Chapter 115 Shuangxi Town (IX) Precognitive Dream

The players discussed what had happened, and by then, the sky was already bright.

Cold daylight seeped into the room through the tattered windows, casting a large area of white light and shadow on the floor.

Qi Si stood by the window, looking toward the West Wing. Red silk and paper cuttings were sparsely plastered across the entire wall, resembling the scabs that form on skin after a burn.

Xier, dressed in a red wedding gown, crawled out of the doorway like a small beast, timidly peering toward the room where the players were staying.

She had returned to her human state. The arms exposed beneath her red sleeves were a vivid, fleshy color, made ruddier by the fabric and the morning light.

“I keep feeling that this instance is very strange. The NPCs are Ghosts one moment and humans the next; life and death are impossible to distinguish.” Li Yao approached Qi Si silently from behind. “Shuangxi, Shuangxi. Usually, there should be both happy events and sad events, but yesterday, no matter how much Sister Xu talked, she only mentioned the God of Happiness and didn’t say a single word about sad events.”

“Didn’t the introductory hint say, ‘The living are not necessarily living, and the dead are not necessarily dead’?” Liu Bingding offered his opinion enthusiastically. “Do you think it’s possible that dead people can come back to life, which is why they don’t place importance on sad events?”

While his words were a reasonable inference, it sounded more like telling a ghost story. Combined with the players’ dreams from last night, it was truly easy to lead to creepy conjectures.

Du Xiaoyu cursed under his breath, “Bad luck,” while Shang Qingbei kept his head down, not saying a word.

Qi Si observed their reactions and replayed the known information in his mind.

In the dream, Xier, who had turned into a Ghost, appeared on an empty bed. After “Li Yao” was startled awake, he also woke up, and after testing Xier, he went out with “Li Yao.”

If this was his dream, there were logical issues with the sequence of events.

— Why did Li Yao wake up before him and make noise to wake him up?

— Why was it Li Yao, who was furthest from Xier, that woke up, and not Shang Qingbei, who was closest?

Also, how to explain the paper money that inexplicably appeared on him?

Qi Si looked up at the pale sky and recalled, “Last night, Xier appeared in my and Shang Qingbei’s dreams, asking us for help. I think we can all conclude two things: First, the God of Happiness is not a good thing; second, Xier knows some secrets.”

The players nodded one after another, indicating their agreement.

Qi Si scanned everyone and asked with a smile, “Now, I want to go check on Xier. Does anyone want to come with me?”

“Sister Xu said yesterday not to wander around, lest we offend Xier.” Shang Qingbei didn’t want to be dragged out like in the dream again, so he deliberately tried to scare them, “I think this is also one of the rules of this instance. I’m afraid something will happen if we violate it.”

“If it’s not a rule written in black and white, there’s room for maneuver. I’m just going to chat with Xier; how can that be considered offending her?” Qi Si toyed with his fingers, his tone sounding exceptionally sincere.

If one didn’t know the inside story, one might actually believe it a little.

The players clicked their tongues, but ultimately did not try to dissuade him further.

Qi Si pushed the door open and walked out on his own. Seeing that no one intended to follow, he sighed in a seemingly helpless manner.

But after stepping into the West Wing territory, which was covered in red paper, the look of regret vanished from his face.

The chain of suspicion objectively exists; humans are mostly rebellious and never hesitate to speculate about others with the greatest malice.

If he had just gone over without saying a word, perhaps one or two players would have quietly followed him to try and glean some information; but since he explicitly asked for people to join him, the players naturally became suspicious, wondering if he was looking for a scapegoat.

Qi Si moved silently and stopped beside the girl in the wedding gown, softly calling out, “Xier.”

Hearing the sound, the girl raised her head and stared blankly at the young man standing in the morning light. Her unfocused pupils did not reflect anyone’s shadow.

Qi Si crouched down and leaned in, his voice gentle and soft: “Humans are always accustomed to exchanging individual sacrifices for collective benefits, even if the smallest cost is heart-wrenching when it falls upon an individual. No one can truly understand your pain except yourself.”

“Every forty-nine years, a girl is chosen to wear a wedding gown and die at her most glorious moment, her bones sinking into the well. The most intense resentment dissolves into the water, providing the whole town with a continuous stream of wealth. Exchanging one person’s sacrifice for everyone’s happiness—from a utilitarian perspective, this is a very profitable deal.”

