Carnivore (6) Night Feast

"The whole background of this tour, no tour guide arranged, and the food is terrible. I really don't know who else would come to this godforsaken place besides us few suckers..."

After leaving the table, Zhang Licai muttered under his breath, expressing his dissatisfaction.

Qi Si leaned in and smiled: "Maybe this tour wasn't meant for the living in the first place; the dead aren't picky eaters."

His voice was extremely light and soft, sounding rather sinister.

Zhang Licai shivered and blustered: "Don't you go scaring me. I'm a timid person; if I get scared, I'll wet my pants."

Satisfied with his own dark humor, Qi Si lowered his eyes innocently: "Sorry, Brother Zhang, I was just saying it off the cuff..."

"I chatted with Granny Su a moment ago, and whenever the area west of the village came up, she acted all evasive. My father is a geographer who likes to study feng shui as a hobby, and I've picked up a thing or two. If I'm not mistaken, there's likely something valuable in the West Village. If we could bring it out..."

He spouted nonsense with a straight face, revealing just the right amount of restless greed.

Zhang Licai, oblivious, patted his shoulder: "Little brother, you're overthinking it. Things in the Eerie Game don't follow the path of wish fulfillment; you can't take them out even if you die."

"If you could take them out, there were mines in the mountains in the last instance—would I still be this poor?"

Qi Si's gaze narrowed slightly.

If things in the game couldn't be taken into reality, then why was he able to bring the Rose Heart out?

Facing Zhang Licai's strange look, he smiled sheepishly: "Brother Zhang, I really didn't know. I was scared to death in my first instance and didn't consider these things at all. It was only later, when I came to my senses, that I started thinking about such nonsense."

"Little brother, let me tell you then..." Zhang Licai, having no reason to doubt him, began to talk at length about the mechanics of the Eerie Game that he knew.

Qi Si put on a look of gratitude, listening to the other man drone on about clichés while his stomach churned.

At this point, he completely abandoned the idea of developing Zhang Licai into a tool.

The "friend" in reality whom he had to keep around because they were useful was already annoying enough; to be saddled with another one in an instance... he just wanted this fat man to drop dead immediately.

After all the players had left the table, Granny Su put on her apron, grabbed a bucket and a rag, and returned to the dining table to clear the pots and pans.

Qi Si finished dealing with Zhang Licai and walked over to the table covered in leftovers: "Granny Su, let me help you clean up. You've worked so hard making such a big meal; go rest on the side."

His voice carried just the right amount of concern, and his eyes looked very sincere.

One doesn't hit a smiling face; Granny Su's expression softened a bit. She picked up a plate with her right hand, turned, and grinned: "You're a polite child, but I can do it myself."

"How could I let you do that?" Qi Si made a move to snatch the plate from her hand.

His fingertips touched the disgusting grease, and he twitched reflexively, but he still gripped the edge of the plate firmly.

Granny Su's strength was smaller than he imagined; with one tug, Qi Si snatched the plate into his hands.

Immediately after, as if he hadn't held it steady, he let go, and the plate fell to the ground, shattering into ceramic shards.

He apologized profusely and bent down to pick up the shards, but his foot slipped, and his upper body lurched as if he were about to fall.

He took the opportunity to grab Granny Su's left hand.

This hand was ice-cold and lacked elasticity, with a sense of decay; its owner had clearly been dead for a long time.

"I'm so sorry. How much are these plates? I'll pay you back." Qi Si's acting was superb; his voice and expression were overflowing with embarrassment and apology.

He pulled on Granny Su's left hand to stand up, and without a trace, he rolled up her sleeve.

On the arm that had been covered, there were large patches of lividity and bruising, which looked like fall injuries; judging by the color, the body had been stored in a cold, damp place for many years.

Granny Su, while cleaning up the mess on the floor, said politely: "You are a guest, how could I let you pay?"

Qi Si had already obtained the information he wanted, so he nodded in agreement: "Alright, then I won't pay."

Granny Su: ...6.

Night fell quickly in the countryside, and in a short while, the curtain of darkness was drawn.

By the faint light of the cold moon, one could only vaguely see the outlines of the houses. The protruding bushes swayed gently in the silver-gray halo, looking from afar like ghosts that dared not fall silent.

Qi Si walked to the washbasin in the corner of the courtyard, rinsed the grease off his hands with warm water, and let his gaze linger for a moment on the sealed Ancient Well to the side before moving it away.

He returned to his room, slid the door bolt into place, placed the cloth bundle containing the God Meat on the table, and wiped the dust off the bamboo mat with a clean rag before finally settling in.

He lay on the bed, fished his pocket watch out, set the hands to nine o'clock to mark the time of nightfall.

Drowsiness struck quickly, his consciousness sinking uncontrollably, yet his sleep was not peaceful.

In the middle of the night, Qi Si opened his eyes from his dream, heard his own heart pounding, and inexplicably realized he was feeling fear.

This long-lost emotion, born out of thin air, was forcibly and unrejectably shoved into the depths of his heart, spreading to every limb and bone...

