But just a minute ago, this person was still talking to us. I felt like I was about to break down—an inexplicable interview had actually resulted in a death, and cold sweat instantly drenched my clothes.

My mind was racing. This isolated mountain village seemed extremely xenophobic. If they saw what was happening now, who knows what consequences there would be.

I stared at the village chief’s corpse, cold sweat pouring down. Suddenly, I noticed something was off: the chief’s stiff body remained in the same position, but his eyeball suddenly moved, as if he winked at me.

Goosebumps shot up all over me. I kept staring at the chief’s eyes and asked Big Lee, “Did you just see the chief blink?”

Big Lee said in panic, “Peter, don’t scare me. How could a dead person blink?”

I mustered my courage, leaned in close to the chief’s face, watched for a long time, recalled his strange behavior, and made up my mind. I pulled a key from my pocket and suddenly stabbed it into the chief’s eyeball!

“Peter Brooks, what are you doing? Are you crazy?” Big Lee shouted, trying to stop me, but in the next moment, his shout was abruptly cut off.

I was right.

The key was hanging with the chief’s eyeball on it, and the bloody back half of the eyeball was crawling with things. Not hair, not sand, and definitely not dust invisible to the naked eye.

They were bugs!

Tiny, densely packed, black bugs! Not just in the eyeball—they were inside the chief’s lifeless body as well.

Tiny black bugs were constantly moving in and out of the chief’s dark eye sockets. Who knows how many there were? Like a tide, they crawled from the eye socket into the chief’s body and kept pouring out from within.

The bloody eyeball dangled from the key, and those wriggling bugs looked utterly terrifying. Instinctively, I threw the key to the ground and took several steps back. Faced with this unbelievable scene, I started dry heaving.

Maybe these bugs had taken over the chief’s body—his eyeballs, brain, even every organ. They coexisted with the chief in a parasitic way, so the chief had already been dead for a long time.

Yes, that’s it.

What I saw last night—the black mist covering the chief’s body—was these bugs! That’s why the chief wasn’t breathing at the time.

But if he was already dead, why was he still talking to us just now?

At that moment, Big Lee suddenly screamed, his voice full of shock and terror. I immediately knew why he was so panicked—those bugs were gushing out of the chief’s body like a fountain, and the chief’s body quickly shriveled and withered. This wasn’t a movie; it was happening right in front of us!

But that wasn’t the scariest part. The most shocking thing was that the bugs gathered together, flowing like two black tides, and the direction they spread was straight toward me and Big Lee.

In that instant, I understood the truth of the village.

Chapter 14: Eye (6)

The chief must have died long ago. These bugs had taken over his body and coexisted with his corpse in a strange way. His movements and our conversations were actually all controlled by those intelligent bugs!

That’s why the villagers all lived so long, why they could see in the dark without lights. No wonder the chief wanted to hide and refuse outsiders—because the truth of this village was so horrifying!

Even more terrifying, these bugs seemed to have set their sights on the bodies of me and Big Lee. They abandoned the chief and surged toward us, reaching our feet in an instant.

Suddenly, I remembered the scene where the chief was afraid of fire. I quickly pulled out my lighter and a pack of cigarettes from my bag, tore open the cigarette box, lit it, and threw it at the bugs. Sure enough, as the burning paper fell to the ground, the bugs immediately retreated like a tide. I shouted, “Run!” and dragged Big Lee away. But at some point, Big Lee had already hoisted the camera onto his shoulder, backing away while filming. I slapped him: “Damn it, you’re still filming at a time like this? Run!”

Big Lee kept backing up and said, “We have to get this footage. The bugs are slow, don’t worry, they can’t catch us.”

I yelled in frustration, “The whole damn village is probably full of bugs! If the others come, we won’t be able to escape.”

Hearing this, Big Lee’s face changed. He finally put down the camera and ran out of the house with me. Sure enough, as soon as we got outside, we saw that all the villagers’ doors, which had been tightly shut, were now wide open. Many sallow-faced villagers were coming out of their houses, moving quietly and quickly toward us.

Old people, women, men, children—all dressed in simple, ragged clothes, their hair dirty and messy, their expressions blank.

The villagers seemed to be controlled by some invisible force. No one made a sound. Their movements were identical—no, even their expressions were exactly the same!

The villagers were approaching one after another, as if performing some kind of ritual. Suddenly, I remembered a movie where the protagonist faced countless townspeople who had turned into zombies. Now, we were facing something just as terrifying.

“Get in the car!” I shouted, running toward the car as fast as I could.