The four lines of verse that appeared this time were scrawled in a haphazard hand, with several characters even smeared by ink. The panic behind them seemed to leap right off the page.
"Do two people not share a room?" Qi Si narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips, mulling over the meaning behind the verse.
The two of them couldn't stay in the same room.
There were six guest rooms. Not counting the Tattooed Woman, who was already close to death, there were exactly enough for each remaining player to have one.
There could hardly be any suspense.
Things had gone too smoothly, and coupled with the note Zhou Yilin had passed him, it all seemed extremely suspicious.
But Qi Si didn't think it was worth worrying about.
He already had a theory about how to solve this instance, and desperately needed a death to test it. The arrival of certain events was exactly what he'd been hoping for.
Danger and opportunity went hand in hand. Qi Si had never feared taking risks or gambling. If he won, he'd make a fortune; if he lost, he'd merely die.
It was completely dark now. The moonless sky was pitch-black, and not a single living thing could be seen.
After an unknown amount of time, faint sobbing drifted over from the distance. It was soft and lingering, mournful and haunting, stirring a trace of sadness in anyone who heard it.
Qi Si listened for a while before patiently asking, "Why are you crying?"
There was no answer.
In the darkness, where he hadn't been able to see his hand in front of his face, scattered points of yellow light suddenly appeared. A cold wind blew through, stealing the warmth from his body. The chill that remained dispelled his drowsiness in an instant.
The sobbing had clearly been far away, as though it came from a corner of the courtyard. Now it had drawn close in an instant, coming unmistakably from beneath the bed.
Qi Si lowered his eyes and looked under the bed.
A ghastly hand, thin and shriveled like a chicken's foot, reached out from the shadows beneath the bed and clutched the edge. Bracing itself, it hauled out a skeletal body inch by inch.
...Sorry to bother you.
Without hesitation, Qi Si pulled a spike from his wristband and drove it into the blue-veined joint of the ghost hand.
The sobbing suddenly rose in pitch. The ghost hand cried out in pain and fell straight to the floor.
[Side Quest Refreshed]
[Side Quest (Mandatory): Repel the Starving Ghost]
Two lines of silvery-white text appeared on the system interface, especially vivid against the darkness.
Qi Si looked up at the window.
In the eerie glow, hunched, gaunt silhouettes were reflected in the dusty window lattice, their blurred edges merging into a single mass.
Something had been drawn over by the ghost beneath the bed's sobbing. It must have been the "Starved Ghost" mentioned in the prompt.
Qi Si held his breath. In the silence, the wind howling against the glass was particularly grating.
A chorus of "crunch, crunch" sounds rose and fell, like beasts chewing the bones of their prey, or the heavy feet of some enormous creature crushing hardwood underfoot.
The things outside seemed to have chosen their target. Sounds from every direction closed in on the room where Qi Si was staying.
"Knock, knock, knock."
The window was tapped softly. A moment later came a "crash"—the spot that had been struck broke open, and cracks rippled across the glass like cicada wings.
Qi Si saw two hands squeeze through the hole into the room.
They were different sizes, and must have belonged to different beings, but both had skin as withered as tree bark, far beyond anything a living person could possess.
A ring of flesh-colored slime surrounded the hands, its fine red threads connecting to skin and flesh, as if it were an extension of their limbs.
Like tentacles, it was extremely malleable. Pressed through the hole in the window, it reshaped itself to fit, and now crept inch by inch toward Qi Si. In the cramped guest room, it was barely a yard from the bed.
[Precondition Hint: The blood-soaked truth lies buried in the villagers' scattered remarks. Restore the truth behind their words and repeat it at the right moment, and the villagers will be unable to harm you.]
The precondition hint gleamed on the system interface. Qi Si reached for the Tape Recorder he had hidden beneath his pillow and pressed play.
A-Xi's crisp voice rang out in the night, reciting the words without a single stumble:
[When the harvest fails, when famine strikes, without rice or flour, we suffer calamity.]
[Outside the Ancestral Hall, beside the locust tree, a great pot is set up to cook meat.]
The recording had blurred the recitation, but mixed with the endless night wind, the distorted sound seemed perfectly natural.
...You want me to solve a riddle, so I'll just throw the riddle back at you. What are you going to do about that?
Qi Si turned the volume knob. The recitation grew louder and louder, drowning out the sobbing beneath the bed within seconds and filling the entire room.