“But I am not a utilitarian, and I strongly dislike this philosophy of sacrificing one to fulfill the majority. After all, you have never enjoyed the benefits brought by the sacrifice, while what you lost is tangible—things you once had or currently possess. This deal is not only unprofitable, it is a huge loss.”

There was no luster in Xier’s eyes; she seemed like a stone with which one could not communicate.

Qi Si smiled, pulled a blade from the silver bracelet on his right wrist, and unobtrusively slipped it into the girl’s hand: “In my view, everyone should have the right to determine their own destiny—people may not be able to decide how they live, but at least they can decide when to die, can’t they?”

Xier gripped the blade tightly, her bright red sleeves covering the hand holding it. From a distance, nothing could be detected.

It was unknown how much she had heard; she just sat there silently, never once responding from beginning to end.

Qi Si stood up and headed back to the room where the players were gathered.

Recalling the touch of Xier’s right hand, he narrowed his eyes slightly.

— Her palm was warm and moist, and her skin was elastic, exhibiting characteristics of a living person.

— There was a thick callus on the side of her index finger, seemingly the result of long-term pen usage.

This Xier had significant discrepancies with what was presented in the dream and what Sister Xu described, clearly leading to another puzzle-solving path.

There were subtle contradictions in the clues; an NPC had lied.

It was just unclear which of the information obtained so far was true and which was false.

Unable to figure it out for the moment, Qi Si simply stopped dwelling on it.

Seizing the leader’s position was still somewhat useful; having the right to speak meant he could influence the direction of the reasoning.

Even if he couldn’t crack the worldview or complete the main quest, it didn’t matter. As long as he ensured he knew more information than the other players, he would have a way to cushion the death points with the lives of the tools.

…

From the moment Qi Si went out, Shang Qingbei had been standing by the window, watching his movements.

Seeing the young man return after only a moment, he asked, “Qi Wen, what did you say to Xier? Did you get any useful information?”

“I asked her about the God of Happiness and if she knew any secrets behind the happy events.” Qi Si’s gaze was sincere, and he sighed regretfully, “Unfortunately, she didn’t say a word to me from beginning to end. It seems I was wrong; she is not the type of NPC that provides clues.”

At this point, Shang Qingbei was convinced that the clue he had obtained in his dream last night was unique.

Without him, the players who blindly trusted “Qi Wen” would most likely only be circling the periphery of the correct answer and would never be able to crack the worldview.

It was about time. Keeping things hidden would only increase the difficulty of clearance, and it wouldn’t be good if casualties occurred.

Shang Qingbei cleared his throat and said, “I have a guess regarding the worldview of this instance…”

“If it’s just a guess, I suggest you swallow it and not say it out loud.” Qi Si interrupted, “The clues are currently insufficient. Putting all kinds of extended guesses together is too chaotic and will only interfere with subsequent judgments.”

Shang Qingbei was choked up. As soon as he looked up, he saw the young man’s look of concern for a child: “Xiao Qing, you don’t need to worry. Only one-seventh of the time has passed; we still have six days. We will definitely be able to crack the worldview.”

“…”

…Again with that damn nickname, and again with that condescending attitude…

The veins on Shang Qingbei’s forehead throbbed wildly. He decisively decided to keep the worldview hidden for a while longer and reveal it all at a critical moment.

After bullying the kid and suppressing the potentially important information, Qi Si took out a face towel from his backpack with extreme leisure to wipe his face, effectively finishing his morning wash.

He walked out of the room, stood half a step away from the courtyard gate, and reached out to test the wooden door by pushing it.

Without using much force, the door swung open with a creak, as if a mechanism had been triggered.

A bright red bridal sedan chair struck his eyes.

The blood-colored behemoth was parked on the ground outside the door. A huge “Double Happiness” character was embroidered in gold thread facing the door, but several threads hung down in a messy fashion, adding an eerie and strange feeling.

This sedan chair was very old. The edges were worn and faded in many places, and it was mottled with spots of dirt, as if it had been stored in a damp warehouse for a long time and had only finally seen the light of day today.