It was like a beast in the jungle encountering its natural predator; every cell was trembling, and the terror etched into his genes triggered his instincts, screaming "run" and "escape"...

He had no memory of the dream's content. Qi Si tucked his hand under his neck, felt a cold sweat, and cast a flickering gaze at the system interface.

The Identity Card was flashing wildly, and tentacles and gray mist were rolling and surging like a tide.

Blood-red text suddenly appeared on the panel, as if a crashed interface had suddenly resumed operation, displaying lines of delayed prompts:

[Warning! God-level NPC (data deleted) has appeared, the instance path has undergone unknown changes... Data error...]

[God-level NPC authority is second only to World Rules; they can appear in multiple instances simultaneously and share memories. Players are advised to proceed with caution and choose carefully!]

[The last player to look directly at His true form has already fallen into madness. Committing suicide before encountering Him would be a good choice... No, you are already insane...]

God-level NPC? "Already insane"?

Qi Si stared fixedly at the fragmented sentences that could only be described as "Dream Ruins," and after a long while, he spat out three words: "What the hell?"

The moon hanging in the sky had risen a bit higher, and lying on the bed, he could only see half of it through the window lattice. Borrowing the moonlight that leaked into the room, Qi Si glanced at his pocket watch.

The hour hand was resting exactly on twelve; he had only slept for three hours at most.

A hunger born from nowhere swept through his stomach—he was hungry, starving, and wanted to eat something...

The fresh, sweet aroma of meat wafted through the air, stirring the hidden desires in his heart, and Qi Si's gaze fell upon the white cloth bundle on the table.

He knew that inside were the two pieces of God Meat he had brought from the dining table. Even through the thick layer of fabric, this unusual ingredient remained exceptionally tempting.

It was just that this stuff was so soft and squishy, it felt as disgusting as mucus...

Qi Si tapped his upper jaw with his index finger, lost in thought, when he heard noisy human voices coming from a distant room, sounding like an argument.

He got up and walked to the window, focusing his attention to listen.

Shouting, the sound of things being smashed—it was a chaotic mess of noises, seemingly a fight triggered by a verbal conflict.

Judging by the distance, the room where the dispute was happening belonged to the tattooed woman and the scrawny man she had forced to share a room with her.

The other players had likely also woken up from hunger in the middle of the night, but not everyone had brought God Meat with them.

In a crisis, to survive, humans were capable of anything.

"So, it really happened, huh?"

Qi Si felt glad that he hadn't followed the herd and impulsively found a roommate, while at the same time, he was curious about how this sudden farce would end.

In less than half a minute, the shouting and fighting died down; they had likely decided a winner.

With a loud "bang," a figure stumbled out of the door. He couldn't make out the features, but one could imagine how wretched the person looked.

Qi Si's gaze passed through the window lattice covered in talisman paper, and by the cold white moonlight, he saw that it was a man.

Blood was streaming down the man's forehead. He knelt on the ground like a wild beast, emitting painful hisses from his mouth, and only words like "hungry" could be heard in his mumbles.

After groaning for a long time, the man suddenly began to dig at the ground like a madman, scooping up handful after handful of dirt and stuffing it into his mouth.

Qi Si watched for a while, then lowered his eyes to scan the Travel Guide on the table.

The poem on the front page seemed exceptionally sinister at this moment:

[The granary is empty, how to soothe the hungry gut?]

[For a hundred miles, all eat soil; wood and stone pass through the belly to death.]

It seemed that hunger could kill; and to overcome hunger, one had to eat the God Meat.

"Just pretend it's jelly." Qi Si reached for the white cloth bundle with a look of resignation and lifted the covering.

The tender, gelatinous meat block was crystal clear under the moonlight, much like the cold dew of late autumn; yet the blood-red veins appearing and disappearing inside gave it a terrifying feel—perhaps "amber" was a more appropriate comparison.

Feeling the hunger that clung to him like a shadow, Qi Si grabbed a piece of God Meat with a bitter expression, shoved it into his mouth, and swallowed.

A chill spread from his mouth all the way to his stomach, bringing a sticky, slippery sensation along the way, as if a mollusk were slowly crawling inside.

Qi Si raised a hand to touch his Adam's apple; the muscles under his fingertips twitched and writhed, and he could feel the meat block struggling inside, as if he had swallowed a live loach whole.

A faint, fishy stench teased his nose, seemingly coming from his own body, only to vanish in an instant, like a hallucination.

Qi Si looked down at his right hand. For a split second, the outline of his skin appeared as a phantom, blurry and indistinct, as if some kind of mucus were surging within, with faint black smoke dissipating around it.

The situation was clear: if he didn't eat the God Meat, he would face the immediate short-term crisis of death; if he ate the God Meat, he would face a long-term crisis with an unknown outcome.

Survival was not easy; both ends were dangerous paths, and every choice was a gamble.

Unless a new factor was introduced into the game model, or the stance of one party in the game jumped outside the original model.

Qi Si's gaze fell once again on the red text of the system interface, whose meaning was difficult to discern.

What exactly happened in the dream? It really made one unable to stop caring...