novelonline Chapter 3472 [The House of the Fake People]
Chapter 3472 [The House of the Fake People]
Chapter 3472 [The House of the Fake People]
Xia Defei carefully opened the wooden door in mid-air and then saw another room next door. After considering it for a moment, he crawled through the small door and landed. He saw that the new room was about a third larger than the previous one, and it was not a bedroom but a reception room.
The furniture is still quite antique and has a strong sense of history; the black tea in the porcelain teacup on the coffee table is still steaming.
Xia De walked to the window again and lifted the curtains. Sure enough, the brick wall behind it was still decorated with chalk drawings of the window. The scenery through the "window" was still blue sky, white clouds, and snow-capped mountains, only the viewing angle was slightly different from that of the other window next door.
[See what comes next.]
"She" suddenly reminded him, and Xia De looked in the direction he had come from, then saw that the door above the wall had disappeared, and now there was a smooth wall.
Shad had basically determined where he was, so he wasn't panicked. Instead, he asked:
"Is it just my imagination? The blood in the room now seems to be a deeper shade than it was in the room before."
[This is not an illusion; the crimson hue is the color that has appeared in the originally formless and colorless space after the power of the relics corrupted it. If one remains in this environment for an extended period, the bodies of flesh and blood creatures will quickly dissolve and become part of this house. This is not a curse, but a fundamental characteristic of this building.]
"So to what extent have I been affected?"
As Xia De looked around the room, he asked, "She" chuckled softly:
[No impact whatsoever.]
The house itself might be alive; this was Shad's first impression of the "House of the Pseudo-Humans".
Last night's notebook clearly described some of the conditions and characteristics inside this Sage-level relic, such as "blood red appeared before my eyes," "most of the furniture was red," "the whispering element was not very strong in a room without flesh and blood," and "there were no windows that could be easily found," which were quite similar to the place where Shad was at this moment.
This time, instead of searching for the "secret passage," he went behind the door, turned the handle, and went straight out.
Outside the door was a corridor covered with a red carpet, but the edges of the carpet showed loosely cut threads, which, upon closer inspection, appeared to be slowly wriggling.
The walls were covered with dark red wallpaper. The room was located at the end of a very short corridor. There was a door on each side of the door that Shad opened, and a crossroads lay ahead in the corridor.
The bloodstains in the corridor were slightly lighter than those in the room where Shad had just been. He then arrived at the crossroads of the corridor ahead. The corridor to his left was shrouded in a thick blood mist, and the liquid in the air was almost congealing into blood droplets. The corridor to his right looked normal, with rows of red oak doors on both sides.
As for directly ahead, there were no doors on either side of the roughly fifty-meter-long corridor, and at the end of the corridor was a bend that could only be turned to the right. When Shad looked there, the sound of rushing water came from inside the quiet building. Three seconds later, a torrent of blood gushed out from the bend at the end of the corridor and rushed rapidly toward Shad.
The red blood gave Shad a very dangerous feeling, and his body instinctively resisted contact with the liquid. Trusting his instincts, Shad walked towards the corridor on his right.
His eyes swept over the rooms without nameplates, then he opened the first one and went inside.
This looked like an apartment, and there were people inside. As Shad stood pressed against the door, in the dark red room, a middle-aged man with ram's horns and hooves was loudly berating two children kneeling before him:
"I sent you to school, not to be naughty! Tell me, whose idea was it to put a basin of water on the classroom door?!"
The boy with the one horn and the boy whose eyes and nose had been switched trembled, but neither answered. Then the man brought down the stick he was holding, and the one-horned "boy" died instantly, his head exploding like a watermelon.
The long red metal rod then pointed to the second boy, and it said tremblingly:
"It was my brother's idea, it was all his idea!"
"She's already learned to lie at such a young age!"
It then smashed the second "boy" to death with a single blow, before pointing the still-dripping stick menacingly at Shad:
"Tell me, was it you who gave them the idea?"
Xia De frowned and said:
"If you want to practice your acting skills, you don't have to make this place so bloody, do you?"
But the man completely ignored Xia De, raising the stick high with both hands and charging towards him. Xia De casually unleashed a silver moonlight slash that severed the man in half at the waist, but its upper body still tried to wriggle closer to Xia De, only to be burned to ashes by the flames.
The small apartment contained only a living room, a bedroom, and a balcony. A gas lamp cast a blood-red glow, and clothes hung to dry on the balcony. Of course, the walls of the open balcony were also painted with snow-capped mountain scenery, making it appear as if it connected directly to the outdoors.
