Thud.
Li Xian collapsed onto the ground with his eyes shut.
By the time he realized something was wrong with his mind, Li Xian could no longer keep his footing. All he could do was use his remaining awareness to shift his weight and make himself fall backward.
The crying stopped abruptly as he hit the ground. Once again, only the burble of flowing water remained in the darkness, as though everything that had just happened had been an illusion.
[What just happened to the streamer?]
[His sanity dropped. He must have been contaminated.]
[That was close. He almost fell into the river.]
[Did he hear something? He covered his ears before he fell. He looked like he was in a lot of pain.]
[Probably heard something. There was nothing unusual about this river during the day, and nobody's explored it at night before. Looks like there's something in there.]
Lin Shiming stared unblinkingly at the screen while his hand kept recording information in his notebook. He never spared the page beneath his hand so much as a glance, yet every word landed precisely on the lines.
After he finished, he looked at the delicate face on the screen. His poised pen shifted, and he wrote down two more words.
Li Xian lay on the ground for only a few seconds. As soon as his vision cleared a little, he hurried away from the eerie riverbank.
[His Mental Value's down to 70. Hitting that number on day one isn't good.]
[There are plenty more places in this instance that'll drain sanity. Hope the streamer can hold out.]
[What could he possibly hold out against? Forget his Mental Value, he's only got 25 HP... Holy shit, why did his HP turn into question marks?!]
[Seriously, streamer, where's your health bar???]
[He looks like an instance boss now... that's hilarious.]
[How can you still be laughing? Do you know what it means when HP turns into question marks?]
[No. What does it mean?]
[There's only one reason a health bar or Mental Value wouldn't display: the player has a corresponding skill, and the system automatically hides the relevant information to protect the privacy of their skills.]
[Which means this newbie was assigned a skill right off the bat! And one related to HP, at that!]
[Just wait. If the streamer makes it to the advanced zone alive, guilds will be fighting over him.]
[He's probably already on a bunch of guilds' candidate lists.]
Unaware that his possession of a skill had already been exposed, Li Xian was on his way back to the village chief's house.
There was actually a sealed square well beside the river, too. Li Xian had glimpsed it during the day and planned to take this opportunity to examine it, but the strange river water had forced him to leave in a hurry.
Li Xian retraced his steps to the village chief's house and reached out to turn the front door handle gently.
The handle did not budge.
The door was locked.
The chat was dumbstruck.
[The village chief locked the door when he came back??]
[He's screwed now!!]
[Spending the night outside in this village is pretty much a death sentence, right?]
[Even if the streamer survives, how's he going to explain it when he sees the chief tomorrow? Say he was sleepwalking last night?]
[I told you he shouldn't go out at night. He's gotten himself killed...]
Before the chat could finish, Li Xian calmly followed the wall through the darkness until he found his room. He pushed open the window he had left ajar, swung a leg over the sill, and climbed inside.
[...]
[You left the window open?!]
This time, Li Xian locked the window properly, then smiled out through it.
[Huh? Who's the streamer smiling at?]
[Yeah, there's nobody outside the window.]
[If he knew the window was open, why didn't he use it in the first place? Why go out of his way to try the door handle?]
[Do you think he might be... smiling at the stream?]
[...]
[Holy shit, was he messing with us on purpose?!]
Regardless of what the chat thought, Li Xian had already lain down on the bed and closed his eyes.
His trip outside had left a trace of the night chill clinging to Li Xian, so he wrapped the quilt a little more tightly around himself.
Having his drowsiness interrupted twice in a row had taken something of a toll on Li Xian's sleep.
But he knew that circumstances like these made it all the more important to stay rested. Li Xian closed his eyes, regulated his breathing, and patiently waited for sleep to come.
After all the night's commotion, little time remained for sleep. Li Xian felt as though he had only just drifted off when daylight arrived.
A clamor of voices came from outside.
He opened the door and found Zhao Fengyi and Qian Xin pacing in the corridor, as if trying to confirm something.
When Zhao Fengyi saw Li Xian open his door, he first let out a relieved breath, then turned a grim gaze toward Wang Ping's room.
