Chapter 126: Shuangxi Town (20) Death is Life

Li Yao watched herself and Liu Bingding lie down in the Coffin, letting out a sigh of relief.

Although there were no clues, she instinctively felt that lying in the Coffin meant safety, a way to avoid Paper Effigies and other Ghosts.

It was as if… this scene had repeated many times, and she was quite experienced with it.

‘No, if I’m already in the Coffin, how can I see myself? How can I… see the Coffin lid close before my eyes?’

Li Yao leaned against a giant, half-human-sized Coffin, her back feeling the chill of the Coffin wall, vaguely sensing that something was amiss.

She stood up in confusion, her gaze fixed on the Coffin that Xu Yao and Liu Bingding had just entered.

“Hehehe… hehehe…”

The sharp laughter of a Paper Effigy sounded behind her ear. Li Yao shivered, instinctively turning back to look.

A pale face suddenly pressed against her nose, a crimson smile stretching to its ears, comically mocking.

It was a very low-level jump scare, and though Li Yao wasn’t particularly afraid of Ghosts, she was still startled.

“Li Yao… Sister Li… Wuwuwu…” A mournful cry followed, replacing the “hehehe” laughter and filling the air.

The Paper Effigy’s eyes and blush remained still, but its mouth suddenly drooped, its smiling face instantly turning into a weeping one, filled with resentment and grievance.

“Li Yao, you are the most experienced player among us. If you don’t go down the well, no one else can.”

“Sister Li, I don’t want to die… We’re only missing a few clues, they must be down the well…”

Coercive and pleading voices, a jumble of words, echoed in her memory. Li Yao suddenly realized:

‘That’s right, I’m not Xu Yao, I’m Li Yao. It was Xu Yao who went into the Coffin with Liu Bingding… I’m still outside…’

‘Xu Yao, Liu Bingding, and I went back to Xier’s house to explore and triggered a side quest…’

‘No, who is Xu Yao? Qi Wen only arranged for two people to go back to Xier’s house. When did an extra person appear?’

The switch to her blind spot was flipped, and all the details she had subconsciously ignored previously began to surface before her eyes.

When she was hiding in a corner of the mansion, a faceless woman followed her like a ghost, huddling with her… In the Coffin, she talked to herself to solidify her memory, and a voice beside her echoed her, its tone becoming more and more like hers… Then, the Coffin was pried open by Liu Bingding, and the woman who had been following her gained a face—her face… If the clues were correct, the young lady from the Xu Residence who had drowned herself in the well, the Goddess of Joy worshipped by the townspeople, was named “Xu Yao”… Li Yao’s hands and feet were as cold as ice, her mind a mess.

Xu Yao is a Ghost, and the Xu Yao who lay in the Coffin with Liu Bingding is a Ghost!

And she had actually been alone with a Ghost for so long!

Terrified to the extreme, unable to think, she instinctively turned around to lift the already closed Coffin lid.

The Coffin lid seemed to be welded shut; no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t open it.

She could only frantically bang on the outside of the Coffin, shouting loudly: “Liu Bingding, can you hear me? Xu Yao is a Ghost!”

No response. All sounds were like pebbles sinking into a swamp, tightly enveloped and swallowed.

Li Yao panted heavily, belatedly remembering that she was in danger herself; how could she have time to worry about others?

She reached for the dagger at her waist but found nothing.

There was nothing there, as if nothing had been kept there for a long time.

‘Did I drop it on the road? Or was it taken by a Ghost? Or… did I not bring it into the instance?’

Li Yao recalled fruitlessly, failing to evoke any impression related to tools.

She resignedly looked up, only to find that the terrifying Paper Effigies were just surrounding her, with no intention of attacking. Instead… they looked at her with a strange gaze, a look of ironic pity.

Some of the faces looked more and more familiar, as if she had seen them deep in her memory.

“Xiao Xi… Hiss… Brother Zhang, is that you?” Li Yao raised her hand to press her forehead, and memories covered in countless cycles surged like a tide.

Before her was a dark, deep river channel filled with chilling Yin energy, with towering mountain walls on both sides blocking the sunlight. Only a small wooden raft drifted on the still, dead water of the river.

This was precisely the scene players found themselves in when first entering the “Shuangxi Town” instance.

