Chapter 697

The boy's mummified corpse suddenly twitched. First his fingers, then his shoulders, then his eyelids, and finally his entire body began to tremble slightly. If anyone had happened to witness this scene in the Red Well at that moment, they would have been terrified, for the situation bore an uncanny resemblance to a corpse rising from the dead. In the dead silence of the Red Well—broken only by the sound of the torrential rain—a muffled "thump-thump" suddenly echoed, as if someone were beating a drum with a mallet. Yet in such intensely violent weather, how could anyone possibly be beating a drum in this desolate wilderness? Furthermore, the Red Well was a military-controlled zone, strictly off-limits to unauthorized personnel... But the drumming grew clearer, more violent, and increasingly bizarre. Eventually, even the sound of the torrential rain could not mask it, as if tens of thousands of troops were surrounding these mountains, simultaneously pounding thousands of cowhide drumskins at frequencies that completely overlapped and grew steadily stronger, until the sound became downright deafening.