The Boundary Between Life and Death, the Laws of Nature

So the first person we saw when we entered the village was already dead?

Thinking back to the strange look the old man had given them, Yu Xing understood.

It made sense. He had expected as much.

Someone else might have felt a little "dread" or found the thought "terrifying the more they dwelled on it," but to Yu Xing, it was simply a rather valuable piece of information.

How interesting.

The information he'd gotten from the Xu brothers, combined with his own deductions, had given him a thorough understanding of Guan Family Village. He continued asking questions.

"Why did Zhou Facai bury him? Was he buried after he died, or..." Buried alive? Yu Xing left out the last two words, knowing the old woman could understand what he was asking.

Asking question after question could make him seem too eager and put the person being questioned on guard.

Swallowing the last few words would subconsciously make the other person feel that he was asking for their opinion and valued it, making them more likely to tell the truth.

The old woman's skeletal fingers tightened around her cane. At last, she shifted her gaze from the sky to Yu Xing. "The village chief is special in our village. He protects us and lives and eats alongside us... We truly love and respect the village chief, but his family has also been cursed."

"What curse?"

"Whenever the village chief has a child, the child has to be sent away. Thirty-five years later, they come back. On the day they return, the child becomes the new village chief and has to bury the old one under the locust tree at the village entrance." The old woman seemed a little sad. "Facai's a good boy, but I'm old. In my memories, the old village chief still feels more familiar..."

Yu Xing gave a quiet "Oh." Two fingers tapped a slow, steady rhythm against his leg.

"What if the new village chief doesn't have the heart to bury the old one?"

"Doesn't have the heart? No, most of them are quite willing to do it." The old woman seemed to recall something, but her stiff, aged facial muscles made it difficult to express what she was feeling. Yu Xing sensed a hint of mockery in her voice. "If one of them isn't willing, the villagers will help bury the old one."

Aha. So only one generation of the village chief's family could exist in the village at a time.

Yu Xing suddenly grew excited. "Other than me, has anyone else asked you about this?"

"Yes... I think a young man came to ask last night."

At that, Yu Xing's lips curled up. He already knew where the missing Carlos had gone.

At daybreak.

The town, separated from Guan Family Village by a mountain, was fairly lively. Plenty of merchants came and went, buying game and medicinal herbs.

Carlos let out a huge yawn. He'd enjoyed a hot shower at the town's hotel, washing away some of the exhaustion from traveling through the night.

He changed and stepped out of the bathroom, a towel draped over his damp gray-blue hair. He'd just reached up to dry it when he heard a muffled "Mmmph, mmph" from the floor at the far end of the bed.

He walked over unhurriedly. The green in Carlos's eyes grew darker as he looked down without a trace of emotion at the young man, whose limbs were bound and mouth gagged.

He said nothing until the young man sensed something, stopped struggling, and stared up at him in terror.

Only then did Carlos smile with satisfaction. "Zhou Qinghai... are you hungry?"

"Mmmph." The young man didn't dare provoke this ruthless madman. He'd only tried to fight back in surprise earlier, and nearly had his leg broken for it.

"If you're hungry, that's fine. We'll go eat in a bit." Carlos smiled as he removed the cloth from the young man's mouth. Before he could speak, Carlos continued, "You'll eat nicely, won't you? I'm exhausted and don't want to deal with any more moths flying at me... I'm sure you don't want to get any other innocent people dragged into this, either."

His tone was as gentle as if he were the young man's friend, but the young man trembled all over and nodded in despair.

"Good. I really like people who know how to make things easy." Carlos gave him one last look, then focused on drying his hair. "After we eat, I'll take you somewhere nice. You'll see the person you've been looking for all this time... Heh. You can thank me later."

According to the memories of his character, he'd stayed at this little inn the night before heading into the mountains.

The guest in the next room had been a young man named Zhou Qinghai. He was cheerful and trusting, and after they'd shared breakfast, Zhou Qinghai had told him he was an orphan who'd been searching for his parents.

Carlos had already paid extra attention to how vivid this event was in his character's memories. After hearing what the old woman had said last night, he understood.

Zhou Facai's son, Zhou Qinghai... was in town.

All Carlos had to do was take Zhou Qinghai back, and the village chief would disappear.

Of course, at the same time, Zhou Qinghai would become the new village chief, bound to Guan Family Village.