However, this time, there were only five people on the boat: Li Yao, the boatman, and three unfamiliar faces.

It was November 19, 2009. After purchasing the item White Blade, Li Yao entered the instance before the countdown ended and met three teammates.

The tall man with a scar at the corner of his eye was Brother Zhang, the thin and timid young man was A Shu, and the girl who deliberately acted cheerful and generous was Xiao Xi.

Li Yao, as a supernatural novelist who knew a lot about folklore and Feng Shui, was naturally pushed to be the leader of the four-person team.

At first, she lived up to expectations, leading her teammates through one death point after another with her experience and knowledge.

But this instance was too big.

Sister Xu appeared regularly, taking players here and there; white fog occasionally enveloped the land, with Ghosts running rampant within it.

Players could do nothing but passively experience the plot.

On the first day, the four of them all dreamt of a woman sitting by a well and were startled awake.

On the second day, the four attended Xier’s wedding banquet and went to the God of Joy Temple to offer incense, being tormented by moving statues and crying Coffins.

A Shu was injured in a fight, and Brother Zhang hinted at abandoning him, but Li Yao sternly stopped him.

On the third day, Xier was found dead in the well, and the four found half a fragment of a cosmetic mirror by the well.

Xiao Xi recognized it as the latest brand, which should belong to Xu Wen.

Brother Zhang believed this was a clue left by Xu Wen, indicating that she was down the well.

On the third night, a hundred Ghosts roamed.

Xier’s ghost returned home, possessing Xiao Xi and indiscriminately seeking lives. During the fight, Li Yao stabbed White Blade into Xiao Xi’s heart, only to find later that Xiao Xi was still alive when possessed… On the fourth day, players still had no clue about the main quest and the world view.

Xiao Xi’s death cast a pall over the players, and cracks appeared in the three-person group.

The fog in the town grew thicker, and even during the day, terrifying anomalies could be seen in the fog.

The players had the same dream as the first night. This time, the woman in red was contorted, sprawled at the mouth of the well, blood tears flowing from her eyes, resentfully begging passersby for help.

On the fifth day, Brother Zhang suggested that someone go down the well to investigate. As the leader, Li Yao was inevitably responsible.

She wrapped a rope around her waist, looked at the ruthless Brother Zhang, then at the pale A Shu, who was injured, and finally, in front of Brother Zhang, she put the White Blade into A Shu’s hand.

She thought that after she went down the well, if Brother Zhang intended to harm A Shu, A Shu would have a means of self-defense; and if Brother Zhang intended to harm her, A Shu could stop him in time.

In such an almost naive wishful thinking, she jumped into the well, falling onto soft mud, and never returned.

In the darkness, her consciousness sank into an intangible something, only hearing the two people above her talking back and forth.

A Shu quietly questioned: “Brother Zhang… what are you doing? Sister Li is still down there…”

Brother Zhang sneered: “Heh, I want her to die down there. Only if she dies do we have a chance to live.”

“But, all the death points along the way were led by Sister Li…”

“Just a few death points. Can she lead us to clear the instance? She herself said she had no clue about the main quest of this instance.”

“Then… that still doesn’t mean…”

“Heh heh, deciphering the world view is a pipe dream. In the end, it’s very likely to trigger the minimum death toll mechanism. Li Yao is the most experienced player among us, so she’s definitely more likely to survive to the end than us.”

“…”

“If we don’t kill her, we’ll all die. Kill her first, and we’ll have a chance to live!”

In a cold, damp darkness, Li Yao’s perspective seemed to rise high into the sky, looking down at the scene from that year.

She saw Brother Zhang draw a black plain blade and cut the rope.

And in the next second, A Shu plunged the White Blade into his throat… Li Yao didn’t know how long she had drifted above Shuangxi Town. She watched wave after wave of players enter Shuangxi Town by boat, and after dying, transform into Paper Effigies and other Ghosts, feeling an inexplicable sadness.

One day, she heard the voice of a god.

The god said: “Your soul is confined within the game. From now on, you will serve as an NPC in this instance, repeatedly reliving the game’s progression.”

Li Yao asked: “Do I need to do anything after becoming an NPC?”

