Chapter 108: The Puppet

Having crawled out of his grave, Yan Luo stood upon a small earthen mound. From his vantage point, aided by the dim moonlight, he could faintly discern the outline of a village in the distance. The settlement consisted of a cluster of low-slung buildings, yet it was devoid of any lights, fires, or signs of life, rendering the scene indistinct.

It was night, and he remained ignorant of the nature of this world—compounded by the fact that he had emerged from a tomb.

Yan Luo pondered for a moment. He reasoned that venturing toward the village in the dead of night might not be wise. The absence of light and smoke raised a chilling question: was this a dead village, abandoned by the living? If this village served as the central hub for this supernatural world, approaching it blindly could invite disaster.

This world was rated Level 1, and while Yan Luo was currently Level 2, he dared not be careless.

The supernatural! Ghosts, malevolent spirits, anomalies—such realms defied logic. Even in the previous world of athletic competition, which lacked powerful bosses, the Level 1 novice world had introduced "The Herd," "The Doctor," and even chaos-tainted "biochemical anomalies," causing a Level 3 guide to meet his demise.

Yan Luo’s tomb was located in a sprawling graveyard surrounded by hills and small groves. He chose to climb a tree. The vegetation here seemed tropical, tall and lush, and by curling up within the branches, he was well-concealed by the dense foliage.

If the village harbored malevolent spirits, investigating by daylight would be the most prudent course of action. Sunlight acted as a powerful suppressant against many specters, such as ghosts, vengeful spirits, and vampires. In films, even formidable bosses like the Black Mountain Old Demon perished under the sun.

He decided to wait in the tree until dawn. In a supernatural world, one could never be too cautious, especially given the bizarre start of his arrival—waking up inside a coffin buried underground.

After squatting in the tree for about three hours, Yan Luo spotted two figures moving toward the graveyard. They were mere silhouettes, their features obscured.

"Could they be... black men?"

A gust of cold wind dispersed a corner of the heavy black clouds, and the moonlight brightened. Yan Luo confirmed that the two were indeed black—unlike Mu Bai, the guide from before who was an Easterner with dark skin, these were clearly of African descent. Their skin was as dark as charcoal, they possessed the characteristic deep eye sockets and thick lips, and their hair was tightly coiled like springs against their scalps.

"The last world was an athletic competition in ancient Greece; has this supernatural world brought me to Africa?" Yan Luo mused. "Does this count as a free vacation?"

The two men were dressed in crude, tattered clothing; their grey-brown garments looked neither modern nor particularly ancient. One was tall, the other short. The tall man wore a bright red belt that stood out even in the gloom of night. Both carried shovels, and the shorter man also held a wooden bucket.

Yan Luo remained silent, hiding in the tree to observe their intent. Soon, the two men stopped at the very grave from which he had emerged.

Because he had tunneled out and caused a structural collapse, a dark, gaping hole remained. Ordinarily, such a sight in the dead of night would startle anyone, prompting fears of a corpse coming back to life. But these two men were brazen; they leaned on their shovels and began to converse, gesturing toward the hole.

Their voices were low, and the distance was too great for Yan Luo to make out their words. "Is that... English? No, it’s not English... Could it be French or Spanish?"

Yan Luo was fluent in eight languages, yet he struggled to identify their tongue.

After arguing for a while, they began to dig. They quickly unearthed the coffin, pried it open, and upon seeing it empty—along with the broken side panel—their expressions turned to fury. A heated dispute broke out.

Just as Yan Luo leaned in to listen, the tall man suddenly threw a heavy punch at the short man’s head. The shorter one fell, but as he scrambled up, he produced an object. The tall man seemed panicked and lunged to grab it, but the short man drew a dagger and plunged it into the item.

The tall man staggered back, clutching his chest. Blood seeped through his fingers, and he collapsed, as if all strength had drained from his body.

The shorter man laughed triumphantly and kicked the fallen man. Suddenly, the red cloth belt around the tall man’s waist transformed into a snake—Yan Luo saw it clearly in the moonlight—and it leaped up to bite the shorter man’s face.

Soon, he too collapsed. Both men lay on the ground, struggling briefly before falling deathly still.

Yan Luo was baffled. He had been considering whether to capture them for information, but they had ended up killing each other before he could act.

"The local customs here are quite fierce," he remarked, still at a loss. Why had they come to the graveyard at night? Why dig up his grave? Why weren't they afraid of the empty coffin? What were they arguing about, and why were their methods so strange?

Yan Luo leaped down from the tree.

He inspected the bodies. The tall man had a gruesome wound on his chest, as if stabbed by a dagger directly into the heart. The shorter man had purple-black lips and dark, foul-smelling blood oozing from his mouth—he had clearly been poisoned.

Beside the bodies lay the red belt. Yan Luo poked it with his foot; it was just an ordinary strip of cloth, no snake.

In the dead man's hand, he clutched a strange puppet. It was only about ten centimeters tall, woven from straw and twine. Its head, the size of a ping-pong ball, was wrapped in thread, and its glass-like eyes reflected a dark, eerie light in the moonlight. On the puppet’s chest was a deep tear, as if caused by a dagger.

"What is this? A voodoo doll?"