"I'm tellin' ya, our Double Happiness Town is the biggest and best for miles around. You look anywhere else, and all you'll find are poor, forgotten holes in the wall. You'll never find another town as grand as ours!"
A hoarse voice, like a stiff brush scraping against tree bark, chimed cheerfully beside him, accompanied by the rhythmic splash of a wooden paddle against the water.
Qi Si opened his eyes to find himself sitting on a wooden raft. At its prow stood a scrawny little old man in a straw rain cloak and a conical bamboo hat, clutching a paddle and grunting with effort as he rowed.
The raft drifted on the murky, greenish-black water, moving forward at a slow, steady pace.
The old boatman was quite the talker, his mouth running nonstop. "Let me tell you somethin' else," he rasped, "the lay of the land here brings the best of fortunes. The water gathers wealth, and we keep it hidden. This river... it's a special one. It lets things in, but never out. Once good fortune flows in, not a drop of it escapes. Ordinary folk can't come to this river. Wouldn't dare to, neither!"
Chinese-style horror, then?
Qi Si looked at the chattering old man, who was so thin he was practically a bag of bones, and had a sudden urge to shove him into the water, just to see if he could swim.
Of course, it was just a thought.
The young man with black hair slid his hands into his pockets, a gentle, harmless smile playing on his lips. "Sir, this river is quite narrow, isn't it? If two boats met, one coming in and one going out, wouldn't they get stuck?"
As he spoke, he lowered his gaze and noticed a name tag hanging around his neck. It read "Folklore Investigator"—his assigned role in this instance, apparently.
The plastic holder for the tag felt thick and bulky, as if something else was tucked in behind it.
The old man grunted, "Didn't I already tell ya? This river of ours lets the living in, but not out. If you want to leave, you take the road on land."
"Is there some sort of custom behind that?" Qi Si asked, casually lifting the name tag from his chest as he glanced down.
Tucked behind the tag was a small stack of photos. The one on top showed a couple: a young woman in her early twenties, arm in arm with a young man in a white shirt, her smile radiating pure bliss.
The woman on the left had long hair and a doll-like face, but her skin was as pale as plaster. Her lips were colorless, her eyebrows so faint they were barely visible. Only her eyes stood out—two pools of deep, lightless black.
The young man on the right was Qi Si himself—or more accurately, some *thing* wearing his face. It sported an expression utterly foreign to him: a look of pure, head-over-heels bliss, as if drunk on love. The sight of it instantly grated on the real Qi Si's fastidious sensibilities.
Qi Si's eyes narrowed slightly, but he kept talking. "We're specialists in folklore and local culture, sir. Any customs you know of, please do share. It could all be useful when it's time to develop tourism here."
The old man snorted. "Customs? There aren't any customs. If everyone took the same path, they'd just crash into each other, wouldn't they?"
What a refreshingly practical answer...
Qi Si felt a pang of disappointment, but then the old man lowered his voice conspiratorially. "Then again, if you're really asking for a tale, I suppose I could tell you one..."
His voice turned sinister, thick and muffled as if he were speaking through a mouthful of phlegm. "Water is of the yin element, so the waterway is the yin road... the path of ghosts. You enter by the ghost path and leave by the path of the living. Humans and ghosts walk different roads; the living and the dead must never share the same path..."
Ahead, a white mist began to curl up from the water. Damp vapor washed over their faces, filling their nostrils with a sticky, suffocating sensation.
Silvery-white text materialized before his eyes, accompanied by a flat, electronic voice.
[Instance Name: *Double Happiness Town*]
[Instance Type: Team Survival]
[Main Quest: Find Xu Wen and get her out.]
[Preliminary Hint: The living are not necessarily alive, and the dead are not necessarily dead.]
Qi Si now knew the name of the woman in the photograph: Xu Wen.
"A team survival instance! That's great! We finally don't have to worry about backstabbing each other!" a deep, booming voice exclaimed from behind him, filled with undisguised joy. "That versus instance a week ago was... something else. Good thing I'm an expert at playing dead."
From his voice alone, the man didn't sound particularly bright. "My name's Liu Bingding. Counting the tutorial, this is my sixth instance. I'm an actor—though it's a bit embarrassing to say, I mostly play corpses in the background."
With someone having broken the ice, the others began to introduce themselves:
"I'm Du Xiaoyu. This is my fourth instance. Heh, I just became an official player. I'm a freelancer in the real world."
"Li Yao, fifth time. I write supernatural fiction, so I know a fair bit about folklore."
"Shang Qingbei, fourth instance... Um, I'm a high school senior, taking the college entrance exams this year."
If they were all telling the truth, the players in this instance were on a similar level—all of them rookies who had only recently become official players.
This was a more typical setup. A game where evenly matched rookies fought it out, a real back-and-forth, was always more entertaining. The last instance, being thrown against a player on Lu Li's level from the very beginning, was a rare and extreme exception.
Qi Si was in a surprisingly good mood, and his tone became much lighter. "Sir," he began, "to be honest, I have a girlfriend in the same line of work. She came to your town and then... disappeared. I was wondering if you might have seen her..."
