The water moths fluttered out one by one. Their transparent wings fell off at the slightest touch, and countless triangular-shaped wings scattered in the air.
Without their wings, the water moths fell like ants, and one step could crush three.
Various insects that usually lived in dark, damp places underground crawled out, rustling as they moved across the red brick floor, which was covered in rotten mango pulp. The area looked like an unprecedented scene of a shipwreck.
“Catch them!”
The village chief’s beard trembled with anger. He raised his cane, pointing directly at the group of outsiders.
“Catch them all!”
“Fellow villagers, it is these people who brought disaster from outside,” the village chief spread his hands towards the sky, looking at the rain that was pouring down like a waterfall. “Our Nanwan Village has been diligent and hardworking for generations, guarding this sea and these mountains. The peace of our ancestors did not come easily. Now god has sent divine punishment! We must offer a living sacrifice to appease the Red Prince’s wrath!”
Clearly, the village chief held a status akin to that of an ancient shaman in this primitive village. The villagers crowding outside the old house were densely packed, their tools drawn. These living people looked even more terrifying than ghosts.
And their group was like sheep driven into a pen.
“Zhou Liao, don’t you know you should repent and return?” The village chief glared coldly. “I took over the responsibility from Old Uncle Zhou. It’s only because you are from Old Uncle Zhou’s family that I gave you extra care. Now you are helping outsiders… I should have known you could never be tamed. Old Uncle Zhou should have discarded you too back then!”
Zhou Liao still shielded Xin Hexue behind him, anxiously signing and explaining.
But in this situation, even a silver-tongued lawyer might not be heard, let alone a mute relying on sign language?
“Sacrifice to appease heaven’s punishment! Pacify God’s anger!”
“Sacrifice to appease heaven’s punishment! Pacify God’s anger!”
“Sacrifice to appease heaven’s punishment! Pacify God’s anger!”
Filled with righteous indignation, they thrust their tools high, and the iron forks were like cold glints in the sky.
………
The ancestral hall had east and west wing rooms at the very edges. They were very old. Usually, whether for village affairs, meetings, weddings, or sacrifices, everything was handled in the main hall. These two wing rooms had been left unused for a long time and were deserted. When Xin Hexue and the others were pushed in with their hands tied behind their backs, there was only dust rising from the floor.
“Ahem, ahem…”
Xin Hexue coughed softly as dust filled the air.
The ancestral hall was a wooden structure. This wing room was narrow and cramped. Once the door was closed and locked from the outside, the only light source was a single wooden window. The entire space was like an ancient prison cell.
There were miscellaneous items piled everywhere, and it seemed to be used as a storage room.
Now it was a sheep pen for holding sacrificial offerings.
The sky was gloomy gray. Inside the wing room, one could barely see any outlines beyond two steps.
Xin Hexue listened carefully and heard the people guarding outside say: “The village chief says once the typhoon clears, we can prepare the sacrificial ceremony.”
“One of them is about to turn…, right? What if they eat each other after getting locked together?”
“The chickens for ancestral sacrifice are also raw before going into the pot. Raw or dead, it’s the same for sacrifice.”
“This east wing has mostly men locked up. There’s one who looks really pretty, prettier than a woman. Too bad he’s a man, I can’t really bring myself to… The west wing has two girls locked up, right?”
“As expected of those educated folks from outside, they just look different…”
“You young people have seen too little. Many years ago, I even saw a young lady from outside!”
“When was that?”
“Ah, I can’t remember. A long time ago.”
The three voices gradually faded as they walked away.
“Hexue, are you okay?”
Matsukawa Masato tried to move towards his direction as much as possible. The east wing was smaller than the west wing. They weren’t divided equally between the two rooms. Currently, there were only three and a half people in the east wing.
Xin Hexue, Matsukawa Masato, and Zhou Liao. Xing Ming counted as half. As for the others, they were all locked in the west wing.
“I’m fine.”
He sighed and slowly sat down on the floor, tired. The wooden floor was covered in dust, but at least this corner had a few books to sit on.
Lightning and thunder started outside. The already dim wing room flickered between light and dark. Wind and rain blew in through the wooden window, and it was somewhat cold.
Matsukawa Masato spoke: “Are you cold? You can lean over here, we can huddle together for a bit of warmth.”
“I’m not too cold.”
