Carnivore (13): Village History

Allen's head lay stranded in the mucus, his thin layer of facial features seeming to float like grease.

The moment sunlight shone in, the signs of life in him vanished along with the tumor, leaving behind a heap of lifeless, dead flesh.

He had no last words, no groan, and didn't even show any sign of unwillingness. He only stared up at the ceiling, like a sunflower reaching for the light, trying to catch the sunlight in his pupils.

Yang Yundong walked over in silence and bent down. His rough, calloused hand covered the young man's face, gently closing his clouded eyes.

There was no speech, no mourning. He stood silently for a while, then turned his head toward the Tattooed Woman, who was leaning against the door.

The woman, who had never quite fit in, had also been unable to resist eating a few mouthfuls of mucus. Now, the right half of her face was semi-solid, dripping flesh-colored mucus.

Noticing Yang Yundong's gaze, the Tattooed Woman raised a hand to cover the abnormality on the right side of her face and loudly declared, with exaggerated nonchalance, "It's fine, just a little injury. It'll be gone once we leave the instance!"

It was true that injuries sustained in an instance wouldn't carry over into reality. But could she really hold out until they left?

Qi Si saw that the abnormality on the Tattooed Woman's face was spreading at a visible rate. The right side of her neck had begun to drip with mucus too. She looked like a melting candle, constantly shedding wax.

By tomorrow at the latest, she would have melted away completely, and there were still four days left before the instance ended...

Qi Si chose his words carefully. "From what the village chief said, we can infer that eating God Meat taints you with sin, while eating that mucus brings retribution sooner. He also said that praying at the Ancestral Hall could atone for it... Looks like we need to change our plans."

Yang Yundong took off his jacket and went into the main room. He wrapped up the pool of white gel on the bed, which was indistinguishable from God Meat, and tied it up. Then he turned and tossed the whole bundle into Zhang Licai's arms.

He scanned the other players and assigned their tasks. "Zhang Licai, Zhao Feng, and Chang Xu, go to the Village History Museum. Zhu Ling and I will take Yin Lina to the Ancestral Hall."

Yin Lina was the Tattooed Woman's name. She had only casually mentioned it during the initial introductions, yet Yang Yundong had remembered it.

Yang Yundong's plan made perfect sense. In theory, splitting up was the best option. Otherwise, if they ran into another situation like the one at the Village Chief's House, they'd likely all be wiped out.

The Ancestral Hall was an important location tied to the instance's atonement mechanic, and there was a chance they'd encounter Granny Su there. It was bound to be dangerous, so it made the most sense for two veteran players on their third instance to lead the exploration.

If those two veterans were both lost, that would send the rest of the players a clear message: forget about the Ancestral Hall. Give up and go to bed. Whether they could survive the next few days would be up to luck.

In any case, they already had enough God Meat. For the remaining days, the players could simply hole up in Granny Su's house, eat their fill, and wait to die.

Well, to wait for death in the literal sense.

Zhu Ling hesitated. "The Village History Museum might have some information about the feng shui layout of Su Village. I'd like to see if I can find any clues. And if there are any ghosts lurking there, I'll be able to respond in time."

Her reaction was expected. Qi Si gave Zhao Feng a timely look, and he promptly volunteered. "I'll go with them to the Ancestral Hall."

The Ancestral Hall was likely to contain crucial clues, so one of their own needed to keep an eye on it. Zhao Feng would make a useful pair of eyes. If anything went wrong, he wouldn't have to worry about Yang Yundong or the Tattooed Woman. He could use their lives to buy time, then withdraw as soon as things looked bad.

Qi Si was certain Zhao Feng would do his utmost to join the Sariel Guild.

He just wondered what expression Zhao Feng would wear when he found out it had all been a lie.

Qi Si smiled, his eyes curving. To Zhao Feng, it looked as if he were offering encouragement.

Zhao Feng knew that most major guilds required a show of loyalty. You couldn't catch a wolf without risking your child. He gritted his teeth and hurried over to Yang Yundong.

Yang Yundong said nothing. He gestured for Zhao Feng to carry the Tattooed Woman on his back, then held the Pu Saber horizontally and led the way out of the Village Chief's House, stepping through the mucus.

Only after the three figures had disappeared through the doorway did Zhu Ling draw the dagger from her waist and grip it in her hand. She managed a strained smile and turned to Qi Si and Zhang Licai. "Stay with me. If we run into danger, ask for help right away. I'll do my best to keep you safe."

She headed for the door, and Zhang Licai hurried after her with the bundle Yang Yundong had given him on his back.

