In the past timeline of Double Happiness Town, Li Yao lay inside the coffin, listening as the voices of the crowd gradually faded into the distance.
The mournful wail of a suona cut through the air, its shrill, piercing melody twisting into something that sounded more like the howling of ghosts.
Li Yao felt her consciousness waver like a loose compass needle, flickering on the edge of clarity and fog. A chaotic flood of information washed over her memories, making it impossible to grasp her own sense of self.
All she could do was recite her past, over and over: "I am a writer of ghost stories. I don't have much of a gift for plot, so I just write these ambiguous tales about spirits. I submit a story to *Supernatural World* magazine every week. In the early years, I mailed in my manuscripts, but later I switched to email, which I'm still not quite used to..."
"A month ago, I entered the game. At first, I wasn't too scared; I thought I could use it for material, for inspiration. It wasn't until the third instance that I truly felt fear... Heh, that was November ninth, my birthday, of all days..."
Heavy, ragged footsteps broke the silence, accompanied by strained panting.
Someone was coming.
...
Liu Bingding dragged himself forward, gasping for breath.
He had used up one of his items to finally shake off the two paper figurines that were pursuing him, managing to blend into a funeral procession.
From the moment he was chosen by the Weird Game, his goal had been clear. Survival was paramount; fulfilling wishes and all that was just a bonus.
He was born ordinary, but he was steady and cautious, always trying to be on good terms with others, which was how he'd managed to survive until the official instances. He had spent every point he'd saved on life-preserving items.
He was a pragmatic man. In his view, you live for as long as you can, and you don't worry about anything beyond that for the time being. Finding Miss Xu wasn't urgent. The most important thing was to get out of this godforsaken place as soon as possible.
A thick, white mist clung to the sprawling streets. The grating sound of the suona echoed dissonantly as a procession of shadowy figures carried a black coffin, seeming to sail smoothly through the fog.
Liu Bingding did his best to shrink into the background, trailing at the very end of the line.
He had always been a background character, never attracting anyone's undue attention. Now, just as he had during his days as an extra, he vanished into the crowd, unnoticed by any of the NPCs.
The head of the procession came to a halt. One by one, the shadowy figures slowed their pace and set the coffin down.
From a distance, Liu Bingding could see that a dense, dark cluster of coffins already rested at their destination, a grim and unsettling sight.
...
Outside the courtyard, Qi Si held his phone while Shang Qingbei and Du Xiaoyu leaned in, one on each side, to listen.
After the call connected, Xu Wen's soft, faint voice drifted through the speaker. "I know where I am now. I'm at the bottom of a well. There are so many ghosts here... Please, come save me..."
Qi Si asked, "How do you know you're at the bottom of a well?"
Xu Wen stammered, "A little while ago, I started to remember things. I was doing research when I got into an argument with them. Then, I don't know what happened, but I suddenly lost all my strength, and they threw me into the well..."
Du Xiaoyu was still confused, but Shang Qingbei shot a look at Qi Si.
Being thrown into a well meant you either fell to your death or drowned. By saying this, Xu Wen was indirectly admitting she was no longer among the living.
Qi Si seemed unfazed. "What did you argue with them about?"
"I don't remember," Xu Wen's voice grew softer. "I just remember we were fighting fiercely. I think I wanted to take someone away with me, or maybe I was the one who wanted to leave, but they wouldn't let me go..."
Qi Si glanced down at his pocket watch. Forty seconds had already passed. Based on the duration of the first day's call, he only had about twenty seconds of questioning time left.
He cut in, "Yesterday, you didn't say there were ghosts where you are. Did they just appear out of nowhere?"
The voice on the phone fell abruptly silent; not even the sound of breathing could be heard. Two seconds later, Xu Wen's bewildered voice broke the quiet. "I don't know what's happening. The thing in the temple is about to get out. It's not supposed to be this early..."
"A temple?"
"Yes, the Mourning God Temple. There's a small town at the bottom of the well..."
A dial tone cut her off. The one-minute call was over.
Shang Qingbei's expression was grave, his dictionary pressed against his chin as he mulled something over.
Du Xiaoyu looked back and forth between them and asked hesitantly, "Qi-ge, what's this about a Mourning God Temple?"
Qi Si pocketed his phone and explained patiently, "This instance has two spaces. 'Double happiness, double happiness, one for funerals, one for weddings.' The town we're in now handles joyous events and worships the Joy God. Correspondingly, there must be a town that handles mournful events and worships a Mourning God to maintain the balance. And the 'well' is likely the passage connecting the two towns."
He walked to the courtyard gate, pushed open the ajar wooden door, and stepped over the threshold.
Du Xiaoyu jumped. "Aren't there ghosts in there?" he blurted out.
"It's only noon. The spirits probably won't come out until evening," Qi Si said without turning back. He crouched just inside the threshold and used his blade to pick up a piece of paper money from the ground. "Besides, they most likely bear us no ill will. The only thing they've done is leave a bit of blood on our food, probably to hint that there was something wrong with it."
"Blood?" Du Xiaoyu didn't understand.
Qi Si stood up, pulled the handkerchief he had used to wipe his mouth after the first day's meal from his pocket, and tossed it to him.
Du Xiaoyu caught it and unfolded it. The pinprick-sized specks of blood had dried into dark, brownish-black stains.
