Chapter 35: Carnage |
The night was as thick as ink. Yang Yundong and Allen trudged down the dusty dirt path, one behind the other, slowly making their way toward the western side of the village.
Going out at night was undoubtedly dangerous, but some things simply had to be done.
The system had prompted that the truth lay hidden in the villagers' words. The sooner they found it, the fewer people would get hurt.
The villagers only came out after dark, so questioning them meant venturing into the night.
In the enveloping silence, Allen finally broke. "Yang," he asked, "can you tell me what this Weird Game is all about?"
"No one knows for sure what it is," Yang Yundong replied without turning, his voice calm and steady. "It could be a set of rules, a massive paranormal event, or even an experiment run by a higher-dimensional civilization. The bottom line is, certain people are chosen at random and pulled into these instances."
"Cool!" Allen exclaimed, but immediately caught himself. "I mean... is this a good thing or a bad thing? That voice said it could grant any wish I have..."
"It's not a good thing." Yang Yundong stopped in his tracks and turned to face him. "Most people die in this game. And even the ones who survive... they're not always human anymore."
"My God, is it really that terrifying?"
Clusters of squat houses stood like gravestones, huddled around a sprawling single-story building. On its wall, a faded revolutionary slogan—something about striving for greatness—now resembled a smear of dirt, its characters appearing to ooze down the wall.
Allen couldn't stand the quiet and started making small talk. "I've never been to the countryside in Long County before. Guess I can count this as a free trip. But man, that old lady was creepy. Said someone starved to death in every single room. Makes me not even want to go back inside... ugh..."
As if on cue, a wave of hunger crashed over him without warning, overwhelming and absolute.
A knot of pain tightened in his stomach, spreading through his entire body and leaving him utterly weak. He collapsed into a squat, trembling, his hands clawing uncontrollably at the dirt.
Yang Yundong dropped to a squat as well, his face grim. The sudden pangs of hunger had clearly caught him off guard too.
Maintaining his composure, he reached into his pocket with a trembling hand and pulled out two pieces of the divine meat. He took one for himself and offered the other to Allen.
They both devoured the meat ravenously. Allen, looking shaken, wiped his dirt- and saliva-smeared hands on his clothes, the easy confidence gone from his face.
Until you stared death in the face, you could never truly believe how close it was.
For the first time, Allen realized this was nothing like his usual outdoor adventures or extreme sports...
His blind optimism shattered, he opened his mouth to speak, but Yang Yundong suddenly raised a hand, signaling for silence.
A jolt went through him. He looked up and saw eerie green specks of light flickering in the darkness, appearing and disappearing like phantoms or will-o'-the-wisps...
...
Zhu Dafu lay on his bed, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling.
He was seventy-eight years old and had been a farmer his entire life. He'd never even left his own town, and his only pastime was scrolling through short videos on his phone.
He was uneducated, had never read stories about being trapped in other worlds, and had certainly never played a horror game.
Three days ago, while pulling his cart to the town market, he'd stumbled upon police arresting a criminal. The suspect was shot dead on the spot. As Zhu Dafu passed by, a black metal card flew out of the pool of blood and vanished into his body.
And just like that, bewildered and confused, he had been pulled into the "Weird Game."
He had somehow stumbled through his first instance. All the talk of points, True Ends, or Normal Ends was completely lost on him. All he knew was that from now on, he would have to face ghosts—all kinds of strange and bizarre specters—every three days.
At his age, any little worry was enough to keep him awake all night.
Zhu Dafu lay there, replaying the last few days in his mind, each thought chasing away sleep a little more.
This time was better, he thought. The village, the houses, even the people—they were all familiar. It wasn't like the last instance, with all its talk of "genes" and "cloning." He hadn't understood a single word of it.
He'd understood most of what the old woman, Su Po, had said. He had lived through those times himself. First, his grandfather had starved to death, then his little sister. They had prayed to every god and spirit they could think of, but no kind deity had ever come to save them.
Zhu Dafu rolled over, his eyes falling on his roommate's youthful face.
Everything about this instance was fine, he mused, except that everyone else was so young. There was even a girl still in college, younger than his own granddaughter.
