Chapter 113 – Shuangxi Town (7): The Man in the Well

Outside the manor, pale moonlight spilled like white silk, and twisted shadows coiled across the ground.

Shang Qingbei watched the corners of the young man’s mouth stretch to his ears; the grotesque smile fixed on that face looked, to him, unmistakably mocking and derisive.

Cornered by a ghost with nowhere to retreat, he sucked in a breath, raised the dictionary high, and smashed it at the youth’s face.

The heavy dictionary came down with full force, but met no resistance—only the sensation of sinking into cotton.

Unable to check his momentum, Shang Qingbei nearly pitched forward and ate dirt.

He flailed his arms to steady himself; the young man had vanished, leaving a paper effigy drifting to the ground.

The paper figurine was about the size of a doll, corpse-white from head to toe. Only a clump of pitch-black hair coiled behind its head, and two jet eyes stared out—sinister and ill-intentioned.

“Paper soldiers and horses fill the town; gloom reigns all day.”

The old chronicle’s line had come true; worse dangers surely lay ahead.

Shang Qingbei exhaled softly and slid a black ballpoint pen from between the dictionary’s pages.

Name: Read-Along Pen

Type: Item

Effect: When its tip touches an anomaly, you randomly receive partial information about it.

Note: Eerie Game-branded Read-Along Pen—tap whatever you don’t understand.

It was the reward item he had earned in the third instance.

Many considered it near-useless early on, offering no boost to combat power or survival odds—but he disagreed.

Information is the most valuable currency in a puzzle game; low-risk, accurate intel lets you handle surprises with composure and seize an informational edge.

For society to stay peaceful, the majority must be shortsighted, expendable; a minority must grasp the core truths of the rules and exploit them.

Shang Qingbei believed this—and was certain he belonged to that minority.

Staying calm, he bent and touched the motionless paper figurine with the pen-tip.

New text surfaced on the system interface:

Name: Guide-Paper Manikin

Note: Carry the cyan lantern, walk the shadowed path, guide the soul across the River of Oblivion.

“What does that mean? If I’d actually followed it, I’d be dead by now, right?” Cold rippled up Shang Qingbei’s spine.

He crouched for a closer look; the scene twisted like paint stirred in a can, swirling into a vortex that spun faster and faster—something shoved him. He jolted upright in bed, gasping.

Before him was the familiar wooden window of the side-room; moonlight seeping through revealed the table beneath it.

Thunderous snoring filled his ears; turning, he saw Du Xiaoyu’s sleeping face, drool glistening.

Had it all been only a dream?

The chill lingered; Shang Qingbei rubbed the gooseflesh on his arms.

In the corner of his eye a silhouette flickered, and a faint voice murmured.

A bride in scarlet bridal wear lay on the empty bed, muttering over and over, “Xier’s afraid… let Xier hide a while…”

In the side-room, Qi Si sat on the bed, idly fiddling with his phone as the time crawled from 03:30 to 04:00 a.m.

He rested the hand wearing the Pocket Watch of Fate on his knee, occasionally comparing it to the phone’s clock.

Pleasingly, the instance’s time flowed exactly as the objective time shown on the watch.

The rewind function was usable, and he was spared any tedious calculations.

The phone had stayed lit for ages without losing battery; evidently the instance wouldn’t force players to hunt for chargers or sockets.

Unable to sleep, Qi Si opened the built-in browser.

After Du Xiaoyu’s pre-bed antics he could conclude:

First, images related to the instance’s background could be identified for more information;

Second, searching the right keywords yielded valid intel;

Third, irrelevant images or searches gave no useful data but seemed free of lethal danger.

Since that was so, searching cost nothing.

Qi Si typed “Shuangxi Town.” Ink-black characters blossomed on the white screen:

Shuangxi Town, famed far and near for a century for hosting weddings and funerals. It not only arranges ceremonies for locals but also sells bridal gowns, mourning clothes, wedding veils, paper effigies, and the like to neighboring towns. Every forty-nine years a grand festival is held: bridal sedans and coffins parade side by side, the realms of life and death, yin and yang, converge; some say the gods themselves attend.

All information the players already knew; even unstated, the clues would have led them to it.

Qi Si noted the entry’s last update: January 1, 2008—twenty-seven years ago.

This instance must be one of the earliest in the pool; he wondered if a full walkthrough existed on the forums.

Realizing he was clearing an instance long past its hype, he felt a twinge of boredom.

Yet the phone’s browser couldn’t reach the forums or any guides, so his mood improved again.

He casually searched “Xu Wen.” As expected, a ghost-image of a bride in red popped up.

Hardly scary; more like the game saying: this is what Xu Wen looks like.

An amusing idea struck him; he quickly typed the single word “Qi” and hit search.

The Identity Card in the upper-right corner shook violently. After three seconds of loading, a line appeared:

Poor connection. Please try again later.

“As expected—can’t bear to see your own name beside an ugly photo, so even the instance’s rules get ignored?” Qi Si stroked his chin and spoke with mock solemnity.

Spotting the sudden “No Signal” icon, he curled his lips in theatrical malice and drawled, “Such a vain little evil god.”

His words seemed to strike something; inspiration caught the crack of a barrier breaking.

The phone screen flashed twice and went black. Crimson, indecipherable symbols crawled across the darkness, becoming intelligible the instant they met his gaze.

“Interesting attempt,” Qi Si heard his own voice remark inside his mental hall.

