Chapter 189: The Long Night

Wasn’t this the scene from last night’s nightmare?

But… it wasn’t raining now, and it wasn’t night…

The mudslide had really happened after all!

The Mountain Top Lake had collapsed!

Around the Mountain Peak Hotel, there were many farmhouses where mountain villagers lived, but no one could be seen now. The place where the Mountain Peak Hotel originally stood was completely submerged, with only the highest and strongest building in the scenic area barely showing its tip above the water.

If the Mountain Top Lake had collapsed suddenly, the villagers wouldn’t have had time to escape.

Fortunately, all the students were now staying in the Mountain Peak Village; otherwise, they would all have been buried here!

“Yinyin, you were not wrong! They wrongly accused you! The mudslide really happened!” Gong Jian called out to ‘Lin Yin’ in a trembling voice.

Yi Ya and the others also looked at ‘Lin Yin’ but said nothing, their eyes filled with confusion and fear.

“The mountain path is blocked; we’re trapped on the mountain! And the darn mobile phones still have no signal!” One boy quickly realized the predicament everyone was facing.

“We must tell the Counselor about this as soon as possible!” Another boy said to the group.

“You go and take the message to them!” Gong Jian told that boy.

“Okay!” the boy replied and quickly ran toward the direction of the Mountain Peak Village.

…

Half an hour later, all the students, teachers, and tour guides who had been sketching and exploring in the Mountain Peak Village arrived at the spot where Gong Jian and Yi Ya were. They all stared in stunned silence at the place where the Mountain Peak Hotel used to be down the mountain, and at the building’s tip barely visible above the muddy ground.

Some of the girls started crying from fear. The two young female tour guides were the most distraught, crying more than anyone else—after all, their families were in the scenic area down the mountain.

The older tour guide, Gu Zheng, who was in his fifties, looked as if he had gone dumb, his whole body trembling as he blankly stared in the direction of the collapsed Mountain Top Lake.

No one questioned ‘Lin Yin’ anymore, but… they all looked at her as if she were a monster… or perhaps… treated her like a witch or something.

“The dam actually collapsed… The dam actually collapsed… It wasn’t because of the torrential rain… No… After all these years, is the Mountaintop Demon going to appear again?” The tour guide murmured fearfully in the direction of the Mountain Top Lake, though no one paid attention to his muttering at the time.

The sudden mudslide had buried the Mountain Peak Hotel, and the communication base station still hadn’t been repaired, completely cutting off everyone from the outside world.

Everyone present was effectively isolated from the world; the Mountain Peak Village had become a deserted island, cut off from everything.

Lü Yang increasingly felt the strength of that unknown, mysterious force. He knew that all of this was definitely not a coincidence.

…

Things went from bad to worse.

Even more critical, around five in the afternoon, the sky slowly grew darker. Instead of setting at six as usual, the sun was completely hidden by dark clouds. A gust of mountain wind blew over, making the clouds heavier and heavier, giving the feeling that torrential rain was about to fall again.

“It’s going to rain. We can’t stay here; we must get to the Mountain Peak Village before the rain starts. The houses there may be old, but at least they can keep us dry,” the male Counselor Chen Jinhu discussed with Gong Xue.

“That’s all we can do for now,” Gong Xue nodded to Chen Jinhu. Then, Chen Jinhu announced their decision loudly on behalf of himself and Gong Xue.

“Don’t go to the Mountain Peak Village! After nightfall, those Faceless Persons in the Ancestral Hall mural will come out of the painting. They will kill us! And cut off our faces!” Lü Yang suddenly jumped up from the stretcher and loudly stopped everyone.

Yi Ya and Gong Jian were very surprised to see ‘Lin Yin’; just moments ago, she had been too weak to speak, so how had she suddenly recovered?

Lü Yang hadn’t slept well, which was the main reason for his fever and weakness. After lying on a chair in a daze for nearly an hour, he had regained some strength. Hearing that everyone planned to return to the Mountain Peak Village, he naturally jumped off the stretcher and opposed it loudly.

Since the mudslide from his nightmare had become reality, Lü Yang had no doubt that the Faceless Persons from the mural in the Mountain Peak Village would also become real.

Especially after nightfall.

The students started talking among themselves after hearing what Lin Yin said. After the shock of the mudslide, hearing Lin Yin talk about this scared many of the students, their faces turning pale.

“Stop scaring everyone!” The male Counselor Chen Jinhu angrily ran over and scolded Lin Yin loudly. Any chaos now could lead to unimaginable consequences.

