On the morning of the Qingming Festival, Liu Pu got an early start. He'd been driving his taxi for about an hour and a half and had just completed a fare when a major long-distance trip popped up on his ride-hailing app.
The pickup was in the Near River District, and the destination was Qi Family Village in Jin City.
The moment he saw the familiar addresses, Liu Pu recalled the eerie experience he'd had on his last trip there, and a muscle in his eyelid began to jump.
It had been somewhere around here, too. He'd picked up a young man and driven him to Jin City, but after the fare ended, he couldn't remember a single thing that had happened during the ride. Worse, whenever he tried to tell anyone about the strange incident, the words would catch in his throat.
Even now, the memory sent a chill down his spine. It was just plain unnatural.
"It can't be that much of a coincidence, can it? There are eight billion people in the world; routes are bound to overlap. Besides, the phone number is different..."
Reassuring himself, Liu Pu adjusted the steering wheel and followed the navigation to the designated pickup spot.
He had only been waiting for a moment when a young man in a white shirt and black trousers approached with a languid gait. His somber, pale face was strikingly familiar.
"No way," Liu Pu thought, his heart sinking. "It can't be. He's probably just passing by... right?"
He repeated the thought like a mantra, but he could only watch as the young man—lugging a suitcase and carrying a long, rectangular box on his back that looked eerily like a coffin—drew closer and closer.
The young man pulled open the door, unceremoniously shoved his luggage into the back seat, and then slid in himself, settling the coffin-like box horizontally across his lap.
Liu Pu watched the young man's every move in the rearview mirror, his eyes eventually fixating on the long box. A thousand strange thoughts raced through his mind, the most prominent being the chilling suspicion that it might actually contain a body.
Qi Si sensed Liu Pu's scrutinizing gaze and looked up, offering him a faint smile. "Good morning," he said. "Have we met before?"
"G-good morning," Liu Pu stammered, quickly averting his eyes. "That's a lot of luggage. Would you like me to put some of it in the trunk?"
"No, thank you." Qi Si's smile didn't waver. "It wouldn't be right to put one's parents in the trunk, now would it?"
Liu Pu was speechless.
...
It was half past one in the afternoon by the time they reached Qi Family Village. Qi Si had only eaten a piece of bread that morning, yet he felt no hunger.
He stepped out of the taxi with his bags and walked directly into a thick, rolling fog. When he glanced back over his shoulder, the car and driver had vanished, swallowed by the mist.
Dense clusters of white fog sealed off the road, condensing into icy droplets on his skin and clothes, enveloping him in a tangible, damp shroud.
A faint, coppery scent of blood drifted on the mist. Following it with his eyes, he saw several dark shapes sprawled on the ground nearby—bodies, most likely, left by the side of the road.
The scene was identical to the one in Double Happiness Town, and the faint sense of familiarity was strangely reassuring. A small smile touched Qi Si’s lips. "Xu Yao," he called out softly, "are you here?"
The wind carried a mournful whimper, though on second thought, it might have been nothing more than the air whistling through gnarled branches. The fog thinned slightly, revealing the faint outline of a path ahead.
Qi Si stepped onto the path where the mist had cleared and began walking toward his destination. Suddenly, a woman's voice, tinged with amusement, whispered in his ear, "You’re so slow."
"My bags are heavy," Qi Si replied, his tone matter-of-fact. "Why don't you help carry them to my house?"
Xu Yao offered no reply.
Two seconds later, a pair of paper figurines in red robes came swaying toward him on the breeze. They took positions on either side of Qi Si and lifted the coffin-like box from his back.
With the weight gone, Qi Si picked up his pace. He soon passed through a cluster of crooked, dilapidated houses and came to a stop before the two-story building his aunt and uncle had left behind after their deaths.
The front door swung open of its own accord, revealing a sluggish stream of blood, thick as jam, seeping over the threshold.
The thick, coppery smell of blood made Qi Si's breath catch in his throat. His eyes immediately fell upon the grotesquely mangled corpse of a man.
The man appeared to have witnessed something terrifying before he died; his eyes were bulging in horror, nearly bursting from their sockets. The joints of his arms were twisted at unnatural angles, and his lower body was almost completely pulverized, as if he had fallen from a great height.
Qi Si leaned in closer and caught the dank, musty scent of a well. The man had fallen to his death.
He stepped over the corpse in the doorway and walked inside. In the center of the living room, eleven more bodies were arranged in a neat row. The oldest was a man with stark white hair and skin as wrinkled as crumpled paper. The youngest was a child no longer than an adult's forearm, clearly not yet old enough for school.
"What is this supposed to mean?" Qi Si’s gaze drifted to the Joy God Statue sitting in the corner, his expression unreadable. "Did you kill all these people and pile them here to impress me?"
The Joy God Statue remained silent, as if it hadn't heard a word.
Qi Si sighed. "Clean this place up. If you leave them here any longer, they’ll start to rot and stink."
