"Looks like what happened last night wasn't a hallucination." Fang Rui pointed at a dark red spot on the red wardrobe. "Look here. Blood oxidizes and darkens over time. Whoever painted this wardrobe must not have known that."
They had tried to cover the bloodstains with red paint, only to expose the truth instead.
The skeleton next door had already given them plenty of clues, so the players decided not to smash open the heated brick bed again and disturb his slumber.
Although the villagers might be restricted from attacking players during the day, the seven decided to split into groups for the time being, just to be safe.
Xin Xin, Zhou Yang, and Zhao Fu formed one group, tasked with gathering tools they could use for lighting or defense.
Tang Cha, Fang Rui, and Lu Jiancheng formed another group, going around the village to ask for clues about the owner of the house.
Given how strange the villagers were, Fang Rui suggested focusing on the elderly and children.
As for Ji Xun, he chose to wander around the village alone. Perhaps he would discover something.
The village was small, with a river running behind it. The water was deep, and fish could just be made out swimming beneath the surface.
On a sweltering summer day, jumping in for a swim would surely feel wonderful.
"Stay away from that river."
Ji Xun was standing by the river when an elderly voice suddenly sounded behind him.
It belonged to a filthy, disheveled old man. His hair was a tangled mess, and his whole body gave off a foul smell.
When Ji Xun turned around, the old man grinned, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth, and said with an air of mystery, "That river eats people."
Ji Xun raised an eyebrow. "Are you from this village?"
The old man wagged a finger and leaned toward Ji Xun's ear. "People? There are no people in this village."
The stench coming off him made Ji Xun take several steps back.
It smelled even worse than a slaughterhouse.
"Old man, cut the cryptic crap," Ji Xun said. "There are obviously plenty of people in this village."
The old man roared with laughter. "They aren't people..."
"They're monsters wearing human skin."
With that, he hummed an unfamiliar tune and ran toward the village, waving his arms and dancing along.
"Lunatic," Ji Xun scoffed.
As the old man vanished from Ji Xun's sight, the person watching from behind a tree also slipped away.
Ji Xun's smile faded, and he reached into his trench coat pocket.
It was a marble.
He had already noticed someone furtively watching from behind the tree, so when the crazy old man leaned close, he had let him take the opportunity to slip it into his pocket.
He just didn't know whether the watcher had been keeping an eye on him or the crazy old man.
He held the little glass marble between his fingers and examined it against the sunlight.
Ji Xun wasn't human, nor had he ever enjoyed a carefree childhood.
Yet the moment he saw the marble, he recognized it as a human child's toy.
He wondered why he knew that, then attributed the instinctive recognition to that bastard boss brainwashing him into his assigned role.
After all, his few childhood memories consisted of playing a mischievous ghost child in a dilapidated house.
Anything he couldn't figure out, he would just blame on that bastard boss.
At the same time, the mechanical female voice sounded in his ear again.
[Side quest detected. Would you like to share it with your teammates?]
Ji Xun chose to share it.
[Grandpa Jin has been troubled by something lately. Marbles keep appearing outside his door, and unexplained wet patches appear on the ground every night. Please resolve this matter for him.] [Completing this quest can change an NPC's allegiance.]
Grandpa Jin was probably that crazy old man.
Ji Xun crouched down and stared at the water for a while, then fetched a long bamboo pole from the village entrance and thrust it toward the riverbed.
"It's that deep..."
Tang Cha had appeared behind Ji Xun at some point. Seeing what he was doing, he hurriedly said, "Ji Xun, stay away from the river. Students drown at our school every year, and this place..."
Tang Cha shuddered. Although he didn't finish, Ji Xun understood what he meant.
This village was so strange. Who knew what deadly thing might crawl out of the river?
When Tang Cha brought Ji Xun to join the others, they found Fang Rui and the rest happily munching on an ear of corn each.
"Damn, you started eating without us!" Tang Cha squatted down by the wall too, making sure to call out, "Ji Xun, come have some."
Ji Xun didn't need to eat, but to avoid unnecessary trouble, he joined them in gnawing on corn.
With lunch taken care of, Fang Rui pulled out her little notebook again. "Let's talk about what everyone found this morning."
"We found a flashlight," Zhou Yang said. "There were plenty of candles, too."
Zhao Fu continued, "We found some farming tools, but I think something's wrong."
Zhao Fu had always kept a low profile and rarely offered his opinions.
So when he said there was something wrong with the farming tools, all the players turned to look at the pile.
Ji Xun followed Zhao Fu's gaze. Several tools, including hoes and shovels, lay at his feet.
Every one of them was covered in rust, and some even had rotten wooden handles.
Other than that, they looked no different from ordinary farming tools.
The players all turned back to Zhao Fu, waiting for him to explain.
"There's nothing wrong with the tools themselves, but it's strange that they're in such bad shape. For example, the shovel we used to dig into the brick bed last night was falling apart because no one had lived in that house for a long time. But why are the shovels we found in the villagers' homes just as worn out?" Zhao Fu paused. "I come from a farming family. Farming tools are important to farmers, just like pens are to students. And it isn't just these few tools. I took a quick look, and the tools in every courtyard in this village are just as dilapidated, as though they're hardly ever used."
Lu Jiancheng rubbed his chin. "Now that you mention it, that really is strange. Something felt off when I went to pick the corn. Thinking back, the corn and vegetables in the fields were all overripe and pecked to pieces by birds, but no one had harvested them."
When they entered the village, they had been so relieved to have survived that they hadn't noticed the farmland out front.
Now that they thought about it, the villagers had only started working after spotting them. Some had even begun harvesting rice that wasn't ripe yet.
Ji Xun chuckled. "If the villagers aren't farming to feed themselves, then why are they doing it?"
Tang Cha looked baffled. "Why?"
"To keep outsiders from getting suspicious, of course," Fang Rui replied with a cold laugh. "The instance's background introduction mentioned that this village is cut off from the world. The villagers don't trade with the outside world. If they didn't grow crops either, anyone who saw the place would know something was wrong."
"But Fang Rui," Tang Cha said, "you just said the villagers don't interact with the outside world. So why would there be any outsiders?"
Ji Xun's gaze swept over his teammates one by one. "Aren't we outsiders?"
Perhaps there were many other lost travelers who unknowingly stepped into this little village and received a warm welcome from its residents.
Then, step by step, they walked toward their deaths.
Before you continue