Chapter 122: Shuangxi Town (16) False Clues

“Ring-a-ling-a-ling… Ring-a-ling… Ring…”

The ringing bell swayed, getting closer and closer to the temple door. Soon, it was only separated by a thin door panel, as if it could break through at any moment.

With the faint, ethereal sound, the thumping inside the Coffin grew weaker, as if appeased, gradually subsiding into a silent void.

Qi Si stood up from the Coffin and looked towards the side chamber on the right.

The maggots and rotten flesh that had been scattered all over the floor were gone, the ground as clean as usual, as if nothing had ever existed.

The Temple of the Joyous God seemed to be just an ordinary temple; apart from the Statue of the Joyous God that had descended from the shrine, there was nothing else unusual.

The only things that could prove what had just happened were the Soul-Suppressing Nail in his hand and Du Xiaoyu lying on the ground.

The bell outside stopped ringing, and then, three light but distinct knocks sounded on the temple door.

Sister Xu’s hoarse voice drifted in: “Distinguished guests, are you inside? Please open the door.”

Shang Qingbei cast a questioning look at Qi Si.

The situation outside was unknown, and Sister Xu’s timing was truly subtle. Moreover, judging by her tone, she seemed to know what had happened in the temple, which made it all the more suspicious.

“Open it. We can’t stay in the temple for seven days.” Qi Si walked towards Du Xiaoyu, who was still playing dead, and reached into his pocket to take out his phone and put it into his own.

As if a switch had been flipped, Du Xiaoyu’s leg twitched, his eyelids fluttered, and he groggily opened his eyes.

He sat up dazedly, looking bewildered: “Brother Qi, why am I lying here?”

“Have you forgotten? We came to the temple to investigate earlier, triggered a death point, and got trapped inside.” Qi Si turned sideways and pointed vaguely at the temple door, “Now, it should be past the allotted time, and Sister Xu is here to take us out.”

Du Xiaoyu finally remembered the beginning and end of the matter. He staggered to his feet and cautiously looked around.

Upon seeing the two statues kneeling at the lower end of the shrine, his face changed, and he took a few steps back with lingering fear.

Only when he noticed the statues were motionless did he let out a sigh of relief, cursed loudly, and spat on the ground.

Sister Xu knocked on the door twice more at the opportune moment, yelling, “Something happened this morning, and we were not hospitable enough. The matter is almost resolved now, so please, follow this old woman back.”

Du Xiaoyu didn’t want to stay in the temple for another second. Seeing Qi Si and Shang Qingbei’s encouraging gazes, he immediately scampered towards the temple door and pulled out the bolt.

The temple door slowly swung open, revealing Sister Xu’s wrinkled face, covered in white powder.

Perhaps because the trouble was resolved, her complexion had improved significantly, and a smile appeared at the corners of her lips: “If the three of you wanted to come to the Temple of the Joyous God, you should have told this old woman. What if something had happened?”

Her words carried a hint of reproach.

Qi Si’s gaze fell on the bell at her waist, and he asked knowingly, “What could happen? Sister Xu, you said that the Joyous Goddess is a deity who protects you. Surely she wouldn’t be unfavorable to us, would she?”

Sister Xu let out an “Aiyoh,” slapped her thigh, and said, “Although the Joyous Goddess is a good deity, she died young and was still a little girl, so her temper can be unpredictable. Every forty-nine years, her disposition turns bad, which is why we hold a grand banquet to make her happy.”

Qi Si lowered his eyes, feigning concern: “Then if Miss Xier passed away and the banquet was ruined, wouldn’t something bad happen?”

Sister Xu chuckled, “The people in our town will handle it. The few of you just enjoy yourselves and watch, no need to worry.”

She swayed and turned her back, her inverted conical legs nimbly moving on the stone slab path, quickly reaching five meters away.

Du Xiaoyu had just woken up from a coma, his mind still unclear, so he followed quickly without much thought.

Shang Qingbei had already retreated to Qi Si’s side when he let Du Xiaoyu open the door. Now, he walked alongside Qi Si, trailing far behind.

The white fog in the alleyways had dispersed, and a pale, cold sun hung high overhead, casting an overexposed photo-like hue over the white walls and black tiles on both sides.

There was no cluster of shadows among the bright houses, nor any Ghosts. The previous encounter seemed to be just an illusion.