But what did that have to do with him? All he had to do was complete the deduction.

A pleased smile flashed in his green eyes.

With the clue he wanted in hand, Yu Xing said goodbye to the old woman and planned to find Xiao Xuechen and Wei Fan to compare notes.

They hadn't arranged to meet at the village chief's house. Instead, they'd chosen the hill near the ancestral hall. It was more secluded, so the villagers wouldn't spot them in advance.

Yu Xing tidied his slightly tousled, fluffy hair and strode lightly into the low hill east of the village.

Normally, the air in the mountains should have been fresh, but the trees on this hill were withered, their upper branches clawing at the sky. The eeriness of night had become desolation in daylight, and it felt as if every breath brought a little deathly aura into his lungs.

When he arrived at the meeting spot, the other two were already there.

"San!" Xiao Xuechen had been talking to Wei Fan. When she spotted him out of the corner of her eye, she smiled and waved.

"Good afternoon." Yu Xing nodded. The three of them found a relatively clean place to sit.

"Let's compare notes. What did you find?" He picked up a twig and idly tapped at the weeds on the ground.

"I'll go first, then." Wei Fan had already heard from Xiao Xuechen about Yu Xing's abilities, and had put aside all his dismissiveness toward the young artist. "I questioned a disabled villager and found out that some villagers never leave their homes. They're hidden resources we can make use of, and they're much friendlier toward outsiders than the others."

"Mm." Yu Xing nodded for him to continue.

"Whenever someone in the village dies, they hold what they call a funeral on the eighth day. Everyone goes to witness it outside the ancestral hall." Wei Fan did his best to condense what he'd gathered. "But that disabled villager told me that almost everyone in the village has been the subject of a funeral."

"So they've all died once!" Xiao Xuechen didn't look afraid. If anything, she seemed a little excited. Her voice, cool and clear as a spring, had grown hoarse after half a day of questioning people. "That matches what I found. The villagers of Guan Family Village are all dead. By day, they're no different from ordinary people, except their thoughts are crueler and more twisted than those of humans. At dusk, they light candles to maintain their human forms. Without candles, they become monsters filled with malice."

She swept the curls that had fallen forward back behind her head and continued, "The village chief is the only exception. I suspect he's the only living person in Guan Family Village. He probably serves as a medium, communicating with the living outsiders."

"He's not a medium. He's a guardian," Yu Xing cut in coolly.

The two of them had done well to uncover such important information. They seemed to be very capable.

"Oh? What do you mean?" Xiao Xuechen was intrigued by the word he'd used.

"I mean..." Yu Xing's hand paused around the twig, and he explained his deductions.

The information he'd traded for from the Xu brothers, the two feng shui masters, was that Guan Family Village lay in a deep ravine, surrounded by mountains that enclosed the lowland on all sides. It was sealed off, with no way in or out.

The houses were laid out in a grid. To borrow a line from "The Peach Blossom Spring," the paths here were "interconnected," and the houses "stood in neat rows."

By their calculations, there was no vitality here. Instead, deathly energy permeated the place, which was completely at odds with the outside world.

"In other words..." Xiao Xuechen's beautiful eyes widened, uncertainty creeping into her voice.

"Yeah. Our perception must have been affected by some kind of illusion, or something else." Yu Xing found his sleeves cumbersome and pushed them up to his elbows. A hint of a smile appeared at the corner of his eye. "This isn't a place where the living dwell. It's... an underground tomb."

"Imagine the place where we entered the village as the tomb entrance, the level paths as corridors, and the houses where we slept as burial chambers holding coffins. So—"

"The coffins are our beds."

Coffin Village was called Coffin Village for a reason. There couldn't possibly be just one black coffin in the ancestral hall.

In fact, every household had many coffins. The illusion had simply altered their appearance so outsiders couldn't recognize them.

"We slept in coffins last night!?" Wei Fan exclaimed.

The idea was so far-fetched that he couldn't help wondering if Yu Xing had gotten it wrong. But when he thought about the rule that they couldn't leave their rooms at night or let anyone else in, it seemed to make sense.

A tomb had its own rules. If nighttime was when the monsters in the village woke up, then they were "corpses" too, since they were lying in coffins. There were two coffins in each burial chamber, and they couldn't be disturbed.

If they failed to follow the rules and let other corpses into their chamber, those rules would be broken, giving the other corpses a chance to take advantage of them.

