"The freshest soil?"
Song Yunyi froze for a second, then quickly caught on. "You mean that funeral procession from earlier?"
Bo Yi nodded.
Song Yunyi looked thoughtful. "That could work..." As long as they found the most recently made mound, they could find the coffin buried during that funeral.
With a clear goal, everything became much simpler. They quickly spread out and began searching for little mounds that looked relatively "fresh."
Soon, the sharp-eyed Chu Youyi pointed somewhere. "Is it that one?!" Both the color of the soil and its looseness clearly set that mound apart from the ones beside it.
Bo Yi walked over to the mound, touched the soil, and rubbed it between his fingertips. "This is it," he confirmed. The others immediately began wielding their spades and shovels-swiped from the villagers' homes-and digging at top speed.
Before long, the object buried beneath the soil emerged.
"Huh?" Bo Yi sounded puzzled.
"What is it?" The other players instinctively stopped digging and looked at him.
Bo Yi tilted his head and carefully examined the coffin exposed in the soil. It looked extremely dilapidated, its surface covered in cracks. Much of the black paint on its dusty body had flaked away, and its edges were badly worn. In places, even the wood beneath showed through, already beginning to rot.
Of course, what puzzled him most was, "Where's the white cloth wrapped around it?"
During the funeral procession, all the players had clearly seen that the coffin carried by the villagers was tightly wrapped in white cloth.
"Maybe they removed the cloth when they buried it?" Chu Youyi suggested.
"Then where are the marks?" Bo Yi crouched down and wiped the dust from the coffin's surface. "That white cloth was nailed to the coffin. If they removed it, there should be marks left behind where they pulled out the nails."
Yet although the coffin before them was weathered and worn, its surface bore no nail holes.
"Then..." The other players exchanged glances. "Should we keep going?"
Bo Yi considered it for a moment. "Let's continue..." They had already dug it up, so they might as well open it and see what was inside.
Once all the surrounding soil had been cleared away, the other players also realized something was wrong.
"The size..." Song Yunyi gestured with his fingers for a while. "It really does seem off." Compared with the coffin they had seen that day, this one was a whole size smaller.
"Open it." Bo Yi nodded.
As the coffin lid hit the ground with a bang, a cold, damp air seeped out into their surroundings. Everyone instinctively held their breath and cautiously peered inside.
"What is this?!"
Inside the coffin lay a completely shriveled corpse. Its skin was grayish-white and withered, its surface covered in intersecting cracks. Dry, brittle hair lay scattered against its scalp, looking as though the slightest touch would crumble it to dust. Its clothes were faded and torn, exposing its empty shoulders.
"He has no arms."
Chu Youyi asked curiously, "Was he disabled?"
"The condition of this corpse is wrong too..." Song Yunyi pinched his nose. "One look tells you he's been dead for ages."
Bo Yi stared at the corpse in the coffin for a few seconds. He had a theory, but he needed more evidence to support it.
"I want to open a few more coffins," he suddenly said.
The other players had no objections, but asked, "Should we still pick fresh graves?" Not that the fresh grave they had chosen had actually been fresh.
"No." Bo Yi shook his head. "Pick any of them."
After everyone's hard work, several more coffins saw daylight again.
"My God..."
After opening the lids, everyone stared at the corpses inside, their faces filled with shock-
Every single corpse was missing its arms.
"I think we can draw a conclusion now." Song Yunyi let out a heavy breath. They had picked these coffins at random, yet every single one had contained an armless corpse. There was no need to keep opening them.
"Huh?" Nearby, Chu Youyi had just dug open another grave. Hearing this, she turned to look at her nearly finished work, hesitation in her eyes. "Should I keep going, then?"
There were two coffins buried beneath the mound she had chosen!
"No need-" Bo Yi turned to glance over. Halfway through his reply, he seemed to notice something and started walking toward Chu Youyi.
Seeing Bo Yi suddenly approach and lean closer to inspect the coffins, Chu Youyi grew uneasy. "I haven't touched anything! I only just dug them up!"
"What's wrong?" Song Yunyi followed him over.
Bo Yi ran his fingers along the seam of the coffin lid, as though checking something. Only after a moment did he speak. "Someone has opened this coffin before."
"I..." Chu Youyi was about to speak again, but Bo Yi cut her off. "I know it wasn't you." The marks on the lid weren't fresh.
"Should we still open it?" Du Yong asked gruffly from the side.
"Go ahead..." Bo Yi stepped back to make room.
The moment Du Yong put his hands on it, he noticed something wrong. "This coffin is so light..." Sure enough, when the lid fell to the ground, the coffin was completely empty.
"What about the other one?"
Everyone turned their attention to the other coffin lying beside it.
"Also empty," Du Yong answered. "It has signs of being opened too."
These two unusual coffins invalidated their previous conclusion.
"What do we do now, then?"
Bo Yi looked up ahead. Not far away, densely packed burial mounds stretched deep into the woods on the Back Mountain.
"Let's check somewhere else."
This time, however, they no longer needed to open the coffins. They only needed to check for signs that the coffins had been opened before.
And so Bo Yi and Song Yunyi continued farther in, while the others stayed behind to "destroy the evidence" and erase the traces they had left.
The trees on the Back Mountain grew thickly. At first, light could still slip through the gaps between the leaves and fall onto the ground. As they ventured deeper, however, the trees grew denser, their branches intertwining. The light began to fade, leaving them reliant on the occasional rays filtering through the leaves to find their way.
"This one hasn't been opened either..." After checking another coffin, Song Yunyi straightened up. "It looks like the only empty ones were the two Chu Youyi found."
"What now?" He looked at Bo Yi. "Do we keep going, or..."
Bo Yi checked the time. "Let's check one last one..." By his reckoning, the three players still in the village were almost at the limit of how long they could stall.
"Which one?"
Bo Yi looked around. "The one in front of that rock face..."
"All right." Song Yunyi nodded. "You go ahead. I'll put this place back the way it was."
He bent down and shoveled some soil back twice. When he looked up again, there was no one in front of him. A breeze drifted through the woods, rustling the leaves like countless people whispering.
Bo Yi had vanished from before him.
Song Yunyi's heart gave a violent jolt. "Bo Yi?!"
The man he was calling was plummeting.
The light in the woods was so poor that, after reaching the rock face, Bo Yi stepped into empty air before he could even approach the burial mound. His body instantly lost its balance. Before he could make a sound, he slipped straight into a hole and vanished beneath the ground.
A few seconds later, Bo Yi hit the ground hard with a thud.
Fortunately, a thick layer of fallen leaves covered the ground, cushioning his fall enough to keep him from getting injured. Even so, Bo Yi began to wonder whether he and this Instance were simply incompatible.
Rubbing his aching arm, he slowly climbed to his feet, planning to examine his surroundings by the faint light falling through the opening. But the moment he raised his eyes, he abruptly stopped moving.
He saw faces-
So many faces.
Those deathly pale faces hung densely across the walls, staring unblinkingly at him.
Before you continue