Chapter 277: I Am the First Red King

They were a sect built on faith in distortion, and the deity they worshipped was the Twisted God.

Of course, in the eyes of the Twisted Divine Cult, they weren't the distorted ones—the world was. Distortion was the true underlying nature of reality, and their ideal was to return the world to its original state.

At least a hundred thousand people? It seemed this place was merely a stronghold of the Twisted Divine Cult rather than their headquarters. The cult was considered a powerful faction within the Middle Hell; their main base wouldn't contain a mere hundred thousand believers.

After all, the Nightmare where the Primal Divine Cult made their headquarters housed tens of millions.

Reaching a stronghold of the Twisted Divine Cult meant they had already entered the Middle Hell—a place rarely visited by nightmare apostles. To think the First Red King had actually vanished in the Middle Prison. The cause of his disappearance likely wasn't a nightmare monster; it might have been the people living in the Middle Prison, or perhaps even a God was involved.

With this thought in mind, Su Mu slowly walked toward the Black Fog. The group assumed he was scouting the terrain and paid it no mind.

Upon reaching the edge, he flicked his finger, launching a metal object wrapped in strands of black hair into the Black Fog.

When he returned to the group, Su Qing shot him a suspicious look. "What did you just throw into the Black Fog?"

"Nothing. I just wanted to see what exactly is inside the Black Fog," Su Mu lied without hesitation.

"Captain, what do we do now? Are we going up the mountain?" Lin Nanxing recalled his Eye of the Sky and approached Su Mu.

"Naturally, we're going up the mountain. But before we do, we need to change our appearance a bit."

A moment later, under the disguise of Myriad Phenomena, the group was completely transformed.

Everyone's facial features had shifted out of place. Some had noses growing where their eyes should be, while others had ears growing in place of their noses. They looked unspeakably bizarre.

With this disguise and the guidance of the Eye of the Sky, the group headed straight for the nearest village. To gather intelligence on this place and search for traces of the First Red King, they had to make contact with the locals. To play it safe, starting in a small village was the most secure option.

The group soon made their way up the mountain. Along the climb, Su Mu was surprised to discover that as they drew closer, the originally towering Statue was shrinking at a visible rate. By now, it had already shrunk by half.

This completely defied common sense. Normally, objects appeared smaller the farther away they were. If you looked down at pedestrians from a hundred-meter-tall building, they would look the size of ants, but upon walking down to the street, those same pedestrians would be your size.

Interesting.

The bizarre phenomenon only made Su Mu find the situation increasingly interesting.

The group continued onward and soon stepped into the village. It felt like walking into an extremely distorted world. The people living there were completely unrecognizable, and the buildings shared the same fate.

The roads meandered and twisted. The surrounding trees even grew upside down, their roots completely exposed to the air while their lush branches and leaves were half-buried in the soil.

The houses, which should have been straight and level, looked as if some external force had forcibly wrung them into twisted braids. Seeing them made the group doubt whether anyone could even live inside.

If things were only bizarre on the outside, that would be one thing, but the behavior of the locals was a hundred times stranger than their appearances.

A man with his head growing out of his crotch was passionately kissing a crooked tree. A large mouth located on his navel occasionally spouted nonsensical sweet nothings.

"My dear, you really make me feel utterly disgusted. The moment I see you, a wave of revulsion washes over me. I wish I could grow into you and feel this disgust every single day."

This bizarre and absurd display made the group feel somewhat uncomfortable. They pressed on. The surrounding twisted ones paid them no mind, seemingly treating them as their own kind.

Soon, they spotted two people fighting over some apparent conflict.

One person held a short sword folded from white paper, while the other wielded a spiked mace. Strangely, the latter was holding the end covered in spikes. Even as the spikes pierced his hand and tore several bloody holes, he remained completely oblivious.

Swish!

The paper sword swung fiercely and crashed into the spiked mace. Instantly, the paper sword tore and bent, while the spiked mace remained completely unharmed.

Yet, the man holding the spiked mace revealed a look of absolute terror. He hoisted the mace high in shock and then snapped it fiercely against his own knee. Crack! The spiked mace broke into two pieces. "You actually severed my weapon!"

A cold sneer sounded from the back of the paper sword man. "This is a divine weapon I spent a whole second forging. You earned your victory. What do you say? Still want to fight?"

The man with the spiked mace looked ashen. "I won. Xiaoli is yours."

"Hahaha... Xiaoli, you're mine!" the paper sword man laughed heartily.

Just as Su Mu wanted to see who Xiaoli was, he watched the man with the spiked mace throw himself into the paper sword man's arms with a look of coy shyness.

Su Mu: "..."

He admitted that his imagination was still somewhat limited.

But at this moment, Lin Nanxing muttered from the side, "Xiaoli is really ugly. Is she even worth the two of them fighting over? The people here have completely distorted aesthetics."

Su Mu's eyes flickered slightly. He faintly realized that the distortion's influence was ongoing. Even if one didn't look at the Statue, simply setting foot on the mountain was enough to be affected.

However, judging by Lin Nanxing's state, the influence was still relatively mild for now.

"Let's find some locals and ask about the situation first."

Su Mu walked toward a shop. The shop owner was a snobbish young man with eyes on the top of his head—not as a figure of speech for arrogance, but because his eyes were literally growing on the crown of his head.

"Welcome. What would the customer like to buy?"

Su Mu was slightly surprised, not expecting to encounter someone who was at least a little normal.

"Just looking around."

He said this, but in reality, he had already initiated hypnosis. A moment later, the shop owner was successfully hypnotized.

Su Mu pulled out a portrait of the First Red King and asked, "Have you seen this person?"

The shop owner nodded blankly. "I have."

"When did you see him?"

"This morning."

Su Mu frowned slightly. This morning? The First Red King had been missing for years and was most likely dead, yet this person claimed to have seen him just this morning?

"Where did you see him?"

"At my house."

"Where is he now?"

"I am him," the shop owner said blankly.

Su Mu: "..."

This was the first time he had encountered such a situation. The hypnosis was clearly successful, yet it felt as though it had completely failed.

The minds of these people were thoroughly distorted. It was impossible to get any real information out of them.

"Let's go." He turned around, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lin Nanxing reaching to draw his bow and an arrow from his quiver.

Seeing Su Mu turn around, Lin Nanxing's expression changed. He hastily pretended that nothing was amiss and discreetly slipped the bow and arrow back.