145: Chapter 145 Illusory Mist

The highway had turned from asphalt into a gravel road half an hour ago.

Twenty minutes later, even the gravel road vanished, leaving only two dirt tracks repeatedly worn down by the three-wheelers of the mountain folk.

The van's chassis was low, and every time it hit a pothole, the shock absorbers creaked and groaned, each sound a protest that this road was not meant for cars.

The mountains on both sides pressed in tighter and tighter, their treetops locked together overhead as if fighting to the death, leaving the light fragmented and sparse; inside the car, it felt just like dusk.

A Shui turned on the radio, but it was nothing but static.

He twisted the channel knob twice, unable to find a single normal frequency.

Jiang Feng took out his phone; a red cross hung where the signal bars should be.

On the dashboard, the GPS navigation's location pin had stopped moving entirely.

"It's fine, I know the way. Turn left at the fork up ahead, and in another forty minutes we'll..."

Before he could finish, he could no longer see the road ahead.

White mist surged from the mountain pass ahead, advancing toward them at an unnatural speed.

The van plunged straight into it.

Within three seconds, their vision was completely swallowed.

The beams from the headlights could only reach two meters ahead; beyond that, there was only milky-white void.

A Shui slowed the van to ten kilometers per hour, both hands gripping the steering wheel, his upper body leaning forward until his nose was almost pressed against the windshield.

In the height of summer in the Shiwanda Mountains, at an altitude of less than a thousand meters, the temperature had dropped by at least ten degrees.

Without any warning, the radio began to shriek.

It was a high-pitched screech, so piercing it made his teeth ache.

A Shui reached out to turn off the radio.

In that brief moment, his peripheral vision caught something outside the left window.

Something was pressed against the glass.

He turned his head.

Outside the left window, amidst the thick fog, a humanoid silhouette was pressed tightly against the glass.

It had no face.

Where the features should have been was nothing but smooth skin.

It wasn't obscured by the fog; there was truly nothing there.

That face was pressed directly against the car window, less than thirty centimeters from A Shui's head.

A Shui's mouth opened, his vocal cords spasming, and only a vague, breathy sound squeezed from his throat.

Bang, bang, bang, bang!

Pounding sounds came from all directions simultaneously.

The front windshield, the rear window, the right passenger window—faceless figures were everywhere.

They slapped the glass with their palms, each strike carrying a dull vibration.

The van swayed from side to side amidst the pounding, and the mineral water bottle on the center console rolled onto the floor.

A Shui screamed.

He slammed his right foot onto the brake.

The van skidded sideways on the wet, muddy road, its rear end whipping out over a meter before it came to a crooked stop in the middle of the road.

A Shui curled into a ball, clutching his head with both hands, huddled in the gap between the steering wheel and the seat.

Jiang Feng did not move.

Outside the windows, those faceless figures were still pounding against the glass, the bang-bang-bang sound relentless, but his heartbeat remained at a steady rhythm.

A switch in his brain had been flipped to another setting.

All the signals of fear pouring in from outside the car windows were blocked by the system at the periphery of his consciousness.

【Empathy Shielding】 activated.

He felt no fear when he should have, and no panic when he should have.

This skill was good, but using it too much always made him feel a bit less like a normal human being.

Jiang Feng turned his head to look at the faceless figure pressed against the left window.

The figure's palm was slapping the glass, with considerable force, making a loud banging sound.

But Jiang Feng stared at the contact point between the palm and the glass.

There were no water streaks on the glass.

The humidity of the mist outside was extremely high, and a thin layer of water droplets had already condensed on the outer surface of the van's windows.

If there were truly a physical entity pounding on the glass, the area where the palm made contact should have wiped away the droplets, leaving a dry palm print.

There was nothing.

The droplets remained evenly suspended there, not a single one wiped away.

Jiang Feng looked at the front windshield again.

Two faceless figures were pressed against it as well.

Similarly, there were no palm prints, no displacement of water droplets, and no traces of any physical contact.

An illusion caused by a magnetic field anomaly.

Jiang Feng leaned back against the seat, his tense shoulders relaxing by half an inch.

"Five hundred meters on the perimeter, magnetic field anomaly zone, do not trust."

He had memorized those words at the time, but the impact of reading them on paper was entirely different from running into it firsthand.

If horror movie special effects reached this level, it would certainly be convincing.

But special effects were, in the end, just special effects.

Jiang Feng looked down at A Shui.

The kid was huddled beneath the steering wheel, curled into a ball, the frequency of his back's trembling no different from a phone in vibration mode.

"A Shui."

"Ahhhhh—"

"Shut up and listen to me."

A Shui revealed one red, bloodshot eye through the gap in his arms.

Jiang Feng took out the final payment and thrust it in front of A Shui.

"Take the money."

He slung his canvas bag over his shoulder.

"Turn around and go back, follow the tire tracks you came in on. Once you drive a certain distance, the fog will clear."

"Boss... you're not going back?"

"I've arrived."

Jiang Feng pushed the car door open.

Damp, cold mist surged into the cabin, the chill creeping up his skin along his pant legs and sleeves.

"Boss! Are you crazy?! It's full of those things out there!"

Jiang Feng stepped one foot onto the muddy ground and turned his head to look at A Shui.

"Those things are fake. The magnetic field is interfering with your eyes and ears; what you see and hear does not exist."

A Shui's mouth hung open, his expression indicating that he hadn't taken in a single word.

Jiang Feng didn't expect him to understand anyway.

"Go back. And stop tipping so many rockets in the future."

He closed the car door.

Bang.

The van's engine roared twice.

A Shui stomped on the gas three times, cranked the steering wheel, and the beat-up van carved a crooked U-turn in the mud, its tires churning through the muck as it tore wildly back the way they came.

The red taillights flashed twice in the white mist, and then everything vanished from sight.

The sound of the engine grew distant and faint, finally swallowed by the thick fog and silence.

Jiang Feng stood in the very center of the muddy road.

White mist surrounded him on all sides.

Those faceless figures were still there.

They circled him, tilting their featureless heads, maintaining some kind of eerie posture.

Honestly, any normal person would have had jelly legs by now.

But Empathy Shielding had hardened everything that should have gone soft.

Jiang Feng only felt that these things were in his way.

He adjusted the strap of his canvas bag and stepped forward.

Walking up to one of the faceless figures, he didn't detour, but walked straight through the middle of its body.

There was no sensation, no temperature, no resistance.

Goosebumps, however, broke out in a fine layer across his skin.

Empathy Shielding could govern the brain, but it couldn't govern the skin.

The figure dissipated behind him, becoming part of the white mist, only to re-coalesce ahead.

Jiang Feng didn't look at them and walked straight ahead.

The fog began to thin.

It wasn't dissipating at a steady rate; it was as if some force had torn a slit right through the middle.

A narrow path was revealed within the gap.

The road surface was no longer dirt and tire tracks, but grey-black stone slabs.

The slabs were overgrown with moss, weeds sprouting from the cracks, but the overall pattern of the paving remained.

Someone had built this road.

And it wasn't work from recent years.

Judging by the weathering of the slabs and the thickness of the moss, it had been at least several decades.

Jiang Feng walked less than two hundred meters along the stone path.

A stele appeared ahead.

It was taller than a person, made of bluestone.

Several characters were carved onto the face of the stele, but they were not Chinese characters.

They were a type of rune he didn't recognize.

The strokes were twisted, each carving dug half a finger deep into the stone.

It wasn't Chinese, nor was it any ancient script he had ever come across in the Huake Institute archives.

The only thing recognizable were three Chinese characters painted in red lacquer on the bottom right corner of the stele.

Wuyin Town.