Chapter 124: Shuangxi Town (18) Descending the Dry Well

In the past spacetime of Shuangxi Town, Li Yao lay in the Coffin, listening to the human voices gradually fading away.

The sound of the suona was mournful, the sharp and piercing melody gradually going out of tune, sounding exactly like Ghosts wailing and wolves howling.

Li Yao felt her consciousness like a loose compass needle, swaying on the edge of clarity and blurriness.

A mess of information washed over her memory; she couldn’t extract her own existence from it.

All she could do was recall her past over and over: “I am a horror novelist. I don’t have a talent for plot; I only know how to write ambiguous stories about Ghosts.”

“I submit manuscripts to’Spirit World’ magazine every week. For the first few years, I mailed them, later I switched to email. I’m still not quite used to it…”

“A month ago, I entered the Eerie Game. At first, I wasn’t very scared, thinking I could gather material and gain writing inspiration. It wasn’t until the third instance that I started to get scared…”

“Heh, that day was November 9th, which just happened to be my birthday…”

Heavy, messy footsteps sounded, accompanied by “huffing” panting.

Someone was coming.

…

On the other side, Liu Bingding dragged his feet forward, panting.

He had consumed an item and finally shook off the pursuit of two Paper Effigies, blending into a funeral procession.

Ever since he was selected by the Eerie Game, his goal had been clear: survival is the priority; realizing wishes and such are just bonuses.

He was born mediocre, but steady and cautious, and kind to others, which is why he successfully survived until the official instance.

And the points he saved up were all used to buy life-saving items.

He was a very pragmatic person. In his view, living as long as he could was what mattered; he wouldn’t consider anything extra for now.

Finding Sister Xu wasn’t urgent; the most important thing was to leave this damn place as soon as possible.

White mist filled the vast street, and the harsh sound of the suona played unpleasantly. The dark shadows blowing and beating instruments carried the black Coffin, sailing steadily through the mist.

Liu Bingding tried his best to lower his presence, following at the end of the procession.

He was always a passerby, never attracting extra attention from anyone. At this moment, he hid in the crowd just like he did when he was an extra, without drawing the attention of any NPC.

The front of the procession had stopped; the dark shadows slowed their steps one after another and set down the Coffin.

Liu Bingding saw from afar that at the destination of the procession, a mass of black Coffins had already been parked, gloomy and eerie.

…

Outside the courtyard gate, Qi Si held his phone, while Shang Qingbei and Du Xiaoyu leaned in left and right to listen carefully.

After the call connected, Xu Wen’s soft, thin voice rang out eerily: “I know where I am now. I am at the bottom of a well. There are so many Ghosts here, please come and save me…”

Qi Si asked: “How do you know you are at the bottom of a well?”

Xu Wen stammered: “Just a while ago, I remembered some things. I had an argument with them while I was out gathering material. Later, I don’t know what happened, I suddenly lost my strength, and they threw me into the well…”

Du Xiaoyu still couldn’t figure out the situation, while Shang Qingbei looked up at Qi Si.

Being thrown into a well meant either falling to death or drowning.

For Xu Wen to say these words was a tacit admission that she was no longer alive.

Qi Si seemed unfazed and asked: “What did you argue with them about?”

“I don’t remember.” Xu Wen’s voice dropped. “I only remember we were arguing very intensely. I think I wanted to take someone away, maybe I wanted to leave myself, but they wouldn’t let me go…”

Qi Si looked down at his pocket watch.

Forty seconds had already passed. Based on the call duration from the first day, he only had twenty seconds of questioning time left.

He interrupted: “Yesterday you didn’t say there were Ghosts on your side. Did these Ghosts appear out of thin air?”

The voice on the phone suddenly went quiet; for a moment, there wasn’t even the sound of breathing.

Two seconds later, Xu Wen’s dazed voice sounded in the silence: “I don’t know what happened. The things in the temple are coming out soon. It clearly shouldn’t be this early…”

“Temple?”

“Yes, the Sangshen Temple. There is a small town at the bottom of the well…”

The “beep-beep” busy signal cut off Xu Wen’s words; the one-minute call time was over.

Shang Qingbei’s expression was grave; he held his chin with the dictionary, wondering what he was thinking about.

Du Xiaoyu looked left and right, asking stammeringly: “Brother Qi, what is going on with the Sangshen Temple?”

Qi Si put his phone in his pocket and explained patiently: “This instance has two spaces.’Shuangxi, Shuangxi; one is called a funeral, one is called a wedding.’ The Shuangxi Town we are currently in hosts weddings and worships the God of Joy.”

“Correspondingly, there must exist a town that hosts funerals and worships the God of Mourning to form a balance. And the ‘well’ should be the passage connecting the two towns.”

He walked to the courtyard gate, pushed open the half-closed wooden door, and stepped over the threshold.

Du Xiaoyu was startled and blurted out: “Aren’t there Ghosts inside?”

“It’s only noon now. Ghosts shouldn’t come out until after dusk.” Qi Si didn’t look back, crouched down half a step behind the threshold, and pulled out a blade to pick up a piece of paper money on the ground. “And they likely have no malice toward us. The only thing they’ve done is get blood on our food, probably implying that the food is problematic.”

“Blood?” Du Xiaoyu didn’t understand.

Qi Si stood up, took out the handkerchief he used to wipe his mouth after the first day’s meal from his pocket, and threw it over.

Du Xiaoyu reached out to catch it, unfolded it, and saw that the pin-sized bloodstains had congealed into a brownish-black color.

