I Forged the Myth of the Ancient Overlords
Chapter 108 - 108 107. Events of the Mythical Era_1

Chapter 108: 107. Events of the Mythical Era_1 Chapter 108: 107. Events of the Mythical Era_1 “The game only mentioned closing my eyes to finish, but the consequences of opening them were not specified.”

“And if I were to continue reciting the poem, I might be able to leave this space, but Red Leaf might end up in danger?”

Lu Ban thought for a moment and decided to open his eyes.

However, when he tried to do so, his eyelids felt extremely heavy and he couldn’t open them.

It was like experiencing sleep paralysis in his own bed; no matter how much Lu Ban wanted to open his eyes, he couldn’t do it.

“So, in this ‘One Hundred Poets’ game, it’s not that I shouldn’t open my eyes, but rather that I can’t open them?”

Lu Ban roughly understood.

“Thinking from a different angle, if I use some method to forcibly open my eyes at this time or try to perceive what’s outside, might it lead to some unexpected results that the game’s designers hadn’t anticipated?”

He opened his mouth.

A sound that humans couldn’t hear emanated from Lu Ban’s mouth, high-frequency ultrasonic waves rippled through the space, and while Lu Ban had initially been prepared to listen to these echoes to determine his current location, he noticed something after a moment.

There were no echoes.

Apart from the ground beneath his feet, there were no walls, no room, no Red Leaf and others; Lu Ban was in an area so vast and silent.

“This is too strange.”

Lu Ban thought and continued to walk forward. At this point, his only option was to recite the poem.

“Bowing my head, I think of home…”

As soon as Lu Ban recited this line, his tensed body suddenly relaxed.

He felt light and warmth in front of him, and when his hand touched Red Leaf’s, Lu Ban opened his eyes.

At least, the shrine maiden before him still looked human.

When he lit his candle, he whispered in Red Leaf’s ear.

“There’s a problem with the game, just finishing the poem should free us.”

Red Leaf gave Lu Ban a glance and nodded silently.

She blew out her candle and quickly left the area illuminated by Lu Ban’s candle, disappearing into the darkness.

“The long, long affairs of the gods…”

Red Leaf’s clear voice came from in front of Lu Ban, conveying a unique and elegant feeling.

If she, dressed as the shrine maiden Chihaya, were to walk through a courtyard with bursting cherry blossoms, accompanied by this chant, it would certainly be a breathtaking picture.

Lu Ban took the opportunity to look at the others.

At the end of the wall to his left was Ginpei, whose body was increasingly deteriorating, and diagonally opposite him was Tachibana Masamune, with his eyes filled with dense masses.

Both were silent, looking straight ahead, fearless.

Lu Ban shifted his gaze to the front.

Then, he saw that, extending forward from his position, at the other end of the wall, stood a person.

That person wore a shrine maiden’s white garment and scarlet hakama, with jet-black hair and a pale face, her eyes a deep red that seemed to absorb all light; she just stood there in the corner, holding a lit candle, its light casting her face in a ghastly pallor.

Wait a minute.

Lu Ban thought.

The wall is straight, so by all logic, Red Leaf should be walking beside this wall, with a Red Leaf between himself and whatever it was on the opposite side.

But he could see the person on the other side without any obstruction!

So had Red Leaf already entered a different dimension?

As soon as she completed the four lines of the poem, she should be able to leave that different space, but, she was about to arrive at the monster’s location.

Lu Ban didn’t know what would happen if the candle was lit by the monster.

“In darkness I never heard…”

Red Leaf’s clear voice now sounded like some sort of countdown, and Lu Ban wanted to warn her, but found he couldn’t make a sound.

He seemed to see a hazy shadow between himself and the monster dressed in the witch costume. As Red Leaf recited each line, she would become closer and closer to reality.

“Maple dyes the Long Tian River…”

By the third line, Red Leaf’s figure was already faintly visible, right beside the shrine maiden.

Lu Ban took a deep breath, noticing that the shrine maiden remained unmoving, only her eyes fixated on Red Leaf, as if trying to kill her with her gaze.

“The bubbling stream flows deep…”

After Red Leaf finished the last sentence, she also reached the shrine maiden in front of her.

The moment before she opened her eyes, a certain sound rang out by her ear.

It was a sharp buzzing, capable of piercing the eardrums, causing dizziness and disorientation, and moreover, Red Leaf had no time to cover her ears before the sound pierced her brain, leaving her consciousness in a haze, unable to stand.

Almost simultaneously, Ginpei and Tachibana Masamune also heard this sound, dropping the candles in their hands and covering their ears.

Lu Ban saw that the eerie shrine maiden’s gaze shifted from Red Leaf to his own body, that resentful and desperate look piercing into Lu Ban’s chest like a spike, causing him an unnatural pain and a chill like that of winter.

However, the shrine maiden made no further move, only the candle in her hand slowly extinguished, her figure merging into the darkness.

“Be careful.”

Lu Ban finally managed to speak, not immediately releasing the speech bullets from the other three people. Instead, he used a candle to light a lantern on the table before helping Red Leaf up from the ground.

He glanced at the corner of the wall in front of Red Leaf, where there was nobody, just a trace of dirty marks at the corner of the wall, like blood that couldn’t be washed away.

“This game really seems to summon something unpleasant.”

Lu Ban remarked. He looked at the other two people, noting that the extent of Tachibana Masamune and Ginpei’s mutation was increasing; by morning, they might turn into lumps of rotten flesh.

He made a gesture with his eyes, bid farewell to the two frightened men, and left with Red Leaf towards their room.

“Can you heal them both, make them return to normal?”

Under the moonlight shrouded in mist, Lu Ban asked this question.

“For those who have already begun to mutate, we cannot purify the pollution.”

Red Leaf seemed to reminisce with a hint of emotion as she spoke.

“This world is just like this, once polluted, eroded, mutated, it will forever relentlessly crash towards the abyss, never able to return.”

“Ginpei and Tachibana Masamune have only been on this island for half a day and have already mutated to this extent, then the island’s residents, the artists who came before, could it be they have already…”

Lu Ban was struck with an ominous premonition.

“Very likely…”

Coming to the same conclusion as Lu Ban, Red Leaf bit her lower lip, pondering for a long while before she continues to speak.

“Even the He Island Shrine, which is the most resistant to pollution, has fallen. No mortal can remain on this island. Tomorrow, I will find an opportunity to inform the Kazushima Omikami, beg, beg the Shrine Maiden Lord, to descend the Pure Fire.”

“You mean the entire island is going to be burned down?”

Lu Ban recalled the flames that burned eternally at the bottom of the sea.

How was this method different from using bombs to directly destroy an entire town that could not contain the spread of a contagious disease?

Of course, in a certain sense, if the Shrine Maiden of the Island Grand Shrine truly destroyed this place, then Lu Ban’s mission would indeed be accomplished smoothly.

He hadn’t expected the jokes he made before starting the mission to actually become prophetic; Lu Ban didn’t know whether to feel happy or sad.

Only.

Lu Ban remembered what Du Danping had once told Cui Siter.

If one cannot maintain their humanity in the Silent Lands, then they would surely lose their life here.

“If, I mean if, I could find a way to find the remaining people who haven’t been polluted, who can still be saved, do you have a way to restore them?”

Lu Ban inquired.

Red Leaf was startled, the black-haired shrine maiden looking towards Lu Ban. The dim moonlight cast on his face made one recall the poem he had recited earlier.

“Maybe, it’s possible.”

She agreed, her expression complex.