Book 3: Chapter 40: Black Python Lotus

Book 3: Chapter 40: Black Python Lotus

The next thing I knew, I felt a pain in my eyes that penetrated deep into my brain. It was just like someone had directly grabbed the nerves in my eyes. I squeezed my eyes shut and rushed towards the place where Poker-Face had been standing just now.

I had to reach him quickly because this darkness was the worst state for the three of us to be in.

But when I rushed over and stretched my hands out, all I caught was air. As I immediately started to lose consciousness, the last thing I could feel was my whole body falling into a sea of black cotton.

It was so overpowering that I was barely conscious before I knew it. Then, I completely blacked out.New novel chapters are published on

When I woke up again, the sky was already bright. I got up and found that I wasnt in the same place I had been at last night. Instead, I appeared to be in a forest on top of a hill.

Honestly, this hill could be regarded as a mountain. It looked to be about two or three hundred meters tall and was completely covered in forest. The trees werent tall, but most of them were European red pines and Mongolian oaks. Sunshine filtered down through the tops of the tree canopies, and as I looked between the gaps in the trees, I could see low mountains in the distance. I could even see the grassland at the foot of the mountain stretching out as far as the eye could see. The mountain was very steep, and when I stood up, I found that there was only a narrow space to place my feet. Moreover, the ground at the top of the mountain was sloped, so it would be easy to slide down if I wasn't careful.

This was very common terrain at this latitude.

I turned my head and saw Fatty lying on a bunch of fallen leaves beside me. Poker-Face was leaning against a tree on the side, quietly resting.

It's dawn?

We're ok?

I cautiously stood up, grabbing the roots of a nearby tree since the ground was sloped and covered in fallen leaves and mud. Fatty and Poker-Face both opened their eyes.

"Whats going on? What happened to me last night?"

Fatty took out his cell phone and showed me some photos. I saw that the whites of my eyes were showing and I had been tied up.

"Were in front of the underground palace," Fatty said. "Don't worry about last night. Lets just get down to business."

I looked at him. Although I was really intrigued by this holey mountain, Fatty's words still upset me. "Are you going to tell me or not? I asked him. If you dont tell me, I won't support you in the future."

Fatty continued to hold on to me as he told me to look behind the holey mountain.

When I did, I saw the snow-capped mountain we had seen when we first arrived here. Now that it was much closer, its magnitude was even more spectacular. The snow-capped peaks formed from the central axis behind this earthen "lotus" mountain were all blackI only discovered this now because the mountain had been so far away beforeand the mountains ridges were very special. One of them looked like a black python that pierced right into the lotus.

This wasnt something that had been carved out; it was just a landform that had coincidentally taken that shape after it had been eroded by water.

"In your opinion, what would make the snow on that mountain turn black?" When Fatty asked me this, I immediately knew what he meant.

Almost every single strange thing we had encountered along the way had been "black", which meant that there had to be something very strange under that black mountain.

And whatever that strange thing was, everything that had happened here should be related to it.

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TN Notes:

(1) Trypophobia is a fear or disgust of closely-packed holes.

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FYI, there won't be an update this weekend. On the bright side, Anna has put "Notes in Rain Village" and "A Thousand Faces" into pdfs for you.