I, a Mental Patient, Was Chosen to Participate in AnalogHorror
Chapter 366 - 333 Cautious Justin

Chapter 366: Chapter 333 Cautious Justin

Seeing isn’t always believing?

Justin lingered in place for a while, keeping his guard up.

"Young man?"

Just as he was about to continue deeper into the mountain, a curious voice appeared behind Justin.

"Did you also get lost in the mountains?"

Crap in a basket!

That voice was all too familiar to Justin—it sounded exactly like the woman who had pleaded for help last night.

Turning around, he saw a young girl with a sly smile, carrying a large bamboo basket on her back.

"Miss, who are you?"

"Isn’t it obvious who I am?"

As she spoke, Huahua patted the bamboo basket behind her and sang.

"The mushroom-picking girl with a big bamboo basket on her back."

Justin: "?"

Pick mushrooms my foot!

Strange mountains paired with a strange girl, nothing good can come of this!

"Did you also get lost in the mountains?"

The kind-hearted Huahua asked Justin again.

"I’m not lost in the mountains; I happen to have business to attend to in there."

Justin corrected, aiming to distance himself from this odd girl.

"Then can you take me down the mountain? Because I’m lost."

Justin shook his head, showing he didn’t have the time, and pointed towards the path down the mountain, indicating a straight way out.

"But I’m so cute and also so weak; going down the mountain alone... I would feel scared."

"Being scared is your problem, what use is it telling me?"

Justin posed this soul-searching question, all the while stepping back, resolved to keep distance from this mushroom-picking miss.

"Good Samaritan, please, just take me with you. I’ll give you a reward, okay?"

"Not okay."

The more she insisted, the more alert Justin became. Everyone avoided the mountains—what good person would willingly venture here?

This time, without giving her a chance to continue the conversation, Justin turned and headed deeper into the mountain.

Huh?

Huahua watched Justin’s retreating figure with suspicion, secretly wondering why this guy was so brave. Wasn’t having her, a free guide, a good thing?

"Young man, don’t rush. If you won’t take me, at least wait for me!"

It was apparent that Huahua’s skin wasn’t thin—in fact, it could be considered rather thick.

Justin, walking ahead, paused but didn’t dare to confront; instead, he quickened his step. Who knew what this strange girl was all about?

...

"I already know who you are, and if you don’t come clean now, don’t blame me if I end up killing you with my Peach Wood Sword."

Huahua, with a frightened face, shrank into a corner of the pond, her lower half hidden in the water, not daring to move, and watched nervously as Jiang Xiao, with the Peach Wood Sword in his right hand and the Compass in his left, confronted her.

"I—I don’t have any background... you know, I’m the weakest among us..."

"Being weak and being special aren’t mutually exclusive. I knew something was off. You, lad, yesterday led me around killing all the weirdness in the mountains like it was nothing. If you were really that weak, how could you be so familiar with the territories of so many supernatural beings!"

Ah, what?

This question left Huahua momentarily at a loss for an excuse.

"Just tell the truth, I won’t do anything to you."

Jiang Xiao, who usually advocated for summary execution, unexpectedly held back his murderous intent today, and even casually sat beside Huahua.

"Really?"

Huahua was still very nervous; she had personally witnessed how ruthless this man could be.

One sword, one little specter, one stab, one silent victim.

"Really. Start from the day you got lost in the mountains."

"Oh~"

Huahua adjusted her sitting posture, then organized her thoughts before she began recounting everything that had happened.

It was no different from the story Wang Dayong had told Jiang Xiao.

The younger Huahua had gone up the mountain with old man Hua and got lost chasing a butterfly. She could only remember ending up in a hollow.

In her panic, Huahua’s lower leg had been pierced by a broken branch.

This trapped her completely, and she could only scream desperately...

"I didn’t have the strength to scream for long. At that time, I felt very painful and very cold."

"Then what happened?"

"Then, well, then I just fell into a heavy sleep. When I became conscious again, my dad was leading villagers up the mountain to look for me. I even heard Uncle Lee holding a torch coming up to the hollow, not even five meters away from me..."

"Unfortunately, it was just too dark at the time. I wanted to call out to him, but no matter what, I couldn’t make a sound. In the end, I could only watch helplessly as Uncle Lee walked away..."

What followed was beyond Jiang Xiao’s comprehension.

According to Huahua, she had thought she was dead, but the next day she came back to life, while the villagers who had come to look for her were all killed by wild animals overnight.

She wanted to leave the mountain, but found that she couldn’t leave the bounds of Sunset Mountain at all. That’s when she realized she truly was dead.

The elders in the village say that if a kind-hearted, gentle, adorable, pure, brilliant, and extremely lovely girl dies on Sunset Mountain, she might become a mountain spirit, unable to die or be destroyed, but doomed to a lonely existence.

Selling melons like old lady Wang?

Jiang Xiao frowned, "Speak human."

"Oh~" Huahua rubbed her sleeves and said, "This last part I just made up, there’s actually no such thing as a mountain spirit."

Jiang Xiao: ...

According to Huahua, it was because the villagers’ obsession with finding her was so deep, and being attacked by countless wild animals magnified their negative emotions to the extreme.

These obsessions held onto Huahua’s soul that should have dissipated, preventing it from leaving Sunset Mountain.

Jiang Xiao nodded; he could just barely accept this explanation.

"What about those villagers? Don’t tell me you don’t know their current state, I won’t believe it."

"Uh, they, they were resurrected by me... or rather, I’ve become bound with the villagers, their obsession brought me back to ’life,’ so I also have the ability to awaken their obsessions through myself."

A mutual supplement?

Would this not amount to a form of eternal life?

"I’ll grow old too, compared to a single breath, I can distinctly feel myself ’aging’."

Huahua sighed, feeling as if some substances inside her were slowly dissipating.

"Maybe there’s not much time left for me to live~"

Huahua seemed quite open about the idea of death, lying directly on a lotus leaf in the pond, staring blankly at the white clouds and the sky above.

"My dad used to tell me a story when he brought me into the mountains. He said that if there were two Sunset Mountains piled on top of each other, standing on the peak would allow you to touch the clouds... What do you think clouds feel like to touch?"

This question Jiang Xiao was unable to answer; he was not well-read and indeed had never touched them.

"What would be the consequences if I killed you?"

"You want to kill me?"

Huahua sat up, arms crossed, utterly disbelieving.