"Haven't seen her, haven't seen her!" the old man waved his hand impatiently. "Our town only lets outsiders stay for seven days. This whole month, you lot are the only boat I've ferried."
He muttered under his breath, "Always looking for someone. You lose 'em, and you come looking here. Can't even keep an eye on your own folk, and then you come here stirring up trouble..."
Qi Si raised an eyebrow. "So, others have come here looking for someone besides us?"
The old man fell silent. Instead, a grimy hand landed on Qi Si's shoulder. "Hey, brother," a voice said. "Let's get acquainted. What's your name? What do you do?"
The voice belonged to Du Xiaoyu.
Qi Si turned, his expression impassive. Just as he was about to speak, the lean, dark-skinned young man behind him pointed at him, his face a mask of shock. "I've seen you in the newspaper! You're that... Qi... Qi..."
"Qi Wen," Qi Si offered with a tight smile, giving a fake name.
He put on the most natural reaction for someone who's just been recognized, and at the same time, gave a slight shrug to dislodge Du Xiaoyu's grimy hand from his shoulder.
"Yeah, that's it! You're that Qi Wen!"
The wiry young man, no older than eighteen or nineteen, looked like a scamp. He wore a black T-shirt with a skull on it and had a devil-may-care air about him.
He took Qi Si's cue and shot him a knowing wink, then grinned. "I'll call you Brother Qi, then! I cut that newspaper article out and pasted it on my wall. I must have read it dozens of times. You're my idol!"
Qi Si recalled the article, titled something like, *Local 22-Year-Old's Provincial Exhibition Brings Honor to Hometown*, and the corner of his eye twitched.
He didn't believe a single word of Du Xiaoyu's fanboy routine, but with everyone's eyes on him, he simply smiled and nodded. "Heh, I didn't realize I was so famous I'd be recognized even out here."
"But no matter who we are in the real world, we all start on equal footing in the Weird Game, so let's cut the chatter. This is my nineteenth instance, and as it happens, I have a few theories about its background."
He thought of an interesting way to play this, so he directly plagiarized Lu Li's lines.
The moment the word "nineteenth" was uttered, the expressions of the other players shifted. Four pairs of eyes fixed on him—some filled with suspicion, others with hopeful surprise.
*He seems like a kind, approachable veteran. And he's even willing to cooperate and share information...*
Qi Si intentionally cultivated this misconception, continuing in a calm, measured voice, "This instance's main quest is a search. A girl named Xu Wen went missing in Double Happiness Town. We are all her family or friends, and we've arranged to come find her together and take her home."
"Since this is a team instance, I hope we can all share clues and not hold anything back. Trying to be clever or acting on your own could get more than just yourself killed. Every person here is important, and I don't want our group of five to lose anyone due to stupidity."
As Qi Si spoke, he matched the names to the faces of the other players.
The sturdy man with sharp features was Liu Bingding, the self-proclaimed actor. He looked to be around thirty, dressed in a blue long-sleeved shirt and pants. His short, center-parted hair and clean-shaven face were well-groomed, but his plain looks made it understandable why he was typecast as a corpse. The slender boy in the blue and white school uniform and black-framed glasses was obviously Shang Qingbei. He had an average face, with a forehead full of acne barely hidden by his bangs. He clutched a thick English dictionary, looking every bit the student aspiring to a top university.
Li Yao, the only woman in the group, was easy to pick out. She wore a black form-fitting outfit and looked to be in her mid-twenties, with a short, neat haircut. She was sitting, so he couldn't tell her height, but judging from her torso, she seemed quite tall.
None of them looked like killer players on the surface, but he couldn't rule out the possibility of excellent acting. Whether a member of the Sila Guild was among them remained to be seen.
All of them had the same "Folklore Investigator" name tag hanging around their necks. Judging by the thickness of the plastic holders, theirs likely had something tucked behind them as well.
He just didn't know if it was a similar photo or some other kind of clue.
A faint smile touched Qi Si's lips as he spoke in a gentle tone. "I can tell you all that my role is Xu Wen's boyfriend. What about you?"
Du Xiaoyu's eyes darted around, clearly looking at his system interface. "It doesn't say anything about my role here. Not even any narration."
Li Yao checked the back of her name tag and also shook her head. "Same for me. The game hasn't told me anything."
The other two nodded in agreement.
Shang Qingbei, catching on, asked resentfully, "Why do you get to just become our leader? Just because you're a so-called 'veteran player'? What proof do you have that anything you've said is true?"
Qi Si's smile didn't waver. "I can't prove it. But this is a team instance—what good would lying to you do me? None of you are fools. The whole 'seize leadership to use others as cannon fodder' trick doesn't really work among official players."
"Fine. Logically, that makes sense," Shang Qingbei said, though he had no intention of believing a word of it. As far as he was concerned, every last one of these veterans was a treacherous schemer.
He shrugged. "But let's be clear up front: I don't believe for a second in 'mutual support' in the Weird Game. Humans are inherently selfish creatures."
