Chapter 27: Has Become #The Eerie Legend of the Special Dungeon# 【Contains Forum Content】

Chapter 27: The Eerie Legend That Has Become a #Special Dungeon# "Including Forum Posts"

As Wang Lin stood frozen, a sudden "thud" sounded—something outside had knocked on the guest room's glass window.

Startled, he jolted upright and glanced at his peacefully sleeping classmates nearby. Tiptoeing lightly to the window, he lifted a corner of the curtain.

Outside, countless ghostly white moths fluttered in frantic fluttering, their wing patterns resembling eyes or human faces slicing through the darkness, carving jagged, crisscrossing paths in the air.

Their sheer numbers turned the night sky sickly white, transforming it into a hazy veil over the village, its shape shifting intermittently.

Their antennae trembled, emitting sounds no normal human could hear.

To Wang Lin’s astonishment, thanks to the moth wings growing in his throat, he could roughly understand their communication.

After a while, a stronger, more resonant soundwave overpowered the moths’ chatter, reverberating across the entire mountain range. As if obeying a specific command, the moths massed toward a particular house in the village.

Squinting, Wang Lin—whose vision had also evolved from the fusion—easily cut through the mountain haze to see the distant scene clearly: the courtyard where the one-eared village chief lived.

Faintly, he could also make out figures slinking through the darkness before slipping into the chief’s home.

Wang Lin instantly realized: villagers were spying on them at night. Their every move would likely be reported to the chief...

Lowering the curtain, Wang Lin crouched with his back against the window and shared what he’d learned in the thread.

№133 (OP):

It’s 1:30 AM, and there’s a sea of moths flying outside. Weirdly, I can understand the messages they’re exchanging.

№134 (OP):

They say many of their kind dropped dead all at once. If we encounter Classmate E or a gray-cloaked man with blond hair, we should stay away as quickly as possible.

№135 (OP):

They also mentioned someone breaking into some "cave"... but I missed the details.

№136:

Damn, OP, what kind of luck is this? First Divine Pollution, then Classmate E who might be a demigod, and now a blond heavyweight even the moths are avoiding...

№137:

LMAO, seems like Classmate E’s deeds have spread among the moths (laughs)

№138:

#The Eerie Legend of the Special Dungeon#

№139:

Any more info, OP? Let us help you figure out how to survive among all these big players.

№140 (OP):

I also noticed villagers have been secretly watching us! The moths flew toward the chief’s house, too.

This village is definitely shady!

№141 (OP):

Aside from that, I heard some mumbled terms—something about "hatching," "fate"...

And one more—"shitu"? "shitu"?

№142:

Trying to read that last word... Could it be "*Apostle*"?

№143:

WTF??? (gasp)

No way? That’s the legendary *Mouthpiece of the Gods*!

№144:

I don’t even know what to say. OP’s one dungeon is more thrilling than a decade of our adventures... (lights virtual candle)

№145:

Crazy idea—what if the blond man the moths fear is the *Apostle* they mentioned?

№146:

It’s possible. The timing does match.

№147 (OP):

Wait, so what does *Apostle* mean?

№148:

(Sigh) Can someone explain it to OP?

...

"Plink, plink..."

Water droplets slid down the smooth stone walls, landing on Teacher Ju’s hair and arms, seeping in with a numbing cold.

The cave was claustrophobic at first, forcing her to hunch over, but soon it opened up, the ceiling rising to over three meters at its lowest point.

Leaning on her hiking staff, Teacher Ju advanced cautiously, her flashlight beam dancing across the walls until it settled on a rock carving.

Despite the damp environment, the carving was weirdly intact. Unidentifiable dark red pigment was deeply etched into the hard stone, running from mid-chest up to the arched ceiling.

Bryce stopped beside her, studying quietly the carving.

"It looks ancient. It’s a miracle it’s this clear."

Teacher Ju automatically decoded the imagery: "This first part shows people standing beneath an arch—likely the old village entrance of Bee-Ant Village. These figures are raising their hands toward the gate, probably welcoming guests."

The next scene pulled back: dozens of stick figures knelt before a moth. Against the moth’s grotesquely huge size, the people looked as insignificant as ants.

To emphasize the moth’s extraordinary status, it alone was depicted in black pigment.

Like a smothering darkness, it loomed over the people, forcing them to cower in fear.

"This likely records Bee-Ant Village’s religious beliefs. It matches up with what I’ve heard from villagers—that their ancestors saw moths in the woods as human faces and feared the Moth God into worship," Teacher Ju muttered, nodding to herself.

The images that followed the depiction of the moth were even more bizarre and ominous.

Dark red lines outlined several humanoid figures, but these figures were far smaller than the normal-sized ones.

At the center of their bodies, a crimson fissure was etched, as if they were being torn apart.

"These smaller figures represent underage children," Teacher Ju stated firmly. "The mural likely suggests that many children in the village fell ill or died."

"With so many children affected at once, the cause was likely an infectious disease... Was it that a plague had broken out among the children of Fengyi Village at that time, resulting in mass casualties?"

"Connecting it to the first painting, is it implying that this plague was brought in by outsiders?"

Then came two parallel lines, representing a long passageway. Within it, one figure knelt before the enormous moth, its head pressed deeply against the ground in what appeared to be devout worship.

Teacher Ju raised her gaze, continuing upward until she saw a moth depicted head-on on the stone wall. Its wings displayed eerie patterns that formed a distorted human visage.