The next second, a pair of invisible hands seized his soul by the neck, crushing it slowly, mercilessly.

A helplessness that ran from life to death itself blossomed inside him—the terror an animal feels when it meets its natural predator, written into every gene.

Qi Si did not fear death; he didn’t even know what he was afraid of. The emotion had been bestowed from on high, snatched out of the air and hurled into his mind, sending up a thousand waves.

Long-dulled survival instincts were forcibly rekindled, triggering reflexive struggle—like an ant trying to shake a tree, utterly futile.

Within seconds, cold sweat soaked his clothes.

Just as Qi Si thought he was about to die, the choking force vanished without warning or explanation, as if it had all been a tasteless joke.

Coughing, he doubled over, elbows braced on knees, chin propped on hands, barely keeping a posture that let his brain keep working.

He inhaled and exhaled deeply, repeated it three times, and finally shook off the causeless dread, steadying himself.

The screen lit up again; the battery icon in the corner was visibly down by half, as if it had been violently gouged away.

“So it’s a warning—next time He’ll destroy this prop? A reprimand, or a reminder of how far His patience stretches?”

Fear-scattered reason settled bit by bit in the quiet night. Rubbing his chin, Qi Si analyzed silently:

“When the villagers of Su Clan Village were slicing my flesh, He wasn’t this angry; He even had leisure to conspire with other NPCs. In Dialectical Game and Hopeless Sea I was far ruder… surely He wouldn’t stoop to retaliation just because I mocked Him with a few words. So is He trying to send me a message?”

“Hm. In the Carnivore instance He couldn’t act, only lie there waiting for players to feed Him. In Dialectical Game He could already interfere with the plot. In Hopeless Sea He could tamper with other players’ skills, creating false effects. Now He can even mess with key items?”

“His authority is returning, bit by bit. Why—and why tell me? To flaunt His power so I, His collaborator, renegotiate our deal? Or simply to scare me?”

Thinking calms; breaking a complex, tangled problem into clear steps eases the anxiety born of an unknown future.

Qi Si knew perfectly well that a being like Qi was no different from a natural disaster. Though currently aligned with him and relatively tolerant, it could snuff out his life on a whim.

Dwelling on such an unsolvable existence was pointless—a waste of time.

Stuffing everything that had just happened into a corner of memory, Qi Si expressionlessly opened his phone’s photo gallery.

At some point, a new photo had silently appeared.

It was a bird’s-eye view: a dry well built of black stones stood in the center. The mouth was broken; a tattered rope lay coiled beside it.

It must have been an overcast day—white mist everywhere, no light reaching the bottom. The well looked like an eye in the earth, a pitch-black orb set in yellow soil, giving the illusion something lurked inside.

“Person in the Well: water belongs to yin, a well gathers wealth. The heavier the yin inside, the stronger the master’s fortune; the more yin accumulates, the richer the blessings…”

“That doesn’t sound like orthodox feng-shui…” Qi Si raised an eyebrow, recalling scraps of “paranormal knowledge” Jin Yusheng used to spout.

The living belong to yang, the dead to yin—encouraging the build-up of yin was downright eerie.

There seemed to be a line of smaller text below the entry. Qi Si lowered his gaze and read it silently:

“What better way to gather yin energy than dumping a wronged corpse to rot at the bottom of a well?”

While his brain parsed the words, associations sprang up unbidden: a red-clad, half-rotted corpse floating in the cold well water, eyes open, staring up at the circle of light above, glaring hatefully at every passer-by.

A young girl stood forlornly by the well, glancing back at distant figures, her gaze lonely and sorrowful. In an instant she leapt; the icy water soaked her clothes, corroded her flesh, left only white bones… “Legend says Lady Joy was once an ordinary girl centuries ago, but she fell for a heartless man. He abandoned her and never returned; in despair she threw herself into the western village well, vowing with her last breath to protect every new bride…”

“Lady Joy loves to hear newlyweds laugh and loathes the fickle—anyone who breaks a heart will not escape her wrath!”

Sister Xu’s eerie words echoed in his ears. Tapping a finger against the bedside, Qi Si fell into thought.

“Lady Joy died in the well, her grudge immense; yet they say she delights in weddings and punishes the unfaithful. Strip away the folklore and the grand red celebration every forty-nine years is clearly a ritual: sacrifice the living so the vengeful ghost may claim lives.”

“The denser the yin, the richer the fortune. If that’s true, I’d keep kidnapping people, torture them to die in utter unwillingness, then toss their corpses into the well.”

“So that’s why Zhang Sheng saw bodies at the bottom in the old tale? He probably didn’t slip—he was pushed.”

The chain of events felt almost too neat.

But with the information he had, that was the only conclusion; anything more would be guessing, clouding later judgment.

“If I’m right, this instance is rich in ‘sin’.” He glanced at the lower-left corner of his vision.

In the last slot of his item bar, the white trident icon sat silent; when his thoughts brushed it, a silver frame highlighted it as selected.

Name: Sea-God Scepter

Effect: Makes you appear more divine (the more sin it absorbs, the stronger the effect seems to grow)

It looked unchanged. Just how did absorbing sin actually work?

“So cold… so cold at the bottom of the well…”

A soft sob sounded behind him; the information on the phone seemed to bleed into reality.

Qi Si turned at the voice.

Li Yao was awake, huddled in the corner’s shadow, hair disheveled, shivering visibly, her mind already half gone.