Beginner Uninhabited Village (3)

"At a time like this, who cares whether it's overloaded? Run! Can't you see they're about to get off?" Lu Jiancheng shouted, taking off ahead of the others.

The passengers on the bus crowded against the windows. With the doors already closed, they pounded furiously on the glass, which had begun to crack in places.

Ji Xun touched the long saber at his waist and sighed.

Better run. All I did was entertain the idea, and my current boss already sent me a warning.

[Warning-Player Ji Xun is prohibited from attacking neutral NPCs.]

[Warning-Player Ji Xun, please obey the system rules.]

[Warning-Player Ji Xun, do you not want your salary?! Put your saber away!]

By the final warning, Ji Xun could hear an extraordinary amount of anger in that mechanical voice. He could only put his weapon away with a look of regret.

Fortunately, the passengers had no intention of chasing them. They had barely run any distance before leaving the bus behind.

The pitch-black sky also brightened after they left the bus stop.

Ji Xun could clearly see a village in the distance, wisps of cooking smoke rising above it.

[Welcome, players, to the instance-Uninhabited Village.]

[Instance duration: Three days.]

[Instance background: This is a village isolated from the outside world. Its villagers are charitable, simple, and kind.]

[Main quest: Find at least four villagers (0/4).]

"I was just about to ask-why call a perfectly normal village the Uninhabited Village?" Tang Cha looked puzzled as he pointed at the men working in the fields outside the village entrance. "And aren't those people villagers?"

"It definitely won't be that simple," Ji Xun said.

As a boss in an escape game, Ji Xun was, in a sense, no longer human.

He could distinctly sense the villagers' gazes settling on them.

Dark, clammy, and deeply unsettling.

They knew something was wrong with this village, but they had no other choice.

The man working in the field stopped what he was doing and asked warily, "Who are you? What are you doing in our village?"

Lu Jiancheng stepped forward. "Hey, we came out here to camp, but our bus broke down. Could you let us stay in the village for a night?"

The man was skeptical, mainly because Lu Jiancheng looked fierce and hardly seemed like a decent person.

His gaze swept over the group, then stopped abruptly on Ji Xun. "You look awfully familiar," he said hesitantly.

"Me?"

Ji Xun looked up. Although the various systems sometimes held crossover events, he had never participated in one.

If this NPC thinks I look familiar, could it be part of my character's backstory?

Sure enough, the villager exclaimed delightedly, "I remember now! Aren't you the Ji family's boy? Your dad took you to the city when you were seven. If your looks hadn't stayed the same, I wouldn't have recognized you."

The villagers watching nearby chimed in over one another. "The Ji family's boy? He's grown so much!"

"Now that you mention it, he really does look exactly like he did as a child."

Their stories grew increasingly outlandish. They even dredged up an incident in which a goose had chased young Ji Xun all over the mountain.

Looking helpless, Ji Xun said, "Yes, that's me. You can stop now."

The villager laughed. "Come on into the village. We've been looking after your family's house for you, though I don't know if there's room for all your friends."

Inside the village, houses sprawled in a crisscrossing layout. They seemed to be built in the style of the previous century, with walls still made of rammed earth.

The villager, Uncle Chen, led them to a house and said, "If you need anything for the house, just tell your Uncle Chen. Don't be shy about asking."

Ji Xun thanked him and was the first to push open the door.

The interior was simply laid out, too. It looked like a northern-style home, with a large earthen kang bed in the room.

A picture frame stood on a cabinet, so thickly coated in dust that its original appearance was impossible to make out.

Tang Cha took the frame down and blew hard on it. "Cough, cough, cough! I'm choking!"

He rubbed his eyes, then said in surprise, "Ji Xun, it really is you."

The photograph showed an exceptionally pretty little boy standing beneath a pine tree, looking expressionlessly into the camera.

The boy's irises were large and black. Combined with the remote mountain forest behind him, they made for an unnerving sight.

Fang Rui frowned. "Why is this pine tree black?"

Unlike an ordinary pine, even the tree's needles were black in the photograph, as though it had been scorched by a fire.

Ji Xun took the photograph from Tang Cha.

The boy in the photograph was indeed him. He even remembered it as the employee photo a senior colleague had taken when he first joined the escape system.

"Ji Xun, were you really from this village?" Tang Cha looked bewildered.

"If the game can bring us into this village, how hard could it be to produce a photograph?"

No need to ask. That damned boss definitely supplied it.

"Can all seven of us sleep here?" Zhao Fu glanced at Xin Xin and Fang Rui, looking troubled. "Maybe I should ask to stay at a villager's house. We have girls here, after all."

"No," Ji Xun stopped him. "We know nothing about this village. Splitting up is too risky."

Fang Rui nodded. "And don't forget, this place is called the Uninhabited Village."

Their main quest was to find at least four villagers, but they had already met plenty on their way here, and the (0/4) on the quest panel had not changed at all.

That meant the villagers mentioned in the quest were not the ones they had seen so far. Who knew whether these people were human or ghosts?

The sun sank in the west. Night fell especially early in the village.

For Tang Cha, without electronic devices to pass the time, every second of the night felt endless.

"Why do you think the game chose us?" Tang Cha lay on the kang with his hands behind his head and let out a heavy sigh. "I don't even know whether I'm dead or alive in the real world."

At those words, everyone except Ji Xun stiffened.

Xin Xin and Zhou Yang, in particular, fell silent.

Tang Cha failed to notice the change in their moods. He glanced at Ji Xun, who lay beside him with his eyes half closed and a peaceful expression. "Seriously, Ji Xun? You can actually sleep?"

Ji Xun opened his eyes, a meaningful smile on his face. "Young man, when your life is on the line, you'll understand just how important it is to keep your strength up."

Many escapees had visited his Black Pine Forest, where they had to spend three pleasant days and nights together. Although Ji Xun had a somewhat nasty disposition, he did not enjoy killing, so most escapees successfully lasted all three days. The few who failed had been so intensely anxious that they could not recover their strength, and ended up staying in the Black Pine Forest forever as fertilizer.

Lu Jiancheng nodded in agreement, then sat down heavily on a stool. "This young fellow is right. Squeeze in and get some rest, everyone. I'll keep watch tonight."

Zhao Fu promptly sat down beside him. "I'll join you. Let the youngsters rest."

Earlier, Tang Cha had found an old-fashioned flashlight in the house. The electric lights flickered on and off at night, so this flashlight might be their only source of light.

After handing the flashlight to Lu Jiancheng, Tang Cha lay down beside Ji Xun. They had known each other for barely a day, yet for some reason, he found Ji Xun extremely dependable, and his tension instantly eased.

Half asleep, he sniffed. He kept feeling that a strong smell of blood was coming from beside him, but before Tang Cha could think further, he sank into a deep sleep.