The strange story of Huai'an Inn

Chong Liu was dragged by the shopkeeper, he staggered between the protruding worms on the ground and the swollen blisters enough to sink his whole foot, the route was twists and turns and was obviously a shortcut.His shoes were soaked in mucus and slipped as he ran, until the last shoe simply slipped off his foot.He had no choice but to continue running barefoot, enduring the pain of something being scratched, after all, none of them dared to stop.

Chong Liu didn't look back, but he knew that those tall and slender shadows were chasing them.They are so tall, but there is no sound of footsteps. The reason why Chong Liu knows that they are still following is because of a subtle sense of vibration.

The vibration continued from the air, stinging his skin lightly like static electricity, making the hairs on his body stand up along with goosebumps.

Nightmare and dogs give him very different feelings.If dogs give people a pure and violent sense of terror, Nightmare gives people a paradoxical, malicious sense of the unknown.You don't know what they'll do to you if they get hold of you, but you know it won't be good.

It's like one person cuts you open with a knife neatly, while the other prefers to pull out your nails one by one, and then pull out your teeth one by one.

Suddenly, Zhu Helan and Chong Liu's feet softened, and they sank before even exclaiming.They happened to be stepping on what appeared to be a membrane of solid ground, and when the membrane ruptured, they fell into a narrow, sticky pocket of fleshy and woody roots.

The shopkeeper immediately covered Chong Liu's mouth, and whispered in his ear, "Don't make a sound, hold your breath."

Chong Liu quickly stopped his breathing.

A black shadow flew past above the head, and the strange vibration became more and more intense, but it stopped abruptly after a while.

Chong Liu was so suffocated that his cheeks were flushed and he was about to roll his eyes, and the shopkeeper was already at the end of his battle. The two looked at each other and let out a big breath at the same time.Chong Liu's hand touched the root of the tree, whether it was meat or wood, and it felt like he had touched a mouthful of thick phlegm, so he quickly shook his hand away in disgust.

The shopkeeper made a shush gesture to him, stood up with his back bent, leaned closer to the film and listened.

Quietly, without the sound of vibration.

"Going away?" Chong Liu asked with his mouth.

The shopkeeper knelt down and said softly, "Maybe it's still nearby, we'd better wait here for a while before going out."

Chong Liu hurriedly nodded, and after a while, said in horror, "Then... what if they eat the incarnation of the locust tree?"

"Although the locust tree is still a sapling, it is not something that can be digested and moved. They can't eat it, but they can also cause damage to it. And... there are more nightmares than I imagined. I'm not sure if they are How did you invade the dream of the locust tree?"

Chongliu asked anxiously, "Then, is there a way to drive these things out?"

"What Nightmare is most afraid of is that the dreamer realizes that he is dreaming. As long as the dreamer knows that he is dreaming, he can have stronger control over the dream, and Nightmare will often be eliminated by the dreamer."

"...So you still have to find the incarnation of your locust tree?"

"How can it be said that it belongs to my family?" The shopkeeper shook his finger at him, "Now it knows you, and treats you as my blessing, and even passed on its consciousness to you. Don't tell me you don't care about others in the future?"

Chong Liu was taken aback by the words, "What do you mean? What do you mean it knows me?"

"The symbol I drew on your hand is written in my blood, so it will think that you are my...extension." The shopkeeper laughed.

The shopkeeper's...extension...

Listen...that's weird...

Chongliu was embarrassed, and said in a low voice, "Why did Keshu recognize you as a godfather when you're so good?"

The shopkeeper laughed a few times, "How do you know it's the godfather and not the young lady?" "...My boss, you don't have a daughter-in-law, so I have to be the main wife anyway?" Chong Liu also went all out, imitating the girl on Pomegranate Street They pretended to be "coquettish".

The shopkeeper laughed out loud. After laughing twice, he realized that the vibration of the laughter might attract the nightmare, so he quickly covered his mouth.

It seemed like he hadn't smiled so heartily for a long time.

Zhu Helan restrained her smile, quietly looked at Chong Liu who was also giggling on the opposite side, and asked softly, "Liu'er, why didn't you run away before?"

"Boss, why did you bring this up again? Didn't I apologize?" Chong Liu thought that the boss was going to scold him, so he hurriedly begged for mercy.

"I don't mean to blame you. I just find it strange... aren't you afraid?" Zhu Helan's eyes really appeared confused.

"I'm afraid, why not." Chongliu shrugged his shoulders, "I just feel... I can't bear it. I know that the locust tree was raised by you, but who can say for sure about these filthy things... in case it What if I eat you?"

"I'm just your boss, and you're just my waiter. Even if I'm eaten, you have no obligation to save me with your life?" The shopkeeper Zhu still didn't understand.

Chong Liu was taken aback for a moment, then scratched his head, as if a little cramped.

The shopkeeper is right.

but……

"I'm not sure why, anyway, I did that at the time. If I do it again, I'm not sure I will do the same thing..." Chong Liu said lightly, "At that time, how could I have time to think so much? .”

The shopkeeper stared at him with a lot of tenderness in his eyes.

Genuine, aimless tenderness.

"You really don't look like you came from Baixiaomen." The shopkeeper commented.

Chong Liu didn't know whether the words were complimenting him or scolding him.