The two ghost hands wedged in the window hole stopped, as if trying to make sense of the words and deciding whether to come any farther.
Immediately after the first song, a second nursery rhyme played from the recorder in the same singsong voice, starkly clear in the silence.
[Big sister and little brother go to Grandma's house. Children have tender flesh and brittle bones, and Grandma is so hungry she drools.]
[At night, Big sister hears a crunching sound and asks Grandma what she's eating. Grandma says she's eating dried fava beans.]
[The next day, little brother is gone. Big sister searches and searches, and finds a pile of broken bones in the corner.]
The nursery rhyme, which had sounded sinister in daylight, somehow felt almost lively in the dark.
It was unmistakably A-Xi's voice, and it began to repeat over and over.
[When the harvest fails, when famine strikes...]
At last, the ghost hand made up its mind. It slid back through the window hole like a loach and vanished beyond the continuous shadows outside in a matter of seconds, as though it had never been there.
The dim yellow lights swayed away like lanterns. The hunched ghostly figures lined up by the window scattered as well, disappearing into the deeper darkness.
[Side Quest Complete]
Qi Si glanced at the system interface and touched the Pocket Watch of Fate in his pocket, feeling a little restless.
Out of nowhere, he asked, "Hey, are you just going to leave?"
As soon as he spoke, the ghost hand and ghost shadows that had retreated came back.
The slimy, pus-covered ghost hand squeezed through the window hole again. A ghost shadow pressed its face against the window, its bloodshot eyeball almost stuck to the glass as it rolled toward the room.
Qi Si gripped the cold Pocket Watch of Fate and looked straight into that eye. "Do you have any requests, or any unfinished business? You can tell me. Maybe we can make a deal..."
The only answer was a loud crash. The entire window shattered across the floor in an instant.
A rustling sound set off alarm bells, and the thick stench of blood made him want to retch. Qi Si's eyelid twitched. He immediately raised the recorder high and turned the volume all the way up.
But perhaps because he'd just done something so suicidal, the recording had no effect this time. It didn't even make the things outside the room pause.
It was too late. Countless ghost shadows surged through the gaping window and rushed at him...
At the last second, Qi Si turned the gear on the Pocket Watch of Fate.
[The "Rewind Time by One Minute" effect has been activated. This effect cannot be activated again in this instance.]
The cold electronic voice rang through the air. Qi Si held his breath and watched through narrowed eyes as the ghost shadows staggered backward out the window in a ludicrous, lurching motion.
The shattered glass rose from the floor along its previous path and reassembled in the frame, forming an intact window with only a small hole in it.
The slime on the ground flew back to the ghost hand. Once it had reattached itself to the skin, the hand withdrew through the hole and out of the room.
Qi Si had used up his one chance to use the Pocket Watch of Fate in this instance. He didn't dare act recklessly again.
He sat perfectly still until time had fully rewound to one minute earlier.
[When the harvest fails, when famine strikes...]
The nursery rhyme, which had already played twice, rang out brightly beside his ear.
Qi Si listened listlessly to the system's [Side Quest Complete] notification and thought, bored, Can't you take a joke? So you really can't communicate with ghosts. What a tedious design...
Perhaps to placate his resentment, new text appeared the next second.
[Congratulations! You have obtained the clue "Starved Ghost with Lingering Resentment."]
[Did they really starve to death? Did they deserve what happened to them, or was it the beginning of another feast of sin?]
[The crowds coming and going, the stacks of money piled high—who devoured their flesh and blood?]
[The ancestral halls, old and new, the densely packed memorial tablets—who suppresses their souls?]
Qi Si narrowed his eyes when he saw the last line.
He suddenly knew how to force a clue out of Granny Su.
In the middle of the night, amid the faint rustling, Zhu Ling opened her eyes.
Feeling Zhou Yilin trembling beside her, she whispered, "Yilin, are you still awake?"
"Sister Zhu, I'm scared..." The girl's voice was mixed with the "clack, clack" of her chattering teeth. Her fear sounded painfully real. "Brother Yang... is he going to die?"
"Yilin, don't be afraid." Zhu Ling put an arm around her and patted her back reassuringly. "You're the only one who knows, besides me. And our intention was to finish the instance as soon as possible and let more people survive, wasn't it?"