From what appeared to be its mouthparts, inky tendrils unfurled outward, chaotically spreading in all directions.

After prolonged contemplation, Teacher Ju said uncertainly, "Perhaps this was the village chief or some important figure of the time, coming to the cave to kneel and beg for the Moth God's favor? And these lines... they might represent the expression of divine might."

Finally, the small figure stood outside the cave, brandishing a torch as it traversed the jungle, with a tiny village depicted in the distance.

"The entire tableau appears to recount the story of an ancient plague, during which a villager successfully prayed to the Moth God, imploring it to descend and suppress the epidemic..."

Teacher Ju said, "This is a quintessential religious carving, recording the worship of the Moth God at the time, possibly even extolling the devout believers."

Hearing her interpretation, Bryce smiled and asked, "So you interpreted it bottom-up?"

"Of course," Teacher Ju replied habitually. "Large stone carvings are typically made using one of three methods: suspension, rock climbing, or scaffolding. Given the conditions here, securing overhead ropes would be nearly impossible for someone to carve while suspended from above."

"So the most logical approach, and the approach most artisans would adopt, is to start at chest height and gradually work upward until they reach the top..."

Bryce interrupted her, "But as you said, that's how ordinary artisans work."

Teacher Ju froze for a moment, murmuring, "What do you mean?"

"You noticed earlier that the moths here are unusual—what if the carver wasn't human? What if it had moth-like wings and could fly?"

Teacher Ju replied in disbelief, "...Then the whole tableau might have been carved from top to bottom."

—The story she had just interpreted should, in fact, be read in reverse.

An electric jolt raced down her spine, making her tremble involuntarily. She inhaled sharply, her gaze sweeping from top to bottom as she reinterpreted the mural.

This time, the mural told a tale steeped in curses and unnatural horror, and divine conquest over humans.

"So that person wasn't returning from the cave to the village—instead, they were leaving the village at night, torch in hand... They stumbled upon this cave and witnessed a creature they had never seen before—a giant human-faced moth."

"The terrifying moth disgorged inky filaments from its maw, spreading outward like a curse, while the person knelt before it, pressing their forehead down in apparent torment."

"The Moth God's curse began to spread rapidly. Cracks appeared on the abdomens of the village children, their survival uncertain; The villagers, terrified of the curse's power, groveled at the feet of the Moth God..."

Teacher Ju's grip on the flashlight trembled. Staring at the painting she had mistaken for the beginning—but was actually the end—her voice dropped to a rasp:

"The villagers beckoning outsiders into the village? They were attracting 'prey' or 'sacrifices' for the Moth God..."

"Just like how they used Professor Linlu to lure us into the village..."

Before the ancient mural, a dreadful and crushing truth revealed itself before her, thundering through her consciousness.

Standing frozen for several seconds, Teacher Ju slowly realized that the flashlight's glow trembled. She struggled to still her quaking hands.

But when her left hand pressed against her right wrist, she realized her entire body was quaking—equal parts terror and fury—as if crushed beneath the unbearable weight of the cruel truth before her.

"You seem to have been carrying guilt and remorse for your students," Bryce's gentle voice echoed through the cave. "Now you can let go of that pointless self-reproach. Even if it weren't you, another catalyst would have emerged."

"—Every one of you was destined to come to Fengyi Village, to stand before our Moth God."

When mentioning the Moth God, Bryce's tone carried a hint of irreverent amusement.

As if it weren't a terrifying deity that had secretly controlled a region for over a century, but merely another subject for him to observe and weave into legends, no more remarkable than any other.

"You... No," Teacher Ju lowered her head, correcting herself, "Can *you* defeat it?"

Bryce smiled leisurely. "Merely a wandering minstrel am I."

"Bards don't create legends. We only record them and pass them on."

Teacher Ju's expression darkened, but then Bryce added, "But don’t worry. I can see the strands of fate around you shifting toward a brighter path."

Indeed, when Teacher Ju had rallied her students and planned their escape, the strands of their fates had already begun to break free from the encroaching darkness.

And now, after she had ventured into the cave at midnight and correctly deciphered the mural, the thick, spider-leg-like strands of fate that had once clung to her faded from black, revealing glimmering silver beneath.

To Bryce—or rather, to Yi Fengchu, who now inhabited his body—fate's balance had already tipped in favor of these ordinary people.

Hearing this, a torch-flame's worth of hope returned to Teacher Ju's eyes.

"Leave now," Bryce said, gazing into the deeper darkness of the cave, his voice echoing down the long passageway. "What lies ahead is too dangerous for you."

The solitary beam of the flashlight bathed Bryce in a nimbus of hazy glow.

Staring at him, Teacher Ju couldn’t help but recall a statue of a smiling angel she had once seen in a famous cathedral.

That statue, bathed in the radiant hues of a rose window, spread its broad wings. Though time had blurred its features, its sacred aura—as if listening to prayers on behalf of the divine—had left a deep impression on her.

Now, that same indescribable holiness seemed to emanate from Bryce, lending an inexplicable charm to his ordinarily plain features.

After a pause, Teacher Ju instinctively raised the flashlight. "What about this...?"

"I don’t need light to witness what lies ahead. You may take it back down the mountain."

His voice grew distant as Teacher Ju watched Bryce's figure gradually meld into the gloom.

"—Farewell."

She heard his amused farewell: "It was a pleasure sharing this delightful journey with you."