At the back of Funan County were endless mountains and dense forests, and the further one went in, the worse the signal became, and in the end, there was no signal at all.
It was not the first time that Ji Mingxia and Yu Ning spent the night in the middle of nowhere, so they were quite used to it.
There were no mysterious items this time, no monsters or ghosts, and no human beings to be vigilant of so it was much better.
Ji Mingxia couldn’t use his mobile phone, and he didn’t have any paper, pencil or homework, so he was a little bored in the mountains, but he couldn’t care less as he had Yu Ning to worry about.
Two days passed in the blink of an eye and Yu Ning was gradually getting better. Ji Mingxia gradually calmed down and finally slept soundly that night.
In his dream, the stars fell from the sky, turning into thousands of dots of light. Like a pilgrimage, they converged from all over the world, and then started coming towards him.
Ji Mingxia vaguely felt like this scene was somewhat familiar. The points of light were getting closer and closer to him, and just when he was getting puzzled, a pained and suppressed groan suddenly came from beside him.
Ji Mingxia woke up with a start and turned his head to see Yu Ning curled up in pain, his body trembling uncontrollably.
As if he was under fire, the blood in his body boiled beneath his skin, and when it reached its limit, Yu Ning’s skin started cracking open inch by inch, blood slowly flowed out, instantly staining Yu Ning red.
Ji Mingxia gasped and lunged up to help Yu Ning, he did not dare touch him easily, and could only call his name anxiously.
“I…..I’m fine…..” Yu Ning was convulsing in pain, he endured and managed to raise his head and slowly reassured Ji Mingxia.
However, in the next instant, his eyes got slight cracks, and blood flowed out of them, dripping onto the back of Ji Mingxia’s hand.
The warm blood landed on his skin, and Ji Mingxia’s hand shook. He felt himself go dizzy as his whole body fell into a great panic.
“We can’t go on like this, I have to find someone to save you, I have to save you ……” Ji Mingxia muttered.
He couldn’t think anymore, he got up in a daze and walked by instinct.
A voice inside kept telling him that he could save Yu Ning if he just kept walking.
As soon as Ji Mingxia got up, the energy around him sensed his movement and the wind whirled around him in a strange way.
Yu Ning gritted his teeth and stretched out his hand, tugging at the hem of Ji Mingxia’s shirt, “Mingxia, don’t go.”
At Yu Ning’s tug, Ji Mingxia instantly came to his senses.
Seeing that Yu Ning was still down on the ground and enduring the pain, Ji Mingxia hurried back to his side and said in a low voice, “Okay, I’m not leaving, I’ll stay right here.”
It was only when he heard Ji Mingxia’s voice right next to his ear that Yu Ning calmed down and slowly released his grip on Ji Mingxia.
Ji Mingxia quickly held Yu Ning’s hand, the joints showed signs of bruising and Ji Mingxia dared not move, he could only stay by Yu Ning’s side.
This time, Yu Ning’s seizure was shorter than the last one, and after about an hour or so, he slowly returned to normal.
But the opposite of that was his appearance.
If the previous Yu Ning had become eerie in the sense that he did not look like a living person, the current Yu Ning was even more terrifying.
He had cracks all over his body that would not heal in a short time, and not only was his body covered in horrible blood stains, even more horrifying were his eyes that were now tinged with red.
Although he looked strange in the past, he looked exquisite, and strangely good-looking, but now ……he might frighten passersby just by walking along the road.
Previously, Ji Mingxia did not quite understand why Yu Ning wanted to be taken into the mountains.
It wasn’t until this moment, when Yu Ning’s appearance had changed so drastically that Ji Mingxia understood his intention.
Although Yu Ning had regained his composure, he could not hide his fatigue. Ji Mingxia noticed it but could only stay by his side and try not to disturb him.
After nightfall, Yu Ning, who had always slept late, went to bed earlier than Ji Mingxia for the first time.
The forest was silent, and the moonlight filtered through the leaves of the trees, falling on Ji Mingxia and Yu Ning in dappled patterns.
Ji Mingxia watched over Yu Ning without feeling sleepy.
He thought back to when Pei Yuan said people like them would die in their middle ages.
At that time, Ji Mingxia could not accept it and promised himself to work hard and find a way to help Yu Ning and the others live a good life and die of old age.
At that time, Ji Mingxia could never have imagined that his deepest fear would happen in less than a year.