Xin Hexue refused faintly, shifted, and leaned against the Zhou Liao-brand cheap blanket.
Those people were afraid they would escape and also afraid they would fight back. After locking them up, they didn’t untie them. Hemp rope as thick as two fingers was wound around countless times, tight enough to cut into the flesh. The rough surface of the rope chafed uncomfortably against the skin of their wrists.
Zhou Liao, who couldn’t even use his usual means of expression now, found a blunt stone from some corner. He silently held the stone in his left hand, then reached back to saw at the hemp rope binding his right hand.
The howling wind blew a book off a distant shelf, and it fell to the floor with a “pa”.
Xin Hexue curled up in Zhou Liao’s arms, borrowing some warmth.
Zhou Liao kissed his soft hair, a hoarse breathy sound passing through his throat.
[Soon.]
The sound of the stone scraping the hemp rope became more frequent.
Outside, a bolt of brightness like daylight suddenly split the sky, and wind rustled the pages of the book.
With the brief light, it was hard to follow with the eyes.
As for what kind of book could appear in the ancestral hall, Xin Hexue could only think of village records and family registers.
The strange thing was…
He couldn’t recognize the characters on it.
They were Chinese characters, but they gave a sense of disorder and chaos. After looking at them, it was like the wind passing without leaving a trace.
There was also a reasonable explanation for this. If this was a dream, then the meaning was often lost, and numbers were often jumbled.
The garbled question numbers on the ID card…
It seemed the game system had already hinted to him.
The sky cracked with a thunderous bone chilling roar.
Xin Hexue tilted his head back and looked out the window. He didn’t know the time outside, but it was at most afternoon. He leaned against Zhou Liao. “I’ll sleep for a while.”
………
He might have caught a chill from the rain, as he caught a fever.
When he woke up feeling dizzy and disoriented, Xin Hexue realized he had a high fever. “Ahem, ahem…”
His mouth was dry and his forehead was hot, but his hands and feet were ice cold.
He lifted his eyelids slightly. Xing Ming, who was tied up hand and foot in the farthest corner, had completely mutated. He was screaming and flopping around like a fish out of water, banging noisily against the shelves.
Xin Hexue had been woken by the noise.
The wind and rain outside had stopped, and he didn’t know if it would return.
Someone’s shoe soles stepped on grass stems, making faint, rustling sounds.
“Little classmates, move away from the window.”
The visitor reminded in a hushed voice.
The eldest daughter-in-law threw a warm metal box through the wooden window.
“Eat something.”
She had come to deliver food.
Seeing no one around, she also dropped a knife, then was about to leave.
“Wait.”
Xin Hexue spoke.
He looked up and saw the white porcelain doll that had rushed past the window just now. It had come with its mother.
These white porcelain dolls themselves weren’t aggressive. Even smashing them couldn’t kill them completely. This was precisely what made the villagers of Nanwan Village find them so troublesome; it was an intangible curse, following them like a shadow and accompanying the village until its destruction.
“May I ask, what year was your daughter born?”
“The Year of Gengyin.” The eldest daughter-in-law smiled. “She was a little tiger.”
The Year of Gengyin.
Was it the current year, 2010? Or 1950?
Or perhaps… 1890?
“Back then, her grandfather told me to quickly have a grandson for their family in the second pregnancy, so we could hurry and hold her first-birthday banquet and his full-month celebration together at Tianxiang Restaurant in town.”
“Pregnancy itself takes ten months. People aren’t rabbits, how can they keep having babies one after another?”
“Forget about that. I need to go back and heat bathwater for the family.”
The eldest daughter-in-law patted her clothes and left with the white porcelain doll.
It was already night.
Zhou Liao grabbed the knife and urgently cut the hemp rope binding him, then went to undo Xin Hexue’s.
Except for Xing Ming, everyone present was untied.
Matsukawa Masato found an oil lamp and a waterlogged matchbox among the piled miscellaneous items in the corner.
Although he didn’t have much hope, he luckily managed to light it. Then they had some of the dinner from the metal box by the candlelight.
Outside, crows cawed incessantly.
Xin Hexue still remembered the scene he saw during the day: the abnormal drop in the well water level, the sulfur smell, the churning water, the roosters crowing and dogs barking.
Signs of an earthquake.
Earthquakes near the coast often triggered tsunamis.
