chapter 6

Finding nothing useful from Li Ergou, the two of them decided not to waste any more time there.

After asking for the address of the woman who’d tried to take advantage of him and where his family lived, Chu Yue took Shen Yubi by the hand and left.

He didn’t head toward either of their homes. Chu Yue’s path had no discernible logic to it; it just looked like he was wandering aimlessly.

The town wasn’t tiny, but it wasn’t big either. No one knew where the exit was. Standing at the edge of town, all you could see in every direction was mountains and forest.

“Brother, what are you looking for?” Shen Yubi glanced over at Chu Yue.

Chu Yue turned his head and swept his gaze around them. He didn’t bother hiding it from him. “A temple.”

In any horror scenario, Monsters and such were secondary. Once things involved gods and ghosts-when Western-style horror escalated into Chinese-style horror-the difficulty spiked considerably.

The moment he heard that the town would be holding a continuous three-day, three-night prayer ritual, Chu Yue had felt a prickle of unease.

Maybe it was prejudice, but folk beliefs in remote mountain villages always carried a kind of twisted, obsessive grotesqueness.

The woman had shut down the moment that topic came up, refusing to say even one word more. There had to be a secret there.

A game with a one hundred percent death rate, and the only quest was to help Li Ergou find a knife?

Chu Yue had heard from Wang Meng that he’d come here to farm points, and that the death rate was just a bug.

But for some reason, it didn’t sit right with him.

Especially since the prayer ritual fell exactly within their mission time. Whatever lay behind it definitely couldn’t be ignored.

Shen Yubi understood what he meant. He tilted his head back and said, “There’s no temple in town.”

Whatever prayer the woman had mentioned probably had nothing to do with a temple.

“How do you know there isn’t one?” Chu Yue looked down at him.

Shen Yubi didn’t answer. He just tugged on Chu Yue’s arm and started walking east.

“This way.”

Chu Yue watched his back, thoughtful, but didn’t refuse.

After walking for over half an hour, they were nearly out of town.

They turned a corner and the view suddenly opened up. At the edge of the small town, a large Plaza lay hidden from sight.

It matched the town’s atmosphere perfectly, suffused with an artistic air.

Statues stood around the perimeter in various poses, and under the sunlight, they almost seemed to glow with a hint of divinity.

Chu Yue’s gaze swept over the statues and finally came to rest at the exact center of the Plaza.

He paused, then walked toward it.

It was a Round Platform, about two meters in diameter and half a person tall.

The Round Platform was densely covered in strange patterns, mysterious and eerie, like an altar.

Chu Yue’s fingertips twitched uncontrollably. A faint blood mist dissipated into the air.

On the altar, a pair of arms and two legs had been tossed there carelessly.

Most of the flesh had been carved off the limbs, leaving only a thin layer of crimson tissue clinging to the white bone.

Blood had soaked the Round Platform, and the grooves of the patterns were clogged with dried, darkened gore.

The stench of blood and an indescribable, rotten reek seemed to burrow straight up into his sinuses. Chu Yue felt his stomach lurch. His throat worked a few times as he forcibly swallowed it back down.

He looked at Shen Yubi. The boy’s small face was almost expressionless, but when he noticed Chu Yue’s gaze and glanced up, there was a faint flinch in his eyes.

“Is… is it my roommate?”

There was no torso or head on the Round Platform, and without the telltale fat as a marker, it was impossible to judge whose remains these bare limbs belonged to.

But who else could it be?

Chu Yue didn’t answer.

The guy was dead either way; there was no point obsessing over exactly whose corpse pieces these were.

Muttering about how scary it was, Shen Yubi climbed up onto the Round Platform. Despite his words, he showed no real hesitation. He casually kicked a few bones off the edge, then lowered his head to study the patterns carved into the altar.

Chu Yue’s brows twitched into a brief frown, but he didn’t say anything. He began examining them as well.

They were markings he had never seen before. Following the lines from their starting points, every stroke fell in a place completely different from what he would have expected.
But looking at it now, calling them patterns wasn’t quite right-they were more like characters he couldn’t read.

With the bones removed, the entire Round Platform lay exposed.

From the outer rim inward, ring after ring, each “character” was roughly the same size, arranged in a strict pattern.

“It’s a curse.” Shen Yubi stood up from the platform. “But Xiao Yu doesn’t understand what it means.”

He stomped his foot. “There’s space underneath. It’s hollow inside.”

Hearing that, Chu Yue rapped on it twice with his knuckles. The sound that came back was exactly as Shen Yubi had said.

“His head and body are in there?”

Circling the Round Platform once, Chu Yue crouched and carefully searched, trying to see if there was any way to open it.

Shen Yubi stayed where he was. “Brother, don’t you smell it?”

Without waiting for Chu Yue to answer, he went on, “Whether his body’s in there or not, one thing’s for sure-there are corpses inside.”

That stench couldn’t be covered up anymore.

Chu Yue froze for a moment, then his expression turned ugly.

He finally realized that the rancid smell hidden beneath the reek of blood was actually the stench of corpses.

The Fat Man had only died last night; he shouldn’t be rotting badly enough to smell like this. Which meant there were other bodies down there.

Whether this Round Platform was for a curse or a ritual, one thing was certain: the people in this town were using human lives for whatever they were doing.

Three days and three nights of nonstop prayer-what exactly were they praying for?

Were the bodies in the Round Platform the previous batch of players?

None of that could be confirmed.

Chu Yue went over the whole thing again and again, not missing a single nook or corner, but still couldn’t find any kind of opening.

The thing seemed to be one solid piece.

In the end, he looked toward the statues around the Plaza.

“Could there be a mechanism over there?” Chu Yue asked.

In TV dramas, you always had to twist a vase or some ornament to open the door to a secret room.

Shen Yubi blinked. “I don’t know.”

Then the two of them went around and searched each statue one by one.

After all that fussing, they still didn’t find a way to open anything.

But Chu Yue did notice something else that was off.

These statues didn’t seem to be people from the same era.

Though they were all dressed in pretty ordinary modern clothes, some had jade pendants hanging from their waists, some wore hairpins.

One woman, who looked quite beautiful, had her hair done up in a style that looked especially like something from the Republican era.

Shen Yubi only glanced at them before looking away. “They’re previous players.”

“Players?” Chu Yue stared at the stone figure in front of him. “How can you tell?”

As soon as he asked, he realized something. “You’re not a newbie?”

Shen Yubi’s tone had been far too certain, with no room for error. It was obvious he actually knew.

He lowered his lashes, hiding the emotion in his eyes. “Basic common sense of the game. If you’re still willing to stay here after you clear this Instance, you’ll find out naturally.”

That was a roundabout admission.

“You can choose whether to stay or not?” Chu Yue was even more shocked. Shouldn’t that kind of thing be forced?

Shen Yubi pressed his lips together. “Maybe.”

He didn’t explain further. Turning, he looked up at the sky. At some point, the sun had already tilted west.

They’d wasted too much time here.

Gathering his clothes tighter around himself, Shen Yubi grabbed Chu Yue’s hand. “Brother, let’s go back. It might not be safe if it gets too late.”

“Okay.” Chu Yue’s voice was very soft.

He couldn’t see through him. He hadn’t been able to from the very beginning.

If he was a veteran player, then everything before this had been an act?