Was this the fated end for people with special physiques?
Ji Mingxia looked at the sleeping Yu Ning, his intuition told him that he must have overlooked something.
What was it?
Ji Mingxia tried to recall what had happened in recent days.
The number of mysterious items appearing had skyrocketed and the whole world had been thrown into chaos.
The only suspicious thing about Yu Ning’s two seizures was that no mysterious items had appeared on both occasions, no mysterious item rushed straight into Yu Ning’s body to cause him to transform into a monster.
‘Could it be that Yu Ning and the rest were used as vessels to carry the mysterious items?
Then, what was the trigger?
What about the others, were they in the same situation as Yu Ning?’
Ji Mingxia wrinkled his brow in thought, the surroundings were dead silent, there were no people or beasts, as if he and Yu Ning were the only people left in the whole world.
There was no source of information, and no matter how much he thought about it, he would not be able to find what the problem was.
But Yu Ning was in an abnormal situation, he could not leave him to go and investigate.
And like this, Ji Mingxia could only continue watching over Yu Ning, and when dawn broke, the two continued on their way, heading deeper into the forest.
Only this time, Ji Mingxia kept an eye out and tried to move as fast up as possible.
After Yu Ning’s assimilation, the energy in his body seemed much stronger than before, but his whole body was fatigued.
Yu Ning saw that Ji Mingxia had stayed by his side and put his mind at ease, so he did not notice that Ji Mingxia was silently changing direction.
Another day passed and when night was approaching, Ji Mingxia and Yu Ning arrived at a more dense forest behind the mountain.
When Yu Ning saw that the area was deserted, he put his mind at ease. Although he wanted to stay awake, the abnormalities in his body caused him to unconsciously drift off to sleep.
After confirming that Yu Ning was asleep, Ji Mingxia found some branches and leaves and spread them beside Yu Ning to hide his body.
The branches built a small space, and after laying down layers of leaves, they completely covered Yu Ning’s body.
Even after all the commotion, Yu Ning showed no signs of coming to his senses.
After doing all this, Ji Mingxia took advantage of the setting sun to see his surroundings. The path was still visible and he quickly ran out of the dense forest and stood at the highest point of the mountain.
This mountain was located at the border of Funan County, with Funan County on the left and another county on the right.
On the side connected to Funan county was a large and dense forest, and it is this dense forest that Ji Mingxia and Yu Ning had been travelling through for the past few days.
On the other side of the mountain was a sheer cliff descending vertically in a straight line.
The altitude at the foot of the mountain was much lower than in Funan County, and the terrain was gentle, making the climate not only warm, but also sunny all year round, which was very suitable for survival.
Therefore people had established an ancient town at the foot of this mountain. Although it was a small town, it had now developed into a famous tourist attraction and was superior to Funan County in terms of both economy and population.
At this moment, Ji Mingxia stood high up on the mountain, found a suitable location and took out his mobile phone.
When they entered the dense forest, the signal gradually disappeared, so Ji Mingxia switched off his phone to save the battery for emergencies.
At this moment, the phone was powered on and it still had a lot of power left, and the signal that had disappeared was finally back.
As soon as he connected to the internet, countless messages popped up on his phone.
Because there were so many messages, his phone even lagged, and it took several minutes before it slowly returned to normal.
When Ji Mingxia clicked on the messages, the latest ones that popped up were actually messages from his classmates and teachers.
Although anomalies had appeared all over the world recently, the most well-known one in China was the incident of Ke Chengxuan being trapped in Funan County.
If he had only been stranded in a hotel, the news would have been just that.
Many people were too busy with their lives and the safety of a celebrity was not something that the general public would be particularly concerned about, except for the fans.
But surprisingly, several people survived and escaped from that hotel a few days ago.
Many of the survivors were interviewed by the media, and because most of them were not involved in the whole thing, they only had a half-understanding of the whole situation, resulting in countless versions of what happened in the hotel being circulated.
Some netizens made a summary of the content of several survivors’ interviews, and eventually found that although the versions differed, content about Yu Ning and Ji Mingxia was highly consistent, thus proving that this part of the story was, most likely, true.
Yu Ning saved everyone in order to find Ji Mingxia.
Ji Mingxia knew Ke Chengxuan.
In the end, Yu Ning and Ji Mingxia protected everyone and helped them escape, and as for Ke Chengxuan …… he ran away and no one cared about him.
