Chapter 1068: Chapter 67: Leech
Dozens of demonized villagers had already climbed halfway up the mountain. The moment they found their footing, they bent their spines and fired bone spurs toward the two living people.
"Move."
Li Ang swung his cudgel, batting aside a bone spur that was flying straight at his face, rushed out the door, and bolted toward the forest on the left side of the slope.
Wang Congshan hurried after him. The two of them plunged into the trees, following the mountain path straight toward the Hiratsuka Family Residence.
Inside the Hiratsuka Family Residence it was likewise a scene of a hundred ghosts parading at night. A great many grotesque Monsters were crawling out of every corner, roaring madly and attacking one another, desperate to tear any moving thing within their line of sight to pieces.
The farther Li Ang and Wang Congshan pushed forward, the greater the resistance they encountered. Just as they were about to be completely surrounded, that Human Head Lantern suddenly flared with blinding light.
The candle flame shot upward over a meter, shedding intense radiance and casting long shadows behind the Monsters lunging at them from all sides, causing those shadows to grapple their own bodies in a deathlock,
opening up a path for the two players.
The corresponding price was that the human-head candle burned itself away at terrifying speed, more than half of it gone in the span of a single breath.
Li Ang understood something in his heart. He lifted the lantern high, and with Wang Congshan in tow, sprinted through the front section of the Hiratsuka Family Residence straight into the central courtyard.
As the candle burned to nothing, the two of them crossed into the bounds of the courtyard.
The courtyard ground was smeared with black-red filth and blood, severed limbs scattered everywhere.
The black-furred creature stood by Guiquan Well completely unscathed, still muttering under its breath, chanting, "Masumi... Yangyi..."
There was no way to tell it was the one that had slaughtered all the Monsters strewn across the ground.
Wang Congshan stepped forward, took the mother-and-child Jizo wood carving from her pocket, and casually tossed it ahead.
The black-furred creature immediately snapped its head up to stare, instinctively about to attack, yet the instant it saw the mother-and-child Jizo, its body jerked and froze.
It reached out to catch the wooden carving, stood rooted in place, and let out low whimpers instead, actually stepping aside to clear the path to Guiquan Well.
The two players lunged forward without hesitation and jumped into Guiquan Well.
They pressed their palms into the gaps between the bricks of the well wall, descending quickly step by step,
down into ink-black water that slowly rotated like a whirlpool, with faint shapes in it—human fingers, eyeballs, and even hair floating like seaweed.
Li Ang sank into the well water, feeling the direction of the vortex and the force of the current, and only then realized that below the well mouth was a horizontal S-shaped trap bend.
The so-called well water was actually just the water at the bottom of that trap bend.
Since it was a trap bend, the other side would be a place without water.
The two players swam along the bottom for some distance, heading for the other end of the S-shaped trap bend, and soon broke free of the water’s surface, arriving at a spacious underground platform.
With the help of their Dark Vision Superpower, they could vaguely see that the area was roughly circular in layout.
The lower half of the circle, where the two of them were standing, was solid ground that could be trod on,
while the upper half of the circle was a cliff leading down into The Abyss.
There were torch brackets on the walls on either side of the platform entrance. Li Ang used Burn a finger to light the torches; by the torchlight, he finally saw more clearly—
The ground of the platform they stood on was densely packed with Jizo Stone Statues.
The floor at the platform entrance was laid with ties and steel pieces, somewhat like railway tracks, only narrower than standard rails,
more akin to the tracks used by mine carts in a mining pit.
The track extended straight forward, all the way to the cliff’s edge,
and on the ground at both sides of the rail’s end, two iron spikes were driven in.
Each iron spike had a hemp rope tied to it, the ropes hanging down over the cliff.
And a black-furred figure identical to the one beside Guiquan Well was picking up one of the ropes, about to tie it around his waist.
When Li Ang and Wang Congshan appeared, that figure clearly wavered for a moment, then hastened his movements, wrapping the rope faster.
"Don’t move."
Wang Congshan shouted, raised her assault rifle, and pulled the trigger.
