In the nightmare, Shang Qingbei had lost count of how many cycles he'd endured.
Each time he thought he was awake—whether he bolted out the door or huddled under the covers pretending to sleep—the scene around him would inevitably collapse after a while.
He would open his eyes again and again, only to see the same ceiling and, on the bed next to his, the terrifying face of Xi'er.
Mechanically, he ran out the door over and over, repeating the cycle of encountering a monster disguised as Qi Si, escaping, and waking up again. The fear grew, flourishing with each loop.
[When Zhang Sheng was trapped in a nightmare, his form withered to skin and bones, and he drifted in a stupor, unaware of its cause.]
The ghost stories had long foreshadowed the nature of the crisis, but they never offered the players a concrete solution...
"Shang Siyuan." Waking yet again, Shang Qingbei heard a neutral voice whisper in his ear, speaking his real name.
He hadn't heard that name in the game for a long time... Who was it? How did they know?
Shang Qingbei whipped his head toward the source of the sound, but saw nothing.
"You were destined to sleep forever in an endless dream, but I may be able to help you awaken from this nightmare," the voice by his ear whispered, enticing him.
Shang Qingbei asked, "Who are you? You say you'll help me—what price must I pay?"
The voice ignored his question and continued, "I will grant you aid within the rules, and in return, you must do one thing for me."
On his system interface, two lines of text refreshed at that exact moment.
[Side Quest Updated]
[Side Quest (Optional): Ruin Xi'er's wedding celebration.]
He'd actually triggered a side quest? It seemed these endless loops weren't just bad luck, but a pivotal part of the story where danger and opportunity coexisted.
Shang Qingbei knew that completing side quests often yielded crucial clues and boosted one's performance score. It was a win-win.
—Especially for an optional quest he could choose to ignore.
Hoping to coax out more clues, he feigned hesitation. "Why would I ruin her wedding? She's just an orphan girl. Wouldn't it be good for her to have someone to take care of her after she marries?"
The voice answered, "After Xi'er marries, she will be pushed into the well. Her resentment will merge with the water to nourish the Joy God. This has been the rule in Double Happiness Town since the beginning."
Just as he'd suspected. The grand celebration held every forty-nine years was nothing good.
The voice's explanation aligned with the usual tropes of ghost stories and matched his subconscious expectations. Without a second thought, Shang Qingbei chose to believe it.
"Alright, I'll do it," he said. "So Double Happiness Town performs a sacrifice every forty-nine years, is that right? Why was this rule established?"
Shang Qingbei had systematically studied the strategy guides on the game forums and had a faint premonition that he might just become the first player to unravel this instance's lore.
He waited solemnly, but the voice behind his ear just let out a soft chuckle. "Rules are rules."
It was clearly a dismissive answer. Shang Qingbei was about to press further when he felt something strike the back of his head, hard.
He couldn't react in time and stumbled forward.
The world spun before his eyes. He felt as if he'd been plunged into a bottomless vortex, falling, falling...
After an unknown amount of time, his back hit something solid. A soft mattress lay over a hard board—it must be the bed in the east wing.
His eyelids were heavy, and he could only vaguely perceive a faint glimmer of light, but his mind was clear, and he could hear voices nearby.
First came Li Yao's voice, tinged with the lingering fear of someone who had narrowly escaped disaster. "I had a dream last night. I was wearing a wedding dress, sitting in the bridal chamber, and there was a well outside the door. I went out and saw a woman sitting by the well. She was dressed in white, clearly not human, and she asked me to save her. I don't know why, but I agreed. The next thing I knew, I was lying at the bottom of the well, surrounded by corpses..."
"The fact that you woke up means it wasn't a death trap. It was probably just trying to tell you something through the dream," came Qi Si's calm and gentle voice. "Actually, I had a dream last night too. I dreamed that you had become a ghost and asked me whether you were dead or alive."
Li Yao asked, "And what did you say?"
"Alive." A hint of a smile touched Qi Si's voice. "Considering the boatman's words and the clues we've gathered since, we can determine that 'humans and ghosts walk different paths, the living and the dead follow separate ways' is the core rule of this instance."
"If I had told the ghost pretending to be you that it was dead, I, standing right there with it, probably wouldn't have survived either. Besides, what if my words became reality and you actually died?"
The last sentence was spoken jokingly, but it held an undercurrent of genuine concern.
Shang Qingbei listened with his eyes closed, committing Qi Si's analysis to memory.
—So it wasn't just him. The others had also encountered ghosts disguised as players?
—No, wait. This is all just Qi Si's side of the story. What Li Yao experienced was completely different from his own dream!
His mind snagged on the inconsistency, and Shang Qingbei finally shot upright with a rustle of movement.
The faint morning light pierced through the window lattice, casting a sliver of white at the foot of the bed. Dust motes and fibers danced in the air, refracting the beam.
The others were already awake and had been talking for some time. Hearing Shang Qingbei's sudden movement, they all turned their gazes toward him in unison.
Qi Si watched Shang Qingbei with keen interest, his fingers tapping an idle rhythm on the edge of the bed.
Shang Qingbei stared back at him, cleared his throat, and said deliberately, "Qi Si, last night I dreamed you became a monster." Seeing the young man adopt an expression of rapt attention, he continued, "I was suspicious of you from the very beginning, so I asked if you were human or a ghost. You said the words 'Weird Game,' and only then did I believe you were a player... If the person in my dream was really a monster, how could it have known about the Weird Game?"
A monster knowing the words "Weird Game" was even weirder than the game itself. An established rule had been broken. It was like waking up one morning to find the sun had become a red eye.
