Famine 133: The Depths of the Abyss

Yan Cheng and Ye Xianqing set out alone on their journey.

The team members watched them go in silence, each with their own expression, but none spoke.

Si Zhiyan had already given instructions to Nidhogg and Shi He; his shadow avatar melted into the darkness and followed the pair as they departed together. Leaving the Dimlight Hostel, even without any light source on him, the shadow avatar did not encounter any attacks. In fact, it made it easier for him to tail the two. Si Zhiyan glanced down at his own hand, thoughtful.

They were flying downward, deeper still into the abyss.

Before long, the cliff face was left behind—out of sight, out of mind.

They had plunged utterly into the abyss.

Yan Cheng and Ye Xianqing showed no hesitation, moving silently onward into depths yet unknown, tendrils emerging from their seven orifices, writhing above their heads in a manner impossible to describe—a sight both bizarre and unsettling.

Si Zhiyan frowned slightly.

He still remembered the first time Ye Xianqing had left the hostel to find Yan Cheng at the camp: how cautiously he had moved, pausing occasionally to check his bearings, relying on notes from his last journey to find the way.

That was more the norm. In the abyss, total darkness reigned; there was no concept of direction. Once separated from the cliff face, all landmarks vanished and there was no way to tell where you were, as if drifting in the deep sea.

But now, they looked so at ease and practiced, as if old hands traversing a well-trodden trail—almost as if… they were coming home.

Why?
What kind of place was the [Nest]? What did it mean for those who had been “parasitized” by [It]?

The cliff region seemed distant from the Nest. Only after flying downward for nearly a day and a night did Si Zhiyan finally glimpse, at the edge of his sight, something apart from the darkness.

It was a vast, floating… shattered plank of wood.

A plank?

Back at the Farm, Si Zhiyan sat up halfway.

The plank was enormous, almost like a floating island—reminiscent of a lower-tier version of the Skeleton Ferry. But unlike the Ferry, it looked distinctly unstable: dry and brittle, swaying gently in the darkness. It was wrapped in a shroud of tattered red velvet so stained it no longer showed its original hue, the fabric’s fibers decaying and frail, barely clinging to the plank. Through rips in the cloth, patches of peeling, rotting varnish showed on the wood—its surface covered in inexplicable, disturbing stains.

A faint aura of curse seemed to emanate from above.

It was unsettling, disturbing enough that a single glance sent instinctive unease through the soul.

What was this? Why is it here?

Si Zhiyan hesitated, hovering in midair, gazing solemnly at the [Nest].

Before his eyes, Yan Cheng and Ye Xianqing—both in a completely natural, familiar manner—landed calmly on the plank. They set aside their weapons, betraying no sign of vigilance. Ye Xianqing stepped to the edge, the toe of his leather shoe scuffing the red silk atop the wood, with almost a trace of instinctive fondness.

“When was the last time we came?” Ye Xianqing asked.

“Over thirty days ago,” Yan Cheng replied.

Ye Xianqing sighed softly. “I hope everyone’s all right.”

A distorted voice called out from ahead: “Cap… zzzt… tain! Xian…qing! You—are… adj… back?”

The voice stuttered and fizzed, like a broken radio.

Yan Cheng and Ye Xianqing’s faces darkened at once.
Si Zhiyan also glanced up, sharply drawing in his breath; his pupils contracted.

A player approached from the distance.

…But was it really a player anymore?

The figure was wholly deformed, hunched over, limbs broken and weirdly shortened. Especially his legs, which seemed broken at the joints, grotesquely bent in the wrong direction; shattered bone jutted through lacerated, bloody flesh, revealing a hideous mix of white and red. Around his waist hung a glowing pendant, still marking him as one needing light, yet half his body was already fused into the shadows, his outline blurred beyond recognition.

Upon his face, bloodshot eyes bulged outward, becoming near-semicircles, his facial features warped yet faintly humanish—the bone structure subtly altered, so that no matter how you looked, everything just felt… wrong.

An unsettling, uncanny-valley terror radiated from him.

And as his lips split into a kindly yet deranged smile, he opened and closed his deformed jaws and said—

“We—have—been—waiting—for—you—all—this—time.”