Liu Bingding opened his eyes to find himself dressed in a vibrant red wedding robe, seated in a tightly sealed chamber.
The chamber was decorated like a traditional bridal room from ancient times. Large, red "double happiness" characters were pasted on the windows, and crimson canopies drifted down from the ceiling and bedframe, resembling drops of blood diffusing in clear water.
A line of white text appeared on the system interface in the upper-left corner of his vision:
[Side Quest (Mandatory): Escape the Xu Residence with "Miss Xu"]
"'Miss Xu?'" he muttered. "Don't tell me this is some kind of elopement plot. Judging by the decor, have I been thrown back centuries into the past of Double Happiness Town? This place is called the Xu Residence... what's the connection to Auntie Xu?"
Muttering to himself, Liu Bingding cautiously got to his feet and tiptoed toward the window.
Thump. Something slipped from his sleeve. He bent down to pick it up.
It was a thick, folded petition. From the way the ink bled through the paper, he could tell it was covered in dense script.
Liu Bingding unfolded the document. Large blocks of text swarmed onto his system interface like a cloud of gnats, page after page blurring before his eyes.
[This humble student, born to a poor family, forsook the scholar's path for the farmer's toil. Displaced by famine, my sisters were seized by villains and ensnared in Double Happiness Town...]
Unable to read the entire text at once, Liu Bingding scrolled to the end. The signature was unmistakable: [Zhang Sheng].
"What's going on?" Liu Bingding wondered aloud. "So Zhang Sheng knew his sisters were abducted and filed a complaint with the county magistrate?"
He heard two people talking outside the door:
"We've already put the young miss in the coffin, just as the old madam instructed. All that's left is to stupefy her along with the rest of the shipment..."
"And while she's out, let's kill that prying little county official. Best to tie up loose ends before he sends word out."
Even if he were slow on the uptake, Liu Bingding could tell the speakers meant him no good.
He glanced around, snatched a chair from beside the bed, and hoisted it over his head. Tiptoeing to the door, he waited, holding his breath in utter silence.
Creeak... The wooden door swung open.
Eyes squeezed shut, Liu Bingding swung the chair with all his might. He brought it down three times in front of him, each blow landing with a soft, dull thud—*whump, whump, whump*.
There was none of the solid impact of wood on flesh. Instead, it felt like striking a wad of paper; the force was absorbed, and the momentum sent him stumbling forward.
"Hee hee hee... hee hee..."
The things that had entered the room let out a shrill, eerie laugh.
Liu Bingding finally steadied himself and stared. The two figures before him weren't human at all. They were paper effigies, crudely fashioned from coarse paper into the shape of limbs and heads, and dressed in paper clothes. Splashes of red pigment were smeared across their ghastly white cheeks, mimicking rosy blush and smiling lips.
Terrified, Liu Bingding recoiled, his leg slamming into the edge of the wooden bed. A jolt of pain shot through him, and he nearly collapsed onto the mattress.
"Hee hee... hee hee hee..."
The two paper figurines seemed amused by his reaction, their laughter growing even more shrill.
They waved their arms in perfect unison, grinning menacingly as they drifted toward him, sealing off his only escape route.
From where he stood, Liu Bingding could see the vivid red tips on their pale paper fingers. The color seemed to grow, extending into nails as long and sharp as daggers, glinting as they lunged for him.
Trembling uncontrollably, Liu Bingding reflexively shoved a hand into his pocket, fumbled for a moment, and hurled an item at the figures.
The object spun through the air, erupting in a flash of light so blinding it seared his vision...
...
Darkness. A darkness that swallowed everything.
Li Yao lay flat on her back, adrift in the darkness. Her eyelids felt as though they were sealed with glue, refusing to open no matter how hard she tried.
Her consciousness was a chaotic swirl, like willow catkins scattered on the wind, preventing any clear thought from forming. She felt herself sinking into a profound, inky slumber, gradually forgetting who she was, where she had come from, and where she was going...
The last thing she remembered was a grotesque, smiling face pressed so close it nearly touched her nose—the face of a paper figurine dressed as a servant...
Paper figurines? The thought sent a jolt through her, and she finally managed to force her eyes open. But the view before her was unchanged—the same impenetrable darkness from her dream.
She instinctively stretched out an arm, her elbow rapping against a hard wooden plank. A dull ache shot through the joint.
