After the funeral ended, the resonance between the candle tray and the black coffin was broken. The coffin rotted into some unknown object so fragile that its surface flaked off at the slightest touch, while Yu Xing carried away the perfectly intact candle tray.
He guessed that the black coffin was the source of the curse, and the candle tray was an offering.
With the curse broken, the chill surrounding the offering had subsided. Yu Xing carried the candle tray with him, and it no longer posed much of a threat.
All the villagers in Coffin Village had been dealt with. The group returned to the village and casually found a few houses to rest in.
Yu Xing felt a little regretful. Some villagers, like the old woman with difficulty walking, hadn't even attended the funeral before they disappeared along with the others.
But on second thought, their very existence violated the laws of nature. And when they had first been transformed into this neither-living-nor-dead state, they must have harmed innocent people, willingly or otherwise. Disappearing was the best possible ending for them.
The Xu brothers' injuries were the harder problem. They'd been hurt too badly, but fortunately, although Wei Fan was an engineer, he unexpectedly had a healing offering. At Xiao Xuechen's request, he helped the brothers once, and then everyone half-carried, half-supported the two of them back to the village.
At least the two of them had survived. Once they left the game, they'd be able to run around just fine in the real world.
Yu Xing vaguely felt that Wei Fan and Xiao Xuechen didn't interact like ordinary coworkers. They seemed more like a subordinate and a superior.
But that had nothing to do with him. With the crisis over, he slept comfortably for another night in an empty room in the former village chief's house...which was actually a grave chamber. He also forgot to set an alarm, and didn't wake up until the sun rose the next day and Xiao Xuechen came to knock on his door.
"San, are you up?" Xiao Xuechen's mature, alluring voice came from outside. After their battle at the funeral, they'd all grown much closer.
"Ah..." Yu Xing slowly climbed out of bed and rubbed his foggy head. He was shirtless; the white, fleece-lined top stained with too much blood had been taken to wash the previous night by Wei Fan, who had inexplicably turned out to be a thrifty homemaker.
If he didn't wash it, Yu Xing might get stopped and questioned by local police today when he crossed the mountain and entered town wearing bloodstained clothes.
Wei Fan had washed everyone else's visibly bloodstained clothes too. The sturdy middle-aged man was practically like a housekeeper, which was quite the contrast.
"Can I come in?" Outside, Xiao Xuechen held the now-dry fleece-lined top. A glimmer of excitement flashed in her eyes.
Ah~ The day's good mood began the moment she saw a handsome man!
"Come in." Yu Xing wasn't shy about it anyway. It was only his upper body. He checked his pants—they were still on properly.
The door opened. Xiao Xuechen carefully peeked her head inside, then stepped in with the rest of her body.
Sunlight filled the room. She immediately spotted Yu Xing sitting on the edge of the bed, his muscles firm and toned, the lines of his arms smooth and elegant. He even had a six-pack, and his whole body seemed to glow with its paleness.
The little person in her heart had already started having a nosebleed.
Waaah, what if she really was lusting after his body?!
After gushing to herself for a moment, Xiao Xuechen maintained a dignified expression and handed him the top. "Um...there are still some bloodstains, but you can't really see them unless you look closely. I couldn't fix the tear on the sleeve, though. Engineer Wei said it was a shame he hadn't brought a needle and thread..."
Yu Xing: "..." Wei Gong sure had an unusual distribution of skill points!
"Then I'll have to thank him properly when I see him." He smiled at Xiao Xuechen and pulled the top over his head. Xiao Xuechen forced herself to tear her gaze away, reluctant to let go, and touched her earlobe.
Just then, she noticed an unattended page from a painting lying in the corner of the floor.
Judging by the colors, it looked like...something San had painted earlier, right?
Oh, right. San had made Zhou Yongsheng look so wonderful in that painting. It must've been hard for him to find out later that Zhou Yongsheng had actually meant him harm...
She walked over, intending to pick up the painting.
The next moment, she saw the image and stopped breathing. Her outstretched fingers trembled.
The warm-toned young man in the painting was gone. In his place was a few more strokes added to the original image, depicting a hideous ghost bound and shackled by layers of chains.
Blended with the warm colors, the ghost seemed to conceal an even more unnerving sense of dread and malice.
"When did you change this painting?" Xiao Xuechen still picked it up and turned to ask Yu Xing.
Yu Xing had already gotten dressed. He'd also examined the tear in his sleeve. It wasn't bad; on him, he could claim it was an intentional fashion choice and no one would question it.
Hearing Xiao Xuechen's question, he answered casually, "I touched it up before the funeral yesterday. Don't bother looking at it. Just throw it away. It's nothing good."
"You...you already knew it was...?" Xiao Xuechen's eyes widened.
"Of course." Yu Xing nodded as if it were obvious and ran a hand through his messy hair. "I only painted it to mess with it and make it think its plan had worked..."
He gave a wicked smile. "That way, when it realizes it was a failure from beginning to end, it'll be even angrier and more desperate~"
Xiao Xuechen: ...How scary.
She'd thought San had a soft side deep down. Sorry, she'd been naive.
Yu Xing guessed what Xiao Xuechen was thinking and chuckled softly.
He wasn't a good person to begin with. Did she really think he'd take the time to paint a ghost he'd only met once?
He'd just been amusing himself and casually setting a trap.
Soon, they packed up, and everyone gathered at the village entrance.
Xiao Xuechen had kept the painting, folding it and tucking it into her bag.
She planned to throw it away later. She knew Yu Xing didn't care, but Investigator type deduction games always had their own causes and consequences. If the painting remained in the village, the official authorities of this world might come to investigate later and find it. That could have unknown consequences for the character San.