About twenty paper figurines filed in through the door in two neat lines. Grabbing the bodies by their arms and legs, they began dragging them outside.
Qi Si settled onto the sofa and watched with an unhurried air as the paper figurines bustled about. They moved with a strange familiarity, disappearing into a storage closet and emerging with mops, brooms, and rags. Then, some standing and others squatting, they began to clumsily scrub the bloodstains from the floor.
An idle thought crossed his mind: this old house could officially be called haunted now. Two families who had lived here had been massacred. If the stories ever got out, a hundred years from now it would surely become a prime destination for paranormal enthusiasts.
In less than ten minutes, the paper figurines had finished cleaning the floor. They then dissolved back into the wispy white fog.
Qi Si was starting to feel hungry. He glanced at the Joy God Statue again. "Xu Yao, can your paper figurines cook?"
Again, there was only silence.
Half an hour later, a matronly figure emerged from the dense fog. She was carrying a bowl of white rice with pickled vegetables, which she placed before Qi Si.
Qi Si had never been particular about food. He hastily finished his lunch, handed the empty bowl back to the waiting figure, and made his way up to the second floor, which had been sealed off for a long time.
His uncle’s family had all died on the second floor, so the villagers who later occupied the house had only dared to use the ground floor. They had even installed an iron gate at the top of the stairs, plastering it with several yellow talismans in a futile attempt to keep whatever was up there at bay.
Qi Si ripped the talismans from the gate, picked the lock with a thin piece of wire, and pulled it open, immediately getting a face full of dust for his efforts.
So he called out again: "Xu Yao—!"
The paper figurines reappeared and, after another flurry of activity, finally had the second floor cleaned.
Qi Si entered the small room he had once occupied, took a mattress and bedding from his suitcase, and made the single bed. He then went into the adjacent room, opened the long box, and carefully lifted out two complete skeletons, laying them side-by-side on the bed.
On April 2nd, the Joy God Statue had been delivered to Qi Family Village right on schedule.
The moment he sensed the package being opened, Qi Si had remotely activated its power, transforming the entire village into a ghost domain.
Throughout the entirety of April 3rd, the villagers, led by their chief, had run around in defiant disbelief. By the end of the day, more than half of them were dead.
The deaths of their friends and neighbors stirred a communal grief, and the survivors were quickly steeped in a marinade of fear and despair. They were all becoming perfect ingredients for the production of sin, ripe for the mastermind to harvest at his leisure.
By April 4th—today—Qi Si figured the village had been sufficiently reshaped by its new, monstrous inhabitants, so he had made his leisurely arrival.
From now on, this place was his domain. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of terrifying ghosts and monsters now ran rampant, having turned the village into a bizarre, haunted landscape identical to the real Double Happiness Town.
A regional supernatural event was at least a B-level threat, and resolving one was often more trouble than it was worth. Even the situation in Double Happiness Town had required significant public outcry before any action was taken. A remote, forgotten place like Qi Family Village stood even less of a chance of being noticed.
And even if some oblivious investigator did come looking for trouble, they would first have to get past the blockade of monsters. Recalling the corpses he'd seen on his way in, Qi Si suspected a great deal of sin had already been produced. He couldn't help but feel a flicker of anticipation.
He lay down on the bed, allowing his consciousness to sink into darkness and return to the game space.
When he opened his eyes again, he found himself in his temple, where countless streams of black smoke were darting wildly through the void. The once dim, dilapidated sanctuary seemed to have been nourished by the sin; the murals on the walls and ceiling were now vibrant and radiant.
Qi Si watched the lively display of sin with great interest for a moment before retrieving Poseidon's Scepter from his inventory.
As if they had finally found their destination, the streams of black smoke surged toward the scepter. They converged upon the pristine white trident, etching a crescent-shaped pattern onto its surface. A closer look revealed that the pattern resembled the writhing, grotesque tentacles of some malevolent god.
The sin had seemed so abundant when it filled the air as black smoke, yet upon touching the scepter, it condensed into a single, delicate stroke before vanishing completely.
Within moments, the temple was clear and empty again. Qi Si’s pupils dilated and then contracted as fragmented words, like whispers from a dream, appeared in his vision.
[Sin... Poseidon's Scepter has absorbed sin... a sufficient quantity of sin...]
The text wasn't a standard prompt from the Weird Game, yet it felt similar, as if from the same source. It was more like a fragment of a scrapped design, dredged up from an ocean of redundant data during a system glitch.
A flood of information surged through his mind—fragmented images of identity cards: [Taboo Scholar], [Empty Talker], [Silent Dictator]...
He couldn't make out the details on any of the cards; only a stream of inscrutable titles flashed before his eyes.
A cold, imperious voice delivered a judgment from on high: "This is not your destiny."
Qi Si thought he saw the phantom of a colossal golden eye, gazing down at him calmly from beyond layers of yellow clouds and a gilded ocean.
A chaotic torrent of thoughts poured unstoppably into his consciousness, flooding the halls of his mind and seeping out through the very cracks in his soul.
