Chapter 44: Flesh Eating (Part 16) - Terrifying Night

The four lines of poetry that appeared this time were written in a messy hand, with several characters smeared by ink stains, and the panic behind them leaped right off the paper.

"Shouldn't two people occupy a room?" Qisi savored the implication behind the verses, his eyebrows arching slightly.

This sentence was very easy to understand. Literally, it meant that two people must not stay in the same room.

There were six guest rooms in total. Excluding the tattoo woman who was practically on the verge of death, the remaining players each had one room to themselves.

You could say there was no suspense left.

"I must say... those few truly died well." Qisi wore a genuine smile as he casually slipped his hand into his pocket, stroking the note that Zhou Yilin had tucked inside her clothing.

——On the first day, the players compared clues at the dinner table, easily falling into a cognitive inertia where they assumed everyone held identical clues.

——The allocation of one room per person happened to fill all the rooms completely, aligning with the common sense known to the players.

——Few people were capable of meticulous and calm thinking, and naturally, they would fall into the trap.

Qisi saw through the development of the situation with crystal clarity, yet he had no intention of disrupting other people's arrangements.

He lay down on the bed, dressed, but his consciousness was razor-sharp, leaving him completely unable to sleep.

He guessed this must be the effect of the instance's mechanics; something was bound to happen tonight.

Qisi loved watching a good spectacle, and at the thought of this, all sleepiness vanished. He simply sat up and stared out the window.

The sky outside was pitch black. Without a moon, the night was an impenetrable void, hiding the shadows of any living creature.

After an unknown passage of time, a faint, lingering sound of weeping rose from the distance—thin as silk, endlessly desolate, and mournful enough to involuntarily stir a deep sorrow in the listener's heart.

"What are you crying for?" Qisi patiently asked.

There was no reply.

Outside the window, scattered dots of yellow, ghostly light dotted the pitch-black dark. A gust of cold wind blew by, stripping away the body's warmth, and the lingering chill instantly dispelled any remaining drowsiness.

The weeping had clearly been far away earlier, seeming to come from the corner of the courtyard, but in an instant, it drew close—clearly coming from underneath the bed.

Qisi hurriedly lowered his eyes to look beneath the bed.

A ghostly hand, withered and skinny like a chicken claw, reached out from the shadows under the bed, gripping the edge of the mattress and using it as leverage to pull a skeleton-like body out inch by inch.

...Pardon the interruption. It seemed tonight's spectacle wasn't someone else's; it was his own.

With the anticipated surprise disrupted, Qisi lost most of his interest. Without further ado, he pulled out the awl from his wristband and drove it straight into the tendon of the ghostly hand's joint.

The weeping sharply pitched upward. The ghostly hand, struck with pain, fell straight to the floor.

[Side Quest Refreshed]
[Side Quest (Mandatory): Drive away the starved ghosts]

Two lines of silver-white text refreshed on the system interface, standing out vividly against the dark background of the night.

Qisi raised his eyes to look out the window. Illuminated by the eerie light, hunched, emaciated shadows were cast upon the dust-covered window lattice, their blurred edges bleeding into one another.

Something had been lured over by the weeping of the entity under the bed. It must be what the prompt referred to as "starved ghosts."

Qisi held his breath. In the silence, the howling of the wind against the glass was exceptionally grating.

Strange, gnawing sounds rose one after another, like a beast tearing into a prey's bones, or the webbed feet of a giant creature crushing hardwood underfoot.

The things outside seemed to have locked onto their target, and various noises closed in on Qisi's room from all directions.

"Thud, thud, thud."

The window was tapped lightly, followed by a crisp "clatter" as the glass where it was struck bloomed with spiderweb cracks like cicada wings.

Qisi saw two hands crowding and shoving their way through the hole into the room.

The two hands were different in size and presumably belonged to different entities, but their skin was identical—as withered and dry as tree bark, completely detached from the realm of the living.

A ring of flesh-colored mucus wrapped around the hands, dense blood vessels connecting with the flesh as if they were extensions of limbs.

Like tentacles, they possessed tremendous plasticity, deforming under the squeeze of the window hole into shapes capable of slipping indoors. At that moment, they inched closer to Qisi, a mere meter away from the edge of the bed in the cramped guest room.

Qisi silently adjusted his posture, pressing himself into the corner of the wall where he was less likely to be touched.

The weeping under the bed lingered like a shadow, constantly emanating from directly beneath him, as if guiding the way for the ghosts outside.

Sure enough, the mucus-wrapped hands twisted into an awkward angle and continued to close in on Qisi's location.

[A priori prompt: The blood-drenched truth is buried in the fragmented words of the villagers. Restore the truth within their words and retell it at the appropriate moment, and the villagers will be unable to cause you harm.]

The a priori prompt on the system interface twinkled brilliantly. Making up his mind, Qisi reached out, picked up the cassette player he had tossed into the corner before bed, and pressed play without hesitation.