Conversely, if they held their ground, the rules of the chamber would keep the other corpses from forcing their way in. They wouldn't be able to do anything to them.

That also explained the food and supplies that seemed to have no source... Perhaps they were just strange products of the tomb...

Thinking about it, Wei Fan turned pale as he recalled the food he'd eaten.

Xiao Xuechen gave Yu Xing an indescribable look. She remembered that a few of the deduction participants hadn't wanted dinner, but San had happily said it was delicious and encouraged everyone to eat.

Could she still throw up?

Did she even have a chance?

Yu Xing pretended not to notice their resentful expressions. He didn't care what he was eating. Even if someone told him outright that the soup contained rotting insects, he'd still eat it as long as it was edible.

He covered his mouth with one hand and cleared his throat twice, then turned away.

"Miss, don't look at me like that. You'll make me blush."

Xiao Xuechen: "..."

Wei Fan: What about me? What about me? Do I not count?

Fortunately, Yu Xing didn't keep playing favorites. He went on with his explanation, offering Wei Fan a little comfort.

"The village chief is different from the other corpses. He's alive. I think his role is something like a tomb keeper."

He repeated what the old woman had told him.

Because the village chief was alive, the woman had already lit a candle just after dusk, but he hadn't needed to.

The corpses changed between day and night according to the rules. The village chief, however... relied only on his acting. Unlike the corpses, whose minds had been irreversibly twisted, he knew everything and still chose to help them prey on outsiders.

Sometimes, the living could be scarier than ghosts.

Fortunately, the village chief had a weakness. The corpses would probably stop the deduction participants if they tried to kill him, and they might even trigger a death condition. But only one tomb keeper could exist in the tomb at a time. If there was another, the corpses would bury the original alive.

Yu Xing knew he didn't have to worry about the village chief. That Magician... should be coming back soon.

"Then I have another question." A glint passed through Xiao Xuechen's gaze as she looked at Yu Xing.

Yu Xing: "Mm?"

"If the villagers are all corpses, what was Zhou Yongsheng before this?" Guan Family Village was Zhou Yongsheng's hometown, after all.

"Didn't you notice that there are no children in this village?" Yu Xing asked, watching her with an unhurried smile. He hoped the young lady would put her brain to work herself.

There weren't merely no children in Guan Family Village. There wasn't a single person under twenty.

Wei Fan had also said that every so often, a new villager would "die," and they'd hold a funeral.

So although this place was a tomb, the corpses in it... changed all the time.

"Could it be... could these corpses still reproduce? They have children, send them away, then bring them back when they're old enough and kill them, making them new villagers!?" A jumble of clues battled in Xiao Xuechen's mind. After several turns, she finally pieced together a logical explanation.

"Not bad." Yu Xing praised her, then continued, "The villagers are no different from the living by day. If there's no difference, then whatever the living can do, they can do too."

He guessed that whenever a child was born, the village chief sent the child beyond the mountains to grow up in the outside world.

During that time, the children might not know what their home was really like. Once they were old enough, they'd be tricked into returning to Guan Family Village, then killed by the village chief or another corpse.

Like Zhou Yongsheng.

Because of the village's unusual rules—or curse—the children born to the corpses were undoubtedly alive.

Such a violation of the boundary between life and death went against the laws of nature, and the world wouldn't allow it. So the villagers were trapped in this tiny place, unable to leave.

The old woman had once been alive, too. After the villagers killed her, she became trapped in the village, forever longing for life in the outside world.

"The funeral takes place at six in the evening, as night is about to fall. That's the set time for funerals in Guan Family Village. Usually, the villagers don't go out; they gather only on days when there's a funeral. It's the moment when yang turns to yin, symbolizing an ordinary living person being buried through a ritual and officially becoming one of them." Yu Xing spoke calmly.

The funeral was the key to perpetuating the village's curse.

Dusk was no longer daytime, but there was still no need to light candles. For Guan Family Village, it was the moment when the boundary between life and death was most blurred.

Today's funeral was for Zhou Yongsheng.

The young man's ordinary life had been completely destroyed.

So Yu Xing, Carlos, and the Xu brothers had all been summoned by Zhou Yongsheng. He hadn't wanted to kill them along with him. He'd simply wanted them to disrupt the funeral ritual and put an end to this endless, vicious curse.