A million different voices rose in a deafening chorus, all speaking a single truth:
"The rules feed on sin."
The rules feed on sin. The gods gather the sins of all living things. Therefore, the rules feed on the gods...
It had been dead for a long, long time, its divine body devoured by an even greater existence. Yet It had not truly perished. It was merely hungry, having not fed for ages, its consciousness dormant in an endless slumber.
But now, having tasted sin once more, It had finally awoken. Its fragmented consciousness began to clamor with an eternal, insatiable greed. He wanted more...
Poseidon's Scepter began to tremble violently. Qi Si felt his soul being torn apart and reassembled, stripped away layer by layer and scattered to the winds. He was looking at himself from a dozen different angles at once, near and far, watching his own body sit rigidly in the high-backed chair, black tentacles coiling out from the scepter to wrap around his arms and neck.
Phantom tendrils seeped from the scepter into the hand that held it, slithering into his veins. They spread unimpeded throughout his body, their suckers sprouting new tendrils that burrowed deep into his flesh, conquering every inch of new territory.
"Possession,"
the word flashed through Qi Si’s mind.
He seemed to know instinctively what he had to do. As his soul was pulled further from his body, the path to escape this crisis grew clearer in the depths of his mind, like an ancient memory etched into his very DNA.
His spirit drifted over to his physical form. He took hold of his own hand and guided it toward the golden vine that hung down beside the throne.
The moment it made contact, it was like a drowning man finding purchase. His consciousness snapped back into his body. The crushing pressure and suffocating feeling vanished instantly, and the ghostly tentacles and floating words faded until they were nearly invisible.
His body was his own again. The Sea God’s tendrils were forced back into the scepter. Qi Si gasped for air, watching as the last vestiges of the strange phenomenon faded away. Slowly, his vision steadied.
The temple was calm once more, as if nothing had happened. The silence was so profound he could hear the frantic pounding of his own heart. *Thump. Thump.*
He had to weigh the benefits of impersonating a god against the risk of being killed by the Sea God. It was a difficult calculation.
After a long silence, Qi Si let out a soft chuckle. "Didn't Qi say that no being besides It could enter this place uninvited? So what's the deal with the Sea God? Did he get in because I have his scepter?"
He tossed the scepter back into his inventory and turned to look at the golden vine that had just saved his life.
Nestled within a cluster of four leaves, a golden apple shimmered into view. It was newly grown, no bigger than half his palm, and it seemed to sway shyly under his gaze. It was almost cute.
[Fruit of the World (Corresponding Coordinates: Qi Family Village)]
"Is this because I turned Qi Family Village into a ghost domain?" he wondered aloud. "Because I essentially control that piece of land now?"
Qi Si felt a subtle pull from the Fruit of the world. He relaxed, allowing his consciousness to sink into it.
Golden motes of light danced at the edges of his vision. Mist condensed and dispersed, and before him, an overhead map of Qi Family Village materialized.
He had a bird's-eye view of the entire area, and with a simple thought, he could zoom in and out at will.
The paper figurines patrolling the roads, the corpses lining the ridges between fields, the birds, the beasts, even the maggots and flies—countless details from across the village flooded his awareness.
It wasn't quite "seeing." It was more like sensing, or simply... understanding.
Every moment contained tens of thousands of elements, each composed of a million more intricate details. This high-definition, granular awareness, combined with a comprehensive overview of the entire area, washed over his mind like a tidal wave of information, all of it instantly accessible.
With a shift in his focus, he saw a hundred faces, some familiar, others strange.
A widow huddled in a corner, tear stains streaking her face, gritting her teeth as she brandished a kitchen knife at the cackling paper figurines outside her window.
A child, trapped in a graveyard and encircled by the bodies of its parents, clutched their stiff hands while locked in a tense standoff with a statue of a bride.
An elderly man had barred his doors and windows, covering them with every piece of red cloth he could find. He had scattered a handful of glutinous rice before his door and was muttering incantations under his breath.
Qi Si felt as if he were both the master of this ghost domain and the domain itself. He knew every person who moved within it, every event that transpired in its darkest corners.
This knowledge included... the past, the present, and... the future.
The golden vine swayed beside him, feeding the information directly into his mind, bypassing speech entirely.
He suddenly realized that he could do things to these people. He could even extend the tendrils of the Weird Game to reach them.
What interesting things might happen, he wondered, if these people—who had survived two days in his ghost domain—were to enter the Weird Game?
A pleased smile spread across Qi Si's face.
He lowered his eyes and declared, his voice deliberate and clear, "My name is Qi. I am the ruling god of the Weird Game..."
In Qi Family Village, every living villager heard a solemn voice resonate in their minds. At that exact moment, every ghost and monster froze in place.
They instinctively looked to the heavens, where they saw golden vines descending from the sky, accompanied by a divine, persuasive message:
"You now have two choices."
"You can remain here, tormented by monsters for all eternity until you die... or you can enter the Weird Game as players."