noveldepot Chapter 24, Fifth Corpse
Chapter 24, Fifth Corpse
"Why hasn't Fang Haoyu returned yet?"
As dusk approached (in the game), Tian Baiwei and the others returned from outside to the house the village chief had assigned them, ready to exchange information.
Even though Tian Baiwei and Yan Junchi didn't get along, they had no choice but to reluctantly cooperate after learning that this game was a team mission.
However, their mission did not go smoothly. Tian Baiwei remembered that the village chief had said they could ask the villagers for help if they needed anything. Yes, after failing the game for no reason because she did not listen to the village chief and violated the rule of not going out at night, Tian Baiwei listened attentively to the village chief's explanation of the rules this time.
But the village chief didn't say anything... It's so hard to find villagers!
She and Xuanxuan went out and knocked on several houses, but no villager answered the door. Originally, Tian Baiwei planned to search house by house, but for some reason, after walking around the village for a while, Xuanxuan seemed to start feeling unwell in various ways.
But she couldn't pinpoint exactly where she felt unwell.
Tian Baiwei could only accompany Liang Lexuan back to the room they had chosen to rest early.
When the others returned, Tian Baiwei compared her experiences with theirs and found that everyone's experiences were quite similar.
It seems that Fang Haoyu, who went out with Yan Junchi at the beginning, was the luckiest. He knocked on the door of the villager on his first visit and was warmly welcomed into the house.
Yan Junchi was left alone to continue searching for the villagers.
"Yan Junchi, do you remember where the villager Fang Haoyu went to live?" Geng Yao asked.
Yan Junchi nodded: "I remember."
……
"This is it..."
Yan Junchi pointed to the house in front of him, "I watched Fang Haoyu go in."
Geng Yao made the decision: "I'll go knock on the door and ask..."
Is anyone there?
Geng Yao raised her voice and knocked on the door a few times: "Hello, we are college students who came to the village to study. We're here to find our classmates..."
"Hello, is anyone home?"
"Tap, tap, tap..."
"Tap, tap, tap..."
Three times, then three more times... but there was still no response from inside the door.
"Is nobody here?" Geng Yao turned around and looked at Yan Junchi.
Yan Junchi frowned, stepped forward, and carefully pressed his ear against the door. He listened intently for a while, then confirmed, "It seems there really isn't anyone there..."
"Did Fang Haoyu finish his mission and leave?"
Yan Junchi shook his head, his expression uncertain: "Probably not."
If Fang Haoyu really finished the mission and left, he would definitely contact him. But the problem is—this trash game doesn't even have a mission log, let alone a social system—if you want to talk to someone, you can only stand next to the person you want to talk to, and if you're too far away, they can't hear you.
A high EQ perspective would be that the game is very realistic and immersive.
A low emotional intelligence way of putting it is that a trash game has no features whatsoever!
"That can't be..." Tian Baiwei said coolly, "Fang Haoyu must have gotten lost in the game, right?" That's why he didn't come back to find them after completing the mission?
"Hey hey hey..." Geng Yao knew things were going to get messed up as soon as she heard that. Sure enough, after being rebuked by Tian Baiwei, Yan Junchi didn't care whether Fang Haoyu was angry or not and was about to retort. She quickly jumped in to smooth things over: "Anyway, there's no one in the house, why don't we go in and see if there are any clues..."
"Look, it's getting dark..." Geng Yao rubbed her arms. Although there was an element of exaggeration, she genuinely sensed that something was wrong with the village.
It's that kind of unease where nothing has changed or happened, but you always feel like something unseen is growing in the shadows.
"I don't have a good feeling about this village. Let's find the people quickly and go back."
Since it was Geng Yao who said she was afraid, Yan Junchi didn't argue back and simply agreed to Geng Yao's suggestion.
Having confirmed that the door had been bolted from the inside, Yan Junchi and Gao Yang simultaneously rammed the door with all their might.
"Bang!" The already flimsy door panel collapsed inward with a loud bang.
But after seeing what was behind the door, their eyes widened in shock—
"Was this house... really lived in before?"
On the octagonal table facing the door, a thick layer of dust had accumulated. Several rough pottery bowls and plates were scattered haphazardly on the table, and there were no signs of any recent movement on the dust. There was even a complete spider web hanging from the corner of the table, with a spider, whether dead or alive, suspended motionless in the center.
Several tattered burlap sacks were piled in the corner, their edges riddled with holes from insects. The old newspapers pasted on the windows were yellowed and brittle, rustling and shaking with the slightest breeze.
In the dim light falling from outside, you could see messy footprints on the uneven dirt floor by the door—fresh footprints left after they slammed the door; apart from that, there was only a uniform, intact layer of dust, like a gray velvet blanket, covering every inch of the ground.
"Where are Fang Haoyu's footprints?"
Gao Yang's voice trembled slightly as she subconsciously glanced at Yan Junchi beside her.
Yan Junchi's face turned deathly pale at some point, his Adam's apple bobbed a few times, and he said with difficulty, "I...I clearly saw him walk into this room..."
He remembered everything clearly, from Fang Haoyu waving at him before entering, as if he could leave everything to him, to the villager's enthusiastic yet somewhat obsequious expression when he opened the door.
However, the interior of the house looked as if it had been abandoned for years and had never been inhabited.
Putting Fang Haoyu aside, what about that villager?
At this point, the others stopped asking unnecessary questions like "Are you sure you're not mistaken?" and instead began to carefully examine the room, making some guesses: "Could it be a bug in the game?" For example, the game automatically refreshed and covered up the footprints Fang Haoyu had left behind?
"Probably not." Tian Baiwei shook her head.
Because of her previous experience, she carefully observed her surroundings as she walked through the village this time. Therefore, she remembered clearly that their footprints, left behind during their time in the village, had never disappeared and remained neatly on the ground.
