PD -Chapter 37 Spatial Wormhole

I shook my head and told him that the “shadow clone” was not something I had created.

Looking more carefully, I realized that the shadow’s facial features were not the same as mine. It was another young man in his twenties. He appeared to be sipping tea while chatting with the woman in the qipao seated beside him.

At last, I understood.

The woman in the qipao had never been talking to me at all. The one she had been interacting with the entire time was that shadow now drinking tea.

But only a dozen seconds later, we watched the young man’s shadow suddenly collapse onto the sofa. The cup slipped from his hand and shattered on the floor as his entire body began convulsing violently.

At the same moment, my head buzzed.

The world spun around me, and I felt exactly like the shadow on the sofa—as though I had been poisoned by the qipao-clad woman.

Grabbing the corner of the wall for support, I tried to keep myself from falling. Li Zi and his two brothers were in no better condition. All three clutched their heads, rolling and crawling across the floor as if they were drunk.

“Supreme Celestial Star, respond without cease. Let wisdom be clear and pure, and let the mind be at peace.”

I silently recited the Mind-Cleansing Incantation, regaining some clarity. Taking the opportunity to look again at the shadow and the woman, I saw the qipao-clad woman stand up, grab the shadow’s legs with both hands, drag him off the sofa, and slowly pull him out of the living room toward the hallway.

I immediately tapped Li Zi and the others twice on the head with spiritual energy, casting the Mind-Cleansing Incantation on each of them.

Only then did they gradually recover and stagger after me as we followed the qipao-clad woman.

Dragging the unconscious figure behind her, she made her way to the basement entrance, opened the door, and tossed him inside before slamming the iron door shut with a loud bang.

Instantly, the four of us were struck by another wave of dizziness.

It felt as though we were the ones who had just been thrown into the basement.

In a flash, our surroundings changed.

The brightly lit hallway vanished, replaced by an atmosphere of darkness and dread.

Unable to help himself, Li Zi switched on his flashlight.

We discovered that we were standing on the stairs of a cold, damp basement.

And the figure the woman had just thrown inside was lying right at our feet.

“T-This is seriously messed up…” Li Zi said in a trembling voice.

I remained silent, holding the three of them back to keep them from moving recklessly while I carefully observed our surroundings.

The basement was cluttered with piles of junk. A faint stench of decay lingered in the air.

At the far end stood a large iron cage surrounded by barriers, though it was impossible to tell what was inside.

Just then, the figure lying at our feet twitched.

Apparently, the poison administered by the qipao woman had not killed him outright. He struggled to get up.

Suddenly, the cage at the far end shook.

A bizarre roar emerged from within.

The three men behind me grabbed my clothes in terror.

I couldn’t tell which one spoke, but a trembling voice sounded beside my ear.

“T-That roar… it’s the same monster that wrecked our car that night!”

No sooner had the words left his mouth than the barricade in front of the cage exploded outward.

A black shadow shot out at incredible speed and instantly dragged the figure at our feet into the darkness ahead.

Crunch… crunch…

“AAAH! AAAH!”

The sound of bones being crushed between teeth echoed through the basement, accompanied by agonized screams.

“AAAH! AAAH! AAAH!”

Soon the screaming multiplied.

What had begun as one person’s cry became the screams of countless people.

Different voices, different tones, different frequencies—all intertwining into a horrifying chorus.

It was a sound I never wanted to hear again for the rest of my life.

We all covered our ears instinctively.

At that moment, fear was no longer our only concern.

The noise was so unbearable that I almost wanted to cut off my own ears just to escape it.

My eardrums began to ache.

Turning around, I saw blood slowly trickling from the ears of Li Zi and the others.

Realizing something was terribly wrong, I immediately pulled out several talismans and handed them to them.

But at that moment, another change occurred.

The damp floor tiles beneath our feet suddenly turned crimson red.

It looked as though the entire house had begun bleeding.

Ignoring the environmental changes for the moment, I infused the talismans with spiritual energy to protect our hearing.

Then I crouched down, channeled spiritual power into my fingertips, and pried up one of the floor tiles.

What I saw beneath it made my scalp go numb.

Something resembling flesh and blood was pulsing underneath.

The entire house seemed to be a living organism made of flesh.

I suddenly recalled what Li Zi had told me before.

He had hired construction workers to demolish parts of the building, but as soon as they began tearing down the outer walls, the house started bleeding.

“Primeval Origin stabilizes the land and proclaims to all spirits. True officials of mountains and rivers, spirits of the earth and soil…”

My hands moved rapidly through a series of seals as I chanted the Land-Calming Incantation, pouring spiritual energy into the tile before placing it back into its original position.

“Stay here and don’t move!”

I shouted to Li Zi and the others.

Gripping my Spirit-Subduing Ruler and flashlight, I charged deeper into the basement.

I had to see what that man-eating shadow really was.

But the farther I chased it, the farther away it seemed.

I crossed countless severed limbs and mangled body parts scattered across the ground, yet I still could not make out the creature’s appearance.

It felt as though some force within this space was deliberately preventing me from seeing its true form.

Eventually, I had no choice but to give up.

I knew the basement couldn’t possibly be this large.

Yet I had already run well over a thousand meters.

Staring at the blood-soaked floor beneath me, I remained silent for a long time before raising my head slightly and shouting into the darkness ahead:

“Show yourselves. I understand your grievances now!”

In an instant, blood-red light flooded the darkness.

The entire basement was bathed in crimson.

And somehow, despite having supposedly run over a kilometer, I was standing only three steps away from Li Zi and the others on the staircase.

The basement was now packed with countless hazy figures.

Looking closely, it was easy to see that they were all young men in their twenties and thirties.

Their faces were blurred, and their bodies were semi-transparent.

Li Zi and his companions had never witnessed such a horrifying scene before.

They immediately began trembling uncontrollably.

I was about to warn them not to act rashly when Monkey, who was standing at the back, suddenly panicked and ran several steps backward out of the basement.

My heart sank.

This was bad.

I shouted for Li Zi and Er Leng to chase after him.

But the two of them were in terrible shape themselves.

Their legs shook uncontrollably, and their minds were still muddled with fear.

With a sigh, I grabbed both of them and rushed out through the iron door.

“Monkey!” Li Zi finally regained enough clarity to shout.

As soon as we entered the living room, we saw a hazy figure in a qipao strangling Monkey by the neck.

The woman’s appearance had changed drastically.

Her body was hunched and twisted.

Her face was covered in deep wrinkles and folds.

She looked nothing like the elegant woman we had seen when the door first opened.

Monkey’s eyes had rolled back as the qipao-clad spirit tightened her grip around his throat.

Dragging him backward, she slowly retreated, seemingly trying to put distance between herself and us.

A surge of anger rose within me.

Spiritual energy gathered along my Spirit-Subduing Ruler as I shouted at the qipao spirit:

“Let him go!”

The qipao spirit hid behind Monkey’s body, exposing only that grotesque face.

She responded with a sinister grin.