The enchanted bullet whirled out, skimming past the black-furred figure’s feet, successfully making him halt.
The two players rushed up, dragged the figure back from the cliff edge, and untied the rope from his waist—he still did not struggle or resist.
Li Ang glanced down over the cliff.
The Abyss below churned with rolling black mist, rising and falling as if brewing something horrific and indescribable. Just looking at it made his vision swim and his brain throb with stabbing pain.
Li Ang tore his gaze away, refusing to look into The Abyss.
He noticed that the end of the other hemp rope at the cliff edge was tied to a metal box, hanging just above the mist, appearing and disappearing in the swirling gloom.
"Were you trying to put an end to all of this?"
Wang Congshan looked at the silent black-furred figure and voiced the answer she had long since known: "Professor of folklore?"
"..."
The figure addressed as a folklore scholar trembled visibly, but still stood where he was, saying nothing.
"Still won’t admit it?"
Wang Congshan sighed and said evenly, "You are the Moh Mask Master of Fate Carving Village, son of Fujimura Xiuping and Fujimura Masumi,
and also the father of Ogashira Tetsuya and Ogashira Ayaka, the Dongyang University folklore Professor Ogashira Masashi, who disappeared in Heisei year 21 at the Yankoku Village Ruins in Gumma County."
The figure jerked his head up, the black hair on his face trembling.
"I wonder if you recognize these scissors."
Seeing him stay silent, Wang Congshan simply took the scissors from Li Ang’s hand and waved them lightly. "We used this pair of scissors from the Hiratsuka Family Residence to break the Shimenawa Seal on the Torii outside the Relationship Sealing Shrine.
In the long-abandoned Shrine, we saw a great many skeletons in kimonos, bodies bearing no obvious external wounds, all embracing one another.
But there was something very strange.
A Seal, by definition, is meant to lock away something evil, ominous, something that brings misfortune.
Yet there were no demons or Monsters in the Shrine, only a floor of bones,
while outside the Shrine, all across Fate Carving Village, it was a hundred ghosts parading at night.
So just what was the Torii’s Seal sealing away?"
Wang Congshan paused for a moment. Seeing that he still had no intention of speaking, she went on, "Obviously, the Torii’s Seal was not aimed at those corpses in the Shrine,
They were meant for the Monsters outside the Shrine, to keep them from entering the Barrier’s range.
The Barrier’s effect was quite good; when the catastrophe came, it successfully protected everyone inside the Shrine.
Unfortunately, the survivors in the Shrine still all died—of hunger, and of despair."
The shadowy figure shuddered all over, his fluffy, disheveled hair trembling up and down.
"Why panic?"
Wang Congshan tilted her head in puzzlement and said calmly, "This Fate Carving Village disaster that happened in July of Showa 54 has nothing to do with you in itself,
because judging from your age, you were only eight or nine years old at the time.
The real cause of the disaster was the Hiratsuka Family, and your mother, Fujimura Masumi..."
"That’s not how it was!"
The shadow finally spoke. He clenched his fists and breathed heavily. "That’s not how it was..."
"Then how was it?"
Wang Congshan’s expression did not ripple in the slightest. She did not change her attitude at all just because the Ogashira Ayaka she was playing was the daughter of the folk‑studies scholar Ogashira Masashi before her. She only said quietly, "Do I really have to spell it out?
Your mother, father, brother, and even everyone in the entire village all died in that disaster because of you..."
"...It wasn’t like that. You don’t understand."
Ogashira Masashi drew in a deep breath and was just about to say something when a deafening boom rang out,
and the whole underground space shook and shuddered.
The solid dome above them, bearing who knew how many tons of earth, split into countless cracks,
a great deal of dust sifting down in cascades as if the entire underground cavern would collapse and be destroyed in the very next second.
"There’s no time,"
Ogashira Masashi looked up, then swung his arm hard, trying to shake off Li Ang’s grip. "You two need to go, leave this place. I’ll put an end to all of this."