Shang Qingbei whispered, “Could Du Xiaoyu be problematic? He was just lying there, and those two statue Ghosts didn’t go for him, but came for us instead. Does he have an item that can divert Ghosts’ attention?”

“No. If he really had such an item, he wouldn’t be so scared.” Qi Si pretended not to hear the divisive implication and shook his head with a smile, “I suspect the Ghosts in this instance have unique attack rules, such as not attacking people in their sleep—who knows?”

Shang Qingbei silently scoffed at the

“nonsense” but didn’t say much.

“Qi Wen’s” judgment indeed made some sense. Many instances, for the sake of fairness, had such settings.

The Eerie Game was under the control of the world’s rules, and all eerie effects were bound to follow inherent patterns. Death rules could be very simple or very bizarre; no one could say for sure.

As he was pondering, he heard the young man say in a joking tone, “Is there a possibility that what we encountered just now wasn’t a death point, but a special plot event? Those Ghosts just wanted to scare us and didn’t want our lives?”

Shang Qingbei instinctively retorted, “How is that possible? Do you think this is child’s play?”

“Why not?” Qi Si chuckled softly, “Do you remember how fast those two statues returned to their original positions from the side chamber?”

Shang Qingbei was startled.

Yes, those two statues could clearly cover a distance of ten meters in two seconds, so why did they play a slow chase game with them, like a cat toying with a mouse?

He looked up at the young man beside him, who, however, was looking straight ahead, muttering to himself with a half-smile, “At the temple, I had already pulled out the Soul-Suppressing Nail and held it in front of me, yet the bride’s statue still reached out to grab me, even directly charging towards the nail, as if deliberately wanting to be pricked…”

Shang Qingbei’s expression tightened: “Are you saying… they wanted to tell us some clues?”

Qi Si did not answer immediately.

After that crisis, he naturally thought of the entry about the 【Soul-Suppressing Coffin】 provided by the phone, subconsciously reinforcing the impression that “the clues provided by the phone are valid.”

However, not long ago, he realized that there was false information in the instance and that some entity was targeting him… It was too coincidental, almost like trying to cover up something.

In the silence, Qi Si suddenly asked, “Sister Xu, how did you know we were in the temple?”

Sister Xu smiled and said, “The town is so small, this old woman just guessed, and she actually guessed right.”

The tone of her words was utterly false, but Qi Si said no more.

He had already made his judgment.

Xu Wen knew the players had arrived in Shuangxi Town, and Sister Xu knew the three of them were in the Temple of the Joyous God. Excluding the option of these two NPCs having clairvoyance, only one possibility remained—

The players had something that could be located on them.

And the only item belonging to this instance that players carried with them was the mobile phone.

Shang Qingbei thought of something and murmured, “Even if Xu Wen and Sister Xu aren’t working together, they should both be Ghosts and can sense the location of something. That prop phone is problematic…”

Qi Si remained silent, pulling out his phone from his pocket and holding it in his hand. The ice-cold phone case reminded him of the temperature of a corpse.

He pressed the power button, entered the browser, and searched according to his memory.

【Soul-Suppressing Coffin: With Soul-Suppressing Nails at its four corners, it can ward off evil spirits and suppress yin souls. A fierce corpse is suppressed within the outer Coffin, its resentment lingering. Once the Coffin is opened, a great calamity is sure to follow…】

【Soul-Summoning Bell: Draws yang souls from the body, brings yin Ghosts back to the living. Yin and yang originally have no boundaries; when the bell rings, they return to the primordial chaos…】

【Person in the Well: Water belongs to yin, wells gather wealth. The heavier the yin energy in the well, the more prosperous the owner’s fortune; the more yin energy accumulates, the thicker the source of blessings…】

Clues, one by one, sketched out a seemingly self-consistent worldview:

The people of Shuangxi Town, for wealth and blessings, would abuse and kill a girl on her wedding day every forty-nine years, throwing her into a well to nourish the well water with her yin energy.

The used corpse, due to excessive resentment, was then nailed into a Soul-Suppressing Coffin and sent to the Temple of the Joyous God to be suppressed by the Joyous Goddess.

Such perverse actions turned Shuangxi Town into a Ghost town. Sister Xu could only wear a Soul-Summoning Bell to barely prevent players from noticing anything unusual.

But what if… the clues provided by the phone were false?

Who stipulated that something written in black and white couldn’t be a lie?