Qi Si's eyebrows twitched slightly. "From the sound of it, you've already made up your mind and decided I'm the problem?"
"After something like that, how could I not be suspicious of you?" Shang Qingbei's tone was stiff. "I just want a reasonable explanation."
He recounted his experience from the previous night, simplifying the details but emphasizing the repetitive dream-within-a-dream cycle. He omitted any mention of the voice at the end of the dream and the side quest.
Even he couldn't understand why he was concealing information that could very well be a crucial clue.
"Dreams have no logic," Qi Si said matter-of-factly. "We might say our dreams are a mechanism of the instance, but they're essentially just images generated by our own brains. Their development and direction are influenced by our individual thoughts."
Qi Si said with a straight face, "At first, you believed the 'me' in your dream was human, which is why you were able to hear the words 'Weird Game' from my lips. Later, I suspect, you had already convinced yourself that there was something wrong with me. Am I right?"
A lie shouldn't be too absolute. It needs to be logically consistent while also leaving enough room for the imagination.
That way, when a flaw appears, the deceived person will fill in the gaps themselves.
Qi Si lowered his eyes, affecting a look of moderate concern and difficulty. "Shang Qingbei, I don't know why you have such a problem with me, but I hope you can set aside your prejudices, at least until we can clear this instance safely."
"Speaking of which, this instance is very strange. It's giving me a bad feeling. The last time I felt this way was during my third instance..."
Shang Qingbei wasn't experienced with such manipulative talk. He just felt uncomfortable listening to this veiled, passive-aggressive speech and retorted awkwardly, "What problem would I have with you? I'm just stating the facts. Anyone who had a dream like that would be suspicious, wouldn't they?"
"No. Following a normal thought process, you should be questioning the instance's mechanics, not me." Qi Si shifted his gaze to Du Xiaoyu beside him.
Du Xiaoyu took the cue and chimed in, "I dreamed you became a monster last night, too, and I didn't say anything about being suspicious of you."
Liu Bingding added, "I dreamed of a monster disguised as Du Xiaoyu. Hey, now that you mention it, it seems like all our dreams form a chain. Li Yao dreamed of the ghost in the well, Qi Si dreamed of Li Yao, Shang Qingbei dreamed of Qi Si, and Du Xiaoyu dreamed of Shang Qingbei..."
Shang Qingbei fell silent, looking abashed.
Li Yao spoke hesitantly. "A town celebrating a wedding, yet the sky is filled with funeral money; last night, everyone except me dreamed of a coffin parked outside the courtyard; life has two great joys, one is marriage, the other is a funeral... What do you all make of this instance's lore?"
"A ghost marriage, obviously," Du Xiaoyu blurted out. "Isn't it obvious? Six or seven out of every ten Chinese horror stories are about ghost marriages."
"I don't think it's a ghost marriage," Liu Bingding said, shaking his head. "According to the instance themes compiled on the forums, there hasn't been a single ghost marriage instance in thirty-six years. There's a rumor that the theme violates some kind of taboo and isn't allowed by the rules..."
Of course it's not a ghost marriage. It's clearly a sacrifice held every forty-nine years, where a girl is offered up to nourish the Joy God with her resentment.
Shang Qingbei silently recited the conclusion he'd drawn from his dream.
He hesitated, wondering whether he should share this information.
For one, he didn't know the others well. Sharing clues proactively was a thankless task. As the saying goes, if someone offers you unsolicited kindness, they're either a thief or a scoundrel.
Second, speaking without evidence could easily lead to mistakes. Those people blindly trusted Qi Si—who knew if they'd seize on his errors and suspect him of plotting something...?
In his moment of hesitation, the topic moved on.
Liu Bingding asked, "Any new clues on the phone? I remember Xu Wen said she'd send over some photos every day."
"I checked it first thing this morning. Not a damn thing. Who knows if that NPC is even reliable," Du Xiaoyu said, tossing the phone onto the bed.
Shang Qingbei was closest and casually picked up the phone. As soon as he turned it on, he saw that half the battery was gone.
It was fully charged yesterday. At this rate, how would it last for seven days?
"How did the battery drain so fast? Did someone secretly use the phone?" Shang Qingbei looked suspiciously at Du Xiaoyu.
Just as Du Xiaoyu was about to flare up, Qi Si, the actual culprit, spoke up at the perfect moment. "We've already discussed this. The Weird Game strictly controls electronic devices like phones. Even when one appears as an item, it's likely to have usage restrictions."
"The battery level corresponds to a time limit. It loses half its charge each day, which means this item can only be used for one more day."
Listening from the side, Liu Bingding's expression grew grim. "Then what do we do? If the phone dies, how will we contact Xu Wen?"
"That's why we need to gather clues and unravel the lore as quickly as possible." Shang Qingbei lowered his head and tapped into the phone's photo album.
There were only two pictures inside: one of the soul-suppressing coffin that was already there, and one of the soul-summoning bell that Qi Si had taken.
—Indeed, no new clues.
This doesn't make sense. Why would the instance be designed this way?
Shang Qingbei had a vague feeling that something was wrong, but he couldn't put his finger on what it was.
"Let's turn it off for now and check again later. Maybe Xu Wen just hasn't had a chance to send the photos yet," Qi Si said calmly from the side.
He had secretly deleted a photo just an hour ago, but now his expression betrayed nothing. His tone and demeanor were utterly sincere. "Judging from yesterday's call, Xu Wen seems to be in a terrible situation. It's possible she couldn't find an opportunity to send a picture, right?"
Xu Wen, who had painstakingly sent the photo only for it to be erased: ...Wow.