The sharp sensation shocked her fully awake. Groping around, her hands met wood on all sides—above, below, and around her. She was trapped inside a cramped, enclosed space.
Suddenly, the piercing wail of a suona horn shattered the silence, its sharp, lingering notes like nails screeching across glass. It was impossible to tell where the sound was coming from; it seemed to be both distant and blaring right beside her ear.
So loud...
Li Yao felt the wooden surface beneath her begin to move, rocking and swaying, rising and falling like a boat on the ocean.
She was being carried.
"Which family's daughter, simple and dull,"
"Simple of mind, a fine womb to fill."
"Which family's son, a wastrel of late,"
"Buys himself a bride in glorious state."
"A coffin for a carriage, red and grand,"
"White paper scatters, across a ghostly land."
"May husband and wife share one breath, one doom,"
"On the same day their souls share the same tomb."
The high, clear chant rang out, a singsong drone accompanied by the grating suona. The voice itself seemed to be another instrument, joining in a dissonant, unholy hymn.
The blood in Li Yao's veins turned to ice. She began to struggle wildly, hammering her fists against the lid of the coffin with a series of frantic *thumps*.
"Help me! Let me out!"
"Help me... Please, let me out..."
She screamed, her voice cracking into a sob, like the mournful cry of a lost spirit.
At some point, the wailing of the suona faded. A voice spoke, muffled by the thick wood of the coffin. "Why should I save you? What's in it for me?"
... It was noon in Double Happiness Town. The hand of the Fate Pocket Watch pointed to the Roman numeral XII.
Auntie Xu stood in the middle of the deserted street, a cheerful smile on her face. "There were only four of you guests," she said. "Where would a young lady be? Any girl you see would have to be one of our own."
"Huh?" Du Xiaoyu, who stood nearest to her, stared blankly and began counting on his fingers. "But there were five of us. Me, Li Yao, Liu Bingding..."
"We must have misremembered," Qi Si cut in, his gaze fixed intently on Auntie Xu. "There were, in fact, four of us. All men. No women."
The smile on Auntie Xu's face broadened, crinkling her features into a pleased knot. She seemed utterly delighted by Qi Si's words.
Du Xiaoyu didn't understand, but he sensed something was wrong and sheepishly fell silent.
Auntie Xu slowly turned and resumed leading the way, her short, stout body and waddling legs giving her the appearance of a spinning top.
They walked on in silence for a while before Shang Qingbei sidled up to Qi Si. "Is Li Yao a ghost?" he whispered.
"Not necessarily," Qi Si replied, his expression unchanging. "It's possible she triggered some kind of mechanism that has temporarily removed her from Double Happiness Town. I thought we'd all agreed after Xu Wen's phone call at the start of the instance that this place exists on more than one plane."
A muscle twitched at the corner of Shang Qingbei's eye. "We've already established there's something wrong with the phone. You still trust her?"
"On those particular details, she had no reason to lie, did she?" Qi Si quickened his pace, keeping about ten feet behind Auntie Xu. "The most convincing lies are always laced with truth. It's the only way to make it impossible to tell fact from fiction."
"And how are you supposed to know which parts are true and which are false?" Shang Qingbei challenged.
Qi Si glanced back at him with a smile. "I don't. Everything I'm telling you is just a guess. You're free to make your own."
"..." Shang Qingbei recognized the familiar, condescending tone one might use with a child. The conversation, he knew, was over.
Having gotten the moment of peace he desired, Qi Si strolled casually along the bluestone path, following Auntie Xu toward Xi'er's house. His mind, however, was replaying Li Yao's every action since they had entered the instance.
The girl hadn't been one for small talk; most of her comments had pertained to occult lore or the instance's backstory, making it easy to glean important information from her.
He remembered her words from that morning, spoken with a sense of dread:
'Before this instance started, I had a dream that I died. My body was in a very dark, deep place, and I could hear water. Now I remember... I think it was a well...'
'I remember there were other bodies around me in the dream. I think... I think I even saw you...'
Was that a vital clue?
A thought struck Qi Si. He took out his phone, opened the camera app, and switched to the front-facing lens for a selfie.
The face on the screen was gaunt and haggard, only vaguely resembling his own, and covered in rough stubble. His eyes were sunk deep in their sockets, the vacant orbs shot through with thick, crimson veins, giving him a starkly inhuman appearance.
