Drawing water

No one could answer that question, any more than they could explain why the village chief had so many empty rooms when he lived alone.

For now, they could only set aside those unsettling inconsistencies.

"Hey, look. Is that the well the village chief meant?" Qian Xin suddenly turned to the others.

Before them stood a well beneath a thatched shelter. Its opening was the usual round shape, unlike the square well by the river.

A rope was wound several times around a wooden shaft mounted beneath the shelter, with an iron hook at its end for attaching a wooden bucket. Turning the handle beside it would lower the bucket. All in all, it looked no different from an ordinary well.

Li Hongqiang took one look and got straight to work. He hooked his bucket onto the rope, lowered it into the well, then cranked it back up.

Everyone watched his movements closely. When he drew his water without incident, they breathed a sigh of relief.

"Looks like it's fine? It's all because of that rain yesterday. Now even looking at water gives me the creeps..." Qian Xin said from the side.

"But we can't just stop drinking water." Zhao Fengyi filled a bucket after Li Hongqiang and answered Qian Xin.

Qian Xin and Xu Yao each filled a bucket with their hearts in their mouths. By the time Song Qingzhang's turn came, he had already worked out the process and lowered his bucket smoothly.

But just as he was about to crank the bucket back up, he suddenly stopped.

"Huh? Why are you just standing there?" Qian Xin looked at Song Qingzhang and was surprised to find him straining, while the handle in his hand remained completely still.

"...This handle won't turn. Is something stuck?" Song Qingzhang asked, puzzled.

Zhao Fengyi tried turning the handle himself and found that it really was jammed.

"That's strange. It worked fine when we used it..."

Qian Xin suggested from the side, "Why don't you just pull the bucket up yourself? It's only a bucket of water. It can't be that heavy."

"All right..."

Song Qingzhang tugged on the rope and began hauling the bucket up by hand. But when it was halfway up, the rope suddenly plunged downward.

The force was tremendous. Caught off guard, Song Qingzhang was dragged straight down.

At the same time, the jammed handle suddenly spun freely in reverse, rapidly paying out more and more rope.

It happened so suddenly that everyone froze. Only Li Xian rushed forward and clamped a hand down on the spinning handle. The rope snapped taut, and Zhao Fengyi, the second to react, immediately ran to the edge of the well and looked down.

"Quick, quick... pull me up!"

Song Qingzhang's panicked voice rose from inside the well.

The fall had not sent him straight to the bottom. Though he had fallen in, he had managed to grab the rope and was now dangling halfway down.

If Li Xian had not stopped the handle in time, Song Qingzhang would have plunged to the bottom even with his grip on the rope.

Qian Xin and Li Hongqiang came over, and the three of them hauled Song Qingzhang back onto solid ground in a few pulls.

Song Qingzhang patted his chest and let out a long breath.

"That scared me to death."

Li Xian released the handle. The rope continued to unwind, and the wooden bucket dropped into the water with a splash that echoed up from the bottom.

"This thing must be completely broken." Li Xian patted the simple mechanism.

Xu Yao looked worried. "But you two still haven't drawn any water... Do you have to pull it up by hand?"

Song Qingzhang looked close to tears. "I'm really scared I'll get dragged down again..."

Li Xian reached out and tugged on the rope. Finding nothing unusual, he pulled the bucket up without trouble.

But instead of relaxing, everyone drew in another sharp breath.

The wooden bucket was filled with bright red, bloody water.

Stranger still, the color gradually faded under their eyes. Before long, it looked like clear water again.

Goosebumps rose all over Qian Xin. "What's going on... Can we even drink this?"

Xu Yao's voice trembled too. "Could there be... something in this well?"

"There shouldn't be... The whole village drinks from this well. It ought to be fine," Zhao Fengyi replied.

Li Xian frowned and drew another bucket using his own empty one.

This time, what came up was ordinary clear water.

He turned and dumped Song Qingzhang's water onto the ground, startling Qian Xin beside him.

"Be careful where you throw that! What if it splashes on someone?"

Li Xian handed the wooden bucket back to Song Qingzhang. "Draw another bucket."

Song Qingzhang swallowed nervously, but obediently did as Li Xian told him.

He set the wooden bucket down. Once again, he had drawn a bucket of bloody water.

Song Qingzhang stared blankly at the bucket. The liquid inside quickly lost its color, turning clear again in an instant, as though it did not want to be discovered.

He shivered involuntarily. When he came to his senses, he realized his back had become drenched in cold sweat.

Zhao Fengyi recovered first. "Why... is there something wrong only with the water he draws?"

Song Qingzhang's lips quivered, and his voice shook a little. "Could... could it be because I saw the bride, and she remembered me?"

"You saw the bride?!"

His words startled everyone. Li Xian, in particular, had never expected Song Qingzhang to say such a thing and was momentarily thrown into uncertainty. Fortunately, everyone's attention was focused on Song Qingzhang, so no one noticed Li Xian's reaction.

"You said you saw the bride. When was that?" Zhao Fengyi asked.

"Before I went to the village chief's house. I was standing by the road when I heard someone shouting that the bride had run away... Before I could react, the villagers swarming over shoved me into the middle of the road."

