Sister~ Want to Knock?

Xiao Xuechen hadn't expected San to make that kind of joke too.

Honestly, the facts told them that whether a girl would dislike such jokes from someone she didn't know depended entirely on his looks.

The little person in her heart blushed, but she countered calmly on the surface. "Better not. You're more likely to be scared. If you cry when the time comes, big sister can lend you her shoulder."

Big sister?

Yu Xing suddenly found that quite interesting.

Calling herself big sister in front of him, oh ho~

"Then, does big sister want to take a stroll with me?" He smiled, but no matter how Xiao Xuechen looked at it, she felt that smile contained something strange.

He put heavy emphasis on the words "big sister." He was mocking her, wasn't he? He definitely was!

"Let's go." Yu Xing tilted his head.

Xiao Xuechen looked at him and subconsciously answered yes, then followed Yu Xing as they brushed past the villagers not far away.

"You must be the new guests?" The villagers greeted them warmly upon seeing the two, their voices thick with accents.

"Yes, sorry to trouble you." Yu Xing greeted them naturally before leaving with Xiao Xuechen.

What a pity... He temporarily gave up on his previous idea. If Xiao Xuechen hadn't come looking for him, he had originally planned to blow out one of the villagers' candles for fun...

Or snatch away the candle along with its holder.

Though the village was not far from town, only separated by a mountain, Guan Family Village absurdly had no electricity. It did not even have kerosene lamps and insisted on using candles instead. Obviously, there had to be something wrong with those candles.

But while he could do that alone, he couldn't have that much excitement with a girl in tow. If it triggered some terrifying event, he'd be dragging her into trouble.

So Yu Xing thought he might as well use this time to investigate Guan Family Village properly. Perhaps he would discover something unexpected.

There were quite a few villagers on the road. In such a small village, it seemed that everyone had come out despite it being late at night. Every so often, they could see white candles swaying in the air.

Their eyes had already adjusted to the darkness, and with a silver moon hanging overhead, they could see the road clearly enough.

After following Yu Xing for a while, Xiao Xuechen noticed that there were fewer and fewer wandering villagers around them. Even the houses had become sparse. Realizing this, she asked suspiciously, "Where are we going?"

Yu Xing replied, "The east side of the village."

"Why the east side?"

After looking around and confirming that no villagers were close enough to hear them, Yu Xing turned his head and said with apparent helplessness, "Big sister~ Were you not listening carefully to the villagers' conversations?"

Xiao Xuechen shuddered at the magnetic voice drawing out the words, and for some reason, her ears felt a little hot.

Then she grew puzzled again. There was information to be found in the villagers' conversations too?

She had thought they were merely talking about everyday matters.

Seeing that the cool beauty hadn't realized it, Yu Xing curved his lips, taking advantage of the darkness that concealed his face, and explained, "Before sunset, I identified the directions. The village entrance is to the northwest. After we came in, the village chief's house was in the west. Even the houses arranged for Wei Gong and the others were several residences in the western part of the village. Why is everything in the west?"

"Big sister, look. The houses are concentrated in the west as well. The farther east we go, the fewer villagers there are."

His smile faded, and he gave Xiao Xuechen an innocent look. "Aren't you curious about what's in the east?"

That was right!

Hearing Yu Xing put it that way, Xiao Xuechen suddenly understood, as though she had instantly gained a direction for her investigation.

What came next was surprise at Yu Xing. Walking beside him, she couldn't help glancing at his profile.

His profile was so handsome too... Pah! That wasn't the point. The point was that this painter San had incredibly sharp observational skills.

It sounded as though the mystery of the eastern village hadn't been deliberately concealed by the villagers. But if San hadn't pieced together so many tiny details, this clue would not have stood out at all.

At the very least, no one else would have noticed it so quickly, because everyone's attention was focused on the problems the villagers themselves had displayed.

Tucking a slightly curled strand of hair beside her forehead behind her ear, Xiao Xuechen vaguely felt that San might perhaps possibly be some kind of expert.

She wanted to cling to his thigh... No, she wanted to make a friend.

Guan Family Village lay at the foot of a mountain. The ground in the village was fairly level, but the farther they went toward its edges, the more uneven the terrain became and the more lushly weeds grew.

A few minutes later, the area around them became completely deserted. There were no houses or swaying white candles, only bleak desolation as far as the eye could see.

"The east side of the village is this barren? Could it be because the ground is uneven, so no one lives here?" Xiao Xuechen looked around, feeling that if they continued onward, they would head straight into the mountains.

"Not so." Yu Xing chuckled. "Come here."

They had not been far apart to begin with, so Xiao Xuechen didn't understand what he meant by "come here" at first. The next moment, Yu Xing gave her a skillful tug. Without feeling any pain at all, she was pulled in front of him, and after a moment of disorientation, she found herself already crouching.

Why am I crouching? Xiao Xuechen was bewildered. She realized that San, this seemingly frail painter, appeared to have some fighting skills.

"Look at the ground." Yu Xing's voice came from above her. She shook her head and obediently looked down.

"Oh... Ah, I see it. The grass here is sparser than the grass around it?" At any rate, she considered herself an Intermediate Deducer above average. Even with the dim light, she could see it once someone pointed it out.

"That's right." Yu Xing raised his eyes toward the inconspicuous little path. "People often walk this way. They've trampled out a path."

