Journey to the End of the Night
Chapter 164 - 164 162 Little Bunny You Can't Be Picky with Food

164: Chapter 162: Little Bunny, You Can’t Be Picky with Food 164: Chapter 162: Little Bunny, You Can’t Be Picky with Food Under the thick, sticky strands of hair was a pallid, bloated body.

Although the outline resembled that of a woman, her size had long since exceeded the bounds of humanity.

The instant she was dragged ashore, countless piercing, chilling cries of infants erupted from her body.

Upon leaving the water, the dense, foul-smelling black hair began to melt away like black sugar under the sun, coalescing into a viscous black liquid that clung to the woman’s pale, swollen skin.

As the hair parted, the full extent of the bloated flesh was revealed, nowhere resembling the body of a woman.

Besides her normal pair of hands, two abnormally elongated arms burst forth from the woman’s abdomen.

She had no legs, only countless dark tendrils rooted below her waist, digging powerfully into the leaf-strewn earth to draw yin energy from the ground in resistance to Baili An’s palm.

The woman’s head lacked ears and nose, sporting only a serrated crescent-like maw.

Embedded in her skull was a pupil-less, eerily white eyeball, crazily whirling under the pressure of Baili An’s hand.

On her back, arms, and neck were bizarrely grown faces of children and babies,

the blackened water from the melted hair dyeing those faces pitch black and fierce, as though enduring some form of infernal torture.

Each face, with its dark maw wide open, emitted a curse-like ‘ahh…’, a wailing sound.

In the mortal world’s valley, the world beyond the forest greeted the dawn in peaceful calm, while the lake within bore cruelty akin to the netherworld.

The Afu Tu crouched in the bed of dead leaves and grass seemed unable to bear the scent emanating from the woman.

It raised its forelimbs and covered its nose expressionlessly with its paws, standing up like a human, retreating a couple of steps backward.

Its cold, indifferent red eyes were filled with aversion.

Baili An, however, didn’t notice its subtle movements.

He continued scrutinizing the woman underneath him, who clearly had ghostly white limbs, yet seemed to be wary of something.

Her gaunt fingers dug deeply into the ground, stubbornly refraining from touching Baili An’s arms in resistance.

Meanwhile, those frightful and ghastly faces growing on her body frantically protruded from her skin.

The faces were stretched long from the skin, yet countless red sinews stubbornly tethered them inside the woman’s body, preventing them from breaking free.

Within the serrated teeth of her crescent-like maw were remnants of fish flesh and blood, and every breath carried a stench of raw fish.

Baili An observed the faces on the woman’s body, which were screaming shrilly and cursing at something, struggling desperately to burrow into the skulls buried in the leaf-covered ground.

A realization dawned on Baili An.

The ghostly creatures of this lake had dragged children and infants into the water to drown them alive and then devoured them.

He had once perused a travelogue titled “Compendium of a Hundred Ghosts” at the Divine Mansion in the East Realm of the Mountain Realm and had seen detailed illustrations and accounts of such yin ghosts.

The creature beneath his palm had long ceased to be human.

It was a Yin ghost that congregated in places where yin energy gathered and stagnant water did not flow.

Its name was Drowned Child’s Mother.

Yin ghost creatures were particularly adored by the Demon Sect and cults, who gathered Yin Resentment with malevolent methods to nurture corpses and refine souls, finally sealing the spirits of the yin corpses with special talismans or sinister needles to create Corpse Puppets for their use.

However, the Drowned Child’s Mother was obviously not esteemed by the practitioners of the Demon Path.

Naturally, no one would waste talismans and yin instruments to refine them.

Such a ghost creature was the transformation of a mortal woman with deep resentment.

According to the records in the book, the most frequent cases of these ghost transformations occurred in young, adolescent girls.

Unwed but pregnant, they were seen as impure and defiled.

As punishment, their families would bind them, put them in pig cages, weigh them down with heavy stones, and drown both the woman and the fetus in the lake.

This was a customary tradition in various realms.

In a world where the Righteous Immortal Sect flourished, people would not permit such impure sinners to live and pollute others.

Had it been any ordinary drowned woman, it might have ended there.

But if the drowned woman harbored a strong protective obsession for the fetus within her, only to feel helplessly the slipping away of her own life and the icy stillness of the child within, this obsession would transform into a potent grievance.

She could harness the power of this grievance and avoid the cycle of reincarnation.

Should any young child, or even abandoned infants, pass by this lake,

The drowned woman would use her hair to drag them underwater to a watery death, and then devour them.

Once tainted with human life, she would affirm karma, planting seeds of malevolence, and officially become a Yin ghost that consumes human life.

Baili An, looking at the woman’s distended abdomen, knew that this Drowned Child’s Mother was nourishing ghost fetuses with the lives and souls of these children.

The skulls buried beneath the fallen leaves must have been aging, which is why this mountain was so desolate and uninhabited.

It seems that this Drowned Child’s Mother had specialized in abducting young children from the nearby villages in earlier years, drowning them in this lake.

Knowing that there was a fierce creature in the mountains,

As the seasons passed, this mountain had become devoid of people.

The dead fetuses in her womb, starved of sustenance, could no longer achieve rebirth.

The creature sprawled on the ground let out a non-intimidating growl, and the two elongated arms extending from its abdomen dug pits beneath it rapidly, concealing its bloated stomach within the earth.

Baili An’s fingers paused slightly, then fully submerged into her skull, and he waved at the small rabbit standing on its hind legs with its paws over its nose, saying, “Little rabbit, it’s time for your meal.”

Afu Tu did not come over, nor did it loosen its paws from its nose for a moment.

Instead, it took two steps back, its large drooping ears twitching, and its red eyes reflecting a distant, cold glint.

It seems the little fella had quite severe preferences for cleanliness.

Baili An, unaware of this, cocked his head at it.

“Have you never seen a Drowned Child’s Mother before?

When Sister Wen left the valley yesterday, she told me that Afu Tu, you love three things in life: the Dragon Clan, God Demons, and Yin ghosts.

Now that I am so feeble, entities like the Dragon Clan and God Demons are beyond my reach, leaving only Yin ghosts to offer as your sustenance.

This Drowned Child’s Mother has killed many innocent children, and should she die, their spirits may also find peace, and you will be well fed.”

Afu Tu, who had been steadily retreating, trying to hide in the bushes, suddenly stopped at his words.

It gave Baili An a slanted glance with those cool, little eyes, and slowly relaxed one of the paws that had been unwilling to uncover its nose, then shook it at Baili An.

Baili An couldn’t discern the meaning behind its shaking paws, squinting thoughtfully for a long time, until finally noticing that Afu Tu wasn’t just wiggling its paw at him.

But its paw was pointing up a finger, signaling the meaning of ‘one’.

Its fingers were so stubby that even when pointing one finger, it was difficult to distinguish it from the other fleshy pads.

Seeing Baili An’s bewildered look, Afu Tu seemed to realize something, its eyes calmly dropping to its own paw.

Once it saw the comically awkward appearance of its chubby paw, the frosty indifference in its eyes was instantly replaced by embarrassment.

Then it hastily hid the paw behind its back, turned its head away, and pretended to look elsewhere.