Chapter 385: A Dead End

It was a male corpse dressed in a suit. The body bore no wounds or signs of a struggle; he had likely thrown himself into the river to commit suicide.

His skin was bloated and pale from soaking, but his basic facial features were still recognizable. The estimated time of death was within a week.

Like the others, this corpse had a large rock tied around its waist. Sunk to the bottom of the river, it swayed gently with the current, unable to break free from its ropes, imprisoned in the pitch-black water.

On the surface, he looked no different from the other corpses, but I noticed an easily overlooked detail. The pockets of his suit jacket were turned inside out. Clearly, someone had picked his pockets after he died.

The person who rifled through his pockets was likely the same one who had tied him to the rock and sank him here. And out on this vast river, who would go out of their way to rummage through a floating corpse's pockets?

The answer was obvious: a corpse retriever who made a living off the dead!

I retracted my gaze and turned to look at Number Eleven. "You fish bodies out of the great river, so you should understand its currents better than we do. Tell us what you think."

"Left or right works. The key is to leave markers so we don't forget the way back." He Bo didn't reveal any flaws in his words. He stood at the bow, acting as if he were seriously observing the area. "The water is calm, and I can't hear any wind. Both paths could be exits."

"Let's go left, then," Jin Zhouzhe said after shining his phone's flashlight around for a long time. "The corpses at the bottom of the left channel seem relatively sparse."

"Then we go left. At worst, we can just come back." Du Yu took a key from his pocket and carved a long scratch into the wall of the air-raid shelter. The group sat in the small boat and entered the left channel.

After rowing some ten meters, everyone sensed something was wrong. The air grew oppressive. Whether the water level had risen or the cave channel had narrowed, the boat's progress grew slower and slower. It bumped and scraped along, frequently snagging on the corpses below.

"It's no good. We can't row anymore. Something seems to have hooked the bottom of the boat." Number Eleven, He Bo, pushed backward with the oar a couple of times, and everyone heard a sharp snap, like a rope breaking.

"It's moving!" Before He Bo could resume rowing, a male corpse floated up from beneath the water. This must have been what had snagged the bottom of our boat.

"Why do these clothes look a little familiar?" Relying on the boldness born of mastery, I grabbed the edge of the boat with one hand and seized the corpse's pants with the other. "Help me out."

With everyone's help, I flipped the body over, and we all saw the dead man's face.

"Detective Number Three!"

"Why is he floating here?"

"Cut the crap and look at his wounds."

On the surface, Number Three appeared to have drowned, but when we lifted his coat, we were met with a horrific sight. His stomach had been completely flattened, like a crushed pancake.

"Have any of you ever seen a cause of death like this?"

"Never even heard of it. His internal organs must be crushed to a pulp."

"Could a ghost have done this?"

Listening to them, I felt wave after wave of chills. A vengeful specter was already deeply resentful and hard to deal with, but there was also a twelfth person among us—someone even more terrifying than any ghost.

"Hurry up, we need to leave. Everyone, help row." I plunged my hands into the water and paddled forward. Occasionally, my fingertips brushed against things I couldn't quite identify, but I didn't probe deeper, not even sparing them a glance. "Faster!"

Du Yu and Wang Shi followed my lead. Only Jin Zhouzhe hesitated. His scalp tingled as he stared at the pitch-black river, half-squatting alone at the stern of the boat.

Even with three more people helping, the boat's speed didn't increase much. The channel grew even narrower, with some sections requiring us to tuck in our bodies just to squeeze through.

"Is there something wrong with this path? Should we head back?"

No sooner had Wang Shi spoken than He Bo braced his oar against the wall at the bow and shouted, "It's a dead end ahead!"

I was also sitting at the bow. Before I even understood what was happening, I activated my Judging Eye to look.

A dozen meters away, the path was completely sealed off. A pile of scar-riddled female corpses was blocking the exit!

Carried by the current, the small boat drifted closer and closer to the mound of bodies, right on the verge of crashing into them.

"Stop rowing! Stop! No, row backward! We have to go back the way we came!" He Bo shouted anxiously, but an undercurrent seemed to be pulling the boat forward.

"Fuck! Who picked this path earlier?"

"What the hell are you panicking for? Isn't it just a pile of corpses? The current flows toward the exit; at worst, we can just ram our way through those floaters!" Jin Zhouzhe had chosen the left path. Now, somewhat flustered, he tried to put on a tough front. "The bodies must have washed up here because of the current. If we move them aside, there's bound to be a clear path ahead!"

