Carnivore (17): Ancestral Hall

The players came out of their rooms one after another. Most had dark circles under their eyes and looked unwell, but none had any new injuries.

The situation was clear. The previous night, only Qi Si and Yang Yundong had each stayed in a room alone; everyone else had paired up, just as they had on the first night.

When Zhou Yilin saw Yang Yundong with his left arm severed and half his body covered in blood, she wiped at the corners of her eyes again. She couldn't manage a complete sentence and looked like a frightened bird.

Yang Yundong pressed his right hand against the wound on his left arm, looked around at the four players who had come out after him, and asked, "Did anything happen to you last night?"

The players exchanged glances.

"No. We all ate God Meat. What could have happened?"

"I slept straight through the night."

Everyone wore an appropriately puzzled expression. There wasn't the slightest sign of deception.

Yang Yundong sighed. "Last night, Chang Xu and I both encountered ghosts. If I hadn't built up a few life-saving items, I probably wouldn't have made it to today."

He paused, then continued, "Let's compare the contents of our Travel Guides. I suspect we each got different clues."

Perhaps Yang Yundong's wound was too gruesome, or perhaps his tone left no room for argument. No one objected this time. They all went back to their rooms to get their Travel Guides.

Qi Si stood beside Yang Yundong and collected the Travel Guides one by one.

On the title page of the newly collected guides, four lines of poetry had been written in bold, sweeping strokes:

[One person must not lodge alone; enter the ancestral hall, but never stay by yourself.]

[Do not mourn the newly dead ghost; with your sins erased, why weep?]

The difference between "one person" and "two people" was only a single character, yet it led to completely different outcomes.

If Qi Si hadn't used the Tape Recorder to break through the predicament in time, and had the Pocket Watch of Fate not provided a safety net, the players' side would likely have lost another member.

Zhang Licai slapped his palm and cursed, "That extra stroke on the 'two' was probably added later. Which bastard did something so rotten?"

Zhao Feng looked at Yang Yundong and asked with a frown, "Are you saying someone among us tampered with it?"

The answer was obvious, but without Qi Si's go-ahead, Zhao Feng had no intention of backing Yang Yundong. Qi Si, meanwhile, didn't want to make things too clear too soon.

Yang Yundong's gaze swept over Zhou Yilin and Zhu Ling, lingering noticeably longer on Zhu Ling.

Zhu Ling noticed and gave a bitter smile. "It could be a false clue left by the Eerie Game to sow discord. I saw people on the forums talking about this a few days ago. They said some instances deliberately provide misleading information..."

Zhang Licai might have been genuinely stupid or just pretending. He muttered under his breath, "Come on. If even clues written in black and white can be fake, how are we supposed to keep playing this game?"

In the end, he didn't question Zhu Ling, even though something was clearly wrong with her.

Yang Yundong was visibly on his way to dying. Offending another powerful-looking ally for the sake of a dying man wasn't worth it.

At that moment, Yang Yundong was utterly alone.

"Breakfast is ready! Come and eat!" Granny Su's call interrupted the discussion.

It was time for breakfast.

The players had little appetite. Each of them took a few bites of a steamed bun before leaving the table.

Seeing the others leave, Qi Si lost interest in eating too. He rose and headed for the door.

Yang Yundong stood alone by the doorway. The shadow of his one remaining arm stretched long beneath the morning sun, wavering as if it might fall apart.

Qi Si approached at an unhurried pace and said with a smile, "Brother Yang, let's work together."

He couldn't understand why anyone would choose to be a good person when it brought them nothing but trouble. But as long as their interests didn't conflict, he didn't dislike people like Yang Yundong.

On the contrary, he was happy to introduce a few unexpected twists into an otherwise unchanging plan, just to see how these righteous people chose to act and what became of them. It would help him refine his disguises and schemes in the future.