His face paled. "Then what we ate yesterday was..." "It wasn't lethal. Most likely just laced with a sedative or something similar," Qi Si said, lowering his head to follow the trail of paper money on the ground.
The small white circles were scattered every few steps, clearly left as a temporary marker.
Qi Si knew that besides himself, only Li Yao carried paper money.
The thought that the girl was trying to leave clues for others even when she could barely save herself was almost amusing.
Qi Si followed the paper trail to the door of the west wing.
Torn red paper lay scattered across the ground, trampled into a bloody muck. There wasn't a soul in sight, inside or out. Not even the scent of blood lingered; everything was deathly still.
This didn't feel like a place where someone had just died. It felt more like a tomb sealed for a century, where even the building itself was dead. A human death here was like a single drop of dye falling into a can of paint—it sank without a sound, leaving no ripple behind.
Qi Si pushed the door open. As expected, there was no one inside, and no body.
Large, dried bloodstains marred the grayish-white walls. They were old, definitely not from that morning. Xi'er's death felt like a phantom from a dream, having left behind not a single trace of proof that it had ever happened.
Qi Si walked straight to the intricately carved wooden bed and lifted the wine-red wedding quilt. The gust of air sent a newspaper clipping fluttering up. It hung in the air for a moment before trembling its way back down.
Qi Si caught the page. A bold headline caught his eye:
[20-Year-Old Female College Student Missing During Trip, Police Investigation Underway]
The photograph below it was unmistakably Xi'er's face.
...
Shang Qingbei followed Qi Si into the courtyard and headed directly for the east wing.
Upon finding the room empty, he took a deep breath and let it out. "Li Yao and Liu Bingding aren't in their room. After investigating the clues over here with Xi'er, they wouldn't have just wandered off. They must have run into some kind of trouble..."
The deserted courtyard was so silent that a normal speaking voice could be heard by everyone.
Standing in the open yard, Du Xiaoyu muttered, "Don't jinx it. There are two of them, they can't have both gotten into trouble..."
Shang Qingbei adjusted his glasses and retorted, "And what if one of them wasn't human?"
"They're alive. They just triggered a side quest after finding a key clue and are now trapped in another space," Qi Si said, emerging from the west wing. He handed the newspaper to Shang Qingbei. "I'm starting to form a picture of this instance's backstory."
Du Xiaoyu instinctively forgot to ask about the reasoning for that first conclusion and eagerly pressed on, "What is it? This instance is so chaotic. What's the background and the world view here?"
Shang Qingbei mentally scoffed at Du Xiaoyu for always playing the perfect straight man, but he silently began reading the newspaper, one ear cocked to listen.
Qi Si walked into the main room, sat on the centermost bed, and pulled a clean handkerchief from his pack to wipe the dust from his fingers. "You've all heard of human trafficking, I assume. That is the core concept of this instance."
The scholar's missing sister, the blood on the windowsill, the stains on the wall, the bread crumbs that turned to blood, the news report, the coffins, the saying "lie in state for seven days, and you become one of the town's people"...
One by one, the clues formed a complete chain of logic. Qi Si began to explain:
"Travelers who enter Double Happiness Town are all brought to this courtyard. Auntie Xu sometimes drugs the food she delivers to control certain travelers, like girls such as Xi'er. The townspeople use some method—I'm guessing they put them in a coffin for seven days—to break their minds, making them docile so they'll remain in the town forever. This is what the boatman meant at the start when he said, 'You may enter, but you may never leave.'"
"Xu Wen came to town for some reason, maybe for folklore research, or maybe she was using research as a cover to look for the missing girls. In any case, she must have discovered something and got into a dispute with the townspeople. To cover up the truth, they pushed her into the well. This wasn't the first time, either. The resentment of just a few corpses wouldn't be enough to create a mirror image of Double Happiness Town at the bottom of a well."
Qi Si paused, then continued, "As for what Xu Wen said on the phone, about the thing in the temple getting out early, I think it has to do with Xi'er's accidental death. Xi'er died before her wedding, which disrupted Double Happiness Town's 49-year ritual. Maybe that caused some kind of seal to weaken. Who knows?"
Du Xiaoyu listened, completely baffled. When he didn't understand, he asked, "So are the NPCs in this town people or ghosts? The clue on the phone said..."
"It's fake," Qi Si stated.
"...Huh?"
"Fake," Shang Qingbei confirmed, then repeated the conclusion he and Qi Si had reached earlier.
Du Xiaoyu nodded with a vacant look, clearly no longer able to keep up with the pace of their deductions.
Shang Qingbei compared Qi Si's explanation with his own judgments and asked, "So what's the deal with the Joy God? What is the purpose of the 49-year ritual? And what's the situation with the two Double Happiness Towns?"
"I don't know," Qi Si said, folding his handkerchief and tucking it into his pocket, his expression frank. "We're still missing some key clues, which are most likely with Li Yao. We either wait for them to regroup with us, or we go down the well ourselves and take a look."
Shang Qingbei pressed, "How are you so sure where the clues are?"
Qi Si didn't answer. He simply took out his phone and unlocked it.
The screen automatically opened to his photo gallery, displaying an image.
It was a map of Double Happiness Town. Black lines formed a simple layout, and a red circle marked the location of the well, making it stand out starkly.
"Xu Wen sent it?" Shang Qingbei asked.
Qi Si hummed in affirmation, a strange smile forming on his lips. "She's rushing us. It seems we have no choice but to go down that well."