Bo Yi walked over to the table.
He reached out and pushed aside the clutter piled in front, revealing what lay behind it.
"What's this?"
Jiang Xiaofeng happened to push the door open just then. Seeing him, he came over. "What are you doing?" He took the things from Bo Yi's hands and began helping.
Before long, they had cleared a large space on the table, revealing the object hidden behind the clutter-it was so big that even tucked away at the very back, part of it still stuck up above the pile. A black cloth covered it, concealing its true appearance completely.
"What's this?" Jiang Xiaofeng stared at the square object, both curious and afraid.
He wanted to know what was underneath, but he also knew that anything covered up like this in an instance probably wasn't anything normal.
But before he could turn to Bo Yi and discuss whether they should lift the cloth, Bo Yi had already reached out. With a rustle, the dust on the black cloth scattered into the air. Jiang Xiaofeng was so startled by Bo Yi's bold move that he sucked in a breath-and unexpectedly inhaled a mouthful of dust.
"Cough, cough..." He immediately launched into a thunderous coughing fit.
To the "background music" provided by Jiang Xiaofeng, the object underneath revealed its true form:
It was a shrine carved from fine wood. It had clearly been used for a long time; the wood had been wiped so often that it had developed a faint sheen. Now, however, it had been carelessly left in this room, which had clearly been converted from a storage room, covered with a thick black cloth and a heavy layer of dust.
"So it's a shrine..." Jiang Xiaofeng finally coughed the dust out of his throat and asked hoarsely, puzzled, "But where's the thing that goes inside?"
The shrine was empty. Whatever had once been worshipped there was long gone. Only a dark, circular mark in the center told them that a statue had stood there for a long time.
Two perfunctory knocks sounded at the door. "You two..." The two men from the room next door stood in their doorway. "What are you doing over there?"
With Bo Yi and Jiang Xiaofeng standing side by side with their backs to the door, they completely blocked the table from view, so the two men couldn't see what they were doing. Bo Yi smoothly draped the black cloth back over the shrine. "What is it?" he asked, skipping their question entirely.
"Oh..." Xu Xiaoyang spoke on their behalf, explaining why they had come. "We're planning to take a look around the village. Want to come with us?"
"After all, we don't know anything about the situation here. The more people we have, the better..." Xu Xiaoyang said with a smile, looking friendly and harmless. He didn't know why the owner of the house had treated him differently from Bo Yi earlier, but that wouldn't stop him from bringing Bo Yi along to make it easier to get information from the NPCs.
Bo Yi had no objections. "Sure."
Jiang Xiaofeng nodded as well.
The four of them left the house together.
"There don't seem to be many people here..." Jiang Xiaofeng remarked.
Whether when the village chief had led them into the village or now, they had barely seen anyone. Every household's door was tightly shut. Even when they occasionally came across a villager working outside their home, before they could approach, the villager would scowl as if they had seen something filthy, grab their things, and go straight inside, leaving only a door slammed hard behind them.
After making a circuit of the village, they hadn't managed to get any clues from the NPCs-they hadn't even managed to strike up a conversation with a villager. Xu Xiaoyang's carefully laid plans had come to nothing.
"This isn't going to work..." Xu Xiaoyang frowned.
If they couldn't get clues from the NPCs, were they supposed to piece things together from the bodies of dead players? There were only twelve of them altogether. They didn't have enough people to keep dying for clues.
Irritated, he kicked a stone on the ground, only to cry out, "Ow! It hurts, it hurts..." Clutching his toes, he hopped on one foot. "Why is this stone fixed to the ground?!"
Bo Yi crouched down.
Ever since entering the village, he had noticed little stones scattered here and there across the roads. Since they didn't interfere with walking, he hadn't paid them any attention. He had simply assumed the village was desolate and its residents didn't care about maintaining public spaces.
But Xu Xiaoyang's mishap made him realize something strange-all these stones were fixed to the ground. He casually pushed a few near his feet, and every one was firmly secured. Judging by the traces left on the stones, this clearly hadn't happened naturally.
He straightened up again and surveyed the road from above. "Hm?" he murmured in surprise.
Although the stones seemed to be "scattered" randomly across the ground, closer inspection revealed a pattern: almost none of them lay in a straight line. If lines were drawn between neighboring stones, the pattern they formed looked exactly like-
A net.
"There you are!" Bo Yu suddenly appeared in his field of vision. She approached from a short distance away with her roommate, Chu Youyi. "I've been looking for you for ages."
"The village chief sent someone over just now. He wants all of us to go to his house for lunch."
"All right." Bo Yi nodded.
The other three had no objections either. They could explore the village anytime, but the instance had only just begun. No one would be foolish enough to antagonize an NPC already.
The village chief's house was easy to find, since it was considerably larger than the other villagers' homes. By the time Bo Yi and the others arrived, the other players were already seated at the large round table inside. The twelve of them formed a complete circle around the wooden table.
Once everyone had arrived, the village chief emerged from the kitchen carrying food. He was smiling, looking completely different from the cold man who had first greeted the players.
He set the large basin he was carrying in the middle of the table with a thud. "Eat up, eat up..."
"Our village might not have the variety you get in the big cities, but there's plenty to go around! Come on, everyone, make sure you eat your fill!"
Bo Yi looked up.
A mass of round white balls floated in the basin, crowding the surface of the clear soup. Each was plump and perfectly rounded, its surface as smooth and fine as white jade, gently bobbing with the ripples in the broth.
"What's this?" one player asked curiously, gently scooping one up with the large steel ladle beside the basin. The round white ball rolled around in the ladle, looking quite springy.
"They look... like fish balls?" another player said uncertainly.
"Fish balls?" Chu Youyi sniffed. Sure enough, there was a faint fishy smell in the air. "They smell pretty good... So that means we can eat them, right?" She rubbed her stomach.
The players sitting downwind swallowed as they caught the aroma. In all fairness, the fish ball soup really did smell good...
"Go ahead and eat!" The village chief remained beside them, craning his neck to watch everyone. "Don't be shy! There's more when you finish!"
With the village chief watching, everyone could only stand up and ladle fish balls into their bowls.
Bo Yi also scooped one into his bowl. The perfectly round ball floated on the soup, looking quite appetizing. At least, quite a few players had already started eating.
"It's so good!" Chu Youyi exclaimed softly. Although the fish still had a faint aquatic smell, it was delicate, silky, and wonderfully fresh.
With Chu Youyi's endorsement, the other players who had still been hesitating finally relaxed.
"It really is pretty good!" A burly player chewed his fish ball in large mouthfuls. "I never thought the food here... Mm... What's that?"
He seemed to have bitten into something. With a spit, he spat the half-chewed fish ball onto the table. The player beside him immediately made a disgusted noise and turned away, putting it out of sight and out of mind.
The burly player continued picking through the bits of meat with the tips of his chopsticks. The player opposite him finally couldn't stand it anymore. "Can you stop poking through it? Isn't it just a fish bone?" Fish balls often contained tiny bones that hadn't been completely removed, an unavoidable part of making them by hand. Usually, you could just spit them out. There was no telling why the big guy was making such a fuss.
"Is this... a fish bone?"
The burly player finally found the culprit that had pricked him and picked it out, setting it to one side.
Bo Yi looked up.
Then he raised his eyebrows slightly-
A small, irregular piece of solid white matter lay quietly on the dark wooden table. It was about a millimeter thick and slightly translucent, with a faint keratinous sheen on its surface. On closer inspection, fine lines could be seen beneath that sheen.
Clearly, it wasn't a fish bone-
It was a human fingernail.
Before you continue