Now, as Yang Yundong scrutinized him like an eagle, Qi Si met his gaze without flinching. "You should have noticed. We have three days left, and there are only six of us. Some people are probably already planning to kill other players to trigger the Minimum Death Quota mechanism."

"As the de facto leader, you're bound to be the first target. The opportunists want to create the chaos they're hoping for, so they'll try to get rid of you first, since you're the one keeping things under control. And, of course, there's me, whose motives are hard to read."

"This time, you and I got away by sheer luck. Next time, I doubt we'll be so fortunate."

He used their shared predicament to foster a sense of solidarity and paint a picture of isolation. A few accepted facts, combined with a little exaggeration, could easily convince someone.

Yang Yundong was silent for two seconds before asking, "If I work with you, then what? We exclude the other players first, and then you and Zhao Feng restrain me?"

Qi Si showed no embarrassment at being seen through. Instead, he beamed. "As expected of Brother Yang. Looks like you're not completely clueless about schemes."

"But so what? If we work together and end the instance early, at least four people can survive. Survival always comes first. Does the method really matter that much?"

Yang Yundong said in a low voice, "I can't see through you, but I can tell you have no respect for social norms or morality, and no sense of decency or self-awareness. Someone like you surviving would be dangerous for the other players."

Qi Si didn't argue. He only looked at him with an almost-smile. "Brother Yang, let me ask you something. Suppose there were a young person with a terminal illness in Eagle County across the ocean, and they needed all your organs to be saved. Would you be willing?"

Yang Yundong suddenly looked up and stared into Qi Si's eyes, seemingly trying to determine what lay behind the question.

Qi Si's smile remained unchanged. "If your answer is no, what gives you the right to demand that I give up my chance to survive for the sake of some so-called moral code? If your answer is yes, why don't you go die for me right now?"

"Or are you just a boring utilitarian, weighing each person's worth by their country, age, education, health, and other factors before deciding whether they should be sacrificed? Or are you just like me, someone who decides whether to save or kill based on personal preference?"

Before undergoing targeted training in critical thinking, few people could untangle a mess of issues and examine each one on its own merits.

Logical traps like loaded premises, ad hominem attacks, and false dilemmas worked time and again on most people.

As the questions kept coming, Yang Yundong's expression grew darker and darker. He had clearly been drawn into the paradox Qi Si had carefully woven.

Qi Si counted on his fingers, speaking as if he were going over the books. "Of course, I know you've already decided I'm your enemy, so you probably won't believe the facts I've laid out. Then let's deal with the matter at hand. I can offer you a few workable options."

"First, you kill me in the name of ridding the world of evil, then die under the procedural justice of a group verdict. Zhao Feng is my ally, so he'll inevitably be eliminated afterward."

"Second, you take Zhu Ling down with you. The result will be much the same. I guarantee I'll wipe out her whole alliance. Of the three left, if we're lucky, all of them survive; if we're not, I survive."

"Third, you take the most innocent one, Zhang Licai, with you. That leaves exactly four people: two allied groups, reaching a Nash equilibrium. We all survive together."

Qi Si tilted his head and delivered his conclusion with the air of someone earnestly analyzing the situation. Whether it was true or not was anyone's guess. "By utilitarian principles, the third option gives us the best return. Don't you agree?"

Yang Yundong said coldly, "Slaughter Style players who kill others for their own benefit deserve to die."

"Slaughter Style" was a broad term for players with antisocial tendencies who believed absolutely in zero-sum thinking. Instead of seeking mutual benefit through cooperation, they preferred to kill other players for greater rewards.

Qi Si knew that such labels were nothing more than human inventions. Killing one person made you a criminal; killing millions made you a god.

He smiled, his eyes curving. "But life is precious, isn't it? You're no god. What gives you the right to judge whether people's choices are right or wrong, good or evil?"

Yang Yundong said, "A murderer should pay with his life. Anyone who harms others should face retribution, too."

Qi Si seemed not to have heard him. Drawing out his words, he asked slowly, "So, what's your choice?"

