The note

Just as they were puzzling over what to do, they spotted a house that stood out from the other tiled-roof homes.

Among the rows of houses on the village's eastern side, this was the only one with bright red "double happiness" characters pasted on its walls, as though a wedding had recently taken place there.

Li Xian went up and knocked on the door. No one answered.

He tentatively turned the handle and found that the house was unlocked, so he stepped straight inside.

Everyone immediately spread out to search the rooms for clues. The house was small, and there were signs that someone had lived there recently. A quilt was neatly folded at the head of the bed, while torn scraps of paper lay scattered across the floor.

Li Xian bent down to pick one up. There seemed to be black writing on it, but the pieces were too small to make out what it said.

They had no choice but to gather the scraps one by one. It took quite a while to piece the paper back together along the torn edges.

The first sentence on it read:

"Xiao Mei disappeared. Everyone in the village says the River God killed her, but I don't believe it. Even if the River God really wanted to kill someone, he wouldn't kill her."

The handwriting in this sentence was fairly neat, but the first few characters had been completely blacked out. They could only deduce that the erased part was someone's name, without knowing whose.

The farther down the page they read, the more distorted and chaotic the handwriting became.

"Why? It keeps raining outside. I heard someone screaming, and when I looked out the window, I saw that everyone who'd been caught in the rain had..."

"Has the River God really come?"

"This village has gone mad!!! Why does everyone believe everything the Village Chief says?!!"

"I can't escape."

The final sentence was barely legible. They studied it for a long time before they could even guess what it said. Some strokes had been written with such force that they had pierced the paper, leaving long scratches across it.

[Xiao Mei? Who's that? Has she appeared in this instance before?]

[Previous players saw that name on the note too, but when they followed the clue and asked the villagers, not one of them would explain who "Xiao Mei" was or what had happened to her. So nobody knows what's going on, even now.]

[Looks like this beginner instance still has plenty left to uncover.]

[But if it's a TOD instance, they have to solve this mystery. Can these people manage it?]

[Nobody has found any related clues so far. I doubt this group will either.]

[And don't forget, they don't know they've entered a TOD instance. They have even less reason to go all out for the true ending. They'll probably give up once they find this lead goes nowhere.]

[After all, the clear condition is to find Li Xiaojuan and put her corpse in the coffin. That's their main task. There's no need to solve every mystery... if this weren't a TOD instance.]

[But at least one person will give it everything he's got, right?]

[Who do you mean?]

[The streamer! He's Li Xiaojuan. If he doesn't want to die, he'll definitely do everything he can to find another way.]

Li Xian was indeed very interested in finding out who the "Shen Xiaomei" mentioned in the note was, but not everyone felt the same way.

Looking impatient, Li Hongqiang urged them on. "Why are we wasting time studying this useless stuff? Aren't we supposed to find the bride? Can't we just search the whole village?"

He had something of a point, but Zhao Fengyi shook his head. "Clues provided by an instance are usually connected to the task required to clear it. We don't have any other leads right now, so let's start by looking into the person mentioned here."

Qian Xin added, "Besides, when the instance ends, you get an 'instance completion percentage.' The higher it is, the more points you earn. There's even a special reward for reaching one hundred percent, though very few people manage that."

Li Hongqiang clicked his tongue and cursed irritably. "What a fucking pain..."

A brief silence settled over them after Li Hongqiang finished speaking. Suddenly, Li Xian heard faint voices outside, as though people were discussing something. He walked out and paused when he heard what the villagers were saying.

"I heard they fished the wedding dress out of the river..."

"Just the dress?"

"Yes. They still don't know where the bride is..."

"Could she have jumped into the river?"

"What a tragedy... That's the second one already..."

After getting the gist of what had happened, Li Xian headed toward the riverbank. Song Qingzhang came out of the house too and hurried after him when he saw him leaving. "Bro, where are you going?"

"Hey! Where are you two going?"

Qian Xin called after them, but neither Li Xian nor Song Qingzhang paid him any attention, leaving him baffled.

...Whatever. It wasn't his business anyway.

Only then did Zhao Fengyi look away from the note and turn to the others. "Let's find the home of that woman called Xiao Mei."

Li Xiaojuan's home was not far from the river, and Li Xian and Song Qingzhang reached it after a few minutes' walk. Many villagers had gathered nearby, but they all watched from a distance, unwilling to approach the river. Only the Village Chief stood on the bank, his face dark as he stared at the tattered wedding dress on the ground.

As soon as the two approached, the villagers' gazes fixed on them. Under their scrutiny, Li Xian walked up to the Village Chief.

The Village Chief seemed not to notice Li Xian's arrival. He stared grimly at the wedding dress on the ground, muttering almost under his breath:

"She's not dead yet... Where on earth is she hiding...?"

"I should have had someone kill her from the start..."

