The village chief

Li Xian remained unmoved by Li Hongqiang's forceful demand.

"What if I refuse?"

Li Hongqiang spat. "That's not up to you."

With that, he reached out to snatch Li Xian's key. Sitting between them, Song Qingzhang instinctively tried to stop him, only for Li Hongqiang to slap his hand away. Whether out of fear or a desire to avoid trouble, no one else spoke up.

"You can swap keys if you want."

Li Xian suddenly spoke. Everyone, including Li Hongqiang, assumed he was backing down, but then he continued:

"I'll go say hello to the village chief tomorrow. While I'm at it, I'll tell him how I ended up with my room."

"...You!" Li Hongqiang opened his mouth to curse, but Li Xian cut him off again:

"Come to think of it, before the village chief brought me here, he mentioned... a very rude guest who had really annoyed him."

Li Xian had exaggerated the village chief's words a little, but he wasn't worried about anyone questioning his account.

"What would happen if he found out that rude guest was still causing trouble? Would he still let him stay here?"

"If even the village chief won't have you, I doubt any of the villagers would take you in."

"And if it happened to start raining at night..."

Li Xian smiled.

"Of course, I'm just talking. The village chief might not actually do any of that."

He opened his hand and set the key on the table, even pushing it a little toward Li Hongqiang.

"Swap them if you want. I don't care where I stay."

Li Hongqiang's arm hung frozen in midair for a long moment. His face was livid, and his gaze briefly wavered as he looked at Li Xian.

After a while, he angrily withdrew his arm and snarled, "Just you wait. We'll see who dies first."

Li Xian didn't even look up at him. He simply retrieved his key at a leisurely pace. "If there's nothing else, I'll head back to my room."

For a moment, no one dared stop him. Li Xian left his seat and returned to his room under everyone's gaze.

Qian Xin clicked his tongue and muttered, "Young people these days... something else..."

After Li Hongqiang's disruption, no one felt like talking anymore. One after another, they returned to their rooms to get some rest.

Li Xian took a look around his room. Its furnishings were sparse: aside from the bed, there was only a wooden table with a worn surface. An empty wooden bucket sat on it, with a lidded enamel mug beside it. When he opened the mug, all he found inside was a ring of dried water stains.

The sight of that ring of stains suddenly made Li Xian's throat feel dry.

Since entering the instance, none of them had drunk a single mouthful of water.

Li Xian did his best to suppress the dryness in his throat, switched off the light, and lay down on the bed. Yet, for no apparent reason, the folk song he had heard in the sedan chair surfaced in his mind again-

"The third farewell, never to meet again in this life; gather the corpse and bones, bring them to the mourning hall."

One wrong step today, and those words would have become his fate.

Li Xian shook his head, driving the unbidden memory from his mind.

A full moon hung high in the sky. With nothing but single-story houses all around, the sky seemed especially vast, and the moonlight made the night unusually bright.

But Li Xian distinctly remembered that it had still been early in the lunar month when he entered the instance, with a crescent moon hanging overhead.

So the full moon struck him not as beautiful, but as faintly eerie.

Li Xian lay on his side with his back to the window. As drowsiness gradually crept over him, he wrapped the blanket a little tighter around himself.

Just as his consciousness began to fade, Li Xian suddenly heard a harsh scraping sound.

The sound was all too familiar-it was the iron door at the end of the house opening.

What was the village chief coming out to do this late?

Li Xian lay still on the bed, straining his ears to listen to the sounds outside his door.

Faint footsteps slowly approached, making their way along the corridor toward the exit.

Whatever the village chief was doing, he stopped for a while every few steps, then resumed walking after a stretch of unnerving silence.

"Tap, tap."

The footsteps drew closer and closer, until they stopped once again, right outside Li Xian's door.

Whether it was his imagination or something else, Li Xian felt that the village chief lingered especially long this time.

At last, the footsteps resumed and moved away.

With a soft sound, the village chief opened the outer door and left.

-What was he going out to do this late?

Although curious, Li Xian made no rash move. He simply kept his back to the window and pretended to sleep.

Suddenly, Li Xian noticed the moonlight in front of him dim.

His first thought was that a cloud had covered the moon, but his instincts told him otherwise.

He quietly opened his eyes and saw a human shadow cast across the head of his bed.

Outside Li Xian's field of view, the village chief stood at the window with a vicious expression, holding the axe he had brought back that evening.

Li Xian focused on his hearing. Amid the stillness, he heard a faint sound.

His window had been opened.

[Holy shit, the village chief even doubles back for a surprise attack.]

[How did he show up at the window? Didn't he always use the door before?]

[I'd just breathed a sigh of relief when he walked past the streamer's room, and then that huge face appeared at the window...]

[Thank god the screen isn't physical, or I would've thrown it away by now.]

Li Xian dared not move rashly. He watched the shadow to discern the village chief's next move, then immediately realized something was wrong-

He had raised the axe!

Li Xian swiftly rolled off the bed and met the village chief's gaze head-on.

The village chief was already leaning halfway through the window. The axe gleamed silver about a meter above Li Xian's head. He didn't seem surprised to find Li Xian awake; instead, once their eyes met, he slowly lowered the axe.

"Is there something you need this late?" Li Xian asked, taking a step back and watching the village chief warily.

The village chief stared at Li Xian for a while, then slowly looked away. His unfocused gaze wandered into the room, though there was no telling what he was looking at.

After a long silence, he asked, almost as if talking to himself, "What did you come to this village for?"

Li Xian tried to work out what answer the village chief wanted and ventured, "To help you."

"Help me?"

"Our interests align. You want this farce to end, and we just want to leave the village."

Li Xian slowed his speech, watching the village chief's expression as he spoke.

"You said we had to find the bride if we wanted to leave... She should be less wary of outsiders, right? If I find her, I can pretend I'm going to help her escape and bring her to you that way."

Li Xian's words were practically a pledge of allegiance, but after hearing them, the village chief merely raised an eyebrow with an unreadable expression, offering no comment.

The axe in his hand began to swing again, just as it had when he first met Li Xian, as he weighed whether to pass "judgment" on him.