Li Ang, however, held tightly to his wrist and would not let go. Amid the world‑collapsing scene, he said placidly, "There’s still plenty of time. We have more than enough time to understand the truth."
"..."
Ogashira Masashi struggled with all his might, but when he couldn’t break free, he could only give up and sigh in bitter resignation. "Why did you have to come looking for me..."
Li Ang and Wang Congshan did not reply. Ogashira Masashi, resigning himself to his fate, exhaled a long breath and finally began to speak, but he started by recounting a seemingly unrelated piece of content.
"Myths are a form of folk literature. Under the harsh conditions of ancient human existence, they arose as a kind of spiritual support—whether longing or self‑numbing—to understand and control nature.
Those mythic tales that could be passed down orally through the long river of history usually have something special about them.
Either they satisfy popular tastes,
or they serve a didactic function in everyday life, and thus are deemed valuable enough to be transmitted for hundreds or even thousands of years—for example, one must be filial, cherish one’s family, keep one’s promises, and so on."
Ogashira Masashi paused and said, "This is basic folk‑studies knowledge, the foundation on which folk‑studies scholars conduct fieldwork among the people.
We have to use legends and stories to understand the material foundations and emotional logic of the local ancestors who created these tales in ancient times.
The myth of Fate Carving Village’s origin is fairly well known in the region around Gumma County.
Even after Fate Carving Village was destroyed, this myth did not completely disappear.
On the contrary, with the disappearance of Fate Carving Village, it became a hot topic in the field of folk studies.
That much you should know."
Li Ang and Wang Congshan said nothing; they weren’t people of this world and did not know this,
but that did not stop Ogashira Masashi from continuing.
"In this myth, the Samurai’s wife dies in childbirth while giving birth to the Leech child. The Samurai offers a sacrifice to the God of Destiny and, by means of a hemp rope, travels to the Netherworld to see his wife. A misunderstanding arises between them, then is dispelled, and at last they are reconciled.
The Samurai settles on Yuan Shan with his children, and at intervals he can meet his wife in the Netherworld through the hemp rope."
Ogashira Masashi paused and said, "For all its seeming happiness, the story contains one crucial problem: the Leech child that the Samurai and his wife are said to have borne.
The Leech child is a limbless infant; in ancient times it was nearly impossible for such a child to survive.
And at the end of the tale, it only mentions that the Samurai’s daughters grow up, find husbands, and establish a village on Yuan Shan—the later Fate Carving Village.
So where did the Leech child go?
If the Leech child was still alive after birth, why didn’t the Samurai ask the God of Destiny to restore the Leech child as well while he was at it?
If the Leech child was dead, why is there no mention whatsoever of the Leech child in the Netherworld segment of the story?
There is only one answer: the Leech child was personally offered up by the Samurai himself to the God of Destiny as a sacrifice in exchange for aid.
That is precisely why the child disappears completely from the latter half of the tale."
Ogashira Masashi said, "This is the greatest problem with this myth.
This myth, suffused with a chill, evil undertone, must originate from a very remote age.
What’s more, some other elements of the story itself really did exist,
but because they were too evil and bizarre,
they had to be covered over with what appears to be a normal myth.
If one assumes the worst possible intentions in interpreting the story, it’s easy to reach one conclusion—
to see his dead wife again, the Samurai sacrificed the dead Leech child and thus reached the Netherworld.
And because of the strange and special nature of Yuan Shan itself, the Samurai couldn’t bear to move away, so he built a village there and had his descendants live on this land for generations."
"Wait,"
Li Ang thought for a moment, then pointed at the roiling, turbid black mist below the cliff. "You’re saying that this Abyss beneath Fate Carving Village is the Netherworld?"
"It’s not,"
Ogashira Masashi swept a glance at The Abyss as if harboring enormous terror and said, "This is only the entrance to the Netherworld.
Just as the myth implies,
Fate Carving Village was built above the entrance to the Netherworld. Only through a certain specific Ritual track can the entrance to the Netherworld be opened,
and only through the sacred Shimenawa, which symbolizes connection, can one reach the true Netherworld."