His expression changed: “Then what we ate yesterday…”

“It won’t kill you. It’s highly likely just something like a sleeping potion added to it.” Qi Si lowered his head and walked slowly along the paper money on the ground.

The pure white circles were scattered every few steps; they should be marks left temporarily.

Qi Si knew that besides himself, only Li Yao had paper money in her pocket.

That girl was struggling to survive herself, yet she was still thinking about leaving clues for others; it was somewhat funny to think about.

Qi Si followed the guidance of the paper money and arrived outside the door of the west wing room.

Shredded red paper was scattered all over the ground, trampled into patches of blood-colored mud.

There was no one inside or outside the room, not even the smell of blood; everything appeared dead and silent.

This place didn’t look like a place where someone had just died; it looked more like a tomb sealed for a hundred years, where even the architecture had died. A human death was like a drop of pigment falling into paint, quickly sinking in without making a sound.

Qi Si pushed the door open. As expected, there was no one inside, nor was there a corpse.

On the grayish-white wall were large patches of dried blood. It was very old; it definitely wasn’t splashed on this morning.

Xier’s death was like a phantom in a dream, leaving no trace or proof whatsoever.

Qi Si walked straight toward the exquisitely carved wooden bed and lifted the wine-red wedding quilt. The wind from lifting it blew up a newspaper clipping, which floated in the air for a few moments before trembling and falling back down.

Qi Si picked up the paper page with his hand. The prominent font formed the headline of the news:

【20-year-old female college student goes missing while traveling, police have intervened in the investigation】

The photo accompanying it below clearly showed Xier’s face.

…

Shang Qingbei followed Qi Si into the courtyard and went straight to the east wing room.

Upon seeing the empty room, he took a deep breath and let it out: “Li Yao and Liu Bingding are not in the room. After they finished investigating the clues here regarding Xier, they wouldn’t have gone running around; they must have encountered some accident…”

The deserted courtyard was silent and quiet; even at a normal speaking volume, everyone could hear clearly.

Du Xiaoyu stood in the open space of the courtyard, muttering: “Don’t be a jinx. With the two of them, it’s impossible that both of them got into trouble…”

Shang Qingbei adjusted his glasses and asked back: “Then what if one of them isn’t human?”

“They are still alive, they just triggered a side quest after finding key clues and are trapped in another space.” Qi Si retreated from the west wing, handed the newspaper to Shang Qingbei, “I already have some thoughts about the background of this instance.”

Du Xiaoyu subconsciously forgot to ask for the reason behind the previous conclusion and asked eagerly: “What thoughts? This instance is a mess. What’s going on with the background and worldview?”

Shang Qingbei despised Du Xiaoyu, who acted as a straight man all day, in his heart, while silently reading the newspaper in his hand and listening with both ears.

Qi Si walked into the room, sat down on the bed in the very center, and took a new handkerchief from his backpack to wipe his dusty fingers: “You should have all heard of human trafficking; that is the core worldview of this instance.”

Zhang Sheng’s missing sister, the bloodstains on the windowsill, the blood on the wall, the bun crumbs that turned into blood spots, the report, the Coffin, “Keep the body for seven days, and they will be people of the town”…

One by one, the clues outlined a complete logical chain. Qi Si explained slowly:

“Travelers entering Shuangxi Town will be brought to this courtyard. Sister Xu sometimes puts some drugs in the food she sends to control certain travelers, such as girls like Xier.”

“The townspeople use some means—I guess it’s putting them in a Coffin for seven days—to make the girls become foolish, thereby staying in the town forever. This is the ‘entry allowed, exit forbidden’ mentioned by the ferryman at the beginning of the instance.”

“Xu Wen came to the town voluntarily for some reason, perhaps for folklore investigation work, perhaps looking for missing girls in the name of gathering material. In any case, she might have discovered something, and therefore had an argument with the townspeople.”

“The townspeople, in order to cover up the truth, pushed her into the well. This is not the first time; otherwise, the resentment from just a few corpses wouldn’t be enough to form a reflection of Shuangxi Town under the well.”

Qi Si paused and continued: “As for what Xu Wen said on the phone, that the things in the temple came out early, I think it should be related to Xier’s accidental death.”

“Xier died before getting married, which is equivalent to breaking the Ritual that happens once every forty-nine years in Shuangxi Town. Perhaps because of this, some seals were loosened—who knows?”

Du Xiaoyu was stunned while listening and asked: “So are the NPCs in this town human or Ghosts? I see the clues on the phone…”

“Fake,” Qi Si said.

“…Ah?”

“Fake,” Shang Qingbei affirmed, then repeated the conclusion he had reached with Qi Si earlier.

Du Xiaoyu nodded as if he understood, his eyes blank, unable to keep up with the rhythm of the reasoning.

Shang Qingbei compared Qi Si’s account with his own judgment and frowned: “What is the deal with the God of Joy? What is the Ritual that happens once every forty-nine years for? And what is the situation with the existence of the two Shuangxi Towns?”

“I don’t know.” Qi Si folded the handkerchief and stuffed it into his pocket, his expression calm. “Some clues are still missing, most likely on Li Yao’s side. Either we wait for them to meet up with us, or we go down the well ourselves to see.”

Shang Qingbei asked: “How are you sure the clues are there?”

Qi Si didn’t speak, took out his phone, and unlocked the screen.

The interface automatically jumped to the photo gallery, and he clicked on a picture.

It was a map of Shuangxi Town. Black lines formed the flat layout, and a red circle marked the location of the well, which was particularly eye-catching.

“Sent by Xu Wen?” Shang Qingbei asked.

Qi Si said “Mm” and his smile became strange: “She is urging us. It seems we have no choice but to go down the well.”