Clearly, both men had heard the disturbance last night but were unsure who had died.
"Let's wait for the others," Zhao Fengyi said.
Within a few minutes, everyone had gathered outside Wang Ping's door.
Li Hongqiang broke the silence first. He muttered, "Fuck," seemingly to bolster his courage, then walked over to the door.
The wooden door was unlocked and swung open with a light push.
There was no body inside, but everyone's expression was much the same as if they had seen one.
Li Xian looked through the wide-open doorway and saw bloodstains all over the room.
Blood stretched from the bed to the floor, with plenty of droplets spattered across the walls as well. Yet there was no corpse anywhere in the room, only scattered chunks of bloody flesh on the ground.
Zhao Fengyi and Qian Xin remained fairly composed, taking the scene in stride. The three newcomers, Song Qingzhang, Xu Yao, and Li Hongqiang, looked considerably worse.
Xu Yao began retching uncontrollably at the sight. Li Hongqiang forced himself to take another couple of looks inside, then quickly backed away from the doorway, his face white.
Creak-
The iron door at the end of the corridor opened.
The village chief walked over to them with an entirely ordinary expression, as though he had not noticed the blood in the room at all. He even asked, "Is something wrong?"
"Ha ha... no, nothing at all..." Qian Xin hurriedly waved his hands with an ingratiating smile.
"Good."
"Go get your breakfast."
Still dazed, they followed the village chief to somewhere resembling a dining hall. Although it was called breakfast, each person received only a single steamed bun, without even a bowl of congee.
The villagers in the dining hall looked perfectly normal, nothing like they had when they charged over to seize the bride. They even complained about breakfast like ordinary people.
"Steamed buns again? Buns in the morning, buns at night. We're going to starve!"
"These are difficult times. Bear with it. We've got no other food left. That's why we started handing it out together like this."
The group strained their ears to catch the villagers' conversations while struggling through the buns in their hands.
It was not that they tasted bad. Everyone had been thirsty all night and had not touched a drop of water since getting up. Eating steamed buns now was torture, the food wringing the last traces of moisture from their mouths.
But after hearing the villagers' complaints, they feared causing trouble and did not dare leave any of their buns uneaten. By the time breakfast ended, none of them looked well.
Song Qingzhang was unbearably thirsty. Once he finished his bun, he cautiously asked a nearby villager where they could draw water. The villager readily answered and even offered them a warning:
"The well's directly south of the village. We line up there every day to draw water. But don't get lazy. Any water you don't finish that day has to be poured out, and you have to draw fresh water the next day."
They hastily thanked him and immediately set off toward the south side of the village.
On the way, Xu Yao asked in a trembling voice, "W-Wang Ping's just dead, then?"
"What else? His room was a mess. It'd be scarier if he were alive," Qian Xin replied from beside her.
"Will the village chief come for us tonight, then...?" Xu Yao was close to tears.
Song Qingzhang rubbed the goose bumps on his skin. "After the screams woke me up last night, I heard knocking sounds for a while... hey, man, what do you think that was?"
Li Xian had his head lowered, lost in thought. Only when he noticed Song Qingzhang looking at him did he realize the question was directed at him.
"Probably the village chief chopping up the body with an axe."
"Really? Why?"
"The village chief came to see me with an axe last night."
"Oh, so that's... wait, you saw the village chief last night?!"
Song Qingzhang's startled outburst drew everyone's attention to Li Xian.
Qian Xin urged him impatiently, "The village chief came for you?! Tell us how you survived!"
"The chief came up to the window outside my room carrying an axe, as if he was about to chop someone up. When he saw I was awake, he asked me a question."
Under everyone's expectant gazes, Li Xian recounted what had happened the night before.
"I see... so you suspect Wang Ping was hacked to death with an axe..." Zhao Fengyi looked thoughtful after hearing Li Xian's account. "So the village chief attacks outsiders, and the way to survive is to tell him we'll help him?"
"But why is the village chief so wary of outsiders in the first place?"
Before you continue