"To clear the final instance, sacrifices are inevitable. All we can do is what the Nine Provinces Guild called for: remember those who died and carry their hopes with us as we keep moving forward."
Zhu Ling spoke with righteous conviction. A fountain pen-shaped item rested in her pocket, its presence unmistakable.
[Name: Unremarkable Fountain Pen]
[Type: Item]
[Effect: Write strokes]
[Note: Some people use it to record stories; others use it to weave lies.]
Zhou Yilin's decision to stay at the residence had been at her suggestion.
The clues written in the Travel Guide were ambiguous. Change a single stroke, and the information conveyed could be completely different.
Chang Xu had already missed his chance to build up his prestige, while Zhao Feng hadn't made much of an impression, and Zhang Licai clearly had no mind of his own...
As long as Yang Yundong died during the night, the balance of power would tip entirely in her favor. With four lives in her hands, what would stop her from clearing the instance?
Even if Yang Yundong survived, it wouldn't matter. He was alone and had no evidence. All he could do was swallow his grievances and keep waiting to die.
Sorry, but I don't have any other choice. I just want to survive... Zhu Ling silently apologized in her heart.
She didn't consider herself a bad person. In the previous two instances, she had used her knowledge to save plenty of players. But this instance was different.
This was her third instance, and with the death rate as high as eighty percent, she had to use extraordinary measures to be safe.
In the darkness, Zhu Ling failed to notice the girl beside her curling her lips into a mocking, playful smile.
As the pocket watch's hands pointed to six o'clock, Qi Si woke naturally.
The morning sunlight slanted through the windows, listlessly casting a milky-white sheen over every surface in the room.
Making use of the light, Qi Si looked beneath the bed, but saw nothing. The ghost hand and sobbing from last night seemed like nothing more than a nightmare.
He took the Travel Guide and went outside, sweeping his gaze over every part of the courtyard.
The Tattooed Woman had died after dinner the previous day. Her body had been left in the corner, and now only a puddle of slime remained.
Even if no one else suffered any losses, only six players remained. In just two days, nearly half their number had been lost. The remaining three days would only be more dangerous.
Qi Si went straight to Yang Yundong's room and knocked twice, neither too hard nor too softly.
"Just a moment!" came a muffled reply from inside. Then silence swallowed it, like a stone sinking into the sea.
Qi Si waited patiently. Five minutes later, the door opened from within.
The smell of blood hit him full in the face and flooded his nostrils.
Yang Yundong was covered in blood. His left arm seemed to have been torn off cleanly along with his shoulder, taking an entire sleeve of his military coat with it.
White bone was faintly visible through the ragged, bloody end.
"The night before last, I promised them meat. They came last night," Yang Yundong said, his eyes sunken but his voice calm. "At least injuries from the instance don't carry over. It should all be over in two or three days."
Qi Si studied the man's wound and said coolly, "Constant pain and blood loss could put you into shock. Even with strong willpower, endorphins could still affect your thinking and judgment. With an injury like that, you won't survive until the instance ends."
"I know." Yang Yundong exhaled, a look of relief crossing his features. "This is my third instance..."
The third instance. An eighty percent death rate. The dangers arrived for no apparent reason, and even the strong could die mysteriously. It was as if the Eerie Game deliberately sought to reduce the average strength of the players and keep certain people from crossing the threshold...
After a long silence, Qi Si gave a bitter smile. "Brother Yang, last night we each had a room to ourselves, yet we both ran into danger. Do you think there's a chance our clues were wrong?"
"Zhou Yilin seemed to be trying to warn me yesterday, but I didn't take her hint seriously..."
The young man lowered his head, showing just the right amount of frustration and remorse, as if he felt terribly guilty about Yang Yundong's injuries.
Yang Yundong looked away and furrowed his brow as he recalled, "My clue was: 'Two people must not share a room. Enter the Ancestral Hall, never stay alone. Do not mourn the newly dead ghost; if sin has been expiated, why weep?' Are you saying that clue was false?"
Qi Si suddenly lifted his eyes and gave a chilly smile. "Changing a single stroke isn't difficult for someone with an item."
I'm scheduled to have surgery the day after tomorrow morning. We won't know for sure whether it's benign or malignant until afterward, when they send the thing they remove for further testing. For now, it doesn't look like I'll die, and everything's been going smoothly. That's a blessing in disguise...
Before you continue