I looked towards the direction Rou Yi was frantically fleeing, and good heavens, I saw something like a dragon fruit skimming across the ground at an extremely fast speed. I couldn't even make out what it looked like.

Before we could react, it darted into the darkness behind us and vanished in an instant.

As it passed us, it made a very faint rustling sound.

So that rustling sound from earlier was made by that thing.

But where did this dragon fruit-like thing come from?

Just as I was recalling the scene, Fatty suddenly patted all of us, including me, and nodded towards someone sitting cross-legged in the triangular formation, gesturing for us to look: "Look, that person's mouth is moving."

We squinted for a long time before locating the person Fatty was pointing out. We took a few steps forward before we could clearly see the person's facial expression.

If you didn't look closely, you really couldn't tell that the person's mouth was moving.

The person's mouth opened wider and wider, and their head tilted back slightly at the same time, as if something was stuck in their throat.

"It looks like they're trying to spit something out." I told them my observation. Fatty shook his head: "It doesn't look like they're spitting something out from their stomach. If it were from the stomach, their throat should be bulging, but their throat isn't changing, and their chest isn't rising or falling. Only their head is moving. I'm guessing that the thing they're spitting out was originally in their mouth, but it suddenly got bigger for some reason."

Fatty's keen observation skills completely won us over. When I looked at the person's throat, the situation was indeed as Fatty said, with no change whatsoever.

From this, we concluded that the thing in their mouth wasn't surging up from their stomach.

But where did this thing come from? We looked at each other, clueless.

The person's mouth continued to open wider, the angle exceeding the limit that a normal human could withstand.

This state lasted for about one or two seconds, and then a red object began to emerge from their mouth. The size of the red object was almost the same as the size of their open mouth.

Moreover, the red object was covered in some kind of unknown sticky liquid, dripping down the person's mouth, making it look both terrifying and disgusting.

When half of the red object had emerged from the person's mouth, I felt a sense of déjà vu: "Damn! This thing is a dragon fruit!"

"It's almost exactly the same as the thing that ran away earlier," Rou Yi chimed in from the side.

After the "dragon fruit" completely emerged from the person's mouth, it rolled onto the ground with a "thud," and the sticky strands attached to the "dragon fruit" stretched all the way back to the person's throat, forming a long trail.

After the "dragon fruit" was spat out, the person's jaw began to retract, but because the jaw was dislocated, their mouth could only remain half-open, just like everyone else around them.

Now we finally knew why everyone's mouths were half-open.

After the "dragon fruit" fell to the ground, it twitched violently for a moment, and then suddenly extended six legs and darted into the darkness behind us.

"Stop it," I said to Fatty.

Fatty reacted quickly. The moment the "dragon fruit" passed us, Fatty stomped down with his big foot, directly crushing the "dragon fruit" under his foot.

"Splatter..." The "dragon fruit" was like a fruit that had been stomped on and burst, crushed to a pulp, with red juice splattering everywhere.

I stared in disbelief at the carnage on the ground and complained, "Damn it, Fatty, you didn't just stomp this thing to death, did you?"

Fatty slowly lifted his foot, looked at the crushed "dragon fruit," and a wave of nausea washed over him. He kept dry-heaving.

Fatty's face turned pale. He looked wronged: "Damn it, Young Master, how was I supposed to know this thing was so fragile? Besides, it was running so fast, and I reacted so quickly that I didn't know my own strength, you know that." I waved my hand, not wanting to argue with Fatty. This wasn't Fatty's fault to begin with.

Fatty moved his foot away from the crushed "dragon fruit," allowing me to observe the scene. There was a puddle of juice-like substance that quickly dried up. There were no internal organs, and the fragments were pitifully few.

"This isn't how a living thing is supposed to look," I said, pointing to the red sludge.

Fatty and Daoqi shared the same opinion. As for Rou Yi and Jennifer, they didn't dare to get close at all.

"The rustling sounds from earlier must have been made by this thing." I glanced at the people sitting cross-legged and judged from their open mouths that there must have been quite a few "dragon fruits" released earlier.

How did these "dragon fruits" grow inside people's mouths?

With this question in mind, I followed the sticky strands connecting the "dragon fruit" crushed by Fatty to the person's mouth, observing the person's half-open mouth.

Some stuff was still flowing out of the person's mouth, not just sticky liquid, but also some lumpy things.

I couldn't figure out what it was, so I called Fatty over and asked, "Fatty, what is this stuff? Do you know?"

Fatty stared at it for a long time and said, "Hmm... this stuff looks a lot like something I ate before, but I can't be sure if it's the same thing."

"Stop being so mysterious, tell me, what is it?"

"Brain matter."

The moment Fatty said "brain matter," I felt my scalp tingle. Fatty called Daoqi over to confirm. After taking a quick look, Daoqi came to almost the same conclusion as Fatty: it was brain pulp.

In other words, the "dragon fruit" had emerged from this person's brain, and those gooey, stringy things were actually a mixture of cerebrospinal fluid and brain pulp.

As for how the "dragon fruit" entered the person's brain, and why it came out, remained a mystery.

"Creak"—"creak"—"creak"—I heard faint creaking noises behind me, hidden within the harsh sounds.

I turned around vigilantly.

Good heavens, the "dragon fruit" that had been crushed to a pulp was now reassembling itself, and the dried juice was regaining its moisture.

The fragments converged, and the juice flowed back. What was happening before my eyes was like a reverse replay of the "dragon fruit" being crushed.

I, Fatty, Daoqi, Rou Yi, and Jennifer watched the bizarre scene before us, not daring to breathe, and could only wait and see what would happen.

A few seconds later, the "dragon fruit" miraculously recovered. It shuddered, then extended its six legs and began to move towards the darkness, a bit slower than before, showing that it had been affected.

I gave the others a look and whispered, "Let's go, we'll follow it."