of the narrow passage.
The hot copper sheet suddenly began to vibrate, and the star-shaped incisions at the joint of the two copper sheets began to ooze scarlet liquid.
He wiped the liquid from the copper plate on his forehead - this was the only recognizable pattern on the remaining pages of the parchment book.
The spider silk in front of him suddenly burned, and the blue flames illuminated the new secret door on the rock wall.
The cold air seeping in from the crack in the door was mixed with a musty smell, and the faint echo of children playing could be heard.
In the middle of the dark room stood a coffin covered with scratches. The moment Chen Yile pushed open the lid of the coffin, the copper piece in his arms suddenly became icy cold.
Twelve cat corpses were neatly stacked at the bottom of the coffin, each wrapped in spider silk like a cocoon.
The most horrifying thing is that the foreheads of these cat corpses are all engraved with the same star patterns as the copper plates.
There was a sound of spider legs piercing the rock wall above his head. Chen Yile hurriedly hid in the coffin, but crushed a rotten wooden board.
A faint light shone from under the hole, which turned out to be a man-made drainage ditch.
He was about to insert the copper piece into the talisman groove at the bottom of the coffin when the whole coffin suddenly stood upright.
The moment Chen Yile fell into the drainage ditch, he saw half of a human leg hanging from the ceiling of the dark room.
The sewage that pushed him to drift suddenly boiled, and the two copper pieces were pieced together into a complete star in the water.
When he surfaced, what came into view was the night sky dotted with stars. He had actually returned to the corridor where he had discovered the calendar.
The pocket watch showed that there were three hours left until July 15th.
Chen Yile was touching the spider silk marks on the back of his neck when he suddenly heard a tiny ticking sound coming from the bushes behind him.
The moonlight cast his shadow on the brick wall, and on his shoulder lay the dark shadow of a multi-legged creature.
It was a spider as big as an adult's palm. Its black body gleamed faintly under the reflection of the blue flame, and its eight slender legs were cruising in the air, as if looking for prey.
Its eyes flashed with a strange red light, staring straight at Chen Yile, as if wanting to devour him.
Chen Yile's heart tightened, countless thoughts flashed through his mind, and it seemed too late to turn around and run away.
The big spider whizzed past him, its sharp legs cutting through the air, bringing with it a chilling hum.
Chen Yile didn't hesitate and swung the copper piece in his hand violently, stabbing it straight at the giant spider like a sharp blade.
The copper sheet collided with the spider's leg, making a crisp metallic sound.
The spider was frightened and its body suddenly shrank, revealing its eyes that were flashing with fierce light.
It turned around angrily, opened its mouth that seemed to be always hungry, revealing a row of sharp teeth, and pounced towards Chen Yile.
Chen Yile gritted his teeth and a surge of courage ignited in his heart. He tried his best to lift the copper piece high up, and with a roar, he smashed it down hard.
The copper piece flickered in the firelight, like a meteor, hitting the spider's head, and then there was suffocating silence.
The giant spider fell down, its twisted body trembling and emitting a pungent stench.
Chen Yile stared at it intently, and his heartbeat seemed to stop at this moment.
His nervousness gradually subsided as he realized that he had actually defeated this terrifying existence.
Chen Yile fell down on the moss-covered stone steps, and the time displayed on his mobile phone screen made him feel cold all over.
It is clearly the cold winter of February, but the dirty water from the underground river on the back of my hand still retains a hint of warmth.
He heard the cry of a night owl in the distance, and then he noticed a dilapidated ancestral hall standing in the woods. The spider webs hanging on the eaves shone silver in the moonlight.
The lantern in front of the ancestral hall suddenly caught fire. With the help of the green flame, Chen Yile could clearly see the broken plaque on the lintel: "Liu Family Ancestral Hall".
The rotting wooden scrolls swayed in the wind, revealing a mass of spider silk on the back. When he reached out to touch the knocker, the copper disc suddenly buzzed, causing pain in his palm.
"Don't touch that, young man."
A hoarse female voice came from behind the locust tree, and an old woman leaning on a snake-headed cane approached hunched over.
She had a patch on her left eye and held a kerosene lamp in her right hand.
"All seventeen members of the Liu family became cocoons ten years ago."
The old woman shone a lamp towards the courtyard of the ancestral hall. Twelve pottery jars were arranged in a star shape, and the mouth of each jar was sealed with yellow talisman paper.
"The copper piece you brought out from underground should have been placed in the seventh urn."
Chen Yile took half a step back and found a stone tablet behind him.
The inscription records the past events of the Liu family offering a boy and a spider girl as sacrifices to the gods, and the date of the inscription is exactly July 15th.
When he touched the star-shaped indentation on the bottom of the stone tablet, the copper sheet suddenly broke free from the bag and stuck firmly to the stone tablet.
There was a sound of breaking tiles in the ancestral hall, and the old woman's kerosene lamp suddenly went out.
Chen Yile heard the rustle of countless tiny feet crawling across the roof tiles. He felt recent scratches on the back of the stone tablet and, using the dim light from his phone, made out a few lines of bloody words: "To break the cycle of reincarnation, you need three bronze talismans. Use them before the cockcrows."
Chen Yile staggered forward in the moonlight, and his trouser legs were scratched by vines that crawled out from the cracks in the ancestral hall's stone slabs. The sticky liquid stained his skin, and a puff of green smoke rose instantly.
He ignored the burning pain and ran while tearing off the star-shaped copper pieces embedded in the courtyard wall.
The moment the copper piece touched his hand, countless blood-red lines suddenly appeared on the cold metal surface.
The bells on the eaves suddenly rang together. Chen Yile turned around and saw thick fog rising from the courtyard of the ancestral hall. Twelve pottery jars were shaking violently and spewing out blood mist.
Blood beads condensed into the outline of a giant spider in mid-air, and the rekindled flame of the lantern cast the monster's shadow on the wall.
"There's only one piece left..."
He climbed over the broken wall, clutching two hot copper pieces.
A sound similar to that of chimes came from deep in the locust tree forest. He followed the sound and found an ancient well. He discovered twenty cat skulls neatly arranged on the well curb, with miniature copper plates embedded in each eye socket.
When he took off the third complete bronze talisman, the whole forest suddenly filled with sobbing sounds.
The three copper talismans automatically connected together and instantly emitted a dazzling red light.
Chen Yile was shocked to see crisscrossing red lines appearing in the air, each pointing to the bottom of the well, and the sound of breaking chains came from the bottom of the well.
The well water suddenly boiled, and a female corpse wrapped in a soaked wedding dress emerged.
Chen Yile recognized that the pattern of the ring worn on the ring finger of the female corpse's left hand was exactly the same as the family emblem engraved on the stone lantern.
When the female corpse opened her mouth, there was no tongue and dense spiders poured out of her mouth.
Chen Yile pressed three copper talismans on the female corpse's forehead, and a phantom emerged in the white light of the star pattern.
On the fifteenth day of July that year, the eldest daughter of the Liu family did not want to be sacrificed to the gods alive, so she was made into a human pillar by her clansmen and suppressed in the well.
The female corpse suddenly raised her hand and grabbed Chen Yile's wrist. All the copper talismans melted into boiling liquid, emitting a dazzling white light.
The last scene Chen Yile saw was the spider god turning into ashes.
When the morning light pierced through the clouds, Chen Yile woke up in a pavilion in the wilderness.
There was half a spider web stuck to the shoulder of my down jacket, and my phone showed that it was five in the morning.