Worship the Lady (6)

To be precise, his arms had been torn off.

The wounds at his shoulders had ragged edges. Bright red muscle and tendons lay exposed to the air, covered in clotted, dark red blood that drew swarms of flies buzzing around the wounds. The sheet covering him was almost completely soaked in blood, and thick drops had formed a "moat" around the bed. The pungent stench of blood kept players with sensitive noses from daring to approach.

But the strangest thing was the dead player's expression-

Although his body had stiffened in spasms of intense pain, his face was utterly peaceful, without a trace of suffering. Even the corners of his mouth curved slightly upward.

The sight was so bizarre that the other players only dared watch from a distance. Only Song Yunyi and Bo Yi stood beside the bed, which made it easier for Bo Yi to examine the corpse.

"I asked the players who shared his room..." Perhaps because Bo Yi looked so practiced at examining the corpse, Song Yunyi volunteered what he had learned. "They said they didn't hear anything last night."

Bo Yi nodded. There had been such a commotion outside last night, yet he had been the only player to go out and investigate from beginning to end. It was easy to imagine why... He looked away from the corpse, but as he raised his eyes, his gaze suddenly froze.

"Where did that spirit money come from?" he asked, looking out the door in confusion.

"Hmm?" Song Yunyi turned to follow his gaze. A few round pieces of pale yellow spirit money drifted lazily through the air above the courtyard outside.

They seemed to have floated in from elsewhere.

Bo Yi and Song Yunyi exchanged a glance, then hurried out of the room and followed the direction the spirit money had come from. Before long, they found its source-a funeral procession.

At the head of the procession were banners held high. The white banners bore no designs and fluttered rustling in the wind. Behind them, villagers dressed uniformly in white, wearing tall paper hats, walked with expressionless faces. Their steps were slow and their eyes hollow, like walking corpses whose souls had been stripped away, or people trudging along in invisible shackles.

Along the edges of the procession were the villagers Bo Yi had seen in the cemetery on Back Mountain. They held long steel pitchforks and walked around the outer perimeter like guards.

At the rear was a coffin carried by several burly villagers, but its surface was tightly wrapped in thick white cloth. Bo Yi looked closely and saw that the cloth had even been deliberately nailed to the coffin, preventing anyone from glimpsing what lay beneath.

The entire funeral procession was eerily quiet. Aside from the fluttering banners and the scattering of spirit money, there was almost no sound.

"Why would they hold a funeral during the day...?" Song Yunyi murmured in puzzlement.

"Probably because..." Bo Yi answered softly, "it isn't very convenient for them at night..."

Hmm? Bo Yi clearly knew something. Song Yunyi was about to ask more when he spotted several furtive figures trailing closely behind the funeral procession.

They were players who had also noticed the commotion. Unlike Bo Yi and Song Yunyi, who followed from a distance, these players stayed very close to the eerie funeral procession, presumably afraid of missing an important clue.

Song Yunyi frowned. "Aren't they following too closely?"

Sure enough, shortly after Song Yunyi spoke, the players accidentally made a little noise as they followed the procession. It was not loud-in fact, it was barely audible-but in the deathly silence around them, that tiny sound was magnified beyond measure-

The funeral procession stopped.

All the villagers turned their heads in unison, their emotionless eyes fixing precisely on the source of the sound. Cold sweat instantly broke out on the players. They tried to shrink back and hide, but then the armed villagers stepped forward, shattering that hope.

The players reacted quickly enough. The instant they saw the villagers move, they turned and ran without hesitation.

Unfortunately, they could not outrun the flying pitchforks.

With a sharp hiss, the steel pitchforks flashed coldly and plunged straight into their bodies. Their limp forms crashed to the ground, and blood instantly stained the earth red.

"Help..." They weakly raised their hands, trying to call for help, but the villagers had already surrounded them with their pitchforks.

Unable to bear the sight, Song Yunyi closed his eyes.

After several successive sounds of sharp points piercing flesh, the bodies on the ground finally stopped moving, and the street fell deathly silent once more. The villagers pulled out their bloodstained pitchforks and returned to the procession. A moment later, it set off again.

This time, however, no players followed.

Bo Yi returned to the house.

He went straight to the well in the courtyard.

With the owner of the house still outside in the funeral procession, he planned to take this opportunity to open the tightly sealed well and see what was inside.

Du Yong and Xu Xiaoyang were both interested in Bo Yi's suggestion. Only Jiang Xiaofeng was too timid. Afraid that disobeying the NPC's rules would trigger some condition for death, he went off alone to hide in the other players' house.

"Then shall we... get started?" Xu Xiaoyang looked at Bo Yi.

Bo Yi nodded. The three got to work. Tall and muscular, Du Yong moved away the rocks weighing down the cover, while Bo Yi and Xu Xiaoyang used knives to pry up the sheet metal sealing the well.

After an uncertain stretch of time, they finally got it open. "At last!" All three let out a long breath of relief.

As they lifted the sheet metal, damp air carrying a distinctive fishy smell of water rushed into their faces. They waited beside the well for a while, then cautiously peered inside once the smell had mostly dispersed. Dark green moss covered the damp walls, and the shaft was deep. In the dim daylight, Bo Yi could just make out several black fish swimming happily beneath the shadowy surface of the water.

Xu Xiaoyang also exclaimed in surprise, staring curiously at the fish. "There are actually fish in this well?!"

Beside him, Bo Yi was rolling up his sleeves.

He intended to catch one and take a look, to see whether the fish in the well were the same kind he had seen the night before.

But he had only rolled his sleeves halfway up when someone suddenly shoved the front door open. "What are you doing?!"

The owner of the house charged in, his voice brimming with fury. "Didn't I tell you?! Stay away from this well! What do you think you're doing?!"

"Sorry, sorry..." Xu Xiaoyang quickly pulled Du Yong back. While edging toward the front door, he tried to soothe the furious owner. "We just wanted to look at the fish in the well..."

"'Fish'?"

The previously enraged owner suddenly seemed as though someone had pressed pause.

He slowly turned his neck to look at Xu Xiaoyang. "What 'fish' are you talking about?"

"Don't joke around..."

"There are no fish here."