Worship the Lady (4)

A deathly silence fell over the table.

Clearly, aside from Bo Yi, these battle-hardened veteran players had all recognized what that thing was.

"Urgh-" The stomach of the player who had spat out the "fishbone" began churning violently.

None of the other players at the table had the heart to tell him to throw up somewhere else, because their faces looked little better than his. After all, quite a few of them had eaten those "fish balls." The only difference was that they had already swallowed them.

"Aren't these supposed to be fish balls?!" One player seemed to finally realize what had happened and shoved the bowl in front of him away. The soup sloshed onto the table, slowly spreading across it.

Bo Yi was prodding the contents of his own bowl with his chopsticks. At that, he said calmly, "They are fish balls."

In his bowl, the white crumbs he had broken into tiny pieces with his chopsticks bobbed on the surface of the water. Curious whether the food here would be as "magical" as the chunks of meat in the previous instance, his first instinct after scooping up a fish ball had been to examine it.

That had spared him this ordeal.

"Fish balls?" The player pointed at Bo Yi's bowl and shouted, on the verge of a breakdown, "Then tell me why-why there's..."

Bo Yi lifted his eyelids slightly. "What I mean is, these really are made from fish." Balls made from fish-what else would they be but fish balls?

As for that player's question, "The balls are made from fish, but what the fish ate-"

"That, I don't know..."

"No wonder... they-the NPCs-made the fish into fish balls." Song Yunyi was clever too, though his cleverness hadn't spared him. "Once the fish is minced, everything gets mixed together..." And that made the nasty secret hidden inside much harder to notice.

The more the players heard, the worse they looked. One after another, they left the table to make themselves vomit nearby. Only Bo Yi remained seated, perfectly at ease, his gaze sweeping around the village chief's home.

"What are you looking for?" After making herself vomit, Bo Yu returned to the table looking weak. Curious, she asked him about it.

"The house you're staying in..." Bo Yi pointed at the well in the courtyard a short distance away. "Does it have a well too?"

Bo Yu looked in the direction he was pointing and nodded. "Yes." And, like the one at the village chief's house, it had been sealed shut.

Bo Yi nodded thoughtfully.

After leaving the village chief's house, Bo Yi continued exploring the village with the other players that afternoon.

They went to the westernmost edge of the village and found the Lady's Temple the villagers had mentioned.

The Lady's Temple lay hidden beneath a stand of towering ancient trees. Tall and twisted, their lush branches and leaves cast a dense canopy of shade over the temple.

Despite being called a "temple," it was little more than a larger earthen house. Its long-weathered walls exposed the dull earth beneath; moss spread across the broken roof tiles; a thick layer of dust coated the tightly shut windows, through which they could barely make out the silhouette of a statue inside the pitch-black temple. Two shabby red lanterns hung beneath the eaves, swaying with every gust of wind and letting out teeth-grating creaks.

Unfortunately, a large, heavy iron padlock hung on the temple doors, leaving Bo Yi and the others unable to enter and see the "Lady's" true face.

They also took a detour to Back Mountain, where they viewed the graveyard the villagers had mentioned from a distance. Just as the villagers had said, outsiders were not allowed near it. Several villagers were even patrolling its perimeter.

"How interesting..." Watching the villagers patrol with weapons such as steel forks, Bo Yi murmured, "No one cleans the Lady's Temple, yet this place is so heavily guarded."

They stayed on Back Mountain for a while, keeping watch. As dusk approached, the number of patrolling villagers decreased rather than increased, and they knew they probably wouldn't get a chance to slip in and investigate that day. They hurried back to the village before darkness fully fell.

"Be careful tonight," Bo Yu reminded Bo Yi kindly. "You were the only one who didn't eat those 'fish balls' today." NPC demands generally couldn't be defied, which was why the players had picked up their chopsticks.

Experience had taught them that going against NPCs rarely ended well.

"I know." Bo Yi nodded, then turned and entered his room.

Bo Yu watched him go, feeling puzzled.

Was it her imagination, or did Bo Yi seem a little... excited?

Night had fully fallen, and there was barely a trace of light in the room.

Bo Yi lay on the bed with his eyes open, waiting for his "surprise."

After seeing the well in the front courtyard and the fish balls on the table earlier that day, he had suspected that this instance might have something to do with "fish."

And "fish" happened to be exactly the sort of aquatic anomaly he wanted.

So the monsters the other players dreaded were precisely what Bo Yi was hoping for.

Beside him, Jiang Xiaofeng was already fast asleep, snoring softly. With that "background music" playing, Bo Yi waited for a monster to "deliver itself to his door."

Just as Bo Yi was growing drowsy from waiting, a splash broke the rhythm of the snores.

Bo Yi's eyes snapped open.

He turned toward the sound. It seemed to have come from... the courtyard. And the only place in the courtyard with water was-that well.

Splash...

As if to confirm his guess, another splash rang out, louder than the last.

Splash...

Splash...

Each splash grew louder, and the intervals between them gradually shortened. Eventually, Bo Yi even heard something striking sheet metal-

Thud...

Splash...

Thud...

Splash...

It sounded as though something was jumping up inside the well, striking the metal sheet sealing its mouth, then falling back into the water.

Stranger still, despite the sounds from the well growing louder and louder, Jiang Xiaofeng remained completely unaffected, still sleeping soundly beside him.

Bo Yi got out of bed and pushed the door open.

Without the door muffling them, the sounds from the well grew even louder.

The two players in the next room were just like Jiang Xiaofeng, seemingly oblivious to the noise.

That isn't the vigilance I'd expect from veteran players...

Thoughtfully, Bo Yi walked over to the well. Just as he reached out to move the stone weighing down its cover, the sounds inside abruptly stopped.

Splash...

The sound suddenly came from... outside the courtyard gate.

Bo Yi froze.

Splash...

The sound drew closer.

Splash...

Thud.

Something struck the gate.

Bo Yi withdrew his hand and walked over to the gate.

With a creak, he pulled it open.

But when he saw the scene before him, his eyes widened-

He saw fish.

Fish crawling across the ground.