Chapter 162: Qingming (Revised)

On the day of the Qingming Festival, Liu Pu woke up early. He had been driving his taxi for about an hour and a half and had just finished a trip when the ride-hailing app assigned him a major long-distance order.

The starting point was at Riverside Estate in Xiacheng District, and the destination was Qijia Village in Jin City.

As soon as he saw this familiar address, Liu Pu recalled his last eerie experience, and his eyelids began to twitch.

Back then, it seemed to be in this same area where he picked up a young man to take to Jin City. After that trip ended, not only did he have no memory of what happened during the journey, but whenever he tried to tell others about the strange incident, he couldn’t utter a single word.

Thinking back on it even now, he still felt it was sinister.

“It couldn’t be such a coincidence, right? There are eight billion people in the world; it’s normal for routes to overlap. Besides, the phone number is different…”

Liu Pu comforted himself as he adjusted the steering wheel and drove toward the location indicated by the navigation.

After stopping for only a short while, he saw a young man in a white shirt and black trousers walking lazily from a distance. That gloomy, pale face was exceptionally familiar.

“No way? No way? He’s probably just passing by, right?”

Liu Pu muttered to himself, but he watched helplessly as the young man dragged a suitcase and carried a rectangular box that looked like a coffin, getting closer and closer.

The young man pulled open the car door, stuffed his bags into the back seat, and then sat inside himself, holding the coffin-like box horizontally in his arms.

Liu Pu observed the young man’s every move through the rearview mirror, his gaze finally landing on the coffin box. In an instant, countless strange thoughts sprang up, and he even suspected if a corpse was really inside.

Qi Si noticed Liu Pu’s scrutinizing gaze, looked up, and gave him a smile. “Good morning. Have I seen you before?”

“Good… good morning, young man.” Liu Pu quickly looked away. “You have so many things, do you want to put them in the trunk?”

“No thanks.” Qi Si was still smiling. “There’s no reason to stuff one’s parents into the trunk.”

Liu Pu: “…”

…It was already 1:30 PM when they arrived at Qijia Village. Qi Si had only eaten a piece of bread when he woke up, but he didn’t feel hungry now.

He got out of the car with his bags and walked straight into the rolling thick fog. When he looked back, the people and things from the direction he came were already gone.

Clusters of white mist blocked the road, turning into cold water droplets that condensed on his body, wrapping around him as if they were tangible.

A faint scent of blood was carried by the flowing mist. Looking toward the source, several dark shadows could be seen lying on the ground not far away—probably corpses by the roadside.

Everything before him was no different from the scenes in Shuangxi Town. A faint sense of familiarity actually put Qi Si at ease. He curled his lips and asked softly, “Xu Yao, are you there?”

The wind brought bursts of whimpering, but listening closely, it seemed like just the sound of airflow moving through the branches. The white mist dissipated slightly, and a road faintly appeared ahead.

Qi Si stepped onto the road cleared of mist, moving toward his destination step by step. A smiling female voice suddenly rang in his ear: “You’re walking so slowly.”

“The things are heavy.” Qi Si’s tone was matter-of-fact. “Why don’t you help me carry them to my house?”

Xu Yao: “…”

Two seconds later, two paper figures in red clothes came swaying on the wind, standing on either side of Qi Si to lift the coffin box he was carrying.

The weight on his back lightened considerably. Qi Si quickened his pace, soon passing through a cluster of crooked old houses and standing before the two-story building left by his deceased uncle and aunt.

The door opened by itself without wind. Blood as thick as jam crossed the threshold, flowing slowly at the entrance.

Smelling the strong scent of blood, Qi Si’s breathing quickened. At first glance, he saw an incredibly ugly male corpse.

This person seemed to have experienced a terrifying scene before death; his eyes were wide with horror, as if they were about to pop out of their sockets. His arm joints were bent at eerie angles, and his lower body was nearly crushed, as if he had fallen from a height.

Qi Si leaned closer and smelled the fishy scent of a damp well bottom, thus knowing this person had fallen into a well and died.

He stepped over the corpse lying at the door and continued inside. In the center of the living room, he saw eleven corpses lined up neatly. The oldest had completely white hair and skin wrinkled like a crumpled paper ball; the smallest was no longer than an adult’s arm and was bloated by a full circle.

“Is this some kind of jump scare prank?” Qi Si looked at the Statue of the Joyous God placed in the corner with a half-smile. “I believe I only told you to throw them into the well, not to kill them?”

The Statue of the Joyous God remained silent, as if it hadn’t heard.

Qi Si sighed. “Clean this place up. If they stay here any longer, they’ll start to rot and stink.”

