In many places, people had their own customs surrounding the First Seven.
Yu Xing knew a little about it. Since the people of Guan Family Village had mentioned the First Seven, it probably meant that some old customs had been passed down here.
At first, people believed that the deceased's spirit would return home on the seventh day after death. Before it came back, the family had to prepare a meal for it, then hide away under the covers.
If the deceased's spirit saw its family, it would become attached to them, which would affect its reincarnation.
Later, as all kinds of films and supernatural folk stories became more common, the First Seven gradually became associated with vengeful ghosts coming to claim lives, and became closely tied to terrifying imagery.
Whatever the First Seven meant to the villagers of Guan Family Village, Yu Xing figured that since they had brought it up, Zhou Yongsheng's ghost would probably appear tonight.
"Hey, what's with that happy look on your face...?" Xiao Xuechen stared blankly at him for a moment. "So it's the First Seven. You want to summon a ghost or something? Are you calling his spirit back!?"
"Yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing." Yu Xing lowered his eyes to the coffin lid, knocked on it twice more, and continued his very literal spirit-calling. "Get up. Your online friend's here to meet you."
What the hell did he mean, online friends meeting in person? Was he a demon or what?!
Xiao Xuechen's scalp tingled. Sure, the guy was a big shot, but could his Personality Assimilation Degree have already passed 20 percent? Was he being influenced by something negative?
What kind of normal person would do this?
Seeing how interested Yu Xing was in the coffin, she couldn't take it anymore. "Why don't you just open the coffin?"
Yu Xing thought that was a great idea. "You're right."
"..."
Yu Xing then gave Xiao Xuechen a live demonstration of what it meant to open a coffin and examine a corpse on the spot.
The coffin lid wasn't nailed down yet, so Yu Xing slid it aside with ease. Xiao Xuechen regretted speaking without thinking. A little flustered and embarrassed, she peeked inside and saw a man's grayish-white head.
The man looked young, around their age—twenty or so. He had short hair and fairly regular features, but nothing memorable about him. He was the sort of person who could disappear into a crowd without a trace.
"Is this Zhou Yongsheng?" she murmured. She clasped her hands together and gave a small bow, as if to apologize.
Yu Xing caught her little gesture and thought she was adorably earnest in certain ways. "Why are you bowing to him? He's in a coffin and still managing to chat with us online. What a trendy, unconventional corpse."
"I don't even know what to say." Xiao Xuechen put a hand to her forehead and sighed softly.
Her eyes kept drifting toward the corpse. Then, puzzled, she asked, "You went and lifted the coffin lid, and now what? He's just lying here. He hasn't reanimated, and no ghost has appeared. What are we supposed to conclude?"
"What do you think this ancestral hall's standing is in Guan Family Village? Or, rather, what role does it play?" Yu Xing replied as he narrowed his eyes and leaned closer to the corpse.
"Hmm... The only coffin is here, so I think this place must be very important, maybe even the center of the village." As she answered, Xiao Xuechen pursed her lips. Since Yu Xing was inspecting the corpse up close, she leaned over the edge of the coffin too. "Did you find anything?"
"If this is the center, there must be clues here. There aren't many things we can investigate right now, so let's start with the corpse." Yu Xing studied it for a while, then opened its mouth with his hand and looked inside.
"Eugh..." Xiao Xuechen found the scene a little bizarre. A beautiful young man was touching a lifeless corpse without the slightest concern. The contrast struck her like a visual shock.
Thankfully, the beautiful young man let go after only a moment.
"Look. The face is bruised, cyanotic, and swollen. There are petechial hemorrhages, and the lividity is pronounced and widespread. The teeth are bleeding too—that's what they call 'pink teeth.'" Yu Xing's magnetic voice slowly listed the corpse's features. He wiped his hand on the side of the coffin as well.
"You know how to examine a corpse? Hah. Artists these days sure are multitalented." Xiao Xuechen already knew he wasn't an ordinary artist, so she took the opportunity to express mock amazement and tease him.
Then she asked, "I don't know much about medicine, but I can make a rough guess. Those symptoms you mentioned mean he died of asphyxiation, right?"
The young lady actually knew a little about this, which saved him the trouble of explaining. Yu Xing nodded in satisfaction. "That's right."
Xiao Xuechen paused. "That's normal, isn't it? The village chief said Zhou Yongsheng was buried by a mudslide caused by heavy rain while he was playing in the mountains. Dying of asphyxiation fits."
"It doesn't fit. It's not normal, either." Yu Xing smiled. "Do you really think being buried means you'd suffocate to death? There are roughly two ways someone can die while buried alive. The first is what you said: lack of oxygen in the lungs causes asphyxiation. But in something as intense as a mudslide, the pressure would crush you to death before you had the chance to suffocate."
Oh... Xiao Xuechen listened and made a mental note.
"And strangulation, hanging, or manual compression of the neck—those cause mechanical asphyxiation, which fits the signs on this corpse better." Yu Xing pointed to the corpse's neck for her to see.
A dark, bluish mark that shouldn't have been on someone who died in a mudslide was clearly visible around the corpse's neck.
"A ligature mark!?" Xiao Xuechen's eyes widened. "Zhou Yongsheng was strangled to death, so the village chief lied!"
She felt as if a whole new world had opened up to her.
Seriously, during an immersive deduction game, this was the first time she'd ever looked for clues on something that was very likely a ghost.