These small apartments typically involve several households sharing a bathroom and kitchen, and are common in the downtown areas of any city.
After a careful inspection, Xia De discovered another hidden door inside the wardrobe. Passing through this door, he entered another wardrobe in a different room. This time, upon opening the wardrobe door, he found a bedroom where flesh and blood were fused with the walls.
Am I venturing deeper into the [House of the Fake Men]?
The dark red muscles remained largely smooth, blending seamlessly with the red wall. The area ratio of the muscles to the wall was approximately 1:2, and the muscles even twitched intermittently, appearing still alive.
The crimson hue in the bedroom intensified, and the pungent smell of blood made even Shad feel extremely uncomfortable.
The bedroom was quite large, with a four-poster bed, big enough for five or six people, placed in the center of the room. From behind the sheer red gauze curtains, a woman's voice asked with a laugh:
"Want to come play together?"
Shad, who had remained expressionless since the beginning, finally showed a wary look. Although he couldn't see the other person's face clearly, the other person was undoubtedly a fourth-stage pseudo-human, and much stronger than those fourth-stage pseudo-humans he had encountered.
Even outside the [House of the Pseudo-Humans], he would have to be cautious if he encountered an enemy of this strength, let alone here, which is the other party's home turf.
From this perspective, even among the pseudo-humans of the fourth stage, the difference in their actual strength is quite significant.
"Madam, I think that's unnecessary."
He replied:
"Thank you so much for inviting me, but I want to go home now."
The woman behind the red veil smiled and said:
“Handsome young man, I did not invite you here, but because you are so beautiful, I can offer you an opportunity. Stay and keep me company, and I will make you enjoy yourself to the fullest. I will not change you, and you can spend a long and happy time with me here. Your essence will become the basis for procreating the next generation of pseudo-humans, and I am willing to share this honor with you.”
"Sorry, I'm going home now."
"What heartless people! Are all humans like this?"
This is the first pseudo-human to use the term "you humans".
"But if you want to leave, I won't stop you. Come on, there are three passages here. One is through the door, another will appear after the bathtub in the bathroom is filled with water, and the third is inside the cabinet in the lower right corner of the desk over there."
She paused briefly, then said with a hint of deeper meaning:
"You must choose carefully, because different doors lead to different outcomes."
"thanks for reminding."
Xia De spoke politely, glancing around the room without looking for a possible fourth door. Instead, he bent down and opened the cabinet in the lower right corner of the desk. Looking inside, he indeed found that the cabinet stretched as far as the eye could see.
The cabinet was too small; Shad would probably have to crawl to get in. So the silver cat leaped out from the moonlight and nimbly slipped into the cabinet.
It seemed like there was a long passage hidden inside the cabinet. It took Shad Cat a full five minutes to see the bloodstains reappear ahead.
After bursting out of the passage, the cat nimbly leaped back into Shad's form, only to find no enemies waiting for him, and the type of room was completely unexpected.
"A private chapel?"
The blood-red room was solemnly decorated, with rows of long benches in the center. Stained glass windows in various shades of red looked both sacred and eerie, depicting scenes of communion. Kneeling stools were placed beside the benches, and locked niches were placed in the four corners; it was from one of these niches that Shad had crawled out.
The altar was made of sturdy mahogany and stone, and its surface was covered with exquisite embroidered altar cloth. Even the chapel of a noble manor in Tobesk would probably only use an altar of this size.
The red candles burning on the altar emitted a strange, drowsy fragrance. The chalice and sacramento had been removed from the sacristy and were now placed to the side of the altar. Apart from the wall with the door, there was an altar in front of each of the other three walls, and each altar was adorned with a different holy emblem.
"Can these hypocrites really worship gods? Aren't they afraid of being struck by lightning thrown by the gods?"
Shad examined the three holy symbols in turn. All three were made of red metal and belonged to the Old Gods: Lord of the Blood Feast, Mother of the Rotten Embryo, and Lord of the Plague Sac.
The common characteristic of these three Old Gods is that they are all evil gods, and their followers are considered "evil" even among cultists.
The "old acquaintance" [Lord of the Blood Feast] needs no introduction. This follower of the god is truly "eating people," and the follower himself even takes pride in being eaten by the god.
Followers of the "Mother of the Rotten Embryo" regard aborted children and children who die in their mother's womb as sacred objects. If an abnormal number of aborted children suddenly appears in a certain area, it should be considered whether these evil cult members have begun to operate in that area.
(End of this chapter)