As a 'fake' item, the phone existed outside the instance's rules. It was immune to the perception-altering effects of the domain, and thus displayed the player's true form.
Ordinarily, Qi Si might have dismissed this as a quirk of a role-playing instance and ignored the discrepancies.
But now he couldn't help but wonder. If his soul was occupying this unfamiliar body, then where was his own?
In the ghost story Li Yao had found, Zhang Sheng '[lost his footing and fell into a well, where he saw the orderly rows of bones and felt a wave of melancholy].'
A normal person's first reaction to a pile of corpses would be terror. So why did Zhang Sheng feel melancholy?
There was only one possibility. What he saw at the bottom of that well was his own corpse. He knew he was dead. He had become a ghost.
For some reason, Qi Si's mind drifted back to the 'Dialectic Game' instance.
Even if a replica killed its original, the instance could still be cleared. It seemed the Weird Game was deliberately replacing players with monsters, a gradual invasion of reality.
This situation was alarmingly similar. He had inexplicably become someone else—a person who resembled him, but wasn't him...
"Here we are," Auntie Xu announced, stopping at an intersection and pointing ahead. "You must all be tired. Go on inside and get some rest."
The deserted alleyway was clean and spacious. At its end, a residence festooned with red banners and festive decorations came into view. Every player and NPC present knew someone had just died inside, yet no one acted out of the ordinary.
The residence gate stood ajar, but none of the players moved to enter.
Qi Si watched Auntie Xu start to walk away, his eyes once again drawn to the bell at her waist. "Auntie Xu," he called out, "didn't you say you'd lost that bell? How is it you're wearing it again?"
Auntie Xu stopped and turned her head, smiling. "Oh, I found it on the cutting board! This old woman must have taken it off while she was cooking."
"But why take it off?" Qi Si pressed, his tone earnest, as if genuinely concerned. "Wouldn't it be better to keep it on all the time? Taking it off and on, you might really lose it one day."
"I take it off when I feel like it," Auntie Xu replied dismissively, then turned and continued on her way, her figure receding into the distance.
Shang Qingbei adjusted his glasses. "It seems the bell has the power to ward off spirits," he analyzed. "Auntie Xu herself is a ghost, so she can't wear it for long. She only puts it on when delivering meals, to prevent us from noticing that there's something wrong with the food."
"Wrong," Qi Si said, fiddling with his phone without looking up. "What difference would it make if we knew about the food? We can't go seven days without eating anything."
"The location is what's important. Auntie Xu has worn that bell twice: once last evening when she came to Xi'er's house, and again when she went to the Joy God Temple after the banquet disaster. She wore it because she knew spirits would be active in those places at those specific times."
"But isn't Auntie Xu a ghost?" Du Xiaoyu asked, confused. "Why would a ghost be afraid of other ghosts?"
Qi Si barely glanced up. "For one," he said flatly, "she might not consider herself a ghost. For another... she's haunted by a guilty conscience."
Du Xiaoyu froze for a second, then quickly sifted through his memories for the relevant information.
That morning, Auntie Xu had said: 'Our town has been plagued by spirits a few times. We all went to the Goddess's temple to burn offerings and pray for her blessing, and all those spirits were suppressed in the town well.'
Shang Qingbei frowned. "It makes sense for there to be spirits at the Joy God Temple, but why would there be any at Xi'er's house?"
"Someone died in Xi'er's house," Qi Si said, "and Auntie Xu was, directly or indirectly, responsible for their death." He switched his phone to his left hand and raised his right, examining his fingertips. They were as pale and clean as ever. "Remember the bloodstains we saw on the windowsill the first day? That should have been a dead giveaway."
"Xi'er is an orphan... so Auntie Xu killed her family?" Du Xiaoyu ventured. He looked up to find Qi Si staring at him with the kind of pity one reserves for a particularly slow child.
"Why not be a little bolder with your guess?" Qi Si's smile took on a sarcastic edge. "For example, is Xi'er really from this town? Do you think Auntie Xu had us stay in this house with her just because it was the only vacant one? Isn't it possible this residence has always been for out-of-town guests... and that Xi'er herself was once a guest?"
*Ring, ring, ring...* The sudden ringing of his phone cut Qi Si off mid-sentence.
Qi Si glanced down at the caller ID. The name [Xu Wen] was displayed in stark, clear characters.
He tapped the answer button and switched on the speaker.