Chapter 50: River of Blood |
Outside the ancestral hall, Zhang Licai dropped the wooden bucket as if it were a venomous snake, hastily turning and jogging away to put distance between himself and the grim scene behind him.
Ever since that morning, the ancestral hall had filled him with a creeping unease, a feeling of countless vicious eyes watching him from the shadows. He never would have made a second trip here if he wasn't terrified of what the night would bring—a time when all manner of spirits were said to roam free.
Zhou Yilin, however, didn't seem particularly frightened. She simply followed along with small, compliant steps, consistently keeping a careful two paces behind Zhang Licai—close, yet not too close.
The quaver was gone from her voice, but her eyes remained red-rimmed, making her look exceptionally pitiable. "Brother Zhang, what are we going to do about Chang Xu?"
Zhang Licai froze, his steps faltering. He truly couldn't follow the girl's train of thought. "Why would we go after him?"
"I just have a bad feeling about him," Zhou Yilin said, choosing her words carefully. "Working with someone like Zhao Feng, letting him kill Brother Yang... and there are still death quotas to meet. Who's to say he won't stab us in the back?"
You're no saint yourself. Don't get so lost in the act that you start believing it...
Zhang Licai grumbled to himself, blinking twice. "I doubt it. Didn't Chang Xu say he had a crucial clue?"
"How could he possibly have a crucial clue? He must have been lying to you..." Zhou Yilin averted her gaze, looking toward Su Po's house. "This is a newbie instance. It shouldn't be this convoluted..."
He stared up at the darkening sky, mulling it over for a long moment but coming to no conclusion. He finally changed the subject. "Let's drop it for now. We can figure it out once we're back."
Zhou Yilin pouted, letting out an aggrieved "Mmm," but said nothing more.
...
To the west of Su Clan Village, a pallid mist stained the deepening twilight, bleeding into an ethereal, hazy purple. Amid the gloom, night slowly encroached from every corner, filling the voids between sky and rooftops. It drove out the thinning fog, claiming the land under its own dark shroud.
The sky was moonless, and the path below seemed to melt into the night, both an identical, impenetrable black.
Qi Si stood perfectly still, and as the moments passed, his eyes slowly adjusted to the dark.
Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that a faint light had begun to glow within the darkness.
He could see them now: in the dilapidated, pitch-black houses lining the road, specks of eerie green light flickered like will-o'-the-wisps in the empty window frames.
The shuffle of dragging feet broke the silence, rising and falling from different directions, followed by the creak of one door after another being pushed open.
Figures of all shapes and sizes emerged from the doorways. They swayed and tottered, some with hoes slung over their backs, others with carrying poles balanced on their shoulders. At a glance, they were indistinguishable from peasants heading out to work during a busy farming season.
The villagers. The ones who only come out at night. Qi Si made his assessment, his mind instantly recalling the relevant data—including the description he'd gotten from Yang Yundong.
Without exception, these nocturnal villagers were draped in black cloaks that allowed them to melt almost seamlessly into the night.
They carried farming tools in one hand and lanterns in the other. On their faces were smiles of peaceful contentment, an expression that was utterly bizarre under the circumstances.
Standing in the middle of the road with Zhu Ling in his grip, Qi Si was jarringly out of place, a conspicuous figure who quickly became the focal point of their attention.
"Meat... give us meat..."
"We want meat..."
The shadowy figures swarmed him from all sides like zombies, their mouths muttering the same monotonous words.
Clutching Zhu Ling, Qi Si backed away step by step until he reached a less dense part of the crowd. He stopped, and then, without a shred of hesitation, shoved the unconscious woman directly into their midst.
Zhu Ling wasn't heavy, but Qi Si had put a sharp, calculated force into the push, sending two of the villagers tumbling to the ground.
For a split second, every villager's movement visibly froze. They clearly hadn't anticipated this turn of events.
But ghoulish creatures have little patience for careful consideration. After two seconds, the villagers stirred back to life. The two who had fallen scrambled unsteadily to their feet, and the crowd split into two groups, one closing in on Zhu Ling, the other on Qi Si.
Qi Si remained perfectly calm, enunciating each word with chilling clarity. "You cannot kill with your own hands to take flesh. Under that rule, what, exactly, can you do to me?"
At his words, the villagers' movements slowed. They hesitated, conflicted.
Qi Si took it all in, then raised a hand and pointed at the collapsed form of Zhu Ling. He smiled. "You know you can't get to me anytime soon. Rather than waste your effort, why not focus on the lovely lady over there? After all, among the living, I'm the only one who knows the rule..."
It was impossible to tell how much they understood, but the villagers around him slowly turned away and began to shuffle toward Zhu Ling. Their measured pace and dark robes made them look like a pack of wary hyenas.
Satisfied, Qi Si brushed off the front of his shirt, which had been creased from holding Zhu Ling, and strode directly into the deeper, western reaches of the village.
The corpse of the legendary god was said to be somewhere in the west of the village.