"We have to find her... We have to find her, then kill her..."

The Village Chief's expression was terrifying. Li Xian hesitated mid-step, feeling that approaching him now was not a good idea.

Yet, as though sensing something, the Village Chief slowly turned his head. At the sight of Li Xian, he seemed dazed for a moment, then appeared to come to his senses and immediately composed his expression. His tone, however, remained ice-cold:

"Do you need something?"

"Nothing. I heard something happened here, so I came to take a look."

Apparently uninterested in Li Xian's answer, the Village Chief simply picked up the waterlogged wedding dress, seemingly unconcerned about the river water on it.

Li Xian frowned and moved a few steps farther away, making sure none of the water on the dress could touch him.

The Village Chief was already carrying the dress away. The crowd immediately parted to leave a broad path, watching the wedding dress in fear.

Li Xian looked away from the Village Chief and casually scanned the crowd, trying to find a clue.

[Is the streamer trying to pick a villager to ask about the "Xiao Mei" mentioned in the note? He should give up. They won't tell him anything.]

[These villagers might as well all share the same mouth. Whenever someone mentions Xiao Mei, every one of them says there's no such person in the village.]

[He won't get any clues, no matter who he picks.]

Just as the comments said, the villagers gathered here seemed like an inseparable whole. They wore the same clothes, had the same aged faces, and even showed identical fear when they looked at the Village Chief.

Not a single villager had any trait that clearly distinguished them from the others, making it seem impossible to find a unique opening among them.

Just as Li Xian was about to give up, a face at the edge of the crowd seemed suddenly to stand out from that sea of sameness.

He looked in that direction and found a face that did not belong among all those fearful expressions.

It belonged to a middle-aged woman with a somewhat plump figure. Her face looked to be in its forties, but nearly half her hair was already white. She wore the same coarse linen shirt as everyone else.

There should have been nothing remarkable about her. Standing at the edge of the crowd, she was entirely inconspicuous, yet a trace of grief in her expression set her apart from the other villagers.

It was a trace of grief that would have gone unnoticed without close attention.

The woman turned, seemingly about to leave.

Li Xian hurried toward her, and Song Qingzhang followed, unsure what was happening.

"Please wait."

The woman stopped and turned her head, her face devoid of emotion.

She was so calm that Li Xian almost wondered whether he had imagined what he had seen.

"Are you all right?"

The woman frowned, seemingly puzzled by Li Xian's sudden concern. "All right? Of course not."

"Who could be all right with something like this happening in the village?"

Li Xian followed her lead. "True. After all, they still haven't found the bride."

A crack appeared in the woman's previously calm expression. In particular, when she heard the word "bride," her body trembled slightly, and that familiar pain surfaced in her eyes again.

Pretending to make casual conversation, Li Xian continued, "I haven't seen many young people in the village. I suppose weddings don't happen very often?"

The woman seemed deeply averse to the subject. "That's none of your business."

Li Xian had to steer the conversation elsewhere. "Apart from the missing bride, are there any other young people in the village?"

"...There's a boy in the Village Chief's family."

"His grandson?"

The woman raised her head and met Li Xian's eyes, answering tersely, "No. His son."

Listening beside them, Song Qingzhang could not help feeling puzzled.

His son? The Village Chief looked to be in his seventies. Any son of his should have been middle-aged by now, so why did she make him sound so young?

"Anyone besides him?" Li Xian persisted.

"No."

Although the woman was speaking with Li Xian, she never stopped walking. Over the course of their exchange, Li Xian and Song Qingzhang had followed her quite a distance.

"You don't have any children either?"

The woman stopped abruptly. Li Xian looked up and found that she had halted outside a house.

After they left the river, the people around them had gradually thinned out. It was still daytime, but now there were no other villagers in sight.

Song Qingzhang was starting to feel uneasy, but Li Xian seemed completely oblivious to the potential danger before them. He even took the initiative to ask:

"Is this your home? Would you mind if I came in for a visit?"

The woman ignored him, pushed open the door, and walked inside on her own, but left the door open.

That was tacit permission.

Li Xian gave Song Qingzhang a look, signaling that he could leave now if he did not want to join him.

Song Qingzhang gritted his teeth and followed him in, then gently pulled the door almost shut.

When the woman saw the door close, she seemed to deflate in an instant. An unmistakable weariness settled over her face as she turned and sat on a stool.

"What do you want to ask?"

Li Xian glanced around the room, seemingly having reached a conclusion, and asked, "Is there someone in the village called Xiao Mei?"

The woman froze at the name. After a long while, she turned her head aside. "...No."

"Then let me ask another way. Was your daughter... named Xiao Mei?"

At those words, the woman's shoulders trembled. Finally, unable to hold back any longer, she covered her face, a faint sob escaping between her fingers.