The players crowded around Qi Si, their gazes fixed on the phone's screen.
It was the first time any of them had encountered an item like a smartphone in an instance. If not for the potential danger, they would have already been reaching out to touch it.
The phone had no lock screen. Qi Si opened it with a simple swipe. The apps inside had been wiped cleaner than a factory reset, leaving only four essentials: Phone, Messages, Browser, and Camera.
Shang Qingbei, who was leaning in the closest, watched as Qi Si expertly opened the phone app and navigated to the contacts list.
There was only a single entry, labeled "Xu Wen."
The young man's pale finger hovered over the call button, as if he was itching to press it.
Who knew what would happen if he made the call? Shang Qingbei held his breath, nearly crying out in alarm.
Thankfully, after a few seconds, the finger moved away. He swiped over to the messages and opened the only one in the history:
[Xu Wen: Come to Double Happiness Town. Save me! (2008/8/15)]
The phone's display read 5:39 PM, August 17, 2008. It seemed that after receiving Xu Wen's plea for help, the group had made only minimal preparations before rushing here at once.
Du Xiaoyu muttered under his breath, "Two days have passed. If her life was really in danger, she's probably already a goner, don't you think?"
"If she is, then we'll just take her body with us when we leave." Qi Si offered a smile that could almost be described as gentle as he opened the camera roll and selected a bizarre photograph.
The photograph showed a pitch-black coffin, shot from directly above. The stark, upright casket looked unnervingly like a standing person at first glance. Its surface was covered in intricate runes, and a long spike was driven into each of its four corners, giving it a truly menacing appearance.
After a moment, the phone began to operate on its own. It selected the image, opened the browser, and performed an image search, automatically clicking the top result.
[Soul-Suppressing Coffin: Fixed with Soul-Suppressing Spikes at its four corners to ward off evil and imprison restless spirits. A malevolent corpse is sealed within, its resentment lingering eternally. To open it is to invite certain doom.]
Qi Si glanced at his system interface. No corresponding text appeared.
So, was this a clue players were meant to memorize on their own?
He was about to speak when the screen flickered twice, exiting the search and returning to the camera roll.
The image had changed. Fresh blood now seeped from beneath the coffin, pooling thickly on the ground. The spikes at the four corners seemed to have been pried loose by some outside force, hanging precariously from the wood. A thin crack had appeared between the lid and the body of the coffin. In the pitch-black gap, a faint glint of light shone through, as if something inside were pressed against the opening, peering out.
With a placid expression, Qi Si swiped right.
The screen didn't move. There was only one photograph in the album.
The silence was shattered by a sudden ringtone—the clear, tinkling sound of a wind chime, which sounded utterly eerie in the quiet room.
The caller ID read "Xu Wen."
Xu Wen? The woman from the main quest? The one who'd sent the distress signal two days ago, then vanished without a trace? The one who was, in all likelihood, already dead?
A dozen horror stories about phantom phone calls flashed through Shang Qingbei's mind. He opened his mouth to stop him, but Qi Si had already hung up with a decisive tap.
The thousand protests lodged in his throat dissolved into a single, baffled sound: "Huh?"
Stroking his chin, Qi Si began to reason aloud, a look of profound seriousness on his face. "The fact that I could hang up means answering isn't a death trigger. It probably also means that whatever she was going to tell us isn't critical to solving the instance."
Ignoring the other players' bewildered stares, he counted to three, then called back. As soon as the call connected, he put it on speaker for everyone to hear.
A weak, trembling female voice erupted from the speaker, the words tumbling out in a rush. "I'm lost. I can't find my way out. You need to keep yourselves safe first—don't trust anyone in Double Happiness Town. They're all ghosts! I'll take pictures every day and sync them to that phone. Be careful... they're starting to come out, one by one..."
The voice sounded faint, more air than words, as if she might draw her last breath at any second.
"Xu Wen?" Qi Si called out tentatively.
After she confirmed her identity, he asked, "Is it cold where you are?"
"Yes," Xu Wen said, "it's freezing... like winter. I only have seven days. Settle in for today, but please, find me tomorrow. Quickly..."
"Do you have any idea where you are? Can you send us your location?"
