Chapter 63
The rough and yellowed letter paper was wet with fresh bright blood. Overlapping with the dark red blood that had dried up, it was harsh on the eyes.
The ink handwriting was blurred by the bloodstains, looking rational and calm, but there seemed to be a ruthless ferocity between the lines– the calm after the extreme sadness, and the madness after the extreme calm.
Mo Yi stared at the note in front of him and was speechless for a moment.
He pursed his lips, moistened his dry throat, and put the note away.
Mo Yi looked up and continued to observe the graves in front of him.
The two small mounds happened to be located in the center of the whole open space. The strong smell of rust mixed with the moist smell of soil spread inside his nostrils, almost forcing him to hold his breath.
Mo Yi frowned slightly, walked slowly around the raised mounds, and carefully looked at the scene in front of him.
When he walked to the side of the mounds, he couldn’t help but be slightly taken aback.
The moist soil of the mounds was soft and new, it looked as if it had just been turned up from below. The viscous blood dripped down the top layer of the soil and silently seeped into the ground below.
Mo Yi’s eyes were heavy, as he continued to walk behind them. The sight that was blocked by the grave mounds became clearer.
There was a large hole in the ground, revealing an open grave with a deep and black hole.
The smell of blood was getting stronger and stronger, and the blood in the air could almost condense into substance. The sharp sting compelled people’s senses, and deeply engraved traces that were hard to ignore.
Mo Yi held his breath a little, took a few steps towards the open grave, leaned forward slightly, and looked into the dark and deep grave–
His gaze met a pair of staring eyes!
Mo Yi was startled and subconsciously took a few steps back.
The intense pulse of blood and the beating of his heart sounded in his eardrums, Mo Yi felt that his heart could almost jump out of his throat, and even his rapid breathing could be heard clearly.
He settled his mind.
Calming down and thinking about it, those eyes were cloudy and lifeless, and there should be a high probability that he was not alive.
Mo Yi took a deep breath, walked forward slowly, and turned on the flashlight to shine into the grave.
The flashlight’s light paused on the dark red ground at the edge of the grave, then moved slowly inwards, and finally stopped on a pale face covered with mud.
His face was distorted with fear. The dirt and blood stained his pale skin, and his turbid eyes stared at the void. There was no luster in his blank pupils, and he stared straight at the edge of the grave.
It was a complete head.
Under the head, there was a broken neck, a large piece of skin, veins, and not a drop of blood oozing from the pale fracture. The bright red muscles and white bones were visible under the light of the flashlight, as if someone forcibly tore off the head from the neck.
Mo Yi was stunned for a moment, turned the flashlight, and pointed it at the twisted and dirty face again.
After careful identification, he recognized the face hidden under the mud and blood this time.
–This was one of the players.
Mo Yi still remembered that the twisted man stepped in from the darkness step by step, the frantic screaming and struggling of the player before his death, as well as the endless blood and dazzling bright red.
Mo Yi pursed his lips, and there was an ominous premonition in his heart.
He moved his wrist, and the flashlight moved down with its movement, revealing the whole picture of the grave.
On the short and narrow tombstones by the head of each grave, several huge marks were deeply engraved, almost covering the entirety of the tombstones. The strange and twisted lines criss-crossed, and dark red blood gathered in the depressions of the lines.
Although Mo Yi could not recognize the meaning represented by those symbols, judging from the deformed inverted pentagram and the simple horns in the symbols, it was an indisputable fact that it was related to Western demonology and mysticism.
Now, the tiny animal bones in the attic and the giant goat skull had an explanation.
Mo Yi subconsciously tightened his fingers.
When he was in the attic before, he already had a vague guess.
After all… when a person believes that God does not exist, what is she going to believe?
–the devil.
A desperate mother who lost her children chooses to sacrifice to the devil to resurrect them.
‘What are little boys made of?
Frogs and snails
and puppy-dogs’ tails.
What are little girls made of?
Sugar and spice
and all that’s nice.’
It is sung in the nursery rhyme.
In reality, someone really wanted to recreate a little boy and girl.
She just didn’t use harmless frogs and snails, sugar and spice– but real human flesh and blood.
Above the dark brown ground, some of the missing bodies of the players were all neatly arranged on the moist soil of the graveyard according to the human body structure. From the corpses the heads, hands, elbows, and other parts were missing.
But… even though four killings had been carried out, why were there only three body’s here?
Mo Yi lowered his eyes and pondered, as he continued to approach the middle of the graveyard. His dark eyes became more and more focused, carefully searching for any clues that he might have missed.