Qi Si remembered that in his dream last night, that jet-black Coffin had also seemed to be parked in this position, and its size was even no different from the bridal sedan chair.

The boundary between dream and reality seemed to be broken through in an instant. The pale corpse lying in the Coffin was dressed in a blood-colored wedding gown and painted with bright red lipstick, becoming a heavily made-up, gorgeous corpse.

The Coffin was painted with vermilion, traced with gold, draped with ribbons and red silk, and lifted by Paper Effigies dressed in red. With music playing, it was carried away in a grand manner, not knowing where it was going…

Qi Si walked closer step by step and crouched down beside the bridal sedan chair.

Under the wooden frame supporting the sedan chair, several pieces of white paper money were startlingly pressed down. They were already stained with dirt, gray and wrinkled, and were particularly conspicuous against the red.

“Qi Wen.” Li Yao’s voice came from behind. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you.”

Qi Si stood up, turned around to look, and cast an encouraging gaze.

Li Yao’s expression was grave, her voice hoarse: “The dream last night felt very real. It felt as if I was really lying at the bottom of a well; the surrounding water was very cold and icy, yet I couldn’t even shiver.”

“Even though the body was already dead, the soul was still trapped within it, watching helplessly as the body rotted bit by bit…”

“Do you remember the story of the Soul-Summoning Bell I told you yesterday? Actually, there is another version: Wang Sheng’s wife kept haunting Wang Sheng, and the Soul-Summoning Bell had the effect of warding off evil, which allowed Wang Sheng to live for another seven years before dying.”

“Do you think we might also have been haunted by Ghosts and have fallen into a cycle similar to a ‘ghost wall’?”

Qi Si smiled gently: “Why scare yourself? In the strange story written on the paper, Zhang Sheng fell deep into nightmares after entering Shuangxi Town, which just goes to show that the dreams we had are merely a mechanism of the instance.”

Li Yao shook her head slightly: “You don’t understand. I have been having precognitive dreams since I was a child, dreaming about things in the future.”

“Before entering this instance, I dreamed that I died, and my body was placed in a very dark and deep place where I could still hear the sound of water. Now that I think about it, that should be in the well…”

“I remember that in that dream, there were many other corpses beside me, and I seemed to see you too… Tell me, is it possible that we are already dead, and just don’t have the memories of the moments before death?”

Qi Si smiled and shook his head: “Then tell me, if I were to commit suicide now, and you buried my body in some random place, wouldn’t the so-called precognitive dream no longer hold true?”

Li Yao was taken aback, looking up in astonishment.

Qi Si recounted: “Before, my relatives heard from a fortune-teller that my fate carried a baleful aura, and that everyone who was good to me would have bad luck. They used this as an excuse, and with their shallow empiricism, wantonly inflicted the malice within their cognitive range upon me…”

He stopped, his smile carrying a hint of savoring the memory.

Li Yao asked murmuringly: “And then?”

“Then they all died, died especially miserably, to a degree that so-called ‘bad luck’ couldn’t reach.”

Qi Si turned his head and looked straight into Li Yao’s eyes, his own eyes flashing with an strange light: “That’s why I never believe in so-called prophecies and fate; they are merely excuses that mediocre people find for themselves, self-comfort for losers.”

“In my view, the only prophecy one can believe in is that ‘everyone will eventually die’.”

He used a joking tone, but his attitude was exceptionally serious.

Li Yao was speechless for a moment, truly not knowing how to respond.

The silence lasted for a full half-minute before Qi Si suddenly spoke up: “Li Yao, where are your novels published?”

“I’ve discovered that my knowledge regarding the supernatural is too lacking, and I’d like to find a few supernatural novels to read.”

Li Yao laughed: “My novels are not well written and are often rejected. If you want to read some shorter supernatural stories, you can subscribe to a magazine called’Supernatural World’.”

“Alright, although I’m still very curious about the novels you write, thanks for the recommendation.” Qi Si thanked her with a smile, but there was no warmth in his eyes.

He had subscribed to “Supernatural World” for a period of time when he was a teenager, so he remembered very clearly that the magazine had been ordered by the Federation to rectify itself back in 2028 and subsequently ceased publication.

As a supernatural novelist, how could Li Yao not even know this?