Chapter 76 Mushrooms

The outskirts of Kalanfor.

High overhead, a robin circled beneath the open sky, its silver-white feathers seeming to melt into the mottled light.

“Is this the place?”

Xia Nan studied the somewhat dilapidated wooden house in front of him.

Behind him, one of the accompanying guards nodded.

“Yes, sir.”

By now, Xia Nan and the Halfling had left the cemetery behind. With a squad of guards in tow, they had come to the home of the person Ingram believed matched the description in the poem.

As for their ever-diligent sheriff, he was currently escorting the cemetery keeper to the church.

With priests guarding it and a deity watching over it, the church was probably the safest place in all of Kalanfor.

Once the cemetery keeper was safely locked up, Ingram would come straight over to meet them.

At first glance, there was nothing unusual about the place.

Unlike the cemetery keeper’s house in the graveyard, this wooden cottage might have looked equally old and worn, but it had clearly been looked after.

The small flower bed outside the door was lush and green, dotted with brightly colored flowers Xia Nan could not name. Everything about it felt full of life.

Even in an inconspicuous corner at the base of the wall, a cluster of brown mushrooms had stubbornly pushed its way from the earth.

It had poured the day before, and the weather was hot and humid now.

There was nothing strange about mushrooms growing here.

Xia Nan gave them no further thought and followed the Halfling to the door.

“Knock, knock, knock.”

A hand tapped lightly against the wood.

“Coming…”

A hoarse, deep voice came from inside, accompanied by slow, muffled footsteps.

Creak…

The dark wooden door eased open with the grating rasp of stiff hinges.

A thin, gaunt old man appeared before them.

He was clearly much older than the cemetery keeper. Even his body seemed to have buckled beneath the weight of the years, leaving him stooped and hunched.

In his youth, he had reportedly been an adventurer of little renown. During one mission, however, a frenzied Axe Beak had pecked out his left eye.

After that, he had stayed in Kalanfor and become one of the town’s few gravediggers, hauling corpses and digging graves for a living.

Old Blind Eye.

That was what everyone called him now.

“What business do you have?” the old man asked slowly.

His sluggish gaze drifted between the two visitors before finally settling on Xia Nan.

For some reason, Xia Nan felt a chill.

The sunlight behind them was fierce, and the room beyond the doorway was not especially dark. Yet the instant Old Blind Eye opened the door, Xia Nan could have sworn that a cold draft rolled out from inside.

It carried a strange, unpleasant smell.

The old man’s face was covered in deep wrinkles and age spots, steeped in the stale air of approaching death. Looking at him, Xia Nan was reminded of the rough, dark bark of the oaks deep in the Misty Forest, half-hidden beneath layers of fog.

Then there was that eye.

Gray-white, lifeless, split through by a savage scar.

The longer Xia Nan looked at it, the more it seemed like a black hole, silently swallowing his awareness.

Something strange began to spread through his mind.

Eerie.

Grotesque.

It grew like weeds.

For one bizarre instant, Xia Nan felt as though he were no longer standing at the doorway at all.

He was the mushroom growing at the base of the wall.

Tiny, weightless spores sank into damp soil and began to germinate. Threads of mycelium twisted together beneath the earth, intertwining and thickening, becoming something solid.

They stretched outward.

They grew.

At last, they pushed through the soil and became…

“Xia Nan? Xia Nan?”

Someone was shaking his arm.

The voice sounded distant, muffled, as though it had crossed the surface of deep water to reach him.

Xia Nan’s awareness snapped back into his body.

He froze.

At some point, he had entered the house.

He was sitting beside the fireplace on a soft sofa, with the Halfling next to him.

Two cups of steaming tea sat on the table in front of them.

“What’s wrong with you?” Alton asked, looking puzzled. “You’ve been distracted this whole time.”

Xia Nan did not answer.

His eyes remained fixed on the hunched old man sitting across from them.

Old Blind Eye was staring back at him with the same puzzled expression.

One second.

Two seconds…

Xia Nan abruptly shook his head and rubbed his cheeks hard.

“It’s nothing. I was just lost in thought.”

[Was it an illusion?]

He had no idea.

But one thing was certain.

Something was wrong here.

Or rather, something was wrong with Old Blind Eye.

“How long have we been inside?”

“About two hours, I think.” Alton stared at him. “What’s gotten into you? Have you really gone muddleheaded?”

Two hours?

The answer sent another wave of unease through Xia Nan.

He rose at once and grabbed Alton, who had been lounging comfortably on the sofa.

“Why hasn’t Ingram come yet? Could something have happened?”

“I think we should go check the church.”

“What do you mean?” The Halfling looked completely baffled. “You barely said a word just now. Why are you suddenly in such a hurry?”

Xia Nan’s expression, however, was unusually firm.

Seeing that, Alton stopped resisting and sprang lightly from the sofa, landing neatly on his toes.

The tea in the cups rippled twice.

Xia Nan’s heart seemed to tremble with it.

“Old Blind Eye is actually pretty nice,” Alton continued as they moved. “He told us a bunch of stories even I haven’t heard before. I wonder where he used to adventure when he was young.”

“In a couple of days, we can come back and…”

He turned his head.

“Hey! Are you listening to me?”

There was a trace of complaint in his voice as he stared at Xia Nan’s rigid posture.

“Let’s get outside first,” Xia Nan said. “Just get outside.”

His pace quickened until he was almost dragging Alton toward the door.

“What is wrong with you today? You’re acting really strange.”

“I…”

Before Xia Nan could finish, a sudden wave of heat surged from the wooden sword strapped to his back.

At almost the exact same instant, a violent commotion erupted outside.

Cries of pain.

Angry shouts.

The guards standing watch outside.

Xia Nan and Alton stopped talking and rushed through the door.

The warm air of the house vanished in an instant.

What replaced it was a bone-chilling wind saturated with dense negative energy.

On the ground, the fingers of a severed arm twitched weakly.

Fresh blood dripped soundlessly from the broken half of a rusted sword.

Pale bluish skin.

Dead-gray eyes filled entirely with white.

No light.

No life.

Tim stood in the muddy yard before the house, quietly watching the two men who had just burst outside.

At the center of his battered scale armor, the old puncture left by Xia Nan’s wooden sword was still visible.

The wound beneath it, however, had already healed.

Only dry, rough skin remained.

Several guards lay dead at Tim’s feet.

“How could he do it that fast?” Alton hurriedly pulled up his lute, his face full of disbelief. “I didn’t hear a thing from inside!”

Xia Nan was already moving.

Sword in hand, he charged straight at Tim.

Yet something felt wrong.

The enemy was right there, but the battle lust that normally surged through Xia Nan in a fight never came.

Instead, as soon as he had left the cottage and put even a little distance between himself and that wooden house, a strange sense of relief welled up inside him.

Behind him, stirring music rang out.

Tim, who had been standing motionless, suddenly withdrew his sword.

Then he turned and ran.

Compared with the ghostlike figure who had melted into the darkness that night, Tim was far less terrifying beneath the full light of day.

He was still somewhat faster than an ordinary person, but not by enough.

Xia Nan and Alton could keep up.

Whoosh…

Three figures tore down the road and disappeared into the distance.

Inside the wooden house, the teacups remained quietly on the table.

Steam curled lazily upward.

A withered, bony hand closed around one cup’s handle.

It lifted the tea.

Blew gently across the surface.

Then took a slow sip.