The flashlight’s beam paused on a head for a short while, illuminating a bloody mass of flesh half-buried in the wet dirt, nestled exactly where the shoulder was supposed to be.
–There was no problem with the number now.
In the first nursery rhyme, the head was ripped off by the twisted man. In the second nursery rhyme, the player was killed by the blind rat and lost his hands afterwards. In the third nursery rhyme, the flesh from the shoulder of the player was bitten off by the rat in the beak mask. And in the fourth nursery rhyme, the elbows were following the torn man.
Each nursery rhyme corresponded to a body.
Mo Yi stood up, stamped his stiff and numb feet, raised his eyes, and glanced at another grave.
With the dim light of the flashlight, he could almost see the same pattern in that grave.
Mo Yi frowned slowly, his slender fingers subconsciously rubbed the slightly rough surface of the icy flashlight in his palm. His heart became more and more clouded, as if there was a thin layer of mist lingering in front of him, blocking his eyes, and interfering with his vision.
At this moment, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a pale corner exposed in the soil, which didn’t match the surrounding color.
Mo Yi was slightly startled and took a few steps in that direction.
Under the light of the flashlight, he could now clearly see what was hidden in the soil– it was a yellowed corner of a paper, half buried in the soil, it seemed to be densely covered in handwriting.
He took a deep breath, prepared himself mentally, then leaned down and squatted on the ground, reaching into the grave.
The blood-soaked soil made a wet and sticky sound under the soles of his feet. Mo Yi stretched out his arms, and the upper half of his body slowly sunk into the half-human-height grave.
Shadows and darkness enveloped his eyes, and the huge smell of blood and the rotten and moist soil rushed towards his face instantly. A sense of coldness surrounded his body, and the extreme sensory stimulation enveloped him, almost forcing him to stop breathing.
The pale and mutilated corpse was in sight.
Mo Yi forced himself to focus his eyes and on the piece of paper that was hidden in the soil.
His body bent lower.
The tips of his fingers touched the rough surface of the paper, scratching with them sharply.
Mo Yi moved his fingers with difficulty, grabbed the corner of the paper with his index and middle finger, and then pulled it out of the soil with force.
In the corner of his eye, he seemed to see the pale head beside him, his eyes slowly moved a notch, and the out-of-focus and turbid pupils slowly looked at him.
Mo Yi was startled, unknown strength burst out of him from out of nowhere. He used his other hand to support himself on the ground, and suddenly pulled his upper body up!
He staggered back a few steps, hot sweat dripping down his cold temples, his palms trembling involuntarily from the excessive force.
The soreness and numbness of his muscles had just been transferred to the mind by his dull nerves, which felt very painful.
Mo Yi panted as he looked into the grave under the light of the flashlight.
The head, covered with mud and blood, lay quietly at the bottom of the grave, staring at the sky with turbid eyes, as if the scene he saw had just been an illusion.
Mo Yi’s chest was still heaving rapidly, and the strange and cold air was like a hand tightly holding his heart, then slowly tightening, bringing about a feeling of almost powerless suffocation.
He closed his eyes, forced himself to calm down, and opened the blood and mud stained paper with his fingers that were still trembling slightly.
Although the paper was a little wrinkled, the handwriting was particularly clear. The neat ink handwriting looked calm and rational, although the Latin and English were mixed, which made it particularly difficult to understand.
Several strange and complicated symbols were drawn on the paper, which were almost identical to the patterns on the tombstones. Mo Yi frowned and recognized a few simple Latin characters.
‘Lunae’ meant Monday, followed by the word– ‘caput’.
Skull.
Mo Yi raised his head, his eyes subconsciously swept across the dark sky, only to see the familiar fluorescent blue countdown flashing icy light in the deep and dense darkness.
Time……
–time!
Mo Yi was stunned for a second, looked at the paper in his hand again, and suddenly realized.
A pair of extremely dark eyes flashed a compelling light, focused and bright, like two icy cold stars on a pale face.
In this instance, time was the biggest clue.
Not long ago, he had made an assumption based on his previous experience, and the reminder at the beginning of the game: Solomon Grundy’s life had a total of seven days, and the time of this instance was exactly seven hours, so the sung Nursery rhymes of each hour correspond to every day in Solomon Grundy’s life.
And now he saw in the graves here, some of the body parts that the monsters took away from the people they killed.
So… they killed according to the time, and they brought the body parts corresponding to the time here.
–to complete the sacrifice.
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