"Save me!"

In the darkness, the figure reached out to Shang Jianyao, like a drowning person trying to grasp the last straw.

But Shang Jianyao felt icy cold, as if slowly sinking into the water in winter.

As that hand got closer and closer, the faintly glowing darkness before his eyes shook violently.

Finally, this silent darkness shattered, and rays of sunlight shone in, allowing the black coffin and the "mummified corpse" in hemp clothing to reappear in Shang Jianyao's eyes.

His consciousness returned to the real world.

At the same time, his body still retained obvious numbness, and many nerve endings were twitching slightly.

"What's wrong?" Jiang Baimian withdrew her left hand, which was still emitting a few sparks, and asked with concern, "I saw your expression was distorted, so I tried to wake you up."

Speaking of this, she exclaimed with relief:

"Luckily, you took off the mask!"

"How long has it been?" Shang Jianyao asked instead of answering.

"About three minutes." Jiang Baimian could give the answer without even looking at her watch.

She had been closely monitoring Shang Jianyao's condition and the specific time, after all, they couldn't stay in the temple for too long.

Shang Jianyao recalled for a moment and said:

"I felt like only a dozen seconds had passed."

He then described the dark environment he had "seen," the window in the dim light, the distant, blurry tower, and the figure crouching under the window, in detail.

"That figure was shouting 'Save me'?" Jiang Baimian asked back, slightly surprised.

Shang Jianyao answered irrelevantly:

"He was using Ashlands language."

Jiang Baimian glanced around the temple's layout, looked down at the black hair and rough hemp clothing of the "mummified corpse," and nodded slightly:

"That's normal."

She then muttered to herself with interest:

"He was actually shouting 'Save me'… Does this mean that his current state is not a natural occurrence?

"He ran into trouble while exploring the depths of the 'Mind Corridor' and is trapped inside, unable to return his consciousness to his body?

"Before, his aura merged into the Fishmen Awakened, wanting to be gestated, was that an attempt to open a channel between the mental world and the real world?"

Every time Shang Jianyao entered the "Origin Sea," she would have similar concerns, and now she made a reasonable guess.

"It's also possible that he wanted to try something, trapping his own conscious mind in his subconscious." Shang Jianyao offered another possibility.

At this moment, he was doing a serious academic analysis.

Jiang Baimian "Mm"ed:

"But none of this explains why his body has survived until now.

"Could it be that, when in such a predicament, the human body, or rather, an Awakened's body, will naturally enter a state resembling deep freeze?"

Her question could not be answered for the moment, so she could only turn to say:

"I also don't know what that window and the tower outside mean.

"If it's the situation you guessed, then it should be some kind of psychological projection, and if I guessed correctly, then it could be a scene from the depths of the 'Mind Corridor'…"

Speaking of this, Jiang Baimian glanced at her watch:

"Time is running out, let's search for other clues, we can't discuss anything useful by just talking in the air."

Shang Jianyao agreed deeply, put on his mask again, and took out the flashlight from his tactical belt.

The yellowish light beam quickly shone into the black coffin, causing the shadows to recede and revealing more details.

Jiang Baimian held the gun with one hand, bent down, and, with the help of the flashlight, inspected the sleeping "god" named Yan Hu from top to bottom.

As her gaze moved down inch by inch, she suddenly noticed that several of the dried corpse's right-hand fingernails were broken and stained with dark red.

"Injured?" Jiang Baimian's heart stirred, and she signaled Shang Jianyao to focus the flashlight's light on the coffin board next to the "dried corpse's" right hand.

As the light dominated that area, Jiang Baimian and Shang Jianyao simultaneously saw several scratches.

Some of these scratches were normal, some were intermittent, and some were stained with traces of dark red.

"Did he make these with his fingers after he fell asleep? Could he still move his fingers occasionally in the early stages?" Jiang Baimian couldn't decipher what the scratches meant for a moment, because they might have been made in several times and were not completely aggregated together.

She stopped holding the gun and let it hang on her body, then took out a pen and paper from her pocket, and, according to the layout on the coffin board, transferred the scratches to the paper one by one, and actively shortened the distance between them.

After the replication was completed, Jiang Baimian finally recognized what these scratches were.

They were four Ashlands language characters:

"New" "World"

"New World?" Jiang Baimian never expected that the hint left by the "god" Yan Hu after falling asleep, using all his strength, was such a phrase.

Shang Jianyao then suddenly realized:

"He is trapped in a new world!"