Excluding the cluttered information, many previously overlooked details surfaced one by one: Sister Xu made guests stay at Xier’s house, saying it was the only vacant room… In supernatural tales, Zhang Sheng’s sisters were beautiful and thus disappeared near Shuangxi Town… There were bloodstains on the windowsill… Xier’s fingers had thick calluses from holding a pen… The crying Coffin… The lyrics accompanied by suona… The old man in the temple said that staying for seven days meant they were people of the town… All this information pointed to a completely different worldview, but it was subconsciously ignored by the players due to the misleading clues from the phone.

It must be said that the entity behind this setup had a very precise grasp of human psychology.

Placing the phone on Liu Bingding, and then having Qi Si lead the players to find it, made them instinctively believe it was a crucial item.

The novelty of an electronic device appearing in the game prompted players to immediately explore the phone, thus seeing the photo and entry for 【Soul-Suppressing Coffin】.

The image of the Coffin seeping blood in the photo aligned with the eerie atmosphere of the instance, making it convincing; Xu Wen’s call then interrupted the players’ thoughts.

Even Qi Si gradually overlooked: the entry’s information had not refreshed on the system interface.

Later, most of the information Xu Wen provided over the phone was disproven. After noticing the superficial trap, Qi Si failed to realize that a larger lie was hidden beneath the obvious false appearance.

The eerie images in the photos materialized in the instance, subtly creating a psychological suggestion about the authenticity of the clues; and the subsequent process of taking photos, identifying images, and obtaining clues gave a false sense of agency.

A large net had been silently cast from the moment players entered the instance, gently and slowly tightening, until everyone was ensnared.

Actually, the moment the clue about the 【Person in the Well】 appeared, Qi Si vaguely realized something was wrong, which is why he took a series of actions like deleting photos and instigating Xier’s suicide.

He felt he was being misled and manipulated, and he wanted to break the behind-the-scenes entity’s scheme through unconventional actions.

But it was futile.

“Beyond misleading information, even false clues and false items were used? So that’s how it is…” Qi Si smiled silently.

Because it was a fake item, Qi could freely change the phone’s battery level, and he could also freely delete photos on the phone… If the clues on the phone were real, how could the Eerie Game allow him to change them at will, using such a simple and crude method to create an information gap?

“The deception on the item wasn’t entirely undetectable. The timeline was 2008, yet the phone model was so new, which itself was problematic. But I treated it as an oversight by the Eerie Game and subconsciously ignored it.

“I entered the instance too late, and despite knowing I lacked experience, I still carelessly overlooked some details; my judgment of some high-level entities also had deviations, and in some places, I was ultimately too dismissive and took things for granted…”

Qi Si stored the lessons learned in his memory, not forgetting to mock himself from beginning to end.

He was not a god, unable to be omniscient and omnipotent. All he could do was constantly summarize his failures and be more meticulous and cautious in the future.

At this moment, his thoughts were clearer than ever: “The situation hasn’t reached an irreversible point. The fake item created by that entity can be modified by me and Qi, which means its status is not as high as I imagined, and dealing with me is not due to the rules’ authorization. Therefore, the minimum death toll mechanism should still be effective.

“It can fabricate false information, but it cannot conceal or destroy real clues. The roles of the phone and Li Yao overlap, and can even be said to be opposing and contradictory. If the phone is fake, then Li Yao’s identity is worth discussing…”

Li Yao’s words replayed in his ears.

‘Li Yao, fifth time. I mainly write supernatural novels and know a lot about folklore.’

‘Seven in Taoism is the youngest of the yang numbers, the intersection of yin and yang. The first seven days after death, the soul returns, debts of gratitude are repaid, and worldly ties are resolved.’

‘The feng shui layout of the Temple of the Joyous God is very strange. I glanced inside when I passed the temple gate earlier, and the yin energy inside is extremely heavy, nurturing Ghosts to devour themselves, as if using poison to fight poison, suppressing something.’

The Eerie Game never specified the number of players in this instance. Who was a player, and who was an NPC? Who could say for sure?

Qi Si narrowed his eyes and asked, “Sister Xu, did you see Li Yao on the road? The girl who came with us?”

Sister Xu stopped, turned around to look at him, and slowly grinned with her toothless mouth, revealing a dark, cavernous smile: “What girl? Only four of you came, all young men.”