Chapter 1 Li Ang picked off a small piece of intestine and was surprised to find something stuffed at the end – a bulging, solid object.

Straddling the top of the freight elevator shaft, he squeezed the object from the withered intestine, still wearing his gloves.

It was a small wooden and cloth puppet horse, crudely made but with obvious care.

Judging by the style, it was a toy puppet for children.

"A horse puppet stuffed inside an intestine? What's with that?"

Li Ang muttered, "A fanatical little pony lover, perhaps..."

Insufficient information prevented a definitive judgment.

He put both of the somewhat aged items into his inventory, mentally counting the four abnormal organs he had collected.

"Heart, intestines, lungs, limbs."

Li Ang said to himself, "Halfway there. Now all that's left are the kidneys, head, torso, and the embryo."

He was about to grip the rope and slide down when he noticed something carved into the brick wall on the inside of the freight elevator shaft.

"Hmm?"

Li Ang frowned, and gently brushed away the thick dust on the brick, still wearing his gloves.

The surface of the brick revealed a line of writing cut with a sharp object, like a knife.

The writing was rather twisted and crooked, but upon closer inspection, it was a line of English letters:

"croatoan."

Li Ang read the English word, frowning. He gripped the rope and descended to the bottom floor's junk room, greeting his three teammates.

The Stonemason was currently questioning Wu Nian about the hallucinations. Seeing Li Ang return, he nodded and continued questioning Wu Nian:

"When you were attacked in the elevator shaft, did you see any hallucinations besides the flesh walls?"

"Yes."

Wu Nian nodded, saying, "After I was teleported here, the first thing I saw was a normal stone wall. Then, strange images appeared before my eyes."

A peculiar expression appeared on Wu Nian's face as he began to recount.

It was a desolate and ruined colonial village. The land was cracked and scorched black, the crops withered and died.

The villagers, with Caucasian features, wore blank expressions, their cloth garments more like rags than clothes.

Worse, many villagers had large, yellow-green pustules, the size of steamed buns, bulging on their bodies, filled with pus that sloshed with every movement.

Plague, hunger, death.

Expressions of numb despair covered the faces of every villager as they dragged their families out of their low, flat houses and gathered in front of the village, at the entrance to a dark, dense forest path.

A dense fog filled the forest, and a huge shadow with a human silhouette approached from a distance, stopping in the mist.

The shadow seemed to say something. The villagers' faces flashed with struggle, and after a moment's hesitation, they silently walked into the fog, following the shadow and disappearing into the forest.

A little girl, held in her mother's arms, clutched a small wooden horse puppet.

She blinked her light green eyes and looked outside the forest, at the only villager who had not followed the shadow into the forest.

It was a middle-aged man.

His body was also covered in pustules, with his left eye completely obscured by a pustule that had grown on his eyelid.

He wore what could be considered the cleanest and tidiest clothes, and judging by the style of the clothes and the Bible he clutched tightly in his hand, he could be identified as a clergyman of the village.

The little girl and her mother disappeared into the forest. The wooden horse puppet in her hand accidentally fell, rolling onto a moss-covered stone.

"..."

The clergyman stared blankly at the villagers who had abandoned him. He picked up a stone from the ground and, using its sharp surface, carved a line of English words on a tree at the edge of the forest.

Then, alone and covered in pustules, the clergyman limped into the village, clutching his Bible.

"The hallucination ended there."

Wu Nian said, "After that, I saw the elevator shaft full of flesh, constantly contracting."

Forest Cat's brow furrowed deeply.

This was another hallucination, and judging by Wu Nian's description, the time of the ruined colony was even before Williams built the mansion.

The time span between the two was unknown, and what was that huge shadow that lured the villagers into the forest...

"Wait a minute."

The Stonemason's eyes suddenly lit up. He looked at Wu Nian and asked seriously, "The words written by the clergyman, was it 'croatoan'?"

To avoid Wu Nian not remembering clearly, the Stonemason even took out a paper cutter and carved the English letters onto the wooden floor.

"Uh..." Wu Nian looked at the English and recalled for a moment, "It seems so."

"I understand."

The Stonemason let out a long breath, stood up, and the tightly furrowed brow relaxed a lot, "Roanoke Island."

"Roanoke?" Forest Cat raised an eyebrow, "So that's how it is."

Both of them understood something, but Wu Nian was still a little confused, "What does it mean?"

"Roanoke Island, is a coastal island in North Carolina, USA, located in the southern Albemarle Sound."

Li Ang said, "This island exists on Earth in the real world, but from the current situation,

this script mission is just borrowing this background, and it's not really happening in the real world."

"That's right."

The Stonemason nodded and explained to Wu Nian, "The hallucinations we all saw are the past history of this script mission's world.

The time of the disappearance of the colonial villagers you saw, in fact, occurred in the late 1580s.

In 1585, the English explorer John White traveled to Roanoke Island on the east side of the United States and drew a map of the island.

Two years later, he led a British immigrant team back to establish a colony. When he returned to England to replenish supplies, he was delayed by the war until 1590.

When he returned again, the colony had disappeared. More than 120 British colonists had completely disappeared, without a trace, and the only trace left was the English word carved on a tree, 'croatoan'."

Forest Cat continued, "This historical event really happened, and for hundreds of years, many scholars or idlers have studied the reasons for the disappearance of the colonists on Roanoke Island.

Some people think that the colonists on the island were attacked by Native American residents, while others think that they moved to the American mainland themselves.

The reasons vary, and no conclusion has been reached so far. This collective disappearance is also quite famous in the field of mystery, and has even been used as inspiration for TV series.

In short, it can be assumed that the event you saw is the root of all the events in this script mission.

It is necessary to figure out what that huge shadow is."