Before long, the players gathered outside the courtyard.

The crisis of trust had already begun, but everyone tacitly kept silent about it.

Yang Yundong still led the way. The six players followed the directions on the map toward the Ancestral Hall.

Faint footprints marked the village's muddy paths, dotted with bloodstains like flecks of fresh paint.

The sun had yet to rise fully above the rooftops. Beneath the pale sky, dust billowed over the dirt road.

The houses on either side were in a wretched state. The farther they went, the more dilapidated and aged everything became. Weeds swallowed the crumbling mud walls, and broken bricks and tiles lay scattered in the dirt.

The players rounded a locust tree and stopped in front of a building.

They had reached the Ancestral Hall.

Su Village's Ancestral Hall was tall and beautiful. Two bright red lanterns hung beneath the eaves, their vivid color at odds with the ruined village.

The doorposts and window lattices were intricately carved. Even the paint looked new, yet from a distance the place seemed cold and sinister.

Zhu Ling frowned. "The feng shui here is strange. A locust tree in front of the hall invites ghosts, and the doors face east and west, so vengeful spirits can't leave. It looks like this place is meant to suppress something."

Zhang Licai shuddered. "Miss, don't scare me. I don't know anything about feng shui..."

While the two of them chatted, Qi Si had already gone to stand beside Yang Yundong and used a piece of wire to pick the lock on the door knocker.

He reached out to pull open the Ancestral Hall's vermilion doors, expecting to have to put some effort into it. But the moment he tugged at the knocker, the door swung open by itself.

As though the wind had blown it open.

A smile curled at the corner of Qi Si's mouth as he made a rather unfunny joke. "I didn't expect them to be so welcoming. They can't wait to invite us inside."

Yang Yundong's face had turned the ashen gray of dirt from blood loss. His body swayed slightly, but he still showed no obvious signs of fatigue.

He glanced coolly at Qi Si, then turned his gaze ahead and stepped over the threshold.

Qi Si pressed his lips together and followed close behind.

The Ancestral Hall's interior made them intensely uncomfortable. It was as if countless eyes were watching everyone who entered from every angle, completely unashamed, making their skin crawl.

Behind the incense altar stood densely packed memorial tablets, stacked row upon row. At a glance, there seemed to be dozens, perhaps even hundreds.

There was no idol, nor any sign of anything related to a god. The players exchanged glances, each seeing confusion in the others' eyes.

Qi Si recalled the clue he had obtained the previous night and had a fairly good idea of what was going on.

He noticed a wooden bucket in front of the incense altar. It was the same one Granny Su had carried the day before.

Only a few scraps of meat remained inside. The bucket's rim was covered in a mess of tooth marks. They looked like human bite marks.

The marks varied in size and angle. It was easy to imagine a starving horde of things, neither human nor ghost, lunging at the bucket and tearing at the meat from every direction like beasts, heedless of everything—even biting the wood by mistake.

"Plop."

Something fell to the floor and congealed into a sticky puddle.

Walking right behind Qi Si, Zhang Licai looked up at the sound. When he saw what was above him, he sucked in a sharp breath, a rasping "huh, huh" escaping his throat.

Faces of various sizes were arranged neatly across the ceiling. Their wrinkled skin looked ready to flake away like tree bark at the slightest touch, yet every mouth wore a peaceful smile. In the circumstances, they looked utterly eerie.

Qi Si glanced up, then looked away. His gaze wandered among the tightly packed memorial tablets.

Every tablet began with the surname "Su." They bore different birth years, but all shared the same year of death: without exception, the year the villagers had first begun to transform.

The records in the village history matched the evidence before his eyes. With a sense of certainty, Qi Si took a few steps back and stood by the door. He gave Zhou Yilin, who was also standing there, an innocent, harmless smile.

Zhou Yilin kept her eyes down and cautiously sidled over, making room for him to move around more easily.

They understood one another without a word.