More than twenty paper figures lined up in two rows and filed in from outside. Some lifted the hands and others the feet, dragging the corpses out.

Qi Si sat on the sofa, watching leisurely as the paper figures familiarly ducked into the utility room, took out mops, brooms, and rags, and either stood or squatted to clumsily clean the blood on the floor.

He thought pointlessly that this old house could now be called a haunted house. Two families who had lived here had all died tragic deaths. If word got out, this would definitely be a prime spot for supernatural enthusiasts to visit in a hundred years.

In just ten minutes, the paper figures finished cleaning the floor and dissipated into the wispy white mist.

Qi Si felt a bit hungry and looked at the Statue of the Joyous God again: “Xu Yao, can your paper figures cook?”

Xu Yao: “…”

Half an hour later, a figure resembling Sister Xu appeared from the thick mist, placing a bowl of white rice with pickles in front of Qi Si.

Qi Si was never picky about food. He finished his lunch quickly, returned the bowl to Sister Xu who was waiting nearby, and climbed up to the long-sealed second floor.

Because his uncle’s family had all died on the second floor, the villagers who occupied the house only dared to stay on the first floor. They had installed an iron gate at the stairs to the second floor and pasted several yellow talismans on it to deceive themselves.

Qi Si tore off the talismans, picked the lock of the iron gate with a thin wire, and was immediately hit in the face with dust upon opening the door.

So he called out again: “Xu Yao—”

The paper figures appeared once more, and after some effort, they finally cleaned the second floor.

Qi Si walked into the small room where he used to live, took out bedding and a mattress from his suitcase, and spread them on the single bed. Then he went to the room next door, opened the coffin box, took out two skeletons, and laid them flat on the bed.

On April 2nd, the Statue of the Joyous God was delivered to Qijia Village on time.

Upon sensing that the package had been opened, Qi Si immediately activated the effect remotely, turning the entire Qijia Village into a ghost domain.

Throughout April 3rd, under the organization of the village chief, the villagers ran around recklessly, refusing to believe in the supernatural, and more than half of them died.

The deaths of their companions stirred a sense of shared grief. Fear and despair quickly marinated the crowd. Everyone would be excellent seasoning for producing sin, waiting for the culprit to pick them at will.

April 4th, which was today, Qi Si estimated that Qijia Village had been sufficiently transformed by ghosts before he leisurely moved in.

From now on, this was his home turf. Hundreds of terrifying ghosts rampaged here, turning the place into an eerie site just like the real Shuangxi Town.

The danger level of a regional eerie event was at least B-rank, making it not worth the effort to solve. Shuangxi Town had to wait for public opinion to ferment before it was dealt with, let alone the remote Qijia Village.

Even if some blind investigator wanted to come looking for trouble, they would have to see if they could break through the ghosts’ blockade first.

Recalling the corpses he saw along the way, Qi Si expected that the sin produced must be significant, and he couldn’t help but feel expectant.

He lay on the bed, letting his consciousness sink into the darkness and return to the game space.

When he opened his eyes again, he saw countless streaks of black smoke crashing around in the void. The originally dim and old temple seemed to have been nourished by sin; the murals on the walls and ceiling were now brightly colored and radiant.

Qi Si watched the lively sin with interest for a while before taking the Sea-God Scepter from his inventory and holding it in his hand.

The black smoke seemed to have finally found a home, surging toward the scepter and carving a crescent-shaped pattern on the white trident. Looking closely, it resembled the tentacles of an evil god, twisted and eerie.

The sin appeared numerous as it scattered in the form of black smoke, but after touching the scepter, it only outlined a single stroke before vanishing completely.

The temple became clean and spacious within a few breaths. Qi Si’s pupils dilated and contracted, and broken words like sleep-talk were reflected in his eyes.

【Sin… The Sea-God Scepter has absorbed sin… sufficient sin…】

These weren’t prompt texts from the Eerie Game, yet they had common origins and similarities. They were more like discarded drafts that had been crushed, unearthed from the ocean of redundant information during a system failure.

Countless pieces of knowledge surged in his mind, which were actually fragmented Identity Cards: 【Immortal Witch Priest】, 【Utopian Orator】, 【Fallen Savior】… None of the card faces could be seen clearly; only meaningless nouns flitted before his eyes.

A cold voice pronounced from above: “This is a fate that does not belong to you.”

Qi Si seemed to see the phantom of a giant golden eye, calmly gazing at him through yellow clouds and a gilded ocean.

A chaotic tide of thoughts poured uncontrollably into his consciousness, filling his mind palace to the brim and overflowing from the cracks of his soul.