"I can't pinpoint my location. Double Happiness Town doesn't exist on any map..."
"I see..." Qi Si drew out the words slowly. "Then how did you know we had arrived?"
The voice on the other end of the line cut off abruptly. Even the sound of her breathing was gone. The silence was absolute.
Qi Si waited calmly for a few seconds. The call was disconnected from the other end, leaving a one-minute call log.
He tried calling back again, but after several rings, all he got was the automated female voice: "The person you are calling is unavailable. Please try again later."
"She was able to respond to my question, which means it wasn't a pre-recorded message," Qi Si stated. "Xu Wen is still conscious."
Qi Si tossed the phone to a nearby Du Xiaoyu and sat down on the bed in the middle of the room, beginning his analysis. "She called to give us three key pieces of information. First, this is a ghost town. You get turned around, and normal methods of leaving won't work. Second, the horrors in those photos will manifest in reality. The longer we stay, the more of them we'll encounter. And third, she feels cold."
He paused, scanning the other players. "Do any of you feel cold?"
"Not me. I'm actually a little warm."
"It feels normal to me."
The other players shook their heads.
Qi Si continued, "There are two possibilities. Either she's physically unwell—injured or running a fever, which is making her feel cold—or she isn't in the same location as we are."
"Furthermore," he added, "the way she hung up suggests she's hiding things from us. We can't rule out the possibility that she lured us here with malicious intent."
His methodical reasoning and unflappable demeanor had all but convinced the other players. This man calling himself "Qi Wen" was clearly an expert, the kind of player whose coattails you could ride to clear the instance.
Liu Bingding asked hesitantly, "So what do we do about the main quest? If she means us harm, but we're supposed to save her... isn't that a contradiction?"
"Didn't I tell you?" Qi Si smiled, a bright, clear smile that held no warmth. "If she won't cooperate, we'll just take her corpse with us. I've cleared enough instances to have a decent stock of items. Killing a single NPC won't be difficult."
By this point, most official players shared the consensus that an NPC's life didn't really count as a life—especially one that posed a potential threat.
Still, to hear Qi Si state something so brutal so candidly sent a chill down their spines.
Shang Qingbei clutched the English dictionary in his arms a little tighter. He'd been skeptical when Qi Si claimed this was his nineteenth instance, but now he was almost entirely convinced. The rumor was that the more instances a player cleared, the more twisted their psyche became, until they were nearly as monstrous as the ghosts they fought.
Judging by "Qi Wen's" state of mind, there was no doubt he was a veteran player...
"What are you all thinking?" Qi Si scanned their rigid faces and clicked his tongue. "That's just the last resort. I'd prefer to conserve my items, you know..."
"Aargh!"
A sudden, miserable shriek cut him off mid-sentence.
Du Xiaoyu, who had been engrossed with the phone ever since he got it, suddenly leaped backward with a look of pure terror, flinging the device onto the bed as if it had given him an electric shock.
The phone bounced twice before landing facedown on the covers. A faint red glow was visible from the space underneath.
Du Xiaoyu looked at Qi Si and stammered, "I... I just noticed it could connect to the internet, so... I searched for something random, and I didn't expect... *that* to pop up."
Qi Si picked up the phone, which had gone dark, and opened it.
The screen lit up to reveal the figure of someone in a crimson wedding dress, standing in a courtyard adorned with red decorations. A red veil completely covered its head, tassels spilling over its shoulders. From beneath the long sleeves, a pair of bluish-black hands emerged, tipped with long, sharp, crimson nails—the hands of a corpse.
The hands were outstretched in a contorted gesture. Whether due to the camera angle or something else, it created the unnerving illusion that the figure was about to claw its way right out of the screen, filling the viewer with a creeping dread.
Qi Si tapped the search bar, deleted the word "beauty" that Du Xiaoyu had typed in, and replaced it with "Weird Game" before hitting search.
The result was the same: the eerie photograph.
It seemed that unless you used specific keywords, any search would yield the same result.
As Qi Si paused to consider this, a choked, gurgling sound came from beside him, like someone trying to scream with a throat full of phlegm.
He raised his eyes, following the terrified gazes of the players.