...You want me to solve a riddle, so I'll just throw the riddle right back at you. How will Your Excellency handle that?

The crisp voice of Axi played meticulously and clearly from the cassette player:

[Years of famine, years of dearth; no rice, no flour to pass the calamity.]
[Outside the ancestral hall, beside the locust tree, set up a big pot to boil and taste the meat.]

The chanting became muffled after being filtered through the recording medium, but mixed into the ceaseless night wind, the audio distortion turned out to be just right.

Qisi turned the volume knob. The chanting grew louder, successfully drowning out the weeping beneath the bed within seconds and occupying the entire room.

The two ghostly hands stuck in the window hole stopped, seemingly parsing the information conveyed by the sound, hesitating whether to push further forward.

Right behind the first nursery rhyme, a second one poured from the cassette player in the same tone, exceptionally vivid in the silence.

[Older sister and younger little brother go to grandma's house; children's meat is tender and bones are crisp, grandma droops her saliva in craving.]
[At night older sister hears crunching sounds, asks grandma what she is eating, grandma says dried fava beans.]
[The next day little brother is gone, older sister searches and searches, a pile of shattered bones in the corner.]

Nursery rhymes that sounded utterly chilling in broad daylight were played out in the dead of night, unexpectedly conveying a sense of bustling liveliness.

It was undeniably Axi's voice, looping over and over again.

[Years of famine, years of dearth...]

At this point, the ghostly hands finally made a judgment. Like loaches, they slid back out through the window hole, vanishing within seconds into the contiguous shadows outside the window as if they had never appeared there.

The dim, yellowish eerie light swayed away like a lantern, and the line of hunched ghost shadows standing by the window also scattered one by one, sinking into the deeper darkness.

[Side Quest Completed]

Qisi glanced at the system interface and bluntly asked, "Hey, are you just going to leave like this?"

The ghostly hands and shadows returned in unison, answering with actions.

The sticky, pus-dripping ghostly hands squeezed into the window hole once more, and the ghost shadows pressed their faces against the window, bloodshot eyeballs nearly sticking to the glass as they rolled into the room.

Clutching the cold pocket watch of destiny in his pocket, Qisi raised his eyes and looked straight into those eyes. "Whatever your grievances or unfinished business might be, feel free to share. Perhaps we can make a deal..."

In response, there was a loud crash of "shattering," and the entire glass window pane shattered into pieces all over the floor within a single second.

The rustling sounds pulled tight on his bad premonitions, and a thick, fishy stench made one want to vomit. Qisi's eyelids twitched wildly, and he immediately hoisted the cassette player high, turning the volume up to the maximum.

Yet, perhaps because of his earlier reckless stunt, this time the recording failed to produce any effect, not even slowing down the things outside the room for a second.

It was too late. Countless ghost shadows surged into the room through the wide-open window opening, lunging forward...

In the final second, Qisi turned the gear of the pocket watch of destiny.

[The effect "Time Reversal by One Minute" has been activated. This effect cannot be activated again in this instance.]

A chilling electronic voice rang out in the air. Qisi held his breath, narrowing his eyes as he watched the ghost shadows tumble backward out the window in a comical, distorted gait.

The shattered glass all over the floor tracked back along its previous path into the window frame, reassembling into a complete pane of glass with only a small hole broken in it.

The dripping mucus flew from the ground back onto the ghostly hands, fusing with the skin before retreating out of the room through the small hole along with the hands.

Having used up the [Pocket Watch of Destiny]'s usage quota for this instance, Qisi didn't dare to fool around anymore; he didn't even dare raise a hand to wipe the cold sweat from the back of his neck.

He remained completely motionless, sitting upright like a wooden figure until time fully rewound to one minute ago.

[Years of famine, years of dearth; no rice, no flour to pass the calamity...]

The nursery rhyme that had already played twice rang out crisply in his ear.

With a listless expression, Qisi listened to the system prompt of [Side Quest Completed] and complained with bored sarcasm: "So sore a loser? You actually can't communicate with ghosts and spirits—what a dull design..."

Seeming to appease his resentment, the next second, new text refreshed.

[Congratulations on obtaining the clue "The Grievance-Bound Starved Ghosts"]
[Were they truly starved to death? Were their encounters deserved, or the prelude to another feast of sin?]
[The crowds coming and going, the piling layers of money—who feasts on their flesh and blood?]
[The new and old ancestral halls, the dense rows of memorial tablets—who suppresses their souls?]

Upon seeing the last line, Qisi narrowed his eyes.

He suddenly knew how to squeeze clues out of Granny Su.

...

In the latter half of the night, amidst the rustling sounds, Zhu Ling opened her eyes.

Feeling the tremor of Zhou Yilin beside her, she softly asked, "Yilin, you still haven't sleep?"

"Sister Zhu, I'm scared..." The girl's voice was mixed with the "chattering" of teeth, and the fear sounded exceptionally genuine. "Brother Yang... is he going to die?"