Tens of millions of different voices resonated in unison, speaking the same meaning:

“Rules feed on sin.”

Rules feed on sin; gods gather the sins of all living beings. Thus, rules feed on gods… He had been dead for a long time, and even His divine body had been devoured by a higher existence. He still hadn’t perished, but was merely hungry from not eating for a long time, His consciousness slumbering in the endless wait.

Until He tasted sin again, He finally woke up. His fragmented consciousness began to clamor with eternal greed; He wanted more… The Sea-God Scepter vibrated violently. Qi Si felt his soul tearing and restructuring, peeling off layer by layer and scattering to various angles. From all directions, near and far, he watched his own body sitting stiffly on the high-backed chair, his arms and neck entangled by black tentacles extending from the scepter.

The phantom of the tentacles extended from his hand holding the handle into his blood vessels, crawling and spreading through various meridians and cavities without obstruction. Suckers extended new tentacles to root into the flesh, occupying every new territory.

“Possession.”

Qi Si suddenly thought of a word.

He seemed to naturally know what he should do. The method to escape the crisis became clearer at the bottom of his mind as his soul was pulled away, like an ancient memory carved into his genetic code.

He walked over, grabbed the hand of his physical body from the other side, and guided it to touch the golden vine hanging beside him.

In an instant, like a drowning person finding a support, his consciousness returned to his body. The pressure and suffocation acting on him vanished, and even the tentacles and words became barely visible.

His body returned to the control of his soul, and the Sea-God’s tentacles were forced back into the scepter. Qi Si breathed heavily, watching the abnormalities before him fade bit by bit, his vision slowly settling over time.

The temple returned to peace as if nothing had happened. In the silence, he could even hear his heart pounding, thump, thump… Weighing the benefits of pretending to be a god against the risk of being killed by the Sea-God, which was greater was a question.

After a long silence, Qi Si chuckled: “Didn’t Qi say that except for Him, no other existence can enter here without permission? What’s the deal with the Sea-God? Is it because I took His scepter?”

He threw the scepter back into his inventory and turned to look at the golden vine that had just saved his life.

Surrounded by four leaves, a golden apple was faintly visible. Because it had just grown, it was only half the size of a palm, swaying shyly as his gaze touched it, quite cute.

【World-Fruit (Corresponding Coordinates: Qijia Village)】

“Is it because I turned Qijia Village into a ghost domain and essentially took control of this territory?”

Qi Si felt a faint pull from the World-Fruit and relaxed, letting his consciousness sink into it.

Numerous golden spots of light swam on both sides of his vision. Bursts of mist gathered and dispersed, and before him was a map of Qijia Village.

Qi Si gained an overhead perspective and could zoom the image in and out at will.

Paper figures patrolling the road, corpses on both sides of the field ridges, birds, beasts, even maggots and flies—countless pieces of information within his field of vision were acquired by him.

It could no longer be called “seeing”; it should be “feeling” or “understanding.”

Every frame of the image contained tens of thousands of elements, and those elements were composed of thousands of tiny branches. High-precision details and a wide global awareness flowed through his mind like a tide, available for use anytime, anywhere.

With a thought, Qi Si then saw over a hundred familiar or strange faces.

A woman who had lost her husband sat huddled in a corner, tear stains still on her face, yet she gritted her teeth and waved a kitchen knife at the laughing paper figures outside the window.

A child trapped among graves was protected in the center by the corpses of his parents. While tightly clutching his parents’ stiff hands, he stared fixedly at the Bride Statue, confronting it.

An elderly person closed the doors and windows tightly, turned out all the red cloth that could be found in the house to paste on the windows, and scattered a handful of glutinous rice at the door, muttering under his breath… Qi Si seemed to be the master of the ghost domain at times, and the ghost domain itself at others, able to know the people who walked by and the things that happened in every nook and cranny of this place.

Including… the past, the present, and… the future.

The golden vine swayed beside his face, bypassing the step of speaking to let him know the information.

He suddenly realized that he could do something to these people, and even extend the tentacles of the Eerie Game to them.

What interesting things would happen if people who survived for two days in a ghost domain entered the Eerie Game?

Qi Si smiled happily.

He lowered his eyes and declared word by word: “My name is Qi, the Chief God of the Eerie Game…”

In Qijia Village, all the surviving villagers heard a solemn voice ring in their ears. At the same time, the actions of all ghosts froze at that moment.

They instinctively looked up at the sky and saw golden vines hanging down from the high heavens, accompanied by a persuasive oracle:

“Now, you have two choices.”

“Be tormented by ghosts for all eternity and die in reality; or, enter the Eerie Game as players.”