Lost City Trial

"I'm back."

Pushing open the courtyard gate, he called out habitually.

But as he looked up, the courtyard was overgrown with weeds, and the response he remembered from memory was no longer there.

The old house looked exceptionally dilapidated, the paint on the corner of the wall had long since peeled off, and the windows were broken and battered, swaying gently in the wind. He sighed softly and walked in.

The weeds in the courtyard had already covered his ankles, rustling as he stepped on them.

Xiao Ran walked into the house and saw the spirit tablets of his parents and the ancestral tablets of his family as soon as he looked up.

He took out a box of incense from his backpack, took out three sticks, lit them, and placed them in the censer.

Wisps of smoke curled upwards. After a simple memorial, Xiao Ran began to tidy up.

His return was not only to repair his cousin's remains but also to do a simple cleaning of the old house.

After all, it was his family's old house, and he might have to come back in the future.

The weeds in the courtyard were easy to deal with. Xiao Ran finished clearing them in less than an hour.

There wasn't much furniture in the house; it was empty. He was a little more careful in his cleaning because there might be mice.

Especially in Old Master's room, there were some miscellaneous items piled up that needed to be sorted.

There were several boxes of various sizes, all containing the belongings Old Master didn't take with him back then. However, there wasn't anything valuable inside.

He casually opened one of the boxes and found all sorts of strange and peculiar knives inside.

Xiao Ran picked up a razor and played with it in his hand for a few moments before tossing it back into the box.

"No wonder Grandpa didn't take these things with him. If anyone saw these, they'd at least have to go to the police station."

After tidying up these boxes, Xiao Ran bent down and looked under the bed. It was dark and he couldn't see anything clearly.

Thinking that Grandpa might return to live here for a few days, Xiao Ran simply swept the area under the bed a few times with his broom.

"Clang!"

The broom hit something. Xiao Ran looked down and saw a wooden box that he had swept out.

The box was square and looked like it could be held in one hand, but it was surprisingly heavy.

"Hoo~"

He blew away the accumulated dust and wiped the box a few times, revealing a bright red lacquer finish underneath.

"Huh! It's a lacquerware."

Xiao Ran looked at the box and felt a sense of fondness for it. He opened the box and saw a red cloth underneath. After lifting the red cloth, a bronze plaque appeared before Xiao Ran.

Xiao Ran picked up the bronze plaque and examined it carefully in his hands, but he couldn't figure out anything special about it. He didn't recognize any of the characters on it.

He casually placed it aside. Inside the box, there was also a set of knives wrapped in cotton cloth, along with various needles and threads.

To Xiao Ran's surprise, there were also more than a dozen dark yellow candles.

"Candles..."

Xiao Ran held a candle in his hand. It was heavy and as thick as an ear of corn. He rubbed his finger on it and smelled a strong scent of hazelnut milk.

"Good stuff." Xiao Ran's eyes lit up.

The candles looked ordinary, but they were genuinely made of ghee.

The older these things were, the better. These candles were useless to others, but to a second-rate craftsman, they were often life-saving items. Clearly, these were tools left behind by Old Master when he was a second-rate craftsman. He didn't know why Grandpa didn't take them with him back then.

He put the items back into the box, along with the box itself, and stuffed them into his backpack. He planned to take them back home with him later. Even if the items in the box were not useful, they should be taken along, especially since the box itself looked quite valuable.

"Buzz buzz..."

At this moment, Xiao Ran's phone vibrated.

He picked up the phone, and the caller ID showed Uncle Li.

After Xiao Ran pressed the answer button, he heard a hoarse voice urging him on the phone.

"Xiao Ran, if you have time, come over now!!" Uncle Li's voice was unusually mysterious, and his words carried a sense of urgency.

"I'm still at my old home right now," Xiao Ran said helplessly.

"Old home?" Uncle Li was stunned for a moment, and his tone immediately became disappointed. "Then forget it. I can't wait for you. I'll give this job to someone else first. Come back early, and I'll arrange something else for you."

Without waiting for Xiao Ran to speak, he hung up the phone in a hurry.

Xiao Ran didn't find anything wrong with this. Uncle Li was a middleman who operated around the funeral home. He relied on being well-informed and could take on some of the dirty jobs that funeral homes didn't want to handle, such as bodies that needed to be pieced together. Although such work was difficult, it was very profitable. If he couldn't give the family a guarantee in time, the order might fall into the hands of other middlemen.

"So urgent, it must be quite difficult. Could it be piecing together? Or facial reconstruction? Car accident? Fall? Uncle Li is too unreliable. He didn't even mention the situation. Isn't this just teasing me?"

Xiao Ran narrowed his eyes, his mood beginning to anticipate. He immediately prepared to take a car home. The price of the job could be negotiated, but such high-difficulty work was really rare nowadays.

Xiao Ran had an extremely fervent, even pathological, obsession with corpses. The more difficult the task, the more he liked it, especially bodies that needed to be pieced together bit by bit. The feeling of perfectly restoring the deceased's appearance by stitching together every piece of flesh was as if he were intervening between life and death, a sense of accomplishment that was indescribable.