At this moment, the surroundings suddenly began to tremble violently, and Chong Liu had to hold on to the roots of the tree so as not to be thrown into the air.Zhu Helan stabilized her body, and saw that the surrounding tree roots began to squirm chaotically, like countless tangled pythons, gradually squeezing towards the middle.

"Liu'er! We have to go out!"

First he stretched his hand out of the membrane, groping for a tree root outside.Chong Liu also stumbled over, and the two pulled each other, crawling out in a panic.

The whole land is wriggling, all the roots and worms are writhing, and the trees are also bumping and undulating, just like a crazy scene of crazy demons dancing wildly.Chongliu felt in a trance that he was being stuck in the wrinkle that twisted and deformed with the movement of a giant monster, and it was like a boat bumping with the waves in a roaring and angry sea.

And in the sky, a strange and frightening spectacle appeared.

Those huge black fleshy clumps began to emit a bleeding-like red light, and thin and dense filaments continued to extend from the chapped gullies.When they gradually approached the ground, Chong Liu could see the whole picture of those "silks" clearly.

It was not silk, but it seemed to be silk because of the distance.They are countless hideous black tentacles as thick as the torso of a century-old tree.Under the translucent dirty skin, tens of thousands of swollen eyes quickly appeared and disappeared.The cracks that seem to grow randomly scattered open and close, revealing the sunflower-shaped teeth covered with barbs, and the tentacles-like clusters of tongues sticking out long, throwing out a highly toxic acid that can corrode any metal.

Countless terrifying black tentacles descended from the sky, like an upside-down dark forest, gradually merging with the deformed three forests on the ground.Just as they were getting closer to the ground, some chaotic thoughts began to stir in Chong Liu's mind.

Rotting land, decomposing corpses, crowded maggots, foul-smelling slime, colorful swollen bubbles, filling the dark sky with... gods...

It was obviously a terrifying, dirty, and deformed thing, but it inexplicably made him yearn for it.It was as if there was something primordial and beautiful behind the most twisted, unrecognizable horrors, attracting him, beckoning him.

It made him want to reach out to meet those tentacles, to meet their sharp teeth and the venom that would burn his skin open in an instant, exposing his veins and flesh, to be swallowed and digested by it, to become a part of it, to become eternal a part of……

"Liu'er!" The shopkeeper's voice suddenly pulled him out of that weird trance.Chong Liu was startled, and found that he actually stretched out his hand towards an approaching tentacle, and the shopkeeper was holding his wrist tightly, pulling him back.

They had no choice but to retract under the film again.The space that could have accommodated about three people became much more crowded than before.The two of them were almost face to face and stuck tightly together.Chong Liu could even hear the powerful beating of the heart in the hot chest through the heavy cloth on the shopkeeper's chest.

He has never been so close to anyone before...

Chong Liu's heart rate also started to increase. I don't know if it was an illusion, but the shopkeeper's heart rate also seemed to increase.

"Just now... what happened just now? What are those things?" Chong Liu's forehead almost touched the shopkeeper's shoulder, and he barely managed to lift his neck back.

The shopkeeper forcefully pushed away a root system lying beside his head, and said in a low voice, "This is the scene in the dream of the locust tree when he was just born. The one in the sky... is its mother."

"Why is Huaishu's mother a cloud?!" Chong Liu couldn't understand.

"That's not a cloud... She's just too big, we can't see her whole picture. And this is just her appearance in the dream of the locust tree, probably a little distorted. The real her... I don't know what it looks like "The shopkeeper smiled wryly, "If I knew, I wouldn't have a chance to talk to you."

"why?"

"No one who saw her face ever lived to leave any record of her. They either disappeared or went mad."

Chong Liu couldn't imagine how terrifying it really was.

"Even if it's just an incarnation in a dream, if the locust tree doesn't have a strong control over the dream, we may be swallowed. It seems that we have to hide here for a while longer." The shopkeeper said apologetically.

Zhong Liu was squeezed into discomfort, and all the remaining air was sultry on his skin.He wanted to move his body, but he heard the shopkeeper grunt.

"You stepped on my foot."

"Ah! I'm sorry!"

Chong Liu dared not move again.At this moment, he seemed to be embracing the shopkeeper face to face, wrapped in a cocoon made of wriggling roots.

The shopkeeper was also sweating profusely from the heat, but the faint scent of medicine on his body could still pass through the sour smell emanating from the mucus attached to the surrounding tree roots, injecting a little comfortable breeze into Chong Liu's nose... …

Hearing the shopkeeper's heartbeat and feeling the shopkeeper's embrace, Chongliu's cheeks began to heat up, and his mind was in a mess.

The shopkeeper suddenly said softly, "Your heart is beating so fast."

Chong Liu cleared his throat and changed the subject, "Will those... tentacles just now eat Yan?"

"I can't tell. Maybe this is the instinctive reaction of the locust tree when it senses the invasion of outsiders in its dreams, and the Mother Goddess is its defense. But if Nightmare hides well, it will be difficult to completely clean it up."

"Mother God? The one in the sky...isn't it the Mother God of Everything you mentioned?"

"Yes."

Chong Liu was stunned, then giggled, "I thought you were talking about the Queen Mother..."

The shopkeeper also laughed, and the resonance in his chest made Chongliu inexplicably... intimate.

The author has something to say: the prototype of the Mother Goddess of All Things is Shabu Nicholas, one of the three pillar gods in the Cthulhu mythology, which has been mentioned in many works of Lovecraft and later generations.