Chapter 39: Painful Grace

“Village Chief, sir, we express our deepest regrets for what happened to your children.”

“Sigh… it’s alright, child. This is… something neither you nor I could do anything about.
For you to be able to bring this child back—to give this old man a reason to live, that is enough.”

The old man’s hair was white, and there were tear stains at the corners of his time-worn eyes.
His face was full of sorrow as he leaned against the doorframe.

“Sir, please accept our condolences. May the gods have mercy on you and me,” two men in wide-brimmed hats nodded and bowed their heads.
On the surface, they were mourning the unfortunate fate of the old man’s children, but in reality, their eyes were fixed on the baby in the old man’s arms, their thoughts unknown.

The stark contrast between the old man’s loose, dark skin and the baby’s fair skin was like that of a desolate, fading sunset and a blazing, rising sun.

“You must be tired after traveling for so long,” the old man said.
“There are still some spare rooms in the village.
If you don’t mind, you can rest here for a few days before you set off again.”

“Mm, then we’ll be troubling you, sir.”

“No trouble, no trouble.”

The old man in front of the men shook his head and pointed with a trembling hand to a wooden house not far away.

“It’s just over there. You can go ahead. I’ll have someone clean it up in a moment.”

The two men didn’t stand on ceremony.
After a slight nod, they turned and walked towards the wooden house.
A cloak with a coiled serpent pattern fluttered behind them, and the old man took it all in.

The coiled serpent pattern was not unfamiliar to the old man.
He could even say that he had been dealing with it his whole life.
In his early years, in his distant and blurry memories, the serpent had appeared when he was critically ill, when his mother died, and when his wife passed away.

And now, the misfortune of his son and daughter-in-law had also attracted the serpent.
It seemed that every death was inseparable from the serpent.

The largest charitable medical institution in the Holy Nation.
If it didn’t exist, perhaps there would be more misfortunes.
If not for the serpent, his little grandson would not have returned.

The old man thought to himself.

At night, in the fishing village by the sea, you could hear the “whoosh” of the tide hitting the beach.
Perhaps some people would not be used to such a sound, but for the old man who had lived here for a long time, it was commonplace.

Except for… the inexplicable sound of chewing.

Perhaps it was a rat again.

Rodents were not welcome in the village.
The old man was woken up by the sound, but his first reaction was not to look for the universally hated rat.

The side of the bed was empty, which made the old man’s heart hang in suspense.
He clearly remembered placing his swaddled grandson beside him before he went to sleep.
Now, apart from the tattered, bird’s nest-like swaddling clothes, there was no sign of the child.

The old man hurriedly got out of bed, lit the oil lamp, and searched the room.
The child might be in some corner of the room.
He just hoped that he wouldn’t be bitten by a rat.

The flame of the oil lamp flickered in the room, and the darkness was driven away like a receding tide.
Under the warm light, the old man finally found his little grandson on the dining table in the hall.

The baby was holding something in his two chubby hands and was gnawing on it.
The chewing sound from before was clearly coming from here.

“You little rascal, you’re not even giving this old man a moment’s peace on your first day here,” the old man said as he walked to the table, wanting to pick up his little grandson.
But the old man had overlooked one problem.

How could a baby who was still in swaddling clothes and whose teeth had not yet fully grown make a chewing sound loud enough to wake someone up?

But the answer was soon revealed.

The baby curiously turned his head to look at the old man.
In his clear eyes, an umbilical cord extended from the corner of his eye, the end of which was connected to a grayish-white, strange worm.
The worm had no eyes, but the old man felt that it was staring at him.

In the baby’s mouth, dense, hooked, sharp teeth were arranged like a meat grinder, reminding one of a “lamprey.”

Clang—

The oil lamp fell to the ground.
The old man was so scared he couldn’t speak.
He was just an ordinary, uneducated old fisherman, and he didn’t know what to do.

He desperately picked up his little grandson, grabbed his cane, and rushed out the door.
He ran to a wooden house at his fastest speed and pounded on the door with his dark hands.