If the world of Nanwan Walled City was the real one, then Nanwan Village had long been destroyed by a tsunami at the end of the 19th century…
1890 to be exact.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
Outside the ancestral hall, the sea monkeys began banging on the door. They were particularly restless tonight.
In an instant, the wind and clouds changed, and the heavens and earth shook.
Dust powder fell from the termite-eaten beams overhead. The joints of the structure creaked gratingly, and the floor cracked and bulged with “cracks.” Matsukawa Masato kicked the door anxiously. It shook, but there wasn’t enough time to break it down by force.
Amid the violent shaking, the shelves toppled over!
“Find a corner and take cover!”
Xin Hexue raised his voice.
“Hexue!”
He turned around. The movement of the earth’s crust under the force of nature was enough to knock people down, and Matsukawa Masato practically threw himself over to shield him.
A broken piece of wood fell from above, hitting Matsukawa Masato on the back.
Matsukawa Masato groaned, frowned, and looked down. It turned out the pain was from his abdomen and back; a knife was clearly embedded in his chest, and blood was gushing out.
At the final moment of his life, he instead laughed hoarsely. “When did you find out?”
“Wasn’t it you who gave me the answer?”
Xin Hexue’s eyes were cold, like the snake-like pupils of a beautiful serpent.
“Introduction to Calculus and Mathematical Analysis.”
Such a thick book could be browsed completely without errors, without the chaotic sense of disorder.
Dreams need material. The unclear writing on the family register was because the Red Prince himself didn’t care about or understand its contents. But he had possessed Matsukawa Masato. Since he could obtain Yu Xingzhou’s memories when he took over his body, naturally he could also get the content of that book from Matsukawa Masato’s memory.
“It’s useless.” The Red Prince said faintly, even as the body continued to lose blood and body temperature. “You’ve only killed the host I temporarily placed my soul in.”
Xin Hexue had to stab the Red King’s true form.
Contrary to the Red King’s expectations, Xin Hexue gave a slight smile, as if finding what he said amusing.
“Do you know why I waited until night to act?”
The Red Prince was silent.
Xin Hexue: “Night is when your true form is in deep sleep, am I right?”
During deep sleep, there are few dreams, and this environment constructed based on dreams also becomes fragile.
Therefore, in the photos Xin Hexue took the previous night, the old house outside had reverted to a wooden structure, unable to maintain the illusion and exposing the scene before the 1890 tsunami.
When the true form is in deep sleep, it’s naturally an opportunity.
“Matsukawa Masato’s” expression had already changed slightly, so clearly, his guess was correct. Xin Hexue spoke slowly.
“The village chief’s eldest daughter-in-law told me this afternoon.”
“Long ago, when Old Uncle Zhou was still alive, his wife couldn’t bear children. He was the only son. To continue the family line, Old Uncle Zhou had someone kidnap a female student from outside.”
“Hitting, scolding, confinement…every method was used. That female student consequently became pregnant with his child. She gave birth to a boy and Old Uncle Zhou was very happy. He just didn’t know that the female student was a young lady from a wealthy family. Even after having a child, she couldn’t be trapped. Even if her body was confined, her will was on the path of escape.”
“One day, she jumped into the well holding the child.”
“The next day, everyone hurriedly fished out the bodies. Strangely, the child wasn’t dead.”
Xin Hexue finished recounting what he learned from the eldest daughter-in-law. “Let me guess, this child was called Zhou Liao. He really didn’t die, but a monster moved into his body, right?”
His tone gradually became certain. “When the tsunami came, this monster had a dream, drawing the entire Nanwan Village into its dream.”
That well that still existed in the world was the entrance to the dream.
The Red Prince stared at Xin Hexue through Matsukawa Masato’s eyes. “Even if you know now, can you bear to kill him?”
Xin Hexue tilted his head slightly. “Then, do you want to take a look?”
“Forget it, it’s better not look.” He patted Matsukawa Masato’s face, and said thoughtfully. “Xiao Hei is personally killing its father. The feeling of being killed by your own child probably isn’t very pleasant.”
[Bonus Question To Clear The Level: Who does the Black Prince(Xiao Hei) love the most? (Answer correctly for a perfect score.)]
“It was useless even if you threatened it all night.”
“Because it listens to me the most.”
Xin Hexue smiled softly, blood splattering on his cheek.