Hearing this, Li Xian suddenly remembered where he had seen Song Qingzhang's face before.

The situation had been so urgent at the time that he had unconsciously overlooked it.

"The bride was only a few steps away from me then, with a bunch of villagers chasing her."

Everyone listened intently, waiting for him to continue.

With everyone staring at him, Song Qingzhang's gaze wandered.

"...Then she rushed over and jabbed me. I stumbled, and she ran right past me."

Qian Xin blurted out, "Then she shouldn't hate you. She should thank you!"

Zhao Fengyi glanced at Qian Xin and gave a quiet cough. "That doesn't seem to be the reason... Did anything unusual happen to you today?"

"Unusual... Not really? I've been with you all since I got up this morning."

For a moment, no one could make sense of it. Then something suddenly occurred to Li Xian, and he immediately told Song Qingzhang, "Check your pockets."

Song Qingzhang did not understand, but Zhao Fengyi caught Li Xian's implication, and his expression instantly grew serious.

Both pockets in his shirt were empty, but when Song Qingzhang reached into his trouser pocket, he felt something.

It was thin, like a scrap of paper.

He pulled it out and held it between his fingertips. Then his pupils contracted.

It was a little human figure cut from red paper.

"...When did-" Halfway through, Song Qingzhang suddenly realized the answer. "The villager sitting beside me this morning!"

"You asked him where the well was, too."

A chill ran through all of them. The villager had behaved perfectly normally, even answering Song Qingzhang's question enthusiastically. None of them had expected him to secretly slip something like this into his pocket.

"...Looks like we can't let our guard down around the villagers either," Zhao Fengyi concluded.

Song Qingzhang hurriedly found somewhere to throw away the paper figure, then drew another bucket of water under everyone's watchful eyes.

This time, the water in the bucket did not turn red.

Only then did everyone breathe a sigh of relief. Belatedly realizing that their throats were parched, they all but ran back to the village chief's house, carefully poured the water into cups, and drank more than half a cup in one gulp.

"Ah... Finally, some water..." Only now did Xu Yao feel up to talking.

Zhao Fengyi, however, had not forgotten their earlier discussion. He asked Song Qingzhang:

"When the bride ran away, did you get a good look at her?"

Song Qingzhang thought back for a moment before saying:

"She had her bridal veil wrapped around her face. I only remember that she had very pretty eyes and slightly curly hair, about this long." Song Qingzhang gestured at his chest.

"What about her build and height?"

Song Qingzhang clapped his hands. "Right! She was pretty tall, only a little shorter than me. I thought it was strange at the time!"

"You're about a hundred and eighty centimeters, aren't you? How could the bride be that tall? Are you remembering wrong?" Xu Yao asked in confusion.

"No, I'm pretty good at judging people's height... She was hunched over at the time, but she should've been around a hundred and seventy-five centimeters..." Song Qingzhang looked around after saying this. "About as tall as Li Xian!"

Li Xian was inwardly startled. He had deliberately bent over while fleeing, precisely to keep anyone from noticing anything suspicious about his height. He had not expected Song Qingzhang to work it out in the brief moment he had blocked his path.

Li Hongqiang sneered. "You're not just trying to save face, are you? You didn't stop her, after all. If it had been me, we wouldn't even be discussing 'finding the bride' right now."

Song Qingzhang's ears reddened. "You have no idea how hard she elbowed me! She nearly knocked me flat on my backside!"

Li Xian silently blinked twice.

Li Hongqiang spat. "How strong can a woman be? You're just too weak!"

Seeing the conversation heading in the wrong direction, Li Xian interrupted:

"Would the system let us complete the task that easily?"

"No," Zhao Fengyi said firmly. "Anyone else might have failed to catch the bride too. The instance probably picked someone to run into her just to give us clues, not to let us catch her outright."

"So that's why the bride's so tall and strong too?" Qian Xin guessed, following Zhao Fengyi's reasoning.

"That's also possible."

With a single question, Li Xian had steered the conversation in his favor, but that did nothing to ease his mood.

No one had realized that a player might be playing the bride, which meant this situation was exceedingly rare.

What exactly was the instance trying to do by assigning me a role like this?

"Which way did she run?" Zhao Fengyi continued.

Song Qingzhang pointed toward the door. "Straight along the road outside."

"Let's have a look around first, then."

With that, everyone immediately set off, deciding to search Li Xiaojuan's home for clues first.

After yesterday's heavy rain, the dirt underfoot was still slightly damp. They encountered only the occasional villager on the nearby streets, wearing rain boots and straw hats. Almost all of them first quietly sized up the outsiders with wary eyes, then lowered their heads and hurried past the group.

Zhao Fengyi stopped a villager. Having learned from what had happened earlier, he carefully kept several steps away while asking where Li Xiaojuan lived.

The villager seemed deeply reluctant to mention that name. He quickly pointed in one direction, then shook his head at every further question and hurried away.

They could only follow the direction he had indicated. But the rows of tiled-roof houses looked as though they had all been cast from the same mold, and for the moment, they could not tell which one was Li Xiaojuan's.