Outside the room's grimy window, a figure in a red wedding dress had appeared. It was pressed flat against the glass, as if trying to force its way inside...
"*Tinkle... tinkle... tinkle...*"
In the frozen silence, the distant wind carried the tinkling of bells—a clear, ethereal sound that drew steadily closer.
Mistress Xu's thin voice drifted over. "Xi'er, what are you doing out here? Go on now, back to your room!"
Her tone was casual, as if shooing away a cat, yet the bride in red immediately slid back from the window. She turned sluggishly and shambled toward the western side of the courtyard.
The players now noticed that the bride's exposed arms were a healthy, rosy color. She wasn't a corpse, after all.
"Told us not to 'startle' her. Who's startling who here?" Du Xiaoyu muttered, spitting at the bride's retreating figure. "Acting like a ghost, scaring the hell out of people..."
His words caught in his throat.
Mistress Xu's powdered white face appeared right behind the bride, pressing against the windowpane like a phantom. Her murky eyes peered at the five players inside.
"My honored guests, I hope she didn't frighten you?" She offered a benevolent smile and tapped the back of her head twice with her right hand. "Xi'er... she has a little problem up here. She was born that way."
Stooping slightly, she walked around the window to the doorway. In her left hand, she carried a wooden bucket of food; with her right, she pushed open the half-closed door. "You must all be hungry. An old woman's cooking can't compare to those fancy city restaurants, but I hope you'll find it acceptable."
Qi Si noticed a string of thumb-sized black bells hanging from Mistress Xu's waist. They appeared to be bronze, engraved with peculiar patterns that gave off a chilling, unsettling aura.
"Not at all. We're grateful for your hospitality," he said, picking up the phone and stepping forward with a smile, motioning to take the bucket from her.
The back of his hand brushed against the old woman's soft, wrinkled skin. It was as cold as ice.
Mistress Xu's steps were steady. Seeing Qi Si move as if to take the bucket, she quickly switched it to her other hand. "You're our guests. Please, just sit and rest."
Qi Si hadn't actually intended to carry it, so he simply nodded and returned to his seat on the bed. "Mistress Xu," he said, "that string of bells you're wearing is quite striking. I'd love to buy one like it as a souvenir. Is that possible?"
"Oh, you can't buy these. They're a family heirloom," Mistress Xu said as she walked to the wooden table by the window. She began taking dishes out of the bucket, arranging them in a neat row.
Qi Si pressed on. "Why put them on all of a sudden? I don't recall you wearing them when you came to meet us."
"I've always worn them, dear. You must be mistaken."
The dinner wasn't lavish, but it was substantial: braised pork, stir-fried greens, and steamed white buns. It looked like a typical farmhouse meal, and there was more than enough for the five of them.
Eating inside an instance was a serious consideration, especially in longer ones that lasted more than three days. Forget the extreme possibility of starving to death; even mild hunger could dull one's thoughts or cause low blood sugar, which could be a death sentence at a critical moment.
Instances rarely bothered with something as mundane as poisoned food, so the players picked up their chopsticks and began serving themselves. With plenty of food to go around, the atmosphere was polite and orderly.
Holding the empty bucket, Mistress Xu stood by the door, watching the players eat with a pleasant, unwavering smile.
Qi Si looked up at her. "Mistress Xu, have you eaten? Would you like to join us?"
Mistress Xu chuckled. "Oh no, this old woman doesn't eat. I'll just wait here to clear the table when you're done."
Hearing this, the players exchanged a glance.
Qi Si silently put down his chopsticks, grabbed a white steamed bun, and sat back on the bed. He began to... peel off the bun's outer layer.
He deliberately slowed his movements. By the time the other players had nearly finished their meals, he had only just finished peeling the thin outer layer off his bun. Then, he began to nibble at the snow-white interior, taking tiny bites.
There might be a limit to how fast one can eat, but when it came to stalling, there were a thousand ways to drag out a meal.
If peeling the outer layer wasn't enough, Qi Si could have started peeling away the inside of the bun itself, layer by layer.
After clearing the table of dishes and leftovers, Mistress Xu's gaze—slick and cloying—slid over to Qi Si, who was still dawdling. "Just waiting on you now..."