Under the shade of the banyan tree, Bai Lixin looked up into the blazing sun.
The sunlight stung his eyes, causing his vision to go blank for a moment.
In that brief emptiness, he seemed to catch a glimpse of something gelatinous flowing in the sky above.
“Brother,” Xia Chi groaned, holding his head in discomfort, “I feel like I was climbing the tree with you just now.”
“Ugh, it was so noisy, all that chattering was giving me a headache.”
Bai Lixin squinted his eyes against the blinding sunlight.
After a moment of thought, he retrieved the rarely used bow and arrow weapon, the [Arrow of Light], from his backpack.
He drew the bow towards the sky, and a glowing golden feather arrow slowly materialized, resting on the bowstring.
When the young man released his grip, the golden arrow shot up into the sky. When it flew higher and higher, almost disappearing, the edge of the sky began to ripple.
Like a stone dropped into water and creating ripples, the same thing happened in the sky.
Bai Lixin: “…”
—Lin Xiao is in the sky.
—Lin Xiao is underground.
—Lin Xiao is in the wind.
—Lin Xiao is everywhere.
—He’s always been here.
The sound of a horn that rang out at any moment.
The sigh in his ear.
The banyan tree and the earth beneath his feet pulsed with a heartbeat.
Li Cangshan suddenly appeared in this world.
Lin Xiao.
The Nine Dragons Coffin on his back.
And then there was that sentence, ‘inside the coffin was his lover’s child’.
Fragments of memories flashed, drifted, and pieced together in Bai Lixin’s mind, eventually forming a complete picture.
A bold guess emerged in Bai Lixin’s mind.
They were currently inside the Nine Dragons Coffin on Lin Xiao’s back.
If that were the case, then the person who set the fire was…
Bai Lixin abruptly turned around, “Let’s go down the mountain! We need to find the family tree!”
He moved swiftly, like a deer running through the forest toward freedom, leaping over obstacles, and dashing through the underbrush with single-minded determination.
Song Yuantian and Xia Chi could only follow closely behind Bai Lixin to avoid falling behind.
It only took ten minutes to get from the mountaintop back to the foot of the mountain. When Bai Lixin rushed into the village chief’s house, the village chief was busy stitching a shoe sole.
Her eyes were somewhat blurry with age, and her stitching movements were slow and deliberate, each needle and thread carefully placed.
When Bai Lixin rushed in, the village chief merely glanced up, and she then lowered her head to continue her work, unfazed.
“Grandma Chief,” Bai Lixin’s chest heaved, slightly out of breath, “I want to see the genealogy.”
Xia Chi and Song Yuantian, who had followed Bai Lixin in, were stunned: “…”
‘Wasn’t the plan to be clever and strategic? Just asking for it directly? So straightforward and blunt?’
The village chief didn’t even raise her head, “Why do you want to see the genealogy?”
*Okay, I am going to use”genealogy” instead of”family tree”.
Bai Lixin: “I want to remember the names of the people from Chenjia village.”
With rough, shriveled hands, she forcefully pushed the needle through the shoe sole, “There are several thousand names in the family tree.”
Bai Lixin: “What a coincidence, I have an excellent memory, photographic even.”
Village Chief: “Then let me test you. How many pieces of flesh did they sew together that night? What did those people look like?”
Xia Chi and Song Yuantian were confused.
Bai Lixin: “There were a total of 1,358 pieces of flesh, sewn into 15 bodies. The most was one body stitched together from 189 pieces, belonging to a man in his forties. I can even draw his appearance as he once was. The other fourteen bodies were…”
He recounted them one by one, and at some point, the village chief put down her needlework, staring intently at Bai Lixin with her cloudy eyes.
Xia Chi and Song Yuantian who were standing nearby were dumbfounded.
What kind of memory was this?
When Bai Lixin finished recounting, the village chief still maintained her posture with her head tilted back.
It wasn’t until Bai Lixin called her twice that she pointed to a small bench beside her, “Sit down for a moment, and wait until I finish stitching this shoe sole.”
Xia Chi and Song Yuantian were anxious.
But there was no choice—when an NPC told you to wait, you had to wait.
With nothing else to do, they helped the village chief with her stitching, one holding the sole in place, another punching holes with an awl, and another threading the needle for her.
Time ticked by, and the thread in the village chief’s hand grew shorter.
Finally, after tying the last knot, the village chief handed the freshly stitched shoes to Bai Lixin.
Bai Lixin paused, then he took the shoes with a surprised expression.
“These are for you,” the village chief’s voice was hoarse, “You two, go bring out the wooden box on the kang in my room.”
Suddenly being called upon, Xia Chi and Song Yuantian obediently followed the order, bringing out a large box big enough to hold a person.
It was heavy, and they wondered what was inside.
When the village chief opened the box, it was full of shoes, identical to the ones in Bai Lixin’s hands.
The village chief rummaged through the box and handed two pairs to Xia Chi and Song Yuantian, “These are for you.”
Xia Chi took the shoes, stunned, “We have some too?”
“Hehe,” the village chief chuckled, closing the box, “It’s not just the three of you, all of you have a pair.”
“Remember, only people like you can wear the shoes I make. Only with shoes that fit well can you run fast. When you run, pump your arms, run with all your strength, and don’t look back, don’t look back.”
“Wahhh!” Xia Chi suddenly covered his face and ran out.
