The croak of frogs continued uninterrupted. A gentle drizzle lasted several days before ceasing, leaving the mountain paths muddy and difficult to traverse after the autumn rain.
Yet in the dead of night, a carriage emerged from the end of the mountain road.
A waning moon was obscured by clouds, and the carriage carried no lanterns. Still, it proceeded effortlessly through the narrow gaps between towering mountains.
Inside the carriage, darkness reigned—so pitch-black that one couldn't see their own hand. The windows were boarded shut, and the entry and exit were covered with curtains. Only the occasional glimpse of moonlight revealed the silhouette of a burly coachman behind the curtain cloth.
The coachman sat motionless; an unpleasant odor wafted from his body—a rancid mix of blood and a peculiar oiliness.
Li Mo stared at the coachman's back for a long while, the primal fear creeping up his neck sending chills down his spine. Coupled with the carriage's damp chill, his thin body instinctively tightened his cotton coat around himself.
He appeared no older than ten, with unremarkable facial features, wheat-toned skin typical of a farming household, and lips tinged faintly white.
Only his bright, spirited eyes lent a touch of uniqueness amidst his impoverished upbringing.
Suddenly, he heard a few shrill cries outside the carriage.
With Li Mo's familiarity with livestock, he could tell it wasn't the sound of horses or cattle. Nor did it resemble that of mules or donkeys—it was unmistakably the scratching sound of two clawed feet upon the earth.
From inside the carriage came the muffled sobbing of children.
Li Mo, unfazed, retrieved dry rations and swallowed them down his throat. Instinctively, his hand reached for the rough wooden carving of the Peaceful and Unharmed Token hanging from his neck.
There were a total of fourteen children in the carriage, all of them of similar young, adolescent ages.
Their exposed skin was universally pale, almost devoid of blood. Among the older ones, visible signs of premature aging could already be seen.
Zhao Zhu leaned close to Li Mo and, glancing at the coachman, cautiously asked, "Heiwa, how much longer until we reach Rong Town?"
Heiwa was Li Mo's nickname from childhood. His parents were still alive, and he had an older brother inheriting their carpentry trade, along with a sister married long ago.
"Zhu Zi, don't be so reckless. This isn't Niu Village anymore."
Li Mo lightly tapped Zhao Zhu's head but still replied, "Counting the days, it should be about two more before we arrive."
After saying this, he paid no further attention to Zhao Zhu, closing his eyes as if preparing to nourish his spirit.
Li Mo understood Zhao Zhu all too well—it was likely homesickness from being far from his village. But once one set out for Rong Town, there was no turning back; no one who headed to Rong Town ever returned home.
Yet even so, whenever Rong Town recruited, the entire village would scramble and fight over the slots.
Li Mo tried to doze off for a while, but no matter how he twisted and turned, sleep evaded him. His nerves remained heightened, his heart pounding furiously.
It wasn't homesickness or fear that unsettled him; it was the prospect of soon encountering an unimaginable world.
Li Mo wasn't a native-born inhabitant. He had lived a previous life on the technologically advanced Blue Star, his soul unexpectedly inheriting the body of a drowned child.
He'd survived in this eerie and mysterious world for five years now, gradually forgetting the extravagant brightness of his former life.
Pressing fingers to his left wrist, Li Mo muttered silently, "My heart rate is forty-five beats per minute—slower than last week."
"If this continues, I'll soon become neither alive nor dead."
Zhao Zhu, noticing Li Mo tossing and turning, asked worriedly, "What's wrong, Heiwa?"
"Nothing's wrong with me."
Li Mo shook his head, unwilling to elaborate. Just then, morning sun spilled into the carriage through the curtains. Using the light, he sized up the group of children around him.
Among them, Ma Ergao was the oldest, already over sixteen years old.
He sat timidly in a corner, arms wrapped around his knees. His temples bore specks of white—the early signs of aging-induced graying hair.
Li Mo sighed softly.
The physiology of people in this world was disturbingly strange.
Before reaching the age of eight, children were normal in every sense. But past eight, their heart rates steadily slowed each year, ceasing entirely by the age of twenty.
When the heart stopped, their internal organs became inert, and their skin took on the pallor of a corpse. Premature aging, muscle atrophy, and other symptoms followed.
In short, if someone failed to marry and have children before turning twenty, they would lose the ability to reproduce—slowly transforming into a quasi-corpse neither fully alive nor truly dead.
Of course, the upside was equally astonishing.
It was "Longevity," or what elders whispered about in fear as the "Death Disease."
Once someone exceeded the age of twenty, their body's life functions completely disappeared. There would be no further decay from illness, no matter how decrepit they became; they would never die of old age.
They no longer even needed food for sustenance.
In Li Mo's village, there were elderly individuals exceeding three hundred years old.
Despite their bodies being so frail they couldn't move, they persisted in living day after day, until they themselves requested to be cremated.
In Niu Village's ancestral hall, there was rumored to be an ancestor who lived for over a thousand years.
The ancestor's joints were completely rigid, his flesh decayed to the utmost degree. During ancestral rites, villagers would carry his body out to "ward off bad omens."
Li Mo had always believed that Longevity was nothing but a curse.
Trapped inside a desiccated shell, their soul was imprisoned eternally, enduring the never-ending torment of immortality.
Li Mo's journey to Rong Town was spurred by rumors of methods to slow down the Death Disease.
Every twenty years, a shop assistant from Rong Town would come to Niu Village—this time it was the shopkeeper himself, supposedly recruiting young apprentices.
Li Mo had inquired with the village elders.
He learned that Rong Town rarely opened its gates to outsiders. Ordinary folk could live their whole lives without setting foot within, unless brought by a town resident.
