The Earth God Refuses to Accept

Gu Yunqing's lifeless body slumped into the water. Cold droplets splashed onto Ye Miaozhu's face, leaving her mind in a daze.

"Yunqing... is dead?"

Ye Miaozhu muttered, her eyes vacant. Ning Zhe reacted quickly, lunging forward to grab Gu Yunqing's sleeve before the current could carry him away.

Dragging the corpse, Ning Zhe cast a quick glance at Feng Yushu, who was trembling and paralyzed with fear, then at Ye Miaozhu, whose mental state was clearly fracturing. He realized he could only rely on himself.

Unbuttoning Gu Yunqing's shirt, Ning Zhe quickly examined the body.

Although he wasn't a medical student, a simple check allowed him to reach some basic conclusions: "Like Xie Sining, there are no external wounds on Gu Yunqing, no internal bleeding, no signs of drowning or asphyxiation, and no indications of poisoning..."

Aside from the fact that Gu Yunqing had only just died and his body still retained some residual warmth, there was no difference between the two corpses; they were identical in their state of death.

"The two died in exactly the same way. Were they both killed by that thing that impersonates others? Or is there a danger inherent to the river itself?"

Ning Zhe didn't know the answer, but he dared not take the risk.

He dropped Gu Yunqing's body and stepped back, moving away from the riverbank. Feng Yushu, suffering from a nervous breakdown, quickly followed him, leaving only Ye Miaozhu sitting on the ground, staring blankly.

"Yunqing... how could he just die like this?" Ye Miaozhu's gaze was unfocused, lost in confusion: "We didn't break any taboos. We didn't travel, we didn't hold a burial, we didn't perform funeral rites... and we didn't offer sacrifices. Why did Yunqing have to die?"

Ye Miaozhu clutched her head, pulling her once-smooth hair into a tangled mess: "Even if examining the body counts as a funeral rite... why did Yunqing die, but I'm fine?"

"I don't know." Ning Zhe shook his head: "How could I know..."

"Is that so? You don't know either." Ye Miaozhu leaned down and buttoned up the shirt Ning Zhe had undone, one by one. Holding the corpse, she turned her head to watch the river water slowly drifting downstream, the bright moon reflecting on its surface.

"Are you trying to die?" Ning Zhe frowned: "I noticed Gu Yunqing's movements before he died. In the seconds before he lost his vital signs, he was looking down at the river surface. I don't know if the danger lies in the corpses by the river or the river itself, but mimicking what he did before his death is undoubtedly a death wish."

"So what if it is?" Ye Miaozhu looked up, her dead, lifeless eyes staring straight at Ning Zhe: "I've had enough."

Ning Zhe was silent for a moment, then said softly: "I understand, but I don't agree."

Everyone here was an ordinary person—studying, working, living, and keeping to themselves, thinking life was just an endless pile of such mundane days.

Yet, with the simple push of a door, they had arrived in this inexplicable place, forced to follow inexplicable rules and endure senseless terror.

The weight of death was so heavy it left everyone gasping for air. The rules that changed every day tortured their fragile nerves, leaving them trembling, walking on thin ice.

Ning Zhe didn't know the nature of the relationship between Ye Miaozhu and Gu Yunqing, but in an environment where life was so precarious, the two had grown accustomed to relying on each other.

Ye Miaozhu wasn't a particularly strong person. If not for the company of someone she knew, she would have been crushed by the looming threat of death long ago, let alone surviving until now in this strange, eerie village.

Now that Gu Yunqing was dead, she had lost her mental pillar and the courage and motivation to keep struggling for survival.

Ning Zhe didn't approve of her reckless abandonment of her own life, but he didn't oppose her seeking death either, because it was actually beneficial to him.

"After Ye Miaozhu dies, there will be three ready-made death samples here." Ning Zhe thought to himself: "One or two bizarre deaths, and I can't see the logic behind them, but three? Four? There will eventually be clues... the puzzle can always be solved."

Others might collapse, give up, or throw caution to the wind, but he wouldn't.

Seeing the calm, indifferent look in Ning Zhe's eyes, Ye Miaozhu suddenly smiled: "I actually wanted to be angry at you, because if you hadn't made us check Xie Sining's body, Yunqing wouldn't have died. But feeling his body slowly turn cold, I realized I don't even have the energy to be angry anymore."

"It's a good thing you don't." Ning Zhe said dismissively: "If you threw a tantrum at me, I'd kill you."

"Pervert." Ye Miaozhu cursed with venom.

But then, she felt a sense of relief: "But perhaps only a heartless pervert like you can survive in this heartless place, like a fish in water."

"Considering you're about to die, I won't hold your insults against you." Ning Zhe didn't care.

The riverbank fell silent, their hushed words swallowed by the crystal-clear water. Ye Miaozhu held Gu Yunqing's body in her arms, quietly watching their reflections on the river, like a prisoner on the execution ground closing her eyes to await the arrival of death.

But as time ticked by, Ning Zhe checked his phone again and again—5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes... Ye Miaozhu remained sitting quietly on the bank, letting the cold night wind sap her body heat, but nothing else happened.

"It seems the Snake God doesn't think it's your time to die." Ning Zhe walked down the stone slope and reached out to the woman sitting on the ground: "Time to go. Since whatever that thing is has returned your life to you, you should cherish it."

Ye Miaozhu kept her head down, silent for a long time, before finally letting Ning Zhe take her hand without resistance.

Ning Zhe pulled her up from the riverbank, quickly organizing the known information in his mind:

"First, the Snake God has gone mad, with regular monthly episodes. The cause and symptoms are unknown."

"Second, besides the Almanac's fortune, which affects luck, there are other hidden rules in He Family Village that lead directly to death, such as reading tomorrow's Almanac."

"Third, Xie Sining and Gu Yunqing both appear to have died from breaking hidden rules, and their state of death is identical to that of Lin Zhiyuan."

"Fourth, although the bodies of Xie Sining and Gu Yunqing both appeared in the river, Ye Miaozhu has proven that their deaths are not directly related to the river."

"Fifth, there is a special entity in He Family Village that impersonates others, which is suspected to be related to the hidden rules that cause death."

As the information gathered, the Train of Thought in Ning Zhe's mind gradually cleared. Among the seemingly chaotic fragments of information, he found the first breakthrough point:

"That ghost that took Xie Sining's identity followed Zhang Yangxu for a long time without killing him, and it didn't attack me after discovering me. Why didn't it kill us? Did it not want to? Or is it actually incapable of killing directly?"

"Or, to look at it another way, does that ghost not need to be near us to kill, but rather needs to satisfy certain specific conditions—needs us to trigger certain special rules?"

The fog on the path ahead dissipated. From the tangled knot of chaos, Ning Zhe grabbed the thread that would unravel the truth.

At that moment, Feng Yushu's phone vibrated. Someone was calling.

The caller was Zhang Yangxu.

"Answer it. Hang up if it feels wrong." Ning Zhe said softly.

Feng Yushu didn't dare to answer, but she nodded involuntarily, her fair, delicate fingers trembling as she pressed the answer button.

As soon as the call connected, a loud warning, almost a scream, came through the speaker:

--"Watch out for Gu Yunqing!"