"Thanks," Qi Si said with a smile, trailing far behind them.

The three of them walked along the muddy path, following the directions on the map.

The rutted dirt road wound between dilapidated houses. Dry weeds grew crookedly on either side, nearly swallowing the path.

The road was hard to travel, but luckily the Village Chief's House wasn't far from the Village History Museum. After another five minutes, they reached a large building with windows facing the road that let in plenty of light.

The windows hadn't been papered over. Though covered in dust, they still offered a view through the old glass of the desks and tables inside.

The low wooden door belonging to the building stood wide open, as if inviting them in.

Qi Si followed the two ahead of him over the threshold and was showered in dust. He coughed and instinctively sucked in a breath, only drawing more dust into his throat and making it itch unbearably.

He quickly realized what was happening and covered his mouth and nose with his hand, barely managing to stop coughing.

The Village History Museum consisted of only one room. Everything inside was in plain view, and there were no ghosts or death traps, so searching for clues wasn't difficult.

With no one having come by for ages, cobwebs had sealed away the past. Scattered papers still lay on the dust-covered desk, but time was sure to wear them away.

Qi Si walked up to the desk. An old, yellowed household register lay on it, with one page folded over. When he opened it, that page fell into view.

It listed the names "Granny Su" and "Su Xi," with their dates of death marked as the same day.

Qi Si raised an eyebrow and drew his conclusion. "Granny Su and A-Xi died before anything happened to Su Village. They might not even have eaten God Meat."

Zhang Licai watched Qi Si flip through the register at random and couldn't help asking, "How do you know that?"

"On the first day, I tested Granny Su. She had bruises on her arms, so she probably died from a fall from a height. Her livor mortis was purple, which suggests her body had been left somewhere cold for a long time after her death."

"Besides, before the page listing her and A-Xi, the villagers' deaths were scattered over time. There was no large-scale, mass-death event. Do you think a major event like divine punishment would have killed only a few people here and there?"

Qi Si's fingertip moved over the dates of birth and death. Suddenly, he flipped over a thick stack of pages, revealing a blank section at the back of the register.

He curled his lips and said with a smile, "The records really do stop here... After all, once people ate God Meat and ended up in the same state as the village chief, it'd be hard to tell whether they were dead or alive."

Zhu Ling leaned in too and smiled in understanding. "Granny Su and A-Xi didn't eat God Meat, so they didn't die after being tainted with sin. That's why they could keep their human forms and walk in the sunlight."

When Qi Si heard the words "tainted with sin," his eyes narrowed.

No, something was wrong.

If Granny Su had no sin, why had she posted a couplet on her door that read, "Year after year, eat vegetarian to erase your sins"?

If she had died long ago, why was she connected to God Meat? And when asked about the legend of God Meat, why had she told that blood-soaked story?

It was as though someone had programmed her in advance and instructed her to say those things...

Qi Si thought back to the first clue. That unsettling story was like a misplaced puzzle piece, disrupting an otherwise seamless chain of deductions and twisting it into a knot...

Who had brought the dead Granny Su and A-Xi back to the human world?

Was there really only one god in the background of this instance?

Zhu Ling clearly wasn't thinking along the same lines. She picked up the village history book lying scattered in the dust and carefully opened it.

The first few pages of the village history book had been torn out. It didn't mention what had happened before the famine, so there was no way to figure out what had caused it.

The disaster seemed to have been entirely natural, as though some godlike presence had plucked it out of thin air and dropped it onto this land. There was no way to investigate it further, and no way to prevent it.

Zhu Ling flipped to a page where the words were still just barely legible and began reading carefully.

When she came across a passage, she furrowed her brow slightly and softly read the words aloud.

A sliver of Su Village's past came into view.

When the great famine first arrived, everything seemed no different from previous years.

Now and then, the old, weak, women, and children starved to death in the fields. Now and then, bodies that had been buried were dug up. The springs and ponds dried up, and the bark and grass roots were picked clean. It was as if the land, too, had died along with the village.

In the face of survival, every pretense of humility and courtesy was stripped away. Bare human nature and the instinct to survive surged like thorny brush. Scrambling, beating, and killing took root on this land.

The moral codes people had made for themselves were cast aside, and one atrocity after another became commonplace amid the chaos.

Granny Su died before the god descended. Starved and delirious, she threw her grandson A-Xi into the pot. When she realized what she'd done, she jumped into a well and died from the fall.

The day after she died, before her body had been buried, the god's body fell into the village.