The source of all this strangeness, the scarlet eyes from the depths of his nightmares, the unseen pull of his Identity Card... countless factors converged, sketching the outlines of a mysterious and fantastic corner of this world.
Qi Si was intensely curious. What kind of being was it, truly?
The shuffling footsteps of the villagers faded into the distance, leaving only the whisper of a phantom wind. Soon, even that fell away, replaced by a stagnant, dead silence. It felt as if this very moment had been gouged from the river of time, frozen and unmoving as the world turned on without it.
The farther he walked, the darker it grew, until he could barely see his hand in front of his face. Soon, it was impossible to discern the path beneath his feet.
Qi Si pushed aside his scattered thoughts and pressed on in what he hoped was the same direction. One step, two, then more, until he had counted over a hundred.
Without warning, a light flared in the impenetrable darkness.
It wasn't a harsh light, but a collection of golden specks that floated and swayed in the air, weaving themselves into a shimmering, winding path.
Without a moment's hesitation, Qi Si followed the light.
The motes of light drifted into his body and then away again. His consciousness bobbed on an ocean of thought, for a moment communing with some deeper, higher existence, before the weight of his flesh dragged him back down with a thud that seemed to echo from the earth itself.
His vision was abruptly filled with a dazzling brilliance. Golden motes, fragments, and ribbons of light hung suspended in the air, drifting with a slow, deliberate abandon, like flotsam caught in a deep-sea eddy.
Qi Si found himself standing beneath a colossal golden tree. Gilded vines cascaded from its branches, swaying gently in the windless air.
Beneath the tree flowed a river of gold. As his gaze traced it upstream, a shocking slash of crimson crashed into his vision.
It was a figure in a long red robe, slumped in the middle of the river. From beneath half-closed eyelids, a scarlet light shone—the same gaze that had found him in his nightmare, the same one that had shattered into a rain of blood the moment he met it.
It was covered in wounds, Its torso stripped bare to reveal a cage of gleaming white bone, like a great fish beached on the shore and left to rot.
And yet, It possessed a solemn sanctity that permitted no mockery, no argument, no desecration.
The instant his eyes fell upon It, a single realization bloomed in Qi Si's mind: This is a god.
The Humanoid Evil on his Identity Card opened its scarlet eyes, the unmarred half of its face twisting into a grotesque smile.
Clusters of gray fog coalesced into inky black tentacles that writhed with the ebb and flow of his thoughts.
[Warning! Proximity to God-Level NPC (Data Redacted) is too close... Error! Danger!]
Descriptive knowledge flooded his mind, bypassing cognition to be instantly captured, absorbed, and understood.
Its blood forms the river...
Its influence persists...
It can still respond...
It was as if ten thousand voices were whispering in his ears, carrying waves of extreme sorrow, wild ecstasy, burning rage, and cold indifference... Contradictory emotions, none of them his own, washed over his consciousness, a torrent that left no trace.
Qi Si's face twisted into a savage mask. His sanity fractured, dissolving inch by inch like bursting bubbles as frantic, elusive thoughts shot through his mind.
He didn't realize when he had started crying, but tears were streaming down his face.
His fear reached its apex, only to flip into an overwhelming wave of euphoria and pleasure. Beneath the tracks of his tears, his face split into a wide grin. "As you wished, I have come. Now, shouldn't we settle the matter of you disturbing my dream the other night?"
There was no reply. Not even the whisper of wind.
The god had long been silent.
Qi Si's vision blurred, then sharpened again. Shards of brilliant color arranged themselves before his eyes like a turning kaleidoscope.
He walked toward the corpse in the river, the dry leaves on the ground rustling under his feet.
Then, in a single instant, his fractured reason flooded back into his mind, and he managed to pull a coherent thought from the chaotic sea of his consciousness.
He chuckled, speaking to himself. "The god disguised as a black-robed Taoist claimed you needed human flesh to mend your body, yet he also told the Su Clan villagers to feed your flesh to the visitors."
"I was confused at first. We players have eaten your flesh; we've already been mutated by it. How could our flesh possibly help you?"
"Such a contradiction in the rules wouldn't exist without a reason. Unless... he was lying to the villagers."
Qi Si stopped two meters from the river's edge, bracing himself to stay upright as he gazed down at the corpse resting by the water.
"No, he actually gave the answer himself. It harbors an identical malice toward all living beings. Its greatest pleasure is to tempt humans into sin, and then to watch them struggle with the weight of their transgression."
"You never needed flesh and blood. You needed sin. The sin committed by ghosts and players alike, all centered on the core mechanics of this instance."
Silence.
A god's corpse, it seemed, wasn't so different from a human's. Perhaps more aesthetically pleasing. It certainly looked like it would have more collection value.
At the thought of its collection value, the smile on Qi Si's lips grew more genuine.
He tilted his head, took two more steps forward, and crouched beside the exquisitely formed corpse.
Beneath the golden tree, the black-haired young man took the stark, skeletal hand that rested against a backdrop of red and gold, his eyes curving into a smile.
"Well then, Your Excellency," he murmured, "do you think I bear enough sin for you?"