At his age, death was just death. But what did those damned monsters want with these kids?
Lost in these rambling thoughts, he watched the moon climb higher, its cold, pale light spilling through the window lattice onto his face.
Suddenly, his stomach seized with a sharp pain. A long-forgotten hunger clawed at him, a gnawing need that willpower alone couldn't suppress. Every fiber of his being screamed for food.
It was as if he had been dragged back seventy years to an era shrouded by the shadow of death. The memories flooded back: the parched earth, the stench of decay, the swollen faces, the sickly yellow pus...
Memories of the past merged with the agony of the present, and he began to shake, uncontrollably...
...
A lone rooster crowed, sharp and clear against the horizon as the eastern sky began to pale.
Qi Si climbed out of bed, strode to the door, and pushed it open. His eyes immediately fell on the figure collapsed in the center of the courtyard.
It was the unfortunate soul who shared a room with the tattooed woman, a scrawny man. Qi Si recalled his name was Lu Keliang, a volunteer math teacher.
—He looked like he'd been dead for hours, so far gone it was as if the words "beyond hope" were written across his face.
Qi Si nudged the corpse onto its back with his foot. He glanced down and saw the man's mouth and nose were caked with dirt, his stomach grotesquely bloated.
It was obvious at a glance: the man had either choked or literally eaten himself to death.
It seemed that if a player failed to eat the divine meat in time, they would fall under some kind of spell, compelled by the Weird Game to gorge themselves on inedible things until they died.
It was a gruesome way to go. In that moment, Qi Si's resolve to survive this instance hardened.
He instinctively touched the cloth-wrapped piece of divine meat he had tucked away.
It took one whole piece of meat to stave off a single attack of hunger, and Su Po had only given the players eleven pieces yesterday. Every extra portion someone took meant someone else would succumb to the hunger and die a wretched death.
Strictly speaking, anyone who had taken an extra piece was a murderer.
At that thought, Qi Si nonchalantly pushed the cloth-wrapped bundle deeper into his pocket. He felt not a shred of guilt, but he had no intention of giving anyone leverage to start preaching at him or laying a guilt trip.
A creak came from the courtyard gate as the large wooden doors were pushed open from the outside.
Qi Si quickly pulled his hand from his pocket. In an instant, his expression shifted to one of profound sorrow, his features colored with the grief of seeing a fellow creature fall.
"What's going on?" Yang Yundong asked as he stepped through the gate. His brow furrowed at the sight of the body. "What happened last night?"
Allen followed him inside and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw the body. "Fuck! Someone's dead on the very first night? This is intense!"
Qi Si suppressed a smile and, in a somber tone, briefly recounted what he had found, making sure to emphasize the tattooed woman's part in the affair.
After listening, Yang Yundong's expression darkened. He instinctively reached for his pocket, but found it empty.
He let his calloused hand drop to his side. "Are the others alright?" he asked.
Probably not okay at all, Qi Si thought to himself. Outwardly, he simply lowered his gaze and remained silent.
Just then, the other players began to stir, opening their doors one by one and emerging into the courtyard.
Zhu Ling and Zhou Yilin were the first to emerge.
The moment Zhou Yilin saw the body, her face went white, and she nearly screamed. Fortunately, Zhu Ling kept her composure, stepping in front of her and murmuring words of comfort.
Zhang Licai and Zhao Feng followed close behind. As players who had cleared an instance before, they managed to keep their composure, though their faces were just as grim.
Zhao Feng clearly hadn't slept well; his eyes were sunken into dark hollows, giving him a ghostly appearance at first glance.
Spotting Yang Yundong, he took a step forward. "Yang, after you left yesterday, I went to find that little ghost. It said it won't eat the divine meat..."
He gritted his teeth. "So where the hell am I supposed to find other meat for it?"
Yang Yundong waved a hand, his face etched with the weariness of a sleepless night. "We still have the whole day. One thing at a time."
Zhao Feng bristled at the dismissal, but catching the other players' glances, he sheepishly fell silent.
Just then, the tattooed woman emerged from her room.