Song Yuantian’s eyes reddened, but he calmly stood his ground.
The village chief pointed to the large mahogany box, “Take this box away and distribute the shoes to people like you.”
Song Yuantian: “Yes, Grandma Chief.”
“Ah, I’m getting old, I’m not as strong as I used to be. Just making a few pairs of shoes tires this old body out.” The village chief struggled to stand with the help of her cane, “You said you wanted to see the genealogy?”
Bai Lixin carefully put away the shoes and nodded.
“You can only look at the genealogy here, you can’t take it with you.” The village chief walked to a locked cabinet, unlocked it with a brass key, and took out a large blue book, the size of an A3 paper and five centimeters thick, “You couldn’t take it even if you wanted to.”
“Young man, remember the names in here well, don’t forget them, and don’t get them wrong.”
Bai Lixin took the genealogy and began flipping through it page by page.
The genealogy of Chenjia village dated back five thousand years, with detailed records of the names of every generation. Through thousands of years of changes, the bloodline had never been broken. They had branched out and flourished, shining brightly throughout the long river of history.
Bai Lixin’s eyes scanned the pages rapidly, flipping through the book quickly.
Seeing that it would take Bai Lixin a while to finish, Song Yuantian called Xia Chi back in, and they carried the box outside to distribute the shoes to the other players.
Xia Chi’s eyes were still red, and his voice was trembling as he whispered to Song Yuantian.
“President Song, just now, I don’t know why, but I suddenly felt like crying. I couldn’t hold it in and ran out.”
“I suddenly thought about what the village chief said, that only people like us can wear these shoes. Does that mean we can use these shoes to tell who the real players are and who are the fakes pretending to be us?”
“Long live, Grandma Chief!”
“Wait, doesn’t this mean the village chief has known all along that we’re players?”
“Could it be… Could it be that if the village chief knows, the other villagers and Master Song might have known all along too?”
“Hey, you two.” The village chief called out to them. “Watch carefully when handing out the shoes. Don’t let any of those trying to fish in troubled waters slip by, or you’ll be in big trouble!”
Xia Chi’s back straightened immediately. “Understood, Grandma Chief!”
While Xia Chi and Song Yuantian were outside distributing the shoes to the players, Bai Lixin stayed in the courtyard, continuing to read the genealogy book.
He flipped through the pages quickly, and before long, he reached the later sections and found several familiar names.
Chen Xiaoling.
Chen Dazhuang.
Chen Erniu.
Chen Dahai.
Lin Xiao.
Starting from this page, the names in the genealogy began to show many different surnames, and the number of people far exceeded the 800 villagers of Chenjia Village. Bai Lixin roughly estimated there were about thirty thousand names.
Song Fugui.
Li Ping.
Zhang Dayi.
Yang Wenguang.
.
.
…..
The village chief pointed to the page. “Starting from here, you need to remember these names well. Engrave them in your mind, take them with you, and don’t forget a single one, understand?”
Bai Lixin: “Who are these people?”
The village chief: “They are all great heroes.”
Bai Lixin: “So are you.”
The village chief laughed unexpectedly. “You brat, you sure have a smooth tongue.”
It took Bai Lixin a full three hours to finish reading the genealogy.
Now there were only 7 hours left in the game.
Without delay, Bai Lixin returned the genealogy to the village chief and hurriedly left the house.
Before leaving, he put on the shoes the village chief had made. They fit perfectly and were very comfortable, allowing him to walk swiftly.
Outside, it was noisy and chaotic. Under the old elm tree, a crowd had gathered, all of them players Bai Lixin recognized.
As he approached, Bai Lixin noticed that they were all wearing the same cloth shoes as him, and he overheard their conversation.
“So you two were the fakes.”
“Perfect timing. We were just worrying about having no clues, and here you are delivering a pillow when we want to sleep.”
“Finish what the monster started saying yesterday. Quickly, tell us, what was the cause of the fire?”
The players surrounded two individuals who were forced to kneel on the ground. Their faces were torn off, revealing the black, foul-smelling bodies underneath.
The two monsters knelt on the ground with fierce expressions, muttering in a language the players couldn’t understand.
Even though the language barrier was there, the players could tell from the monsters’ faces that whatever they were saying was not good.
Suddenly, the two chattering monsters seemed to sense something and fell silent at the same time.
They looked up at the sky, and their faces contorted in terror as they desperately tried to crawl toward the nearest house.
The players looked up at the sky in confusion.
The sky was clear and nothing seemed amiss.
Suddenly, someone shouted, “Oh no, it’s a rainstorm!”
“It’s not a rainstorm, it’s a hail of bullets!”
As if to confirm the player’s words, the sky rapidly darkened with ominous clouds.
The howling sound grew louder, and countless hard, dark objects appeared within the clouds. They dove into the clouds, only to emerge again, tearing through them.
Cold, hard metallic objects were dropped from the planes one by one, crashing to the ground and leaving countless ruins and craters in their wake.
“Finally, we can see it clearly. They’re really fighter jets!”
“What are you still looking at? Do you want to die? Run! Take cover!”
A shell landed directly on the two monsters who couldn’t dodge in time.
With a deafening “boom”, the monsters were blown to pieces.
Their eyes were finally opened to the true face of the “rainstorm.”
But its true face was a hundred times more terrifying than the “rainstorm” they once feared.