This was the house where the two men were temporarily staying.

After a long while, the door did not open, and there was no movement inside.
The old man began to ram the door with his shoulder again and again.
Soon, the door was broken open, but there was no trace of anyone inside.

The tables, chairs, and bedding were all neat and tidy, with no signs of being touched…
The two men had long since left.

The old man’s life had been a muddle from beginning to end.
He had worked as a fisherman, a job he didn’t like, married a woman he barely knew, and his relatives had left him one by one.
Now, the only hope he had left seemed to be a monster that had been deliberately arranged and modified by others.

And so, the old man, listless, came to the coast and knelt down.

The old man, in his twilight years, shouted at the rising sun on the sea horizon:
“Oh God! I curse you!!!”

The baby in his hands reacted to the curse and crawled onto the old man’s face.
In the old man’s terrified gaze, the baby’s two small hands pulled open his mouth to a grotesque arc that was completely impossible for a human to make.

And crawled in.

At the same time, some existence in the sky noticed him and sent down a golden, vein-like cord that pierced the top of the old man’s head.
Tentacles from the bottom of the sea also wrapped around the old man.

The scene suddenly ended here.

The sound of a baby’s cry came in waves…

“Ugh! My… head hurts!”

A huge amount of information flooded into my brain.
My head was splitting, and cold sweat broke out.
My body trembled, on the verge of collapse, but I still gritted my teeth and forced myself not to fall.

When I opened my eyes again, the coast, the fishing village, and the old man were all gone.
Only “The Ancient Gaze” was left, floating in front of me.
For the first time, there were fluctuations in its eyes, but I couldn’t tell what the feeling was.
Regret? Sadness? Or anger?

I don’t know…

The eerie green eye closed its lid, and turned into strands of light that entered my body.
The intense pain instantly disappeared.
I gasped for air, hugging myself as if clutching at a life-saving straw.

“Hey… you broken eye, why did you show me these things…”

There was no response, and I didn’t expect one.
The sentence was more of me talking to myself than a question.

The scene I just saw… was probably the reason why the small fishing village became like this…
I subconsciously didn’t dare to think about the old man’s final scene.
Whenever I tried to recall it, a dull ache would appear in my head.

But I could still grasp the basic key information—the serpent, the emblem of the largest charitable medical institution in the Holy Nation.
The transformation of the small fishing village is definitely related to the “serpent,” but I don’t know what the “serpent” represents in this world…

Wait, why am I thinking about this?

I’m already dead!
And even if a tragedy happened here, what does it have to do with me?
I’m just a passerby, not a self-sacrificing savior.

It’s all dark around me now, and I don’t know how to get out.
So…

Let’s just lie down and sleep!

No sooner said than done.
I made a move to lie down on the ground.
At almost the same moment, my body suddenly burst into eerie flames.
The green eyeball appeared again, its resentful little eyes scanning me up and down.

“That’s how you get out? You have no patience.”

The eye rolled its eyes in a very human-like manner.

Lying on my side on the ground, propping my head with one hand, I couldn’t help but find the eye’s action a bit amusing.

“Although I don’t know what you’re thinking in that little eyeball of yours, you want me to work for you for free? No way!”

If it hadn’t led me to the beach, would I have been bitten?
It hurt so much!
And I don’t know what Elvira’s situation is now.

It’s all this broken eye’s fault.

Look, it’s even ashamed and looking away!

It also knows that what it did was not a human thing to do!

“First, tell me, am I dead or not?”

The eye moved up and down, then side to side a couple of times.

¿

Dead or not, give me a straight answer.
What’s the deal with being half-dead?

“Then let me ask you… is the reason I’m still conscious because of you?”

This time, the eye moved from side to side very decisively.

“It’s not you?”

Then what is it??

The moment the question appeared in my heart, a flash of crimson suddenly burst into the pitch-black world.
It floated down from above and stopped in front of me.

Red petals swirled around it, and black vines were wrapped around it.

It was a small seed.