The undercurrent surged, making it hard to turn around with just one oar. As we drew nearer to the pile of female corpses, the Ghost Infant I had been nurturing in my Kidney Aperture suddenly awoke. Its three eyes snapped open, and the flow of Yin energy within my Yin Meridians accelerated to several times its usual speed.

It darted up and down, opening its mouth to shriek in a powerful warning.

A wave of shock washed over me. Not daring to miss a single detail, I scanned the area carefully with my Judging Eye. Suddenly, I spotted a man's head sitting dead center among the pile of female floating corpses.

"It's Number Nine!" Before I could react further, Number Nine's tightly shut eyes abruptly flew open, his bloodshot gaze revealing thick, venomous resentment.

"He's not dead?!"

Under the gaze of the Judging Eye, all evil entities revealed their true forms. I could clearly see Number Nine's body gripped in the hands of several corpses. They seemed to hate him to the very bone; their fingers had sunk entirely into his flesh. Even more terrifying was that Number Nine's chest, half-hidden beneath the water, was still faintly rising and falling. He was actually still alive!

When the boat came within ten meters of him, Number Nine's tightly sealed mouth slowly parted. His teeth and tongue had been torn out; filthy water and blood spilled from his lips, accompanied by a trace of a resentful, malicious smile.

At the same time, the fingers gripping him seemed to loosen, and beneath the river's surface, black hair faintly spread out like water weeds.

"This is bad! Number Nine is inside that pile of corpses! Something's coming!" I shouted immediately, but the current couldn't be fought. The boat's speed didn't drop; at most, we would crash into the mound of bodies in ten seconds.

The situation was critical, yet the others on the boat hadn't realized it. Even Du Yu thought I was overreacting.

With no time to explain, I gritted my teeth and jumped off the boat, pressing both hands against the bow. "Row back! Hurry!"

My feet seemed to step on something. Against my calves and the small of my back, things brushed past my body as they drifted through the pitch-black, murky water.

"Splash!" He Bo seemed to realize the urgency as well. He shoved the oar into Du Yu's hands and leaped into the water too.

Working together, the two of us finally managed to push the boat out of the undercurrent.

"Go to the right channel. This path is a dead end." Still palpitating with lingering fear, I glanced back. In the water not far away, a woman's black hair was drifting toward us like aquatic weeds.

"How can these floating corpses swim upstream?" Wang Shi marveled, but my legs were already shaking with terror. How were these mere floating corpses? They were people who had died unjustly in the great river! Their obsessions had never dissipated, twisting them into water ghosts dedicated to harming the living!

"Quick, get on the boat!" At the critical moment, He Bo and I simultaneously jumped for the small boat. The hull rocked. Sitting at the bow, Du Yu reached out to me without hesitation, dragging and hauling me aboard.

Taking a deep breath, Du Yu and I turned to save He Bo, only to see his legs give way. As if grabbed by something, he fell to his knees in the water for no apparent reason. His face went pale, and his hands flailed wildly like a drowning man.

I tried to reach out, but clusters of black hair surfaced in the water not far away. The sight was indescribable; even having experienced so many live broadcasts, my body felt icy, entirely sapped of strength.

"What is that? The corpses are coming back to life?"

"Hurry up and row! Move!"

He Bo, half-kneeling in the water, sank even further. The water, originally waist-deep, now reached his neck. The rest of us on the boat could clearly see the sheer terror etched onto his face.

He opened his mouth, but before he could utter a single complete sentence, his head was yanked under the water.

Only a string of bubbles remained on the river's surface, the sole proof that a living person had ever been there.

The number of survivors had dwindled once again. Jin Zhouzhe and Wang Shi rowed desperately, escaping the left channel and returning to the three-way fork.

None of us looked well. Although everyone here was a butcher with bloodstained hands, human nature's fragile side inevitably surfaced when faced with such unknown, logic-defying horrors.

"What do we do now?"

"The left is a dead end, so we can only take the right channel."

"But the corpses at the bottom of the right channel are even denser than in the left. I'm afraid we'll run into something even more terrifying." Jin Zhouzhe stared at the murky water, his expression conflicted.

"Monsters aren't scary; it's the human heart that's terrifying." Sitting at the bow, I swept my gaze over the remaining few. "Don't forget, the organizer might be right here among the four of us."