In this way, Ji Mingxia and Yu Ning, instantly became the focal point of the whole incident.
For Ke Chengxuan’s fans, Yu Ning and Ji Mingxia had something to do with the missing Ke Chengxuan;
For the general public, Yu Ning and Ji Mingxia were able to rescue people from such a frightening supernatural event. Did the two have some secret?
Some people were full of praise and curiosity about them, while naturally, some were suspicious and slandered them.
Ji Mingxia’s phone got stuck because there were so many people trying to friend him on the social networking apps, making the phone fail to load properly.
At this moment, Ji Mingxia had just finished scanning the private messages on WeChat, and had just closed WeChat when his phone got stuck again.
He had no choice but to put his phone aside and wait by looking down the mountain.
He didn’t know if it was his illusion, but a few days ago, just after coming out of the hotel, Ji Mingxia could see the text on the phone screen of someone a few hundred meters away.
At that time, he was so preoccupied with taking Yu Ning away that he didn’t have time to confirm it.
At this moment, the straight line distance from the top of the mountain to the foot of the mountain was only about a hundred metres.
Under normal circumstances, when looking down from his current, he wouldn’t be able to see anything clearly even though he could see the whole ancient town below.
The pedestrians coming and going would look like little black dots moving around and apart from being able to tell that they were individuals walking around, it would not even be clear as to whether they were men or women.
The ancient town in Ji Mingxia’s eyes also looked like this.
He blinked his eyes and stared at one of the small black dots, but no matter how much he looked, his vision could not become clearer.
“Was it really an illusion before?” Ji Mingxia whispered.
Just then, the small black dot that Ji Mingxia was staring at suddenly stopped and stood in the middle of the road.
Ji Mingxia froze, and an inexplicable sense of crisis welled up in his heart.
In the next instant, his vision traversed through layers of space, leaping hundreds of metres away in a single bound and before Ji Mingxia could react, he saw the man’s face clearly.
It was a young man of about thirty years old, dressed in simple casual clothes. He had very short hair, decent features and a dark complexion, and at first glance, he looked no different from an ordinary passer-by.
The only difference was that his eyes were unusually bright, as if they were emitting light.
Ji Mingxia looked at his eyes and got a vague sense of familiarity, he must have seen this man before.
Just as Ji Mingxia was thinking hard, the man suddenly jerked his head, as if he had sensed Ji Mingxia’s gaze and looked in Ji Mingxia’s direction!
The man’s gaze seemed aggressive and it stabbed Ji Mingxia at once.
Ji Mingxia was startled and he closed his eyes in reflex. He immediately shrank back and hid himself with the help of the mountain.
The moment he withdrew his gaze, the man’s name finally came up in Ji Mingxia’s mind.
Yan Guang.
A long time ago, when Ji Mingxia and Yu Ning had gotten the blood red ring at the Love Spring Mountain, they met Pei Yuan, and immediately afterwards, they met Pei Yuan’s senior uncle.
It was this Yan Guang who came to pick up Pei Yuan from the foot of the Love Spring Mountain and also took Yu Ning with him, causing Ji Mingxia and Yu Ning to be separated for two months, only to be reunited at university.
Yan Guang and Pei Yuan were colleagues and people who dealt with special cases.
Why would he appear here? Could it be that a supernatural event had occurred in the ancient town as well?
Ji Mingxia was still wondering when his phone finally cached successfully and his phone messages popped up.
Ji Mingxia clicked on it and at the top of the page was a message from his teacher H University. Apart from concern and greetings, the teacher also told Ji Mingxia that Yu Ning’s parents had left for Funan County two days ago.
Yan Guang appeared in the ancient town and the Ding parents also came to Funan County ……
Was there a connection?
Ji Mingxia got suspicious and that indefinable sense of crisis grew even stronger.
He poked his head out and peeked in the direction of the ancient town. Yan Guang was actually still standing in place and staring in his direction. Ji Mingxia did not dare to delay and quickly backed away, leaving the place.
He had only made a few steps when his mobile phone suddenly vibrated and an incoming ringtone rang out.
Ji Mingxia originally wanted to turn it off straight away, but when he lowered his head and glanced at it, he found that it was Pei Yuan calling and after a moment’s pause, he still picked up the call.
“Mingxia.” Pei Yuan’s voice came out as soon as the call connected. “Are you at the mountain in front of the ancient town?”