Sensing all eyes on her, she spat on the ground and pointed a venomous finger at the corpse. "The bastard didn't get any meat for himself, so he came after mine," she snarled. "Well, he picked the wrong person to mess with..."
No one bothered to correct her, even though several of them remembered perfectly well that she'd been the one complaining about the meat being "bad luck" the previous evening, refusing to touch it.
The tattooed woman continued her tirade for some time, only stopping when Yang Yundong snapped, "Shut up!" She finally fell silent, crossing her arms and standing off to the side with a defiant look.
"Wu Heng and Zhu Dafu still haven't come out," Yang Yundong noted.
He walked straight to the last remaining closed door and banged on it twice with the palm of his hand. When there was no answer, he simply kicked it in.
Inside, two twisted figures lay on the floor, a grim confirmation of what they already expected.
Wu Heng, the young man with glasses, had clearly been dead for some time. His cracked spectacles were askew on his face, and flecks of sawdust dotted the corners of his mouth.
The gray-haired Zhu Dafu was collapsed near the threshold, one arm stretched out and his mouth agape, as if he had been trying to grab something—or utter one last word.
In the dead silence that followed, Yang Yundong slowly knelt, reaching out to close Zhu Dafu's eyes. His expression was unreadable.
After a moment, he rose and turned to the others. "You've all seen it," he said, his gaze sweeping over them. "Three people dead on the first day. If we don't solve the mystery of this place, we're stuck here for four more days."
He didn't need to say more. The players understood the stakes.
The minimum death toll was unknown; no one could be sure they'd be one of the lucky survivors. To have any chance of making it out alive, their only option was to actively gather clues and unravel the world's secrets.
"Last night, Allen and I scouted the village," Yang Yundong continued. "All the locations marked on the map were obscured by a thick fog. We tried to push through, but we just ended up back where we started. It looks like we'll have to explore those places in the daytime."
As he spoke, Yang Yundong pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket—a map torn from a travel brochure.
He tapped a landmark with a calloused finger and continued, "We wandered around the areas that weren't covered in fog, mostly on the west side of the village. We saw a lot of villagers out working. For the most part, they seemed normal, but as soon as they saw us, they swarmed us, demanding meat. We had to pretend to agree just to get away."
At this, Yang Yundong glanced at Zhao Feng. "Allen, you, and I are all in the same boat. There's no immediate solution, so we'll have to put it on hold for now and see if we can find an answer as we explore further..."
This clearly explained why he had told Zhao Feng to take things "one step at a time."
Zhao Feng was still clearly unhappy. "But I have to find meat for that little ghost *today*," he muttered under his breath. "What am I supposed to do if I can't? If there's really no other way, I'll have to..."
His eyes flickered toward the bodies on the ground, but he trailed off. The idea would sound insane to anyone else, and besides, he had no idea what the risks might be.
Yang Yundong's lips trembled as if he were about to speak, but in the end, he remained silent.
He turned and walked away, with Allen trotting eagerly behind him. It was a mystery what the young man had experienced during the night to make him so utterly deferential and full of admiration.
Qi Si remained in the corner, his narrowed eyes drinking in every player's expression. Just as he'd hoped, he saw both savagery and hesitation flickering in Zhao Feng's gaze.
Having just been snatched from an orderly reality and thrown into the Weird Game, few people could completely overhaul their worldview in such a short time. It was hard to shed the law-abiding instincts ingrained by a lifetime in human society.
Even a born sociopath or a natural killer, upon first arriving in this playground where evil ran rampant, would instinctively keep to the shadows out of sheer force of habit.
"You don't actually believe in morality, yet you still cling to conventional order out of habit, shackling yourself with society's rules. How does that make you any different from fools like Yang Yundong?"
Qi Si let a small smile play on his lips. He took half a step forward, positioning himself beside Zhao Feng, and spoke in a voice low enough for only the two of them to hear. "You need to understand something. Public authority, laws... they don't mean a thing in here. The only thing you need to fear and obey are the strange rules of the game."
"Humans are animals, after all," he added. "And meat is meat, isn't it?"
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