"Yilin, don't be afraid." Zhu Ling raised a hand to embrace the girl, patting her back comfortingly. "Only you and I know about this matter, and our original intention was to end the instance as early as possible so that more people could survive, right?"

"To clear the ultimate instance, sacrifices are inevitable. All we can do is heed the call of the Jiuzhou Guild, remember those who died, and forge ahead firmly carrying their hopes."

Zhu Ling spoke with righteous indignation, a fountain-pen-like prop resting in her pocket with a distinct texture.

[Name: An Unremarkable Fountain Pen]
[Type: Prop]
[Effect: Write strokes]
[Remarks: Some use it to record stories, some use it to weave lies]

Zhou Yilin insisting on staying in the mansion was at her instigation.

The text clues in the travel guide were ambiguous; altering a single stroke would drastically alter the information conveyed.

"Chang Xu" had already missed the window to accumulate prestige, Zhao Feng's performance was subpar, and Zhang Licai showed no independent will at a glance...

As long as Yang Yundong died in the night, the balance of the game would tilt entirely toward her. With four human lives in her grip, why worry about failing to clear the instance?

Even if Yang Yundong survived, it didn't matter. Alone and without evidence, all he could do was swallow this bitter pill and continue waiting for death.

'I'm sorry, I have no other choice either. I just want to survive...' Zhu Ling felt a silent apology in her heart.

She didn't fancy herself a bad person, and in her previous two instances, she had saved quite a few players using her knowledge; it was just that this instance was ultimately different.

This was her third instance. Facing a mortality rate as high as eighty percent, just to be safe, she had to resort to some extreme measures.

Amidst the darkness, Zhu Ling failed to notice that the girl beside her had curved the corners of her lips into a sarcastic and mocking smile.

...

When the hands of the pocket watch pointed to six o'clock, Qisi woke up naturally.

The morning sunlight slanted half-heartedly into the room, casting a milky-white layer over the surfaces of all the furnishings.

Taking advantage of the light, Qisi glanced under the bed—nothing was there. The ghostly hands and weeping from the last night felt like mere illusions from the depths of a nightmare.

Holding the travel guide, he walked out the door, his gaze sweeping across every corner of the courtyard.

The tattooed woman had already died after dinner yesterday, her corpse left parked in the corner, leaving behind nothing more than a puddle of mucus by now.

Even if everyone else suffered no further losses, the player faction was now down to just six people. In a mere two days, nearly half had been wiped out, and the remaining three days would only grow more perilous.

Qisi walked straight to Yang Yundong's room and knocked twice, neither too hard nor too soft.

"Wait a moment!" A muffled reply came from inside the room, followed by a silence as profound as a stone sinking into the sea.

Qisi waited patiently. Five minutes later, the door was pulled open from the inside.

A reek of blood rushed into his nostrils. Qisi took a deep breath, suppressing the unstoppable upward twitch of his lips, and finally managed an expression that looked worse than crying.

Yang Yundong was covered in blood. His left arm seemed to have been torn straight off at the shoulder, dragging away an entire sleeve of his military cotton-padded coat.

At the blood-soaked stump, grim white bones were vaguely visible.

"The night before last, I promised them meat, and last night they came." Yang Yundong's eye sockets were deeply sunken, his eyeballs shot with blood, yet his voice was remarkably flat, as if pain and injury had nothing to do with him.

Seeing Qisi's bizarre facial expressions, he paused for two seconds before adding, "It's fine, injuries in instances can't be brought out anyway. In another two or three days, it'll all be over."

Qisi reined in his jumbled expressions and said indifferently, "Persistent pain and blood loss could both throw you into shock. Even if your willpower is strong enough, endorphins might still impair your thinking and judgment. With your injuries, you won't last until the instance ends."

"I know." Yang Yundong let out a breath, a sense of relief washing over his features. "This is my third instance..."

Qisi interrupted him. "So, you don't want to live anymore, is that it?"

Yang Yundong was momentarily taken aback, only to hear the young man say with a mocking smile, "I don't know what you've been through or why your will to live is so low. But this is a team instance, and every life is crucial. If you don't want to live, please go die where you're supposed to."

What's going on? Who said I wanted to die? Yang Yundong slowly formed a question mark with his eyes.

Qisi, however, had no intention of giving him time to react, smoothly changing the topic: "Brother Yang, last night both you and I stayed in single rooms, yet both of us encountered danger. Do you think there's a possibility that the clues we obtained are problematic?"

"Yesterday, Zhou Yilin seemed to want to remind me of something, but unfortunately, I didn't take her hints seriously..."

Yang Yundong subconsciously forgot to pursue the strange phrasing of the previous "die where you're supposed to" and instead followed along with the new line of thought: "My clue was: 'Two people must not occupy a room; upon entering the ancestral hall, do not be alone. Do not mourn the newly dead ghost, why weep for sins erased.' Are you trying to say this clue is fake?"

Qisi smiled coolly, implying with his tone, "Altering a single stroke is not difficult for someone with a prop."