Chapter 867: The Dilemma of the Fishing Village

The door slammed shut with a bang.

Baili Pangpang stood on the ground covered in cash, stunned like a wooden chicken.

After an unknown amount of time, he finally pointed at the door, incredulously exclaiming, “Is he crazy? He said I’m using counterfeit money?! How could this possibly be counterfeit?!”

Shen Qingzhu furrowed his brows tightly. He bent down and casually picked up a bill from the ground, examining it closely for a moment.

“This is real.”

“Of course it’s real!”

“But the expression of that villager just now didn’t seem fake. When he heard the number fifty thousand, he really seemed tempted,” Cao Yuan said, frowning in thought.

Shen Qingzhu picked up the money from the ground one by one and stuffed it into Baili Pangpang’s hands. He turned around, squinting at the ancient fishing village shrouded in darkness, and slowly spoke, “The money isn’t the problem; the problem is… this village.”

“What do you mean?” Baili Pangpang asked, confused.

“From the moment the first household opened their door, I sensed something was off,” Shen Qingzhu said calmly. “The calendar hanging on that family’s wall is from fifty years ago.”

Baili Pangpang was taken aback, frowning as he pondered for a moment, unable to recall any impression of that calendar.

“A calendar from fifty years ago?” Cao Yuan exclaimed in surprise. “Could it have been hung up incorrectly?”

“No, that calendar looks too new; it doesn’t resemble a product from fifty years ago at all. It looks more like something that was just produced not long ago,” Shen Qingzhu asserted. “And the shoes and oil lamps in the other households are not items from this era; they are very old, and most of them have already been discontinued. You can’t even buy them if you wanted to.

At first, I thought it was just a coincidence or that this place was too backward. If that person hadn’t just said that this was counterfeit money, I might not have realized this issue.”

Among the three present, no one could match Shen Qingzhu’s observational skills. At this moment, with Shen Qingzhu pointing out these discrepancies, Baili Pangpang and Cao Yuan naturally wouldn’t doubt him.

“Are you saying… we’ve crossed over?” Baili Pangpang tentatively asked, following Shen Qingzhu’s line of thought.

“I don’t know; it’s just a possibility,” Shen Qingzhu said with a serious expression. “Seven Night was right; this place… is very strange.”

……

As night deepened.

The lights in the fishing village gradually went out, and the coastal village was completely engulfed in darkness.

The waves lapped at the shore, causing the nearby small boats to sway slightly. Under the dim moonlight, the waves sparkled white like crushed silver, rolling to Lin Qiye’s feet.

He walked alone along the edge of the waves in the deep night.

At this moment, he had taken off that hat, and the surrounding darkness automatically coalesced, forming a shadowy figure that followed behind him, a crimson eye opening on the shadow’s forehead.

“How is it?” Lin Qiye asked, gazing at the horizon of darkness in the distance.

“Director, I still can’t see anything,” the black-eyed figure replied helplessly.

“We’ve almost crossed the entire fishing village, and still nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“…Strange.”

Lin Qiye pondered for a moment, allowing the black-eyed figure to merge with his shadow. He slightly bent his body, his mental energy surging, and transformed into a streak of night, swiftly racing along the coastline toward the distance.

The environment in his eyes rapidly receded, the hazy moonlight spilling onto the coastline, gradually dimming as he sped forward.

Suddenly, the moon in the sky flickered, as if it had extinguished for a moment, and everything around Lin Qiye plunged into absolute darkness.

Then, Lin Qiye’s vision returned.

He abruptly stopped.

The sound of the waves echoed in his ears as he stared blankly at the dark fishing village that had appeared out of thin air before him, disbelief filling his eyes.

How could this be possible?

He had clearly been running in the opposite direction; how did he end up back here?

Lin Qiye turned to look at the path he had come from, deep and mysterious. Even with the moonlight covering the ground, it remained as dark as a black hole that devoured everything, not even light could escape.

Lin Qiye’s brows furrowed tightly as he turned back and plunged into that darkness. The moon in the sky extinguished for a moment again, and the next moment, he found himself standing at the edge of the coastline in the opposite direction…

At both ends of the coastline, it was as if some mysterious force connected them. Whenever Lin Qiye tried to leave from one side, he would be forced to return from the other end, like an endless loop of a ghostly wall.

Lin Qiye looked at the fishing village in the distance, refusing to believe it. He reached out and pressed into the void, and endless clouds rolled beneath his feet, transforming into a cloud that lifted his body, soaring into the sky!

The speed of the cloud far exceeded his own, and he could easily leap across the range of a small fishing village in the blink of an eye.

However, no matter how he maneuvered the cloud or from what angle he tried to leap over the village’s boundaries, he would inexplicably circle back to the original spot.

The most critical part was that his mental energy perception didn’t detect any anomalies; there were no signs of forbidden fluctuations or forbidden objects. Everything felt so reasonable and natural, as if it were meant to be.

Even when he used [White Slash] to slip into the void, he couldn’t escape the range of this fishing village.

After dozens of attempts, Lin Qiye silently flew back to the coastline, dispersing the cloud with a wave of his hand, his expression more serious than ever.

They were trapped in this fishing village.

He didn’t know who had left such a method here, nor did he understand the principle behind this bizarre phenomenon. Not knowing how to get out, Lin Qiye stood by the coastline, staring at the dark village in the distance, feeling a chill run down his spine.

The unknown was more terrifying than an absolute disparity in strength.

Lin Qiye took out his phone, but there was no signal at all. He sighed and put it back in his pocket.

He calmed his mind and began to think seriously.

Since they couldn’t leave this village in the short term, the urgent task was to figure out the details of this place. At the very least, they needed to know what they were facing, while also searching for the whereabouts of the [Mask] team. Since they had arrived here earlier than him, they might have left some clues…

Moreover, before he entered this village, he had already sent his location to the Night Watch headquarters. If they really encountered something they couldn’t handle, as long as they delayed for as long as possible, Zuo Qing would definitely send someone to support them.

He just didn’t know how things were going on Jialan and Pangpang’s side. Since there hadn’t been any major movements from them so far, it meant they hadn’t encountered danger for the time being, and everything was still within a controllable range…

At least, it appeared so on the surface.