I have no idea how long I was out.

Awareness returned slowly through a thick darkness. I felt like I was still in that cursed passage, my ankles locked in the grip of countless cold hands dragging me down. The despair and suffocation felt horrifyingly real. I thrashed wildly, desperate to see what had me in its grip.


That's when I saw them.

Not the monstrous claws I'd imagined, but… women's arms.

Hundreds of slender, pale arms reached up from the darkness below. Delicate wrists adorned with ancient jade bracelets, long elegant fingers with crimson-painted nails. They wrapped around my legs with gentle yet irresistible strength. The sight was both seductive and horrifying—an eerie sacrificial ritual. Being dragged to hell by monsters is one kind of terror, but being gently pulled to your doom by beautiful hands creates a deeper, more visceral dread that turns your stomach inside out.


"Ethan! ETHAN! Wake up!"

I opened my eyes to Mike's terrified face hovering over me, his lips bloodless. I bolted upright, my head exploding with pain like a hundred tiny hammers pounding at once. We were sprawled at the bottom of a stone staircase. Behind us lay that soul-stealing corridor that had nearly claimed our lives. Leo sat propped against the wall, face ashen, while Mike fumbled with a military first-aid kit, trying to bandage Leo's arm.


"Goddamn it… those gold bars looked so real…" Mike muttered, hands trembling. "We nearly bought it back there. How's the professor doing?"

"The bleeding's stopped, but he's still out cold." I checked Leo's breathing—steady enough—and felt a wave of relief.

When Leo finally came to, he didn't even glance at his wound. Instead, he immediately scanned our surroundings, that feverish gleam still burning in his eyes.

"We made it through," he rasped, using the wall to pull himself upright. "To use Seven Toxin Red as a mere entrance guard—our tomb builder was certainly confident in his defenses…"

We took a few minutes to recover before pressing onward.

Following the stone steps down, we walked for about ten minutes before emerging into a vast underground cavern. Our flashlight beams disappeared into the darkness, unable to find the ceiling or far wall.

A heavy, nauseating stench hung in the air—like thousands of fish rotting in stagnant water, mixed with the metallic smell of rusted iron.

We moved forward cautiously until we discovered the source of the stench—a river.

A pitch-black river stretched before us, so wide we couldn't see the opposite shore. The water moved sluggishly, almost unnaturally still. Most disturbing of all, countless orbs of phosphorescent green light floated on the inky surface—like thousands of ghostly eyes watching us from the darkness.

"Holy shit," Mike whispered, his usual bravado gone. "Did we die and end up in hell?"

His question wasn't entirely unreasonable. At the water's edge stood a stone tablet about waist-high. Two large characters were carved on it in ancient seal script: River of Forgetfulness.

Leo approached and trained his flashlight on the smaller text beneath, reading aloud: "The waters of the River of Forgetfulness may be crossed but not bypassed."

After reading this, he fell into an excited, almost reverent silence.

"What the hell does that mean? Aren't crossing and bypassing basically the same thing?"

"The River of Forgetfulness teems with Black Aquatic Centipedes. Touch the water and you die instantly, your soul shattered. Only by following the Path of Phosphorescence can one reach the far shore." The words flowed from my mouth unbidden—something I'd read in one of my grandfather's ancient texts. How I remembered them now, I couldn't say.

"Well, look at you, Mr. Encyclopedia," Mike said, eyebrows raised. "Since when did you become such a scholar?"

"Shut up. Some of us actually finished college, unlike you."

While we bickered, Leo continued examining the tablet, utterly absorbed.

"River of Forgetfulness…" Leo muttered, almost trancelike. "The mythical boundary between life and death… This isn't mere imitation—he's positioning himself as a god of death! He's constructed his own underworld! And these 'Black Aquatic Centipedes'… mentioned in a lost chapter of the Classic of Mountains and Seas—highly venomous creatures that feed on carrion… Brilliant! A genius madman indeed!"

"I don't give a damn if he was Einstein or Charles Manson," Mike growled, checking his Winchester and chambering a round with a satisfying click. "Anything that moves gets a face full of lead."

"The Path of Phosphorescence must be those glowing spots on the water," I said, pointing to the eerie green lights dotting the surface.

We inflated our military-grade raft and carefully climbed aboard. In the oppressive silence, our tiny vessel seemed like a leaf adrift in an ocean of darkness, ready to be swallowed at any moment.

Leo took the front position, tasked with tracking the phosphorescent path. I sat in the middle, sweeping the waters with my high-powered flashlight. Mike took the rear, rifle ready, combat knife strapped to his thigh, his usual joking manner replaced by grim focus.

"Let's move," Mike growled, driving the paddle deep as our raft glided toward the river's center.

The water radiated a bone-deep chill, and the silence pressed against our ears, broken only by the rhythmic splash of the paddle. The green lights drifted across the surface, clustering and separating, forming a winding, flickering pathway through the darkness.

"Left a bit," Leo whispered. "Those lights ahead are too bright—could be a trap."

Just as we concentrated on finding our path, my flashlight beam accidentally swept across the right side of our raft. In that split second, I glimpsed a face covered in pale scales, eyeless, rising from the black water. Its mouth—a nightmare of needle-sharp fangs—opened silently as it lunged!

"RIGHT SIDE!" I screamed.

But it was already too late.

WHAM!

Something slammed into our raft, sending it rocking violently. I spotted at least seven or eight dark shapes torpedoing through the water around us. They resembled nightmarish hybrids of giant centipedes and catfish—sleek, scaled bodies with countless writhing appendages along their flanks. The Black Aquatic Centipedes!

"Son of a BITCH!" Mike pivoted fastest, swinging his rifle toward the nearest shadow and squeezing the trigger.

BOOM!

The gunshot thundered through the cavern, echoing endlessly. The slug tore into the water with a massive splash, flipping the creature onto its back. Dark green blood billowed out, instantly turning the surrounding water black.

But the blood only triggered a feeding frenzy. The creatures around us went berserk, ramming our raft repeatedly. Their razor-sharp mouthparts slashed through the bottom, air hissing out through multiple punctures.