If he had to describe it, Xiao Ran felt... at that moment, he was more like a god walking between the yin and yang.

He closed the courtyard gate, locked it, and walked along the village road towards the bus stop.

Now that the country's infrastructure was good, there was a direct bus to the city from the national highway outside the village. He heard that a subway would also be built in a couple of years, which would be much more convenient then.

Just as Xiao Ran was about to reach the village entrance, he saw the Village Head and his group rushing over with people.

Upon seeing Xiao Ran, someone immediately stepped forward and asked, "Xiao Ran, have you seen these three children?"

As he spoke, he gestured animatedly, "They're about this tall, around eight or nine years old."

Xiao Ran shook his head. He had just come from home and truly hadn't seen any children.

"Search, keep searching to the east!!"

The Village Head quickly pointed east, instructing people to continue searching in that direction. Seeing Xiao Ran with his backpack, for whatever reason, he didn't forget to call out to Xiao Ran as he was leaving, "Xiao Ran, come help us search, there's strength in numbers."

Xiao Ran sighed, "It seems this job really isn't meant for me."

However, even if the Village Head hadn't asked, Xiao Ran wouldn't have just walked away. The bodies were important, but not the most important. Xiao Ran knew what was more important.

The village wasn't large, and soon everyone had almost turned the village inside out, yet they still hadn't found any trace of the three children.

The sun gradually set in the west, casting long shadows. The villagers' footsteps grew more hurried, and an anxious atmosphere spread among them.

At this moment, Xiao Ran suddenly noticed an old man squatting on the ground by the village entrance. He had his hands clasped to his chest, squinting and completely still. As people walked past him, no one paid any attention to the old man's presence, as if he didn't exist at all.

Seeing this, Xiao Ran hesitated for a moment before walking up and asking, "Grandpa, have you seen three children? Two boys and one girl, about this tall, around eight or nine years old."

The old man slowly raised his head. A flicker of surprise flashed in his cloudy eyes, as if he hadn't expected Xiao Ran to see him.

After staring at Xiao Ran for a few seconds, he raised a finger and pointed towards the woods to the east.

Xiao Ran looked up in the direction of the woods and couldn't help but frown. He was familiar with that place. Inside the woods was an old house, the village's former Mourning Hall.

When he was young, his grandfather used to prepare bodies there, and he would occasionally bring him meals. Could those three children have run into the Mourning Hall?

Thinking this, Xiao Ran thanked the old man and strode towards the woods.

"Wait!"

Just then, the old man called out to Xiao Ran. He then lowered his head, seeming to hesitate before speaking, and finally said in a very small voice, "Be careful."

"Huh? Oh... thank you, Grandpa."

Xiao Ran turned back to look at the old man, wanting to ask a few more questions, but the old man lowered his head and waved his hand, his attitude clear – he didn't want to say any more.

Xiao Ran found it strange, but since the old man wouldn't say, he couldn't press further. He could only go and see for himself.

No one noticed Xiao Ran entering the woods. After waiting for a while, the villagers returned from all directions, and upon being asked, still had no news of the children.

At this point, the Village Head looked around and noticed Xiao Ran was missing, his brow immediately furrowing. "Where's Xiao Ran? Did he leave?"

The crowd exchanged glances. Then someone said, "I think I saw him walk towards the old woods to the east."

"The old woods?"

The Village Head then remembered that there seemed to be an old house over there. He immediately said, "Let's go, let's go take a look over there."

He led the people towards the old woods. But when they reached the edge of the woods, the Village Head, who was walking in front, suddenly stopped.

"Wait!!"

He then raised his flashlight and shone it ahead.

Around the woods, a white, misty fog had appeared at some point. The mist seemed to be surging out from within the woods. When the flashlight shone on it, the ordinary woods were enveloped in mist as if they were an abyss, rendering everything invisible...

"Rustle, rustle..."

The air was filled with the fresh scent of pre-rain.

Suddenly, a few raindrops slid silently from the treetops, landing on the thick leaves with a "drip, drip" sound.

Xiao Ran looked up at the overcast sky. "It's raining??"

"I don't remember the weather forecast mentioning rain?"

Looking at the vast expanse of white mist ahead, the woods in front of him seemed different from how he remembered them.

He remembered this patch of woods not being that large.

A sense of unease arose in Xiao Ran's heart, as if a stone was pressing down on his chest.

"Let's go back!"

Xiao Ran turned to leave. But the moment he turned, he heard a "dong! dong! dong!" sound of a watchman's drum from behind him.

Xiao Ran froze, and then felt a chill rise from his spine. His chest felt as if it had been gripped tightly, and in an instant, an intense sense of abnormality surged through his body, making his limbs stiff.

The vision before his eyes began to fill with a bright red blood-colored light, turning his sight into a scarlet hue.

[You have been locked as a participant for this Lost City Trial. Please follow the rules below.]

Tip 1: After completing the main quest, you can leave the village.

Tip 2: Walking around the village more will yield unexpected rewards.

[The deity on duty for this Lost City is Evil God Xing Xie. You can appease the deity by sacrificing pain to obtain temporary special ability buffs. The greater the degree of pain, the stronger the buff you will receive!]