The air was filled with a fishy smell that was stronger than the sea water.
Collapsed outer walls and uninhabited dilapidated old houses can be seen everywhere outside the town. There is no trace of residents, as if all the figures looking out on the sea are hiding.
Ophelia suddenly stopped walking, and the gaps in her body lit up with a dark red luster.
"What... are you warning... me."
As a wraith, Ophelia was excluded from the town, but Lu Li was not affected because he was a human.
"You wait here."
"No……"
"I need your support after I come out."
Lu Li checked the items he was carrying. A psychic gun and silver-plated bullets, kettles and cans, oil lamps and fluorite, some shillings and a few strange currencies, pills, and a monocular telescope were also on him.
Lu Li's dark eyes were quiet and focused, and Ophelia's flat, charred face with no facial features showed no expression.
Anna's sacrifice of herself to save him was indeed considered by Lu Li.
For example, why Lu Li returned after a long twenty-four years, for example, Friday's sentence with unclear meaning "You will die after seeing the wound", for example, Socrates said "she is by your side and never leaves you".
But like other possibilities, there is no proof.
"I can...feel her...hostility towards me, and her hot...love."
"Why are you telling me now?" Lu Li said.
He thought of the visions of Anna that frequently appeared after low sanity.
"I...can't see...the desire to...live...in your...eyes. I don't want...you to die...inside."
Her sincerity seemed to be felt in the cave-like hoarse voice blown by the cold wind.
"Believe me……"
Lu Li said nothing, nodded gently to her, turned around and walked into the gloomy town shrouded in dark clouds.
As he entered the complete part of the town, Lu Li saw the local residents.
They are indeed human beings, but they still have significant abnormal features, such as the lack of hair, the skin on both sides of the neck that is folded like fish gills, and a pair of protruding fish eyes that never seem to close.
This characteristic seems to become more prominent with age. It is almost invisible in children and young people, but it is more or less common in middle-aged people.
And the strange thing is that the town is full of children, young people and middle-aged people, there are no old people.
Lu Li's appearance made the residents of the town whisper among themselves, full of wariness and hostility towards outsiders, as if they were strange beings.
But to a certain extent, it is quite friendly - after all, this is the territory of the Lord of the Deep Sea, and it is more logical to welcome them with a sacrificial ceremony.
This kind of vigilance made it difficult for Lu Li to approach the locals, and even grocery stores and shops were unwilling to accept them. However, there were no suspected heretics or monster servants coming to cause trouble.
After passing the empty circular square, they saw a huge pillared church standing on the corner of the street.
The paint on the exterior wall of the church has peeled off for a long time, and the name of the church is written on the mottled and faded gable: Dagon Esoteric Cult.
Is this the Lord of the Deep Sea?
Lu Li did feel the nightmarish aura originating from the deep sea from the darkness deep inside the church, but the townspeople were indifferent to the dilapidated condition of the church, as if they did not believe in the gods represented by the church.
A dark, nightmarish outline could be vaguely glimpsed. Lu Li didn't stop or look at it too much, just like a tourist walking by.
After passing a few more blocks, Lu Li found a hotel that was clearly owned by non-locals: Wayaan House.
The Wayan people were once the local indigenous people of the Allen Peninsula, and the shops opened by the locals did not have signboards.
Pushing the door open and approaching the hotel, the figure behind the counter confirmed Lu Li's suspicion.
He was an old man, and had none of the repulsive features of the natives. He was surprised at the stranger's identity, but allowed him to stay.
Because there had been no guests for a long time, the first floor of the hotel was filled with daily clutter, so the old man arranged Lu Li in the bedroom on the second floor.
There is a lush potted fern placed in front of the window. The window faces the bay with waves in the distance, and the light smoke rising from the factory chimney blends into the clouds.
After closing the door and waiting for the sound of the old man's footsteps to come down the steps, Lu Li moved his eyes away from the dark green broad-leafed fern on the window sill and took out the monocular.
Squeak——
The single bed beside him seemed to be sinking, and the girl asked in a confused voice.
"Why come to such a desolate and festering place?"
Lu Li paused as he pulled out the monocular.
"Do you like her?"
The girl sitting on the edge of the bed, kicking and shaking her calves, continued to ask.
Lu Li pointed his extended monocular toward the inlet.
There are outlines swaying around the dilapidated and rough factory, and the skin color or clothing are like mud mixed with seaweed juice.
There is a square paved with wooden planks at the edge of the port. It stands unrecognizable. It seems to be a stone sculpture or just the outline of a pillar.
When Lu Li stared at the square for too long, the sound of distant waves suddenly sounded close at hand, and the house was covered with traces of water mist. The smelly and black water seemed to come from the silt of the seabed, seeping from the ceiling, wetting his hair, and getting into his skin...
"You didn't say anything, it seems you acquiesced..."
The lost whisper in his ear brought Lu Li back to his senses and moved the monocular.
He almost fell into the bewildering and twisted madness of this cult... but was saved by delirium.
"I just have no intention of communicating with hallucinations."
Lu Li no longer used his binoculars to spy on the harbor.
That place is obviously related to Katarina's whereabouts, but if you want to get closer, you have to find a way to be immune to contamination.
Lu Li stretched out his hand to touch his scalp, which was still cold, but he touched a piece of cold, smooth scales that smelled like fish.
It grows together with the scalp, as if it is part of the skin.
Lu Li reached out and took out the pills, poured out a few yellow-brown flattened pills, put them into his mouth and swallowed them.
At this time, a drug was developed by Reiner Pharmaceuticals to suppress delirium caused by low rationality.
The pills took effect quickly and the vision of Anna on the bed disappeared.
Lu Li reached out and touched his hair. The scales were still there under the black hair.
It's not a hallucination, it's not delirium, the scales are the same aberration as Psius's.
Kick-kick-kick.
There was a slow sound of stepping on the wooden ladder outside the door, and soon after there was a knock on the door.
Lu Li put away the medicine bottle, smoothed his black hair, and opened the door.
The friendly old man brought shortbread and fish soup.
"I'm from outside and want to know something about here."
After taking the food he didn't intend to eat, Lu Li said.
The old man is full of wrinkles and ravines, but his face, which is completely different from the locals, has lost its smile.
"Don't inquire into the secrets of the town, don't come into contact with the locals, and don't go near the coast."
He obviously knows something.
"Why."
Before the old man continued to say anything, a slow, crawling knock on the door came from the living room under the cracks in the wooden boards.