In the sunlight, the deduction players, along with Zhou Qinghai, who had been kidnapped and brought here in a daze, passed by the large locust tree at the village entrance, planning to cross the mountain and make their way back.
With the village's curse gone, Zhou Qinghai no longer needed to take responsibility as village chief. Though his origins were strange, he was innocent, and after going through such an upheaval, perhaps he'd become an "NPC" with an interesting story of his own in this deduction world.
That was, if Carlos's behavior hadn't left him traumatized.
But seeing him happily grinning early that morning, he seemed to have gotten over it. Yu Xing felt that Zhou Qinghai wasn't exactly a paragon of mental normality, either. In any case, he was pretty carefree.
At last, the Xu brothers' faces were as pale as Yu Xing's usually were. Their lips were ashen, and they spoke weakly, but their words still carried the joy of having survived a catastrophe.
They said their goodbyes. They would still be "climbing" the mountain together, but they all knew that this would only remain in the memories of their character roles. The deduction system couldn't possibly have them do something so pointless.
"Everyone, let's exchange contact information after we get out. We're always traveling around. Maybe we can even send you local specialties from wherever we end up." Xu Hong was wrapped tightly in bandages in several places. Supporting each other, he and Xu Yuan showed the others the greatest goodwill.
Perhaps because the village's supernatural influence had only just dissipated, the signal was still poor. Neither phone calls nor social media worked, so they'd have to wait until they got to town.
"Sure. It's always good to make more friends when you're out and about. And your warning at the beginning was right. If we'd been ordinary people, we might really have escaped a disaster. You're kind feng shui masters." Xiao Xuechen casually patted Xu Yuan's uninjured shoulder. "Too bad Engineer Wei and I are investigators. There was no way we couldn't enter the village back then, so we only gave you something else to worry about. Sorry, sorry."
"Then let's all exchange contact information. Actually, why don't we make a group chat? We can share interesting experiences there in the future." Wei Fan clapped his hands.
Yu Xing nodded. Carlos, standing off to the side with his arms crossed, snapped his fingers too. "No problem~"
Seven people had entered this game, and six had survived. That was an exceptionally high survival rate, thanks in part to the game not being very difficult. There had only been two deadly points: the first night and the funeral the next day.
So everyone was in a good mood, and they decided to use this conversation to tie their characters' fates together.
It was worth noting that although the Absurd Deduction Game was called a "game" and had a game system, it didn't have a friends list.
In a vast world, people might meet briefly, only to go their separate ways for a long time.
Put simply...they could team up this time, but running into one another in a game again would be much harder.
In other types of games, you could keep the same teammates by forming a team in the real world before entering the game. But in Investigator type deduction games, a character kept traveling around with the world even when the deduction player wasn't there. Even if the players formed a team in real life, their characters could already be scattered across the world when they entered the game, making it difficult to meet up.
That was where a little trick came in: while they could still control their characters, they needed to establish connections between them.
For example, what they were doing now...Once they agreed to make a group chat, the system would assume their characters stayed in touch after returning home. They might even visit each other from time to time, go traveling together, or grab a cup of coffee.
Xiao Xuechen and Wei Fan, for example, had a "coworker" network. They worked at the same studio, so it was incredibly easy for them to enter games together.
The Absurd World seemed to run according to its own bizarre logic in every respect. But when it came to "friends," it offered some freedom, letting deduction players experience the thrill of uncertainty.
They'd made a start on building their network. The rest was up to the system. They set off up the mountain and resumed their exhausting climb.
After walking a dozen meters, Yu Xing glanced back. The village surrounded by mountains had vanished in the sunlight, leaving only a locust tree and a dilapidated cavern beside it.
That had to be the entrance to the tomb.
Sure enough, the entire village had been a mass grave. Everything they'd seen and experienced over the past two days had been distorted.
His hiking pole dug into the mountainside, and he felt the solid earth beneath it.
Emmmm...what had the water coming out of the faucet Wei Fan used to wash the clothes turned into?
The thought suddenly occurred to him.
Whatever. It wasn't important. He wasn't a germaphobe.
The scenery before them soon blurred. The others' voices as they took turns answering Zhou Qinghai's chatter gradually faded away, and in the next moment, the deduction's epilogue and results appeared in Yu Xing's mind.
[You successfully left Coffin Village. After entering town with your companions, you reported the incident to the relevant authorities.] [After the relevant authorities launched an investigation, they discovered that the area where Coffin Village had stood was filled with yin energy, and that there was a strangely designed large tomb underground. There were even signs of human activity inside, so they kept the news under wraps and conducted a systematic investigation. You didn't follow up on what happened afterward. You only heard from the Xu brothers, who stayed in the area to recover, that the source of the tomb's mutation was the ancestral shrine on the mountain. The shrine was even older than the tomb, and seemed to point to an even more terrifying history.] [Your performance earned high praise from two of your fellow investigators. Not long after you returned home, a man came to visit. He introduced himself as a partner and member of the Weird Event Investigation Studio and invited you to join.] [You believed this identity would help you investigate your family's conspiracy, so you agreed. From then on, you became an investigator.] ... [Deduction Hint: The Investigator type deduction game "Coffin Village" has ended] [Case Truth Reconstruction: 95%] [Personality Assimilation Degree Increase: 0] [Rating: S] [Deduction Points Obtained: 701 (Plot Comprehension) (Rating Bonus) (Exploration Bonus) (Deduction Contribution)] [Main Quests Completed: 1/4] [Offering Obtained: Tears of the Underworld Candle] [Exiting Deduction]
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