Although the elders avoided discussing Rong Town in depth, they still pushed their grandsons forward eagerly at any chance to secure apprenticeship slots.
Li Fu, being a carpenter with notable standing in the village, naturally had a quota—and Li Mo happened to be at the age where he needed to split from the family.
Li Mo wasn't aware at first, but Li Fu had already submitted his name to the shopkeeper.
Thus, Li Mo met Manager Tian for the first time. Despite his odd appearance, though visibly over forty years old, the signs of corpse-like degeneration were minimal compared to others his age.
Driving the carriage was the very Manager Tian who had come alone to Niu Village.
Resolving the Death Disease seemed to leave Rong Town as one of the last options.
"What a pity…"
Lost in thought, Li Mo shut his eyes tightly as his consciousness drifted into the murky chaos of his mind, where a book emerged within the void.
Its texture was somewhere between cloth and paper; mist constantly billowed from its surface, transforming into Immortal Birds and Precious Beasts. Three engraved characters stood out on its cover: "Creation Book."
The Creation Book had appeared in his mind inexplicably, its origins unknown.
Li Mo recognized its extraordinary nature at first glance, but despite years of effort since he was five, he had yet to find a way to unlock its secrets.
Staring at the Creation Book, Li Mo unknowingly drifted into a state of semi-sleep, vaguely aware of Zhao Zhu's mutterings nearby.
Before long, Zhao Zhu also fell fast asleep, faint snores echoing in the confined space.
Only when the carriage came to an abrupt stop did Li Mo snap awake instinctively. However, he refrained from moving and continued to feign sleep.
He heard the sound of bones colliding outside the carriage, which ceased abruptly after a few seconds.
"Cough, cough, cough."
The curtain was lifted, and sunlight streamed into the carriage. The children all shielded their eyes uncomfortably.
"Come out, all of you."
The children, squirming uneasily, quickly crawled out from under the curtain. Li Mo followed suit.
Manager Tian's expression was benevolent, dressed in a purple-black robe with a long shirt underneath, and a blue-white cloud-patterned sash around his waist.
His protruding abdomen resembled that of a ten-month pregnant belly, seemingly ready to burst through the confines of his ribs.
Manager Tian's skin bore multiple wounds; though no blood seeped from them, the pallid flesh showed no signs of healing.
This, too, was the price of Longevity—injuries that resisted complete recovery.
The carriage had stopped on a pebble-paved official road. Given the early hour, the travelers and merchant caravans scattered along the road seemed sparse.
They deliberately avoided the carriage, not daring to approach Manager Tian, their eyes brimming with fear.
Li Mo observed covertly, noticing hoofprints ending abruptly in front of the carriage, with traces of blood staining the reins. Whatever had been harnessed to pull the carriage had vanished into thin air.
Manager Tian's sleeves bore faint bloodstains as well.
When he first arrived at the village, Manager Tian hadn't brought any livestock. The carriage had been parked ten or so miles away from the village.
Li Mo dared not dwell on what had been tied to those reins previously.
"Little ones, there's still some distance to Rong Town. Stay close behind me, or you'll have to walk back to Niu Village on your own."
Manager Tian spoke with a smile, his wrinkled features scrunched together like an old fox wearing human skin—a chilling sight.
The children instinctively stepped back, but Manager Tian was already marching down the official road.
They hurried to follow, comforted somewhat by his slow pace—a brisk jog was enough to keep up.
Li Mo lingered toward the rear of the group.
His endurance wasn't bad; in fact, when he first crossed into this world, he assumed physical exercise might slow the onset of the Death Disease.
Li Mo had taken to running laps around the village daily. Though it didn't make him physically robust, his stamina rivaled that of seventeen- or eighteen-year-old youths.
After over half an hour, the group stumbled over a hill.
Only a girl named Li Qingfang twisted her ankle along the way, forcing Ma Ergao to carry her for most of the journey.
Li Mo kept his gaze on passersby, noting their corpse-like features were even more pronounced than those of the villagers, though their movements were strangely unaffected.
Another group of children heading to Rong Town crossed paths with them, but judging by their leader's attire, they seemed affiliated with a different shop. The leader's awkward gait only made their movements seem more odd.
As the sun set, the faint outline of Rong Town appeared at the end of the official road.
Rong Town wasn't simply nestled at the base of the mountain—houses sprawled across the peak as well, though the steep, jagged slopes left the structures looking uneven and precarious.
Dark gray smoke coiled around the mountain's summit, carrying with it a faint stench.
The fields outside were vast and continuous, with farmers tending crops. Upon seeing Manager Tian, they didn't flee but instead remained focused on pulling weeds.
Their exposed faces were marred with black spots and receding gum lines, their sclera streaked with blood vessels, and wounds scattered across their skin showed signs of festering rot.
Li Mo's expression grew distant, lingering on a peculiar sense of déjà vu.
At that moment—
The seemingly lifeless Creation Book suddenly stirred with an anomaly. The Immortal Birds and Precious Beasts that encircled the book transformed instantaneously into a Corpse Mountain Blood Sea.
Next, the Creation Book opened to its first page.
The image of a living brain adorned the book's surface.
Fragments of memories rushed into Li Mo's mind—fragments of a city hauntingly similar to Rong Town.
The peaks hovered a hundred meters above the ground, connected by iron chains, with rows of Daoist Temples neatly arrayed amid faint clouds and mist.
Taoists walked to and fro, raising birds and beasts. Their appearances seemed normal, untouched by the signs of the Death Disease.
Li Mo froze in shock; according to those fragmented memories, Rong Town seven thousand years ago was once a sect focused on raising spirit beasts.
A sect named "Heart Beast."