Chapter Sixty-Five: The Terror in Peach Blossom Village

In the Peach Blossom Hamlet stood the Peach Blossom Cottage, and within the cottage dwelled the Immortal of Peach Blossoms. The immortal planted peach trees and plucked peach blooms to exchange for wine.

Peach Blossom Village was like most small villages of this era—a cluster of a few dozen households nestled by a small river. They rose with the sun and rested at dusk; the collective farmland yielded scant returns, leaving no room for landlords to emerge. Indeed, because the surrounding hills were blanketed with wild peach trees, lending an air of idyllic poetry to the village, scholars and literati, eager to appear cultivated, would often drive over to visit. Occasionally, the villagers could make a modest profit from these cultured guests.

But now, beneath the shroud of night, the village was deathly silent. No cocks crowed, no dogs barked; not even under the countless peach trees did frogs or insects sing. Even the sigh of the evening wind had ceased. This place no longer resembled a living village, but a vast, desolate tomb.

Under the moonlight, the peach groves appeared as a frozen painting, utterly motionless. Yun Huaqi and several martial artists waited in the woods, concealed within the shadows of the tree trunks, each silent, heads lowered and eyes shut. For if anyone failed to do so, should they transgress the rules, death would strike in the next instant. Even those who had reached the pinnacle of martial cultivation could not resist; they would be twisted and slain without recourse, transformed amidst the mysterious peach blossoms into things neither human nor tree, ghastly abominations.

Despair filled Yun Huaqi’s eyes. On the third day after their arrival, they had inexplicably become trapped in an eternal night, where the moon shone bright over Peach Blossom Village. Then began the nightmare—death after death.

Their party, a band of more than twenty martial artists—each one surpassing mortal limits, including one who had perfected his art—had already lost seven members to brutal, unstoppable killings in this timeless limbo.

The things that slew them were moonlight, peach blossoms, water jars, lanterns. A single misstep, a breach of some unseen rule, and invisible forces would murder them with terrifying cruelty—turning living people into half-dead horrors before their very eyes.

Yun Huaqi had no sense of how long they had been trapped. They felt no hunger, no thirst, not even fatigue. Endlessly, they hid, ever wary of the lurking terror, or watched as a companion died inexplicably in front of them.

Were it not for a glimmer of hope, they would have broken down and scattered long ago.

Their hope was the scheduled contact every seven days. Once their absence was noted in Jinling, powerful cultivators who had mastered the Divine Spirit would come to investigate, perhaps even Immortal Lan Yi herself. The martial artists guarded Yun Huaqi at all costs, believing that if Miss Yun perished, even survival would bring them no good end. Yet if they died but Yun Huaqi survived, as Immortal Lan Yi’s trusted proxy, she could see that their children or kin would be cared for and allowed to cultivate in the ancestral shrine.

A bank of clouds drifted across the sky, shrouding the moonlight. Like withered trees, those in hiding exhaled in relief.

Crack!

Suddenly, a sharp noise pierced the stillness. One martial artist jerked his head down, his face etched with disbelief and utter despair. Instinctively, he looked up, pleading for help from his comrades.

The moonlight in the grove, which had just faded, suddenly flared bright—so bright it rivaled the sun. The moon, hidden behind clouds, now seemed like a colossal eye opening a gaping hole in the clouds, beaming down straight into the peach grove.

“Damn evil spirit, when the immortal arrives, you’ll—ahhh!” Knowing death was inevitable, the martial artist lunged forward, his final words a furious roar.

But before he could finish, under the terrified gaze of his companions, the man who had sprinted dozens of meters was caught in the resplendent moonlight. His body stiffened, frozen in place. His skin tore open, muscles wrenched apart, and even his innate vital energy was devoured—one by one, peach blossoms sprouting teeth, fingernails, and eyes burst from his wounds.

Amid the sickening sound of tearing and chewing, the corpse’s flesh began to petrify, his contorted visage becoming an obscure pattern of agony on the tree trunk, while the scattered limbs, now bristling with exposed teeth, feasted hungrily.

Fingers clawed mouths, mouths clasped eyes, and within the eyes were doors, and beyond the doors, monstrous, hoofed, many-legged things—an indescribable chaos of twisted terror that struck straight to the soul.

From the many mouths came bizarre, satisfied giggles. The chorus of laughter swept through the grove as the night wind, setting thousands of peach trees rustling as though in a mournful wail.

What were those things?

There was no time to pause or understand. As one companion met a gruesome end, the others forced themselves to look away and fled from the ever-brightening grove. While the invisible force feasted, that was the only moment of safety. Following the three-pronged path ahead, they seized this brief reprieve, fleeing back to the village to hide anew.

The hurried flight of the martial artists whipped up fierce winds, their footsteps thudding on the earth.

…

In the peach woods, at the three-way fork—

Lan Yi suddenly halted.

Behind him, Xiao Hongzhuan and the guide martial artist also stopped.

“Something’s moving.”

Lan Yi tilted his head to listen. This rat’s nest was more interesting—and more revolting—than he had expected. An experienced psychic cultivator could, just by sensing certain spiritual fluctuations in an area, deduce the type of rat’s nest they were dealing with.

Movement?

The others fell silent, listening intently.

They heard nothing at all.

The night breeze was gentle, leaves whispered, insects chirped, and perhaps somewhere in the distant hills a nimble dog howled. Beyond that, nothing.

After arriving in Peach Blossom Village, Lan Yi and his companions had learned that Yun Huaqi’s group had mysteriously vanished in the village four days prior. The villagers, wary of the martial artists’ formidable auras and inhuman physiques, dared not approach and knew nothing of how they disappeared.

Such inexplicable disappearances were not rare in the village’s history. “Missing” was a term applied loosely—escapes, sudden deaths, new identities, banditry—life was cheap, and no one cared to remember.

Upon entering the village, Lan Yi activated the Colorless Eye.

The Colorless Eye—

It pierces appearances, sees through illusions.

Lan Yi’s most frequently employed fixed Daoist technique, it not only enhanced his spiritual vision but served many practical uses. For instance, since entering Peach Blossom Village, and now in the heart of the peach groves, he perceived that the entire space was being dramatically warped by a peculiar force.

This distortion created a deceptive effect, splitting the space in two. Only when faint spiritual energy leaked through could Lan Yi glimpse the disturbances caused by the martial artists on the other side—like seeing silhouettes moving behind a heavy veil.

Now, the question was:

How would they cross into the other side?