It seemed she'd been going about things the wrong way all along.
"Mhm~ Miss, now you've got a direction for your investigation, haven't you?" Yu Xing hadn't put the coffin lid back on. He leaned against the side and looked at her with a beaming smile.
"You're impressive." Xiao Xuechen had to admit it. At the very least, the conclusion proved one thing: in this village, Zhou Yongsheng was or had been a victim, and the village chief and the others hadn't said a single truthful thing. They needed to be even more wary.
She'd thought the biggest danger in this deduction would be the funeral the next day, with Zhou Yongsheng possibly rising from the dead or becoming the final boss. But now, she could see that even if he really did become the boss, there were plenty of ways she could use the situation to her advantage.
She really respected San.
Xiao Xuechen met the faint smile in his eyes in the dim light, and something stirred inside her. "But... don't look at me like that. Do you have any idea how devastating your face is?"
"Well, I can't help how I look." Yu Xing actually turned away and stopped looking at her, leaving her only his profile—a man who could flirt and then act indifferent. "Do you have a lighter?"
"What, feel like smoking?" Xiao Xuechen instinctively thought San would look great smoking. She patted her pockets. "Sorry, I don't."
"I quit a long time ago." Yu Xing chuckled. "I wanted to see if I could light the candles on either side. Might be something nice to look at."
"Oh..." Xiao Xuechen clasped her hands together, not quite understanding.
"If you don't have one, never mind." Yu Xing brushed the dust off his jeans, thinking he'd leave the game a little dignity. "Let's go. It's getting late. Back to the village."
"Okay." Xiao Xuechen answered. When she saw Yu Xing put the coffin lid back in place, she headed toward the exit of the ancestral hall.
She stopped at the entrance.
"San."
"What is it?" Yu Xing had finished restoring the coffin and looked up.
Xiao Xuechen's back was perfectly still, as if she'd been pinned in place.
Her voice carried an indescribable emotion. "Just now... Zhou Yongsheng... might really have been here."
"Hm?" Yu Xing raised an eyebrow and hurried toward the exit.
Then he understood why Xiao Xuechen had said that.
A large pool of blood had appeared at the exit of the ancestral hall.
It spread through the weeds, forming two crooked lines of blood-red writing—
"After midnight, don't leave your room before the rooster crows!"
"And don't let anyone in! No matter what, don't let them in!!!"
The final exclamation marks were written in a frenzy. Whoever had left the message must have been absolutely certain about it.
They'd been inside the ancestral hall the whole time. They hadn't seen anyone or heard footsteps. The pool of blood seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. So the only one who could have left these words to warn them was Zhou Yongsheng's ghost, out wandering on the night of the First Seven.
"We opened his coffin, and he still left us a warning. By the way, does this lousy village even have any chickens?" Xiao Xuechen's priorities were certainly unusual. "Should we trust it?"
"I think so," Yu Xing said. "So far, aside from using a text message to trick Carlos and me into coming to this village, he hasn't done anything else malicious. If anything, we learned from his corpse that he was a victim too."
He clasped his hands together and bowed slightly toward the bloodstained message. "What an unconventional corpse. Thanks, friend. I'll remember this."
Xiao Xuechen: "..." So he was actually talking to him? Since when were they friends?
At nine o'clock, after wandering around for a long while following their return from the ancestral hall, Yu Xing finally made it back to the village chief's house, having managed to restrain himself from stealing the villagers' candles.
Xiao Xuechen had gone to find Wei Fan along the way, saying she wanted to pass the warning on to him.
Yu Xing agreed. Xiao Xuechen and Wei Fan had entered together as a team, so they were probably on good terms. Besides, the seven deducers probably didn't have any conflicting interests in this game, so sharing clues was no big deal.
A higher chance of survival might even lead to a better rating after the game ended.
He'd asked around along the way. The village chief had put the other five deducers up in a nearby house. It wasn't far, and they could reach one another in just a few steps.
Yu Xing didn't care whether Wei Fan would pass the clue on to the others. After walking for so long, he was tired.
All he wanted was to rest for a while and look forward to the excitement of the night.
But before he could even enter the village chief's house, a little paper doll was sitting right in his path. Its eyes were painted pitch-black with ink, and in the middle of the night, it looked genuinely creepy at first glance.
Yu Xing looked down at the little paper doll in silence.
"Carlos?"
The paper doll suddenly moved. It stood up unsteadily, its movements stiff, and then, with a sharp rip—
As the paper tore, its head split in two.
A bright red rose emerged from the split paper head.
Carlos's rather flamboyant voice sounded beside Yu Xing. "How was that trick?"
Yu Xing turned around and saw Carlos approaching with a messy head of gray-blue hair and a wide grin. He picked up the rose from the ground and held it out to him. "Here. It's my new trick. A little creepy, I know... Did it scare you?"
Yu Xing's expression changed slightly when he saw the red rose.
The flower... reminded him of someone else.
That person had taught him the hard way that you shouldn't accept flowers lightly. The consequences could be unpredictable.
Still, Carlos was different from that person, and the flower was innocent. Yu Xing could only give a soft laugh. "My friend, this flower would be more suitable for two girls. I'll pass. You probably don't need this set of clues from me. I can just tell you directly."
Carlos curled his lips into a smile, his green eyes glinting in the darkness. "Is that so? How straightforward. I like straightforward people."
Before you continue