Stein and I turned around to see Stella, and immediately froze. When had Stella arrived? If Stella was here, then whose voice had that been just now...?
I looked toward where the sound had come from and noticed something hiding in the grass that slipped away the moment Stella appeared.
"Good thing I got here when I did, or you two would be dead already." Stella knocked each of us on the head - the same familiar gesture, the same familiar tone. This had to be the real Stella.
I said, "Can you blame us? It's your fault for falling asleep and leaving us in danger. If we hadn't fallen under that Siberian weasel's demonic spell, we wouldn't have ended up in this courtyard."
"Courtyard? Hmph, this is no courtyard!" Stella snorted coldly, then bit her fingertip and dabbed a drop of True Blood on both my and Stein's foreheads.
"Six Netherworld True Lord, bestow upon me the mystical eyes. All manner of illusions shall be shattered!"
Stella bellowed the incantation while waving her fingers before our eyes.
Suddenly, my vision blurred. When I could see clearly again, all the weeds had disappeared, replaced by a desolate grave. Stranger still, there was a dry well beside the grave. Stein and I had been standing right at the well's edge. Stella said if she hadn't arrived in time, we would have jumped in - victims of some strange curse.
A deserted graveyard. A dry well. What kind of place was this? It didn't match Orwell's description at all. I knew the courtyard and ruined house might have been illusions, but according to Orwell, we should have woken up at Huang Daxian Temple.
I began to suspect Orwell had lied to us. Good thing I hadn't given him that tattoo - this situation was far more complicated than he'd let on.
Looking at the dry well made my skin crawl. The opening revealed only darkness below, impossible to see what lurked down there. Yet I couldn't shake the feeling that someone - or something - was watching me from the depths. The sensation was overwhelming.
The graves were even more terrifying. Their tombstones each bore the carved head of a Siberian weasel, no names inscribed. The surrounding area was bleak, littered with occasional human skulls and limbs. No grass grew here, no trees - just eerie emptiness that felt especially menacing at night.
"What is this place?" Stein asked me.
I said, "You're asking me? Who am I supposed to ask? I just blinked and got transported here from the internet cafe." My legs ached terribly, as if they might give out - how long had I been walking? Checking the time shocked me: 5:00 AM. Had we really been walking for two fucking hours?
At this point, both Stein and I turned to Stella for answers.
Stella explained she had followed us as we headed north. We had been walking incredibly fast - she'd nearly lost us while chasing. After about two hours, we appeared here. She saw us standing by the well's edge, about to jump in, and barely managed to stop us in time.
Two hours of walking in a trance? And where exactly were we? We must be some distance from the city by now. Please tell me we weren't in those godforsaken outskirts.
Some suburban areas were decent, but others were nothing but mountains - places so deserted you might not even find a ghost. What could that Siberian weasel possibly want by bringing us here?
Just then, Stein suddenly cried out, startling us both. "What's wrong?" I asked.
Stein said he thought he recognized this place - it was probably the legendary Siberian weasel graveyard.
When he was young, he'd heard rumors that if you traveled north from Vervecity, you'd eventually come across a Siberian weasel burial ground... where all the weasels were interred.
The graveyard contained a dry well housing an evil spirit. Anyone who came here would unconsciously throw themselves into the well, becoming food for the malevolent ghost.
An evil spirit?
Hearing Stein's words sent chills down my spine. Yet when I peered into the well, nothing stirred. Could the rumors be exaggerated? Maybe this was just an unusual cemetery with local customs - real graves marked with weasel headstones covering a large area.
"Who's there?" Stella suddenly shouted. She flicked a copper coin from her hand. The coin sparked as it struck a gravestone before clattering to the ground.
That's when I noticed someone hiding behind the tombstone. As Stella attacked, a black shadow darted from behind the stone and vanished lightning-fast.
Stein and I rushed over, but found only discarded clothing and an old woman's human skin behind the tombstone - the same old woman we'd seen at the internet cafe.
No doubt now: that old woman hadn't been human. Most likely a Siberian weasel wearing human skin to prey on people.
She must have realized what Stein and I were up to back at the internet cafe. Rather than kill us directly, she'd bewitched us and led us here to throw us into the well.
I glanced at the well again, and involuntary goosebumps rose on my skin... Was there truly an evil spirit down there? Had that Siberian weasel meant to feed us to it?
"Damn it! It got away!" Stella fumed. "Who knows if we'll catch it later - if it goes after more people..."
I asked if she knew what that creature really was.
Stella sniffed the human skin and clothes, then said there was some demonic energy remaining, though not particularly strong. This Siberian weasel's cultivation level probably wasn't very high - she could handle it, though it had managed to escape this time.
I said it didn't matter whether we drove it away completely, as long as it stopped harming people at the internet cafe. If it reappeared, we'd find a way to capture it. Maybe giving protective tattoos to the internet cafe patrons would help suppress its demonic influence.
Then I asked Stella to examine the well - was there really an evil spirit down there? That persistent feeling of being watched from the depths made my skin crawl.
Stella approached and inspected the well's edge. She confirmed the well was problematic, but probably safe since it appeared to be sealed with Taoist talismans.
Pointing to the small talismanic script along the well's interior, Stella showed me the circling rows of incomprehensible incantations. I hadn't even noticed them until she pointed them out - the tiny characters formed concentric circles inside the well's rim.
"If it's sealed, we should keep our distance," I said. Something might indeed be trapped down there, sealed by some unknown master.
Stella agreed. The place was too eerie and sinister. With the Siberian weasel gone, we should leave immediately.
When Stein heard we were leaving, he eagerly raised his hands in agreement and rushed ahead. He'd wanted to escape long ago. With such cowardice, how had he ever adventured with my grandfather?
But after just a few steps, I suddenly noticed something climbing up the well's edge. Then a golden light flashed behind me.
With a soft fluttering sound, something seemed to fall back down into the well's depths.
My scalp prickled with terror, and I immediately sprinted past Stein.
"This place is too damn scary! Let's get the hell out of here!"
Beyond the desolate graveyard lay equally barren wilderness - remote mountainous terrain with no signs of life for miles. Our legs nearly gave out before we finally reached the highway and caught a taxi back.
Returning to Vervecity, Stella rushed back to school while Stein and I returned to the internet cafe.
We wanted to confront Orwell about the discrepancies between his story and our experience. But when we arrived, the manager informed us there was no Orwell - the owner's name was Caius.