The god smiled: “In the past, I might have ordered you to provide false clues, luring foolish lambs astray; but now, I’ve thought of an interesting game.”

The voice brewed with bone-deep malice, and Li Yao trembled uncontrollably, looking up only to see the god’s crimson eyes.

“I will seal your memories of death, preserve the emotions from when you were killed, and grant you the knowledge to control the lives and deaths of others.” The god’s fingertips hovered with cards interwoven in red and black, and his voice was joyful, “I’m curious, will you choose to be human or a ghost.”

From then on, an NPC named “Li Yao” was added to the boatman’s raft.

She looked no different from a player and could randomly copy one of the current players’ skills.

Each time, she followed the players’ team into Shuangxi Town and tirelessly provided important information pointing to the world view.

During this time, there was betrayal, cooperation, being killed, and being genuinely appreciated and revered… And no matter what she experienced, all memories would disappear with the reset of the instance.

Until this moment, scenes both similar and different overlapped, washing over her exhausted will all at once.

Li Yao raised her hand to cover her eyes, tears falling from her palm.

“So I’m already dead… So I’ve been dead for a long time… You all, are dead too…”

…”Neither living nor dead.”

“Neither Yin nor Yang.”

“False is true, true is false.”

“Grief is joy, joy is grief.”

On the other side of Shuangxi Town, Qi Si found a deep, narrow path at the bottom of the well and slowly walked forward in the dark.

Someone was singing a eulogy loudly in his ear, like a funeral wail.

The mournful sounds filled his mind in a three-dimensional surround.

Qi Si frowned in annoyance, his steps quickening under the urging of the noise.

Finally, a glimmer of light appeared before him, a listless glow outlining a round hole, not dazzling, nor bringing the joy of new life.

Qi Si stepped into the light without hesitation, leaving the noise behind.

When he opened his eyes again, he was in a small town shrouded in mist.

The layout of this small town was almost identical to Shuangxi Town above ground, but the overall color scheme was darker and paler, with white walls and black tiles on both sides submerged in the fog, and no red silk ever adorned their surfaces.

Layers of lingering, gauze-like gray mist clustered around him, limiting his vision to a very small range, only vaguely able to see shadows moving in the mist.

White paper copper coins drifted down from the high sky, fluttering and dancing everywhere, like white butterflies emerging from the underworld.

It was clearly only afternoon, yet before him was a hazy gray, like the sky of a polluted heavy industrial zone.

Shadows of Ghosts came and went around him, some hunched, some hopping, some trembling slowly, some hurrying quickly.

Men and women, old and young, from all walks of life, except for their indistinct faces, all greeted and sent off as they did in life.

Qi Si was also one of these lonely Ghosts, about to attend the gathering in an incomplete state.

He walked step by step, passed through by countless gray Ghosts, his body growing colder and colder, gradually able to feel the emotions of those Ghosts.

Sadness, unwillingness, confusion, relief… A woman who had been bedridden for a long time worried about her young children at home, helplessly lowering her weak arms;

A man in his prime fell off a cliff while traveling for business, thinking before his death that he still had unfulfilled wishes;

A child did not know what death was, only wondering why he had come to a strange place and could not see his parents;

An old man, having seen the annoyance and resentment of his children and grandchildren at his bedside, felt grateful for the departure of pain at the moment of his last breath… A suona sounded, followed by mournful and poignant funeral music. Someone cried along with the song, and even Qi Si couldn’t help but be tinged with sadness.

So, in his Hall of Thought… he told himself a joke.

“Young man—” Someone called from behind, their voice deep and hoarse.

Qi Si turned with interest to see an old man in a green long gown gesturing to him with vacant eyes: “Excuse me, have you seen a girl? She’s about that tall, with willow-leaf eyebrows, bright eyes, and two dimples when she smiles…”

The old man’s attire was clearly ancient, his gray hair disheveled, looking like a madman: “I’ve been looking for her for a long time, she must be here… They hid her…”

Normally, Qi Si, considering that this suddenly appearing old man might be an important NPC, might have had the leisure to talk to him for a few more sentences.

But now, Qi Si, with nothing on him, just wanted to die immediately.

He ignored the old man and turned to walk quickly forward.

Behind him, the old man murmured: “Help me find her—Oh, right, her name is ‘Xu Yao’…”