The teammates were both surprised and overjoyed, circling around Lin Xia.
Lin Xia briefly recounted what had happened, saying that she would distribute the incense paper to everyone, so no one would be in danger anymore.
“Thank you!” Everyone was deeply moved, though they also felt a pang of regret for the two teammates who had been lost earlier. In this infinite-dungeon world, casualties were common every time they entered a dungeon, and everyone had grown somewhat numb to it.
If it weren’t for the incense shop, many players would probably have gone completely insane from hopelessness.
At that moment, an experienced veteran player suddenly spoke up: “There’s one issue. This dungeon requires us to purify the villagers’ grudges. We have to find the culprit behind it.”
In other words, even if the NPC villagers could no longer harm them, if they didn’t find the mastermind, their mission would fail after seven days, and they would still be trapped in the dungeon.
Everyone’s hearts sank again.
Lin Xia thought for a moment and said, “Maybe we can ask the NPCs.”
She remembered that Vice President Pu Yunfeng had bribed the Wax Museum’s NPCs with incense paper, proving that NPCs could communicate.
The teammates thought this was a good idea.
·
The next day, Lin Xia and the others found a young boy in the village and tried to subtly ask, “Has anything strange happened in our village?”
The boy stared at them with hollow eyes and didn’t respond.
Lin Xia felt a chill. Although the villagers appeared normal during the day, they were like walking corpses. Seeing the boy stare at her so blankly was genuinely frightening.
“Here, this is for you,” she said, taking a deep breath to steady herself, and handed over an incense stick.
According to the leading guild’s speculation, NPCs in dungeons were usually hard to resist the lure of incense paper.
But this time, the boy didn’t take the incense. Instead, he pointed to her backpack. “I want what’s inside here—it’s better.”
Lin Xia froze. Inside her backpack were gold ingots.
So it seemed the gold ingots were more attractive to NPCs than incense paper?
Seeing that she didn’t move, the boy pursed his lips and said, “If you give me one, I’ll tell you everything you want to know.” He glanced at the incense in her hand. “This isn’t enough.”
He meant that to learn the truth, he required a gold ingot; a single incense stick wasn’t sufficient.
Lin Xia snapped back to reality, quickly opened her backpack, and took out a gold ingot.
The boy reminded her, “I want the big one.”
Lin Xia: “…Okay.”
The gold ingot’s allure was undeniable. The boy held it reverently while telling the secrets of Xiushui Mountain Village.
It turned out the culprit behind this dungeon was a woman named Fan Shuyao. She came from a scholarly family, was loved by her parents, and had a happy childhood, but at fifteen she was kidnapped to Xiushui Village and forced to marry an old bachelor. The old man frequently abused her and even paid other village bachelors to harass her. The villagers all knew of her suffering but didn’t help; when she tried to escape, the entire village pursued her. Eventually, she was so tortured she became unrecognizable and ended her life by suicide before turning twenty.
After her death, her intense grudges turned her into a vengeful spirit, and she also cursed the entire village, transforming everyone into ghosts—turning the mountain village into a ghost village.
“How tragic…” After hearing the story, Lin Xia and her teammates felt extremely heavy-hearted.
Earlier, they had speculated that Xiushui Mountain Village might have been targeted by some evil cultivator, turning everyone into vengeful spirits. But it turned out the villagers had committed evil themselves.
And Fan Shuyao was not the culprit—she was the true victim.
“I want to go find my mom,” the boy said, clutching the gold ingot, and ran off.
Lin Xia and her teammates, still absorbed in the tragic story, didn’t stop him.
“The dungeon task is to find the culprit and restore the villagers to normal,” Lin Xia said, clenching her fists. “But I don’t want to restore them. They deserve to be vengeful spirits… No, after becoming vengeful spirits, they should be taken away by the master—either sent to hell or their souls destroyed!”
Why should they help such a murderous village return to normal?
Because of their countless sins, because of their arrogance!
“But if we fail the mission, we’ll be trapped in the dungeon forever, maybe turn into vengeful spirits like the villagers, or disappear entirely.” Her teammates agreed with her view but felt headache-inducing pressure at the thought of completing the task.
It was like an unsolvable problem—any choice seemed wrong.
For a moment, everyone fell silent.
·
While the group was lost in thought, a disheveled woman in rags appeared, holding the same boy from before.
When Lin Xia saw her, a strange heaviness filled her chest, but she wasn’t afraid—the talismans showed no sign of activating. Normally, the talismans only attacked if there was malicious intent. The woman looked frightening but didn’t seem evil.
“Is this for my son?” the woman asked, holding the gold ingot.
Lin Xia looked at the boy and nodded. “Yes.”
“Any more?” the woman asked.
The teammates immediately became alert, suspecting she might take the gold ingots by force.
But then she said, “I am Fan Shuyao. If you’re willing to give the remaining gold ingots to my son, I will spare the beasts in the village, and you can complete your mission.”
Clearly, she had overheard Lin Xia and the team’s previous discussion.
Everyone froze.
No one had expected Fan Shuyao to have a son—and that the boy was her child!
Wait, wasn’t the boy also the child of that old abusive bachelor?
“This… this is your son?” Lin Xia asked again for confirmation.
Fan Shuyao, as if reading her doubt, said, “He is also that old beast’s child.”
Lin Xia: “…”
In her view, a woman who had been kidnapped shouldn’t have affection for a child forced upon her, especially since the child inherited half the blood of that beastly man. Typically, genetics would manifest, and some sons might side with their abusive father.
But this woman seemed to truly love her son.
Fan Shuyao gently patted the boy’s head. “He got into trouble protecting me.”
The old bachelor had sold her to other bachelors in the village. Whenever he got money, he drank; when drunk, he beat her. Once, she was beaten with a stool until she was covered in blood and convulsing on the ground. Her son, only four years old, ran to protect her—and the old man killed him with the stool.
It was because of this that she eventually collapsed and committed suicide.
Lin Xia: !
Teammates: !
Damn—the old man even harmed his own son! He was worse than a beast, more terrifying than a ghost!
Lin Xia’s only thought now: let that old beast remain a ghost forever; alive, he is already a ghost anyway!
Fan Shuyao looked at her son with gentle eyes. “I want my son to leave this ghostly place.” She looked at Lin Xia. “The gold ingots you gave were very useful. I can feel his ghost energy and grudges diminishing. I want to help him reincarnate, to be reborn. The merit in the gold ingots will help him. I hope he can be born into a happy family next time, without suffering.”
Lin Xia was deeply moved, also curious—so gold ingots had such a powerful effect?
Had the shopkeeper already anticipated this when recommending them to her?