There was more than one such path, so it was mixed in among the weeds and difficult to spot.

But there had to be something ahead.

"Mm." Xiao Xuechen looked up at him for two seconds, then suddenly realized how foolish her posture looked. She hurriedly stood up and gave two soft coughs.

When they had left the village chief's house, Yu Xing had only used getting some fresh air as an excuse, so he had not brought the bag this character carried on his back. He had only stuffed his phone into his pants pocket.

Now, he took out his phone and checked the time first.

They had entered the village at around six. After finding the village chief's house, chatting, eating, and discussing their lodging there, then wandering outside for quite a while, it was already 8:04 p.m.

Then he turned on his phone's flashlight. The weak light illuminated a short distance ahead, making him miss flashlights. Their beams had strong penetration and could shine much farther.

He wondered whether there was one in his bag. The implanted memories did not seem to include such detailed information.

"What do you think is up ahead?" Xiao Xuechen took out her phone as well. With the two light sources together, their visible range expanded somewhat.

"Heh, how would I know?" Yu Xing followed the traces on the ground onward. "Big sister~ Do you take me for a prophet?"

"Ahem, no. There's no harm in guessing." Xiao Xuechen muttered, then quickened her pace and passed Yu Xing.

Unfortunately, thanks to his longer legs, Yu Xing caught up with her after only a slight acceleration, even letting out a soft, inexplicable chuckle.

Xiao Xuechen: "..."

Ten minutes later.

Neither of them had expected the path to be so long that they truly entered the mountains.

The mountain on the eastern side near the western part of the village was relatively gentle, more like a taller slope.

Several large, unknown trees stood scattered about, withered and twisted.

Forests at night were terrifying. Not only did they make lone travelers feel isolated and helpless, sinking into gloom, but the rustling shadows of trees could also induce hallucinations. For example, mistaking a tree trunk for a person, constantly feeling as though someone was following you, or seeming to hear someone calling your name...

However, Yu Xing and Xiao Xuechen were doing all right. The former felt nothing at all, while the latter had a teammate who seemed to be an expert leading her, so it was not so easy for her to lose her composure.

Finally, just as Yu Xing, that black hole of stamina, was starting to be unable to walk any farther, they spotted a building through the layers of tree trunks blocking their view.

The building stood in a relatively flat area. The moment they discovered it, they turned off their phone lights, lest there be something inside and alerting it would be bad.

Yu Xing leaned behind a tree and peeked out. The building was small and appeared to be an extremely crude ancestral hall.

Xiao Xuechen leaned out from behind Yu Xing, clutching two tufts of fuzz on the back of his clothes as she peeked over and whispered, "Should we go in and take a look?"

Yu Xing thought for a moment.

"Let's go in. We're already here."

Xiao Xuechen: "..." That reasoning was truly impossible to refute.

She had always felt that Investigator type deduction games were indeed much like tabletop role-playing games, except there was no dice goddess and no monsters from the Cthulhu Mythos. The greater difference was that in deduction games, they had to actively approach the dangers that might await them.

So even without the line "we're already here," she would definitely choose to go inside and investigate.

Clues that could save their lives often had to be actively sought out.

The two approached the ancestral hall. As they drew near, its appearance gradually became clear.

Vermilion wooden walls, a dark brown mortise-and-tenon roof, and roughly twenty square meters of space. From the front, several rows of wooden tablets seemed to be placed inside.

And... a black coffin.

Apart from that, there was nothing particularly unusual for now.

Yu Xing turned his light back on and stepped inside.

The ancestral hall felt empty. The tablets and coffin stood at the front, while several kneeling cushions rested on either side. Behind the cushions stood symmetrical candle racks.

All the candles were extinguished at the moment. The entire ancestral hall felt lifeless, silent in a terrifying way.

"Could this be... where tomorrow's funeral will be held?" Xiao Xuechen followed him inside. She walked to the coffin and reached out to touch it.

"The coffin is already here... Do you remember the wooden sign we saw at the village entrance? It said Coffin Village, didn't it?" Though she said that, the system had long since given them a more direct hint. This game was called Coffin Village.

"I remember." Yu Xing fixed his gaze on the tablet rack, stepping forward to inspect it. He raised his brows slightly. "These tablets are all blank. There are no words."

His gaze then shifted to the coffin as well. "So far, we've only seen this one coffin... Big sister~ Why don't you knock? Maybe the person lying inside will answer you~"

"..." Xiao Xuechen wasn't afraid. She had played so many games that words alone could not scare her. She simply gained a new understanding of this teammate's twisted sense of humor.

Her ability to judge people was more accurate than most. Aside from a woman's intuition, it was also a skill she had honed in reality.

Seeing Yu Xing wear that innocent expression again, Xiao Xuechen snorted inwardly. What shyness? What embarrassment? All an illusion! This guy, if you cut him open, would definitely be an extremely—extremely dark-hearted bastard.

If he weren't so good-looking, someone like him would have been beaten up long ago!

"Oh, right."

The person she had judged to be sweet on the outside and dark on the inside spoke again. "The one lying in this coffin should be Zhou Yongsheng. The village chief said that today was Zhou Yongsheng's First Seven."

Under Xiao Xuechen's slightly widened gaze, he actually knocked hard on the coffin lid twice. His tone drew out lazily, carrying a smile. "On the First Seven, what do ghosts usually do?"