The dark room was filled with the scent left behind by burning paper money, and my mother knelt in front of several Buddhist shrines, closing her eyes and reciting prayers.

But as I approached, I realized that the shrines were actually adorned with figures of a snake-bodied Nuwa, a thousand-armed Guanyin, and a hundred-headed Buddha...

All of this was incomprehensible and terrifying to me, so I escaped back to my bedroom and locked myself in the closet.

The narrow and dim space strangely brought me a sense of tranquility.

Suddenly, I remembered what my aunt had said about Wu Yan exhibiting similar behavior.

My mind suddenly became clear, and I quickly turned on my flashlight and retrieved the notebook I always carried with me. The doodles on its pages were identical to the ones my aunt had shown me from Wu Yan's notebook!

Countless lines and irregular ovals intertwined, which were not writing but patterns!

They were the patterns in the eyes of the corpse in the cave!

In that moment of recollection, my spirit was on the verge of collapse due to the overwhelming impact. If I weren't trapped in the closet, I would have chosen to jump off the building to end the pain.

I don't know how long it took, but gradually, I regained some consciousness. By now, my hands were covered in blood, and my nail crevices were filled with shreds of flesh scraped from my own body.

My current state was eerily similar to Wu Yan's before he was sent to the mental hospital!

With that in mind, I forced myself to calm down through self-harm. I crawled out of the closet, took a double dose of sedatives, and began organizing the clues I had gathered.

I contacted Qiu Shan and Tao Xiu Hong again, and from the sound of their voices on the phone, I could tell they were in good mental states.

Upon my repeated questioning, they affirmed that they hadn't encountered the space resembling a black hole during their descent.

I think the reason Wu Yan and I experienced hallucinations is because we stepped into it.

With that thought, I couldn't help but recall the question Wu Yan asked me, which seemed to be the answer to everything.

I couldn't wait to call my aunt. I needed to study all the books on myths that Wu Yan had left behind.

However, I couldn't reach her, but luckily, I had a spare key to my aunt's house.

The moment I opened the anti-theft door, a putrid smell hit me, and I instantly had a foreboding feeling.

Sure enough, my aunt was lying in the middle of the living room, long dead. Her facial expression was extremely fearful, just like Wu Yan before he jumped off the building.

I didn't have time to grieve; I immediately called the police.

Before the police arrived, I went to Wu Yan's room to find what I needed. The most intriguing item was a nameless Tibetan book.

Clearly, it wasn't an original but a photocopy. I quickly flipped through it, and based on the patterns, I guessed it contained information about tantric rituals.

However, Zhang Yuan still hadn't replied to the message I sent him in the afternoon, so it seemed I needed to go and see him in person.

The police preliminarily determined that my aunt had committed suicide, and inadvertently, they revealed that they had received many reports of suicides recently, with the victims dying in extreme fear, as if they were scared to death by something.

I was shocked, so when I was giving my statement, I informed them of the information I knew and requested that they investigate the corpse in Dujiangyan and the strange and eerie pattern.

However, they burst into laughter after hearing it and soon produced my mental health diagnosis report, advising me to take good care of myself.

No matter how I pleaded, I only appeared more and more like a complete lunatic.

"Yang Fan, you should be hospitalized," a police officer who had dealt with me before sincerely suggested.