“Was she scaring people? What about the mudslide? If the villagers had believed her, they wouldn’t have all been buried alive down there!” Gong Jian immediately stepped in front of Lin Yin, rebutting the male Counselor. It seemed he needed no reason to defend Lin Yin, even at the cost of offending the Counselor.

“Xiao Ya, no matter what, do not enter the Mountain Peak Village. If it rains, find a place to shelter outside and stay there for the night, but do not go into the Mountain Peak Village…” Lü Yang didn’t argue further with Chen Jinhu but quietly gave this warning to Yi Ya.

“Yinyin, what exactly did you find out?” Yi Ya looked at ‘Lin Yin’ with curiosity. The current ‘Lin Yin’ was completely different from the one she remembered… and instead, she seemed more and more like Lü Yang.

Of course, Yi Ya found this idea both absurd and impossible.

“This Mountain Peak Village… has a problem, a big problem,” Lü Yang couldn’t explain it clearly to Yi Ya; in fact, he himself hadn’t fully figured it out yet.

Last night’s nightmares were strange, almost as if they carried some kind of warning, hinting that bad things were about to happen… just like the mudslide.

A dull thunderclap sounded, and rain poured down heavily. The weather near the Mountain Peak Village had been strange these past few days: it cleared up after dawn, and as soon as dusk approached, rain started again. Although many people had bought rain gear early in the morning, not many were carrying it with them now. With no shelter on the mountain, most people were soon drenched.

Lü Yang, however, had prepared for this. He took out two raincoats, gave one to Yi Ya to wear, and wore the other himself, avoiding getting soaked.

Hu Yulan, Gong Jian, and Gong Xue, having listened to ‘Lin Yin’, had also prepared rain gear and thus avoided getting wet.

Though they didn’t know why, it was clear that listening to ‘Lin Yin’ was definitely the right thing to do.

The group was divided: some thought Lin Yin’s prediction of the mudslide was just a lucky guess and her talk of Faceless Persons coming out of murals to kill people was nonsense, so they insisted on going to the Mountain Peak Village for shelter. Others firmly believed that Lin Yin wasn’t speaking carelessly and refused to enter the village again.

With the torrential rain pouring down, everyone had little time to think it over. In their urgency, both sides compromised and reached a preliminary agreement: they would first go and stay near the Mountain Peak Village, assess the situation, and then decide what to do next.

Lü Yang could only grudgingly agree to this decision. Based on his experience from the previous night, those Faceless Persons seemed unwilling to chase outside the village. Besides, he didn’t want to be separated from Yi Ya; in this remote wilderness, it seemed safer to stay with the group.

Everyone ran toward the Mountain Peak Village in the rain. This time, luck wasn’t too bad: after running for a while, the rain suddenly stopped, and the setting sun peeked out slightly, casting a dim, yellowish glow over Millstone Mountain, which brought a little warmth to the panicked group.

But this faint sunlight didn’t make Lü Yang feel warm; his sense of foreboding grew stronger. This bit of sunlight felt like a final supper, or a last flicker of life—once it completely disappeared beyond the horizon, the nightmare would truly begin.

This night was going to be very long.

…

Everyone hurried and finally reached the vicinity of the Mountain Peak Village just before the sun set completely. When the Mountain Peak Hotel was still safe, the students hadn’t found the village scary. But now, with the hotel gone and all contact with the outside world severed, looking at the dilapidated village in the twilight while recalling Lin Yin’s words made it feel like they were staring at a ghost village.

Everyone temporarily settled down near the Mountain Peak Village. Soon, a very important and urgent matter arose before them.

It was dinnertime, but the Mountain Peak Hotel was gone. So many people needed to eat…

Food is the most important thing for people; this problem had to be solved, or it would cause even greater chaos.

Amid the noise and arguments, everyone realized they had made a big mistake when the rain started…

When they came over, they should have picked some vegetables from the fields or caught some poultry to bring along. Only now, when they were hungry, did they remember this.

At that time, everyone’s attention was focused on the argument about whether to return to the village, and then they were rushed by the rain, completely forgetting about food.

Today, running around on the mountain and not resting well the previous night had left many students exhausted; they didn’t want to go back.

Three boys and two girls from male Counselor Chen Jinhu’s class volunteered to form a hunting team and headed back toward the direction of the mudslide-covered Mountain Peak Hotel. They planned to gather vegetables and catch some poultry to provide ingredients for dinner.

After the hunting team set off, several students from rural areas also became active, wanting to find some ‘wild game’ for everyone to try that evening…

Millstone Mountain was rainy, and the area around the Mountain Peak Village was overgrown with weeds, with shepherd’s purse and various other wild vegetables covering the hills. There were mushrooms in the bushes. In such a large mountain forest, finding enough food for the students shouldn’t be too difficult.