"It's not surprising you think that way," Qi Si sighed softly. "After all, that whole business with the Kyushu Guild just happened..."
He didn't elaborate, but the other players had heard bits and pieces about the Lu Li incident and filled in the blanks themselves.
A fair number of players had watched the *Hopeless Sea* livestream, but it wasn't a huge amount. At any rate, no one here seemed to know that Qi Si was "Si Qi."
Shang Qingbei asked, "Are you with the Kyushu Guild?"
Qi Si sighed again, neither confirming nor denying.
Silence spread among the players, broken only by the sound of the paddle stroking the water.
Qi Si turned back to the prow, his back to the other four, and gazed into the vast white mist ahead.
The air was cold and the mist was heavy. The distant scenery was obscured by a gauzy veil of moisture, reducing everything to gray shadows of varying heights. Still, their faint outlines sketched the silhouette of a riverside town.
The old man at the prow stood hunched over, but the wiry arms peeking out from under his straw cloak were surprisingly powerful as he methodically struck the water with his paddle, again and again.
Splash... splash...
With each rhythmic splash, the stone cliffs that had lined the river abruptly fell away. The view opened up before them, revealing a vast lake that stretched beyond the horizon on either side.
The mist had vanished, revealing a quaint, ancient southern town on the opposite shore. Its white walls and black-tiled roofs were like an ink wash painting come to life.
The bank was paved with blue-green flagstones, where several women in floral-patterned clothes knelt in a row, beating laundry with wooden clubs. Suds of white foam drifted away on the current.
The raft approached a flight of stone steps, bumping against them with a soft *thud* before recoiling. The old man, steady as a mountain at the prow, expertly planted his pole, bringing the raft to a gentle stop alongside the steps.
"We're here. Off you go!" the old man said, exhaling a puff of white vapor. He added a reminder, "Remember now. Seven days. Outsiders can only stay for seven days."
Seven days? That must be the time limit for this instance.
He wondered if Xu Wen, as an NPC in this instance, was also bound by that time limit.
Qi Si asked, "What happens if we stay longer than seven days?"
"Don't know! No outsider has ever stayed in our town for seven days and not left," the old man grumbled. "The first seven days... seven days is enough!"
There was something very strange about his words. Li Yao murmured, "In Taoism, seven is a nascent yang number, the intersection of yin and yang. The spirit returns on the seventh day after death to settle its debts of gratitude and sever its worldly ties."
Faced with an NPC who clearly knew a lot, the players weren't about to let him go.
Du Xiaoyu pressed, "Old man, why can outsiders only stay for seven days? And what did you mean about the 'first seven days'?"
The old man shot them an impatient, sideways glance and waved his hands. "Why are you young'uns dawdling? Shoo, shoo! Get to town. You'll find out what you need to know when you need to know it."
The NPC was shooing them away, so the players didn't dare linger and quickly stepped ashore.
Qi Si stood on the flagstones, turning his head to smile at the old man. "Sir, have we paid our fare? My memory's not so good, I seem to have forgotten."
"Nope." The old man grinned, revealing a toothless mouth. A hollow, wheezing sound came from the dark cavern of his mouth. "Not that you have any money that's good here, anyway..."
A thick white smoke billowed from his mouth, enveloping the five people on the bank. His figure suddenly became transparent, and the raft beneath his feet faded like mist, both disappearing in a matter of seconds.
Where the lake and cliffs had been just moments before, there was now only a narrow canal. On this side were white walls and black tiles, and on the other side, the same.
Buildings of various heights lined the canal on both sides, and the players found themselves standing in the heart of Double Happiness Town.
Behind them was a funeral parlor draped in black cloth. A dozen or so paper figurines, each as tall as a person, were displayed inside, arranged in rows.
Before them, long banners of bright red silk decorated with cloth flowers cascaded from the dark-tiled eaves, linking the houses in a continuous line that stretched into the distance.
Enormous, vibrant red "double happiness" characters were pasted on every wall, casting a pale crimson glow on the white plaster.
The women they had seen by the water were still there, kneeling in the same spot, heads down, scrubbing away in focused silence. Only now, the clothes in their hands were a glaring, vivid red—the unmistakable gowns of traditional brides.
Something was drifting down from the sky, white and fluttering, like snow.
Qi Si held out his hand and caught a few pieces. They were paper circles with a hole in the center—paper money used in funeral rites to appease mischievous ghosts along the road.
[Two joyous occasions in life: one is marriage, the other is death.]
White text refreshed on the system interface.
An androgynous voice, drawing out its words, began to chant in a sinister, celebratory tone:
[For marriage, new clothes are worn, the new couple welcomed, a new home entered, a grand red procession.]
[For death, clean clothes are worn, the old one sent off, a tomb entered, a solemn white procession.]
[Naked you come, in splendor you wed, naked you go—]
The voice suddenly shot up in pitch, laced with a shrill, terrifying laugh, as it shrieked:
[What joy! What joy!]