"Wouldn't this be too simple? And what does the new world represent, and where is it?" Jiang Baimian didn't blindly deny Shang Jianyao's guess but raised more questions.

"I don't know." Shang Jianyao was quite honest.

Jiang Baimian glanced at her watch again:

"Let's discuss it when we get back, continue."

She and Shang Jianyao quickly checked the situation inside the coffin and found no more clues.

They seized the last time and quickly went through the left and right corridors of the temple, but as a result, they could hardly see any dust here.

"That's enough, it's time to withdraw." After returning to the place where the coffin was placed, Jiang Baimian made a rational decision.

Shang Jianyao seemed a little reluctant, but he still chose to obey the team leader's orders.

Jiang Baimian took one last look at Yan Hu, who was sleeping in the coffin, her gaze swept across his closed eyes, his gaunt face, and his slightly yellowed white hemp clothing, and landed on the branch bracelet on his right wrist.

Jiang Baimian guessed that this should also be an item that could produce magical effects, but the final mutation of the Fishmen Awakened made her dare not try it rashly.

Who knows if Yan Hu's legacy has similar backdoors or "viruses"!

"Hu…" She exhaled, suppressed the greed in her heart, turned her body, and walked towards the outside of the temple without looking back.

It's better to leave this kind of high-risk thing to the wary cult members or the company's special task force that may come later to deal with similar affairs.

Shang Jianyao didn't rush to follow her, put away the flashlight, took a step diagonally, and used his hands with rubber gloves to lift the coffin lid and cover it.

After finishing this matter, he stood in front of the coffin where he could no longer see the sleeping "god," and solemnly bowed three times.

Jiang Baimian, who had already decided not to look back, stood in the patio, watching this scene speechlessly.

"He's not dead yet…" Jiang Baimian sighed.

"This way it's warmer, and he won't be disturbed by bugs." Shang Jianyao gave his reason, and then he lowered the white curtain at the entrance of the hall.

Jiang Baimian "Heh"ed:

"Then you bowed to a ghost?"

"Politeness." Shang Jianyao replied truthfully.

After the two left the temple back-to-back, Shang Jianyao turned around again and gently closed the dark door.

"Really polite." Jiang Baimian commented with an ambiguous meaning.

She then said:

"While we still have time, let's search the other houses to see if we can find any clues."

It's better to be near than far, they directly opened the doors and entered the houses in the alley outside the temple and started a simple investigation.

Unfortunately, this place seemed to have been screened by the Fishmen, and nothing related to text was left behind.

The only thing that could be seen was that there were traces of fighting in many places, imprinted with already blackened blood stains.

"It seems that they really suffered an attack by the 'Mindless Ones', and no one survived in the end…" Jiang Baimian combined the information provided by the Fishmen prisoners and made a judgment.

When the "Mindless Sickness" broke out in the town, the remaining humans became the prey of the "Mindless Ones."

Due to time constraints, Shang Jianyao and Jiang Baimian didn't stay for too long, left the houses in the alley, and hurried to the place where the bicycles were parked.

When they were about to reach the entrance of the alley, Jiang Baimian looked back at the doors that she had deliberately not closed and said thoughtfully:

"Then who closed the doors for them?"

The "Mindless Ones" who hunted from house to house should not have retained the instinct to close doors casually.

"Fully automatic." Shang Jianyao replied seriously.

As soon as he finished speaking, he pointed outside the alley and said with joy:

"The bicycles are still there."

"Did you really think they would be stolen?" Jiang Baimian's voice gradually lowered, and she tilted her head to look at the mountain in the middle of the lake island.

There might still be some "Mindless Ones" alive there, and they might really ride bicycles.

Without further delay, Jiang Baimian and Shang Jianyao rode their bicycles and left the town the way they came.

At this time, the winter evening had quietly arrived, and the sky had dimmed a lot.

After riding for a while, Jiang Baimian couldn't help but look back at the town where the temple was located.

This town, full of the ancient charm of the Old World, was silent and lifeless in the gradually darkening environment.

For some reason, Jiang Baimian suddenly thought of the evening in Shuiwei Town:

A large number of townspeople returned from the fields behind and the forests outside, successively lit stoves in the square with many "illegal buildings" to cook food, and the children who had been let out of school either ran around, chasing each other, or looked expectantly at their own stew pots…

…………

After an unknown amount of time, inside the town, which had returned to silence, in the alley where the temple was located.

The howling wind swept past, and the several open doors slammed shut one after another.