Peach Haven Village (I)

An asphalt road stretched ahead, with a pavilion by the roadside. Before Ding Shi could get a clear look at the surroundings, he heard a man's voice say, "More people have arrived."

Ding Shi followed the voice and first saw a slender, refined-looking man wearing gold-rimmed glasses. Two people stood beside him, a man and a woman. The woman was around thirty, pretty but not exceptionally so. The man was in his twenties and had a crew cut.

The crew-cut man said, "Brother, that's the spawn point over there. Don't crowd anyone."

Ding Shi stepped into the pavilion. "What are we supposed to do?"

The woman replied, "I don't know." She had arrived only ten seconds before Ding Shi.

Ita World had given everyone twenty hours to rest, effectively soothing their emotions and allowing them to prepare themselves mentally, so they would not be overwhelmed the moment they entered a dungeon. From this alone, Ita World was fairly friendly.

At 7:59, another tall, skinny man spawned in. After steadying himself, he looked at the others. "Hello, is this a random team for a dungeon?"

Before anyone could answer, the man with glasses said, "A minibus is coming."

A minibus appeared around the bend in the road and headed toward the pavilion. A sign sat on the front passenger seat, reading: Peach Haven County—Peach Haven Village.

The tall, skinny man said, "Peach Haven Village should be where we're headed, right?"

The crew-cut man answered, "Probably."

The tall, skinny man said, "What do you think? Could the driver and conductor be terrifying corpses?"

Everyone froze. The tall, skinny man asked in return, "Haven't you read horror novels? Players might have to survive while being hunted by ghosts, monsters, and all sorts of disgusting things. Based on the usual script, I'd guess Peach Haven Village has already been wiped out and is now a ghost village, but the villagers don't know it. We'll have to stay in the homes of villagers whose bodies are rotting, constantly guarding against being killed by ghost villagers. We can only clear the dungeon and leave Peach Haven Village by surviving for a certain amount of time or completing the main quest."

The others looked at one another. After observing their baffled expressions for a while, the tall, skinny man said, "Remember a few rules: don't eat meat dishes, don't stay outside overnight, and don't casually agree to the villagers' requests."

The minibus stopped by the pavilion and its doors opened. After what the tall, skinny man had said, no one could quite make themselves move. He was not in a hurry. According to novel conventions, someone who did not take him seriously would go test the waters at a time like this.

Ding Shi took the first step, climbed aboard, and ducked into the minibus. There was only a driver inside, a cigarette dangling from his mouth as he gazed leisurely ahead. When he saw Ding Shi, he lifted his head in greeting. Ding Shi pointed at the front passenger seat. "Can I sit here?"

The driver said, "Sure."

Ding Shi sat down. The others boarded as well, and after the driver glanced at the pavilion and saw no one left behind, he pulled away.

Ding Shi noticed that it was a seventy-percent-new manual diesel minibus. If he remembered correctly, this was a typical county-and-town minibus from the late 1980s to early 1990s. Combined with the crude asphalt road and the sign at the mountain pass declaring the entire mountain closed off, he could basically confirm that this dungeon's timeline was around the 1990s.

Once the minibus was on the road, the tall, skinny man looked around and said, "Meeting is fate. Let's introduce ourselves. My name is Li Si."

Li Si looked at the man with glasses. The man blinked. "Then can I be Zhang San?"

Li Si knew the man with glasses had misunderstood and was about to explain when Ding Shi said, "Hello, everyone. My name is Wang Wu."

Is that some kind of rule? The crew-cut man followed up, "Hello, everyone. I'm Zhao Liu."

The woman said, "Hello, everyone. I'm Sun Qi."

Li Si still wanted to explain, but Sun Qi said, "Brother Li Si, what are players, and what is a dungeon? Could you tell us?"

Seeing all those eager, inquisitive eyes, Li Si immediately got interested. Drawing on his experience of browsing a hundred horror novels, he said, "We're players. As for dungeons, they come in all kinds, but generally speaking, there's always a BOSS. Since our destination is a village, there's a ninety-percent chance Peach Haven Village is an isolated mountain village. One type is a reflection of reality—for example, the village might have many trafficked women or many murdered baby girls. Another type is supernatural horror, like what I mentioned earlier, where everyone in the village is already dead. Another type involves ritual sacrifices, where the villagers offer us to some evil god as sacrifices. Another type..."

Ding Shi listened at first, but when Li Si said Peach Haven Village was an isolated mountain village, he stopped paying attention to Li Si's nonsense and instead began chatting with the driver.

Although this asphalt road had been built crudely, with nothing but a layer of asphalt on top that would melt in summer, it still showed that Peach Haven Village was not isolated.

The front and rear seats of the minibus were spaced far apart, so their conversations did not interfere with one another. The driver was not much of a talker, answering only intermittently, but Ding Shi still gained a basic understanding of Peach Haven Village.

Peach Haven Village had over a hundred households. It backed onto the mountains and faced the plains, relying mainly on rice and tobacco farming. Its economy was no worse than that of other villages, and the people seen riding Jialing motorcycles on the road were usually villagers from Peach Haven Village.

However, Li Si had gotten one thing right. There would be a ritual in Peach Haven Village seven days later. The driver did not know the details, because the villagers never discussed the ritual with outsiders. He only knew that Peach Haven Village would be sealed off for one day on the day of the ritual.

Half an hour later, the minibus slowly came to a stop at the entrance to Peach Haven Village.

The group got off one after another. There was a roughly built waiting shelter where they disembarked, with several people standing and sitting inside.

An old man around sixty, dressed in blue and leaning on a cane with one hand, came to greet them. Once everyone had gathered before him, he introduced himself. "I'm the village chief of Peach Haven Village. You're students from Ita University, right?"

As soon as the village chief spoke, everyone received a system message:

You are a folklore major at Ita University. To complete your graduation thesis, you have come to Peach Haven Village to take part in its ritual.

Main mission: Participate in the ritual.

Method of leaving the dungeon: At 8:00 a.m. on the eighth day, take the minibus away.

Danger level: Extremely low.

Main quest: Obtain an identity.

Ding Shi was the first to answer. "Yes."

The village chief nodded. First, he welcomed them on behalf of the village to this year's ritual. Outsiders had originally not been allowed to participate, but the folklore professor was his cousin. In order to let the outside world better understand Peach Haven Village, he had pushed through all objections and agreed to let the students take part. However, the rules could not be broken, so Ding Shi and the others had to obtain identities within the village before they could participate.

The waiting shelter was large, and quite a few people were sitting inside. The village chief gestured for them to look to the left. A woman in red sat there, her head turned as she watched children playing in the bamboo grove outside the shelter.

The village chief called out, "Haitang."

"Coming!" The woman in red, Haitang, turned around. The sight instantly dazzled Ding Shi. She was eighteen, with bright eyes, pearly teeth, and an innocent, natural beauty.

After seeing so many Fugui peonies in modern cities, this wild chrysanthemum from the countryside left everyone present dazed for a moment. Haitang gave them a sweet smile, then shyly tilted her head away, avoiding their gazes.