She pointed to the footprints outside the door: "I observed this when I came over. There was a line of footprints here before, which should have been left by Fang Haoyu."
There were only footprints going to the house, none returning. But this at least shows that it's not a game bug; the footprints left behind won't be refreshed or overwritten.
"Fang Haoyu!" Yan Junchi called out in a raised voice. The voice echoed in the empty, dusty room, and with the sky now completely dark, it sounded particularly ethereal and unsettling.
Yan Junchi suppressed his discomfort and called out again, "Fang Haoyu, are you there?!"
"Splash..."
A very faint but extremely clear sound of water suddenly appeared, as if in response to Yan Junchi's words.
Yan Junchi suddenly raised his head and met Gao Yang's horrified gaze.
"What...what's that sound?"
Liang Lexuan nervously clung to Tian Baiwei's arm, her nerves on edge from the sudden, inexplicable sound of water.
Tian Baiwei gently patted her to comfort her and tell her not to be afraid, then listened carefully for a while, "It seems to be..."
"It's coming from behind the house."
"Splash..."
"Splash..."
……
As if in response to Tian Baiwei's voice, the sound of water rose one after another. In the now quiet room, the sound was amplified and became increasingly clear.
It's like... someone scooping a ladleful of water from a water vat with a wooden ladle, and then immediately pouring it back in.
It's like... someone sinking into the water and then popping up again.
"Let's go out and take a look!" Yan Junchi made the decision, and took the lead in walking out of the room and going around to the back of the house.
"Splash..."
"Splash..."
……
The sound of water grew closer, and the path beneath their feet became increasingly muddy.
Behind the house was a small yard enclosed by a fence. Because it was located right behind the house and was surrounded by trees, Yan Junchi had not noticed the existence of this backyard during his two previous visits.
In the corner stood an old stone well, its rim damp and gleaming with a dark, metallic sheen. Beside the well sat a wooden bucket, half-filled with water.
But what attracted the group's attention the most were the seven or eight huge ceramic water vats in the courtyard.
They stood neatly arranged in the center of the yard, each one more than half a person tall, the glaze on the jars peeling off, the bottoms covered with slippery moss. The weeds in the backyard rustled in the wind, and the rows of silent water jars stood like tombs.
Each water vat was completely covered with a faded red cloth—the red cloth was no longer bright, and under the constant dampness, it looked like dried old blood.
Only the water tank located in the center of all the water tanks is different—
Only the red cloth covering the water vat was a bright, vivid red.
Of course, this is not the most eye-catching thing. What is most striking is that under this bright red cloth, there is a blurry, seemingly human-shaped outline.
And that "human-shaped" figure was rising and falling in the water vat in a very regular pattern: it would lift up a corner of the red cloth, then slowly sink down, then lift up again...
Each time it sank, the red cloth collapsed a little, covering the water surface and also covering the soft "splashing" sound; each time it floated up, the red cloth was lifted up, and the wet cloth was brought to the surface, making a louder "splashing" sound.
—This is the source of the strange water sound we just heard.
"That...that is..." Gao Yang's teeth began to chatter, his voice trembled and became incoherent, and his fingers dug tightly into Yan Junchi's arm.
The latter, unusually, did not scold him for letting go. His body was stiff as a puppet, standing still, staring intently at the human figure silhouette under the red cloth that floated with the water in the dim light.
"What...what do we do now?" Geng Yao asked with difficulty, breaking the tense atmosphere.
Yan Junchi finally came to his senses. He looked around and his gaze fell on a thin bamboo pole beside the fence. He walked over, bent down, and picked it up.
"You mean...?"
"Hmm." Yan Junchi responded heavily, "We need to... confirm it." To confirm whether the human figure in the water tank was indeed Fang Haoyu.
He moved step by step toward the water vat in the center, his eyes fixed on the undulating red cloth.
Once he had moved to a suitable distance, he gripped the bamboo pole with both hands and tried his best to control his trembling hands as he slowly reached for the water vat.
The tip of the bamboo pole trembled, finally making a tentative touch to the wet, heavy red cloth. At that moment, everyone unconsciously held their breath.
Yan Junchi gritted his teeth and forcefully lifted upwards—
With a "whoosh," a corner of the red cloth was lifted, and with the force of gravity, it slid off the edge of the vat and fell into the muddy water next to it.
The pungent, suffocating stench of blood surged from the water vat towards the group like a tidal wave, crashing into their nostrils and making them dizzy.
With a "thud," the bamboo pole in Yan Junchi's hand fell to the ground.
He felt a chill rise from the soles of his feet.
The scene before him was so bizarre that it far exceeded his comprehension.
The tank wasn't filled with water, but rather with a tank full of scarlet liquid.
Above the water, a pale face they knew all too well was curled up in the water tank, sitting with its knees drawn up to its chest in an extremely unnatural posture, as if it were an infant in the womb.
He was still wearing the clothes he wore when he entered the game today, but the clothes were soaked with scarlet liquid and were almost unrecognizable as their original color, clinging heavily to his body.
His eyes were closed, his face was calm, but his body, in the thick blood, maintained that strange rhythm, rising and falling in the blood as if being held down by an invisible hand.
Gao Yang's eyes were wide open, almost popping out of their sockets. His face was as pale as paper, and he could only squeeze out incoherent sounds from his throat, "Heh...heh..." as he tried to back away.
"This...this...what is this...?"
Even though Tian Baiwei had already played the game once and thought she had some basic understanding of its essence, she couldn't help but break out in a cold sweat, and her hands and feet were so cold that she felt numb.
Liang Lexuan even let out a scream, but she tightly covered her mouth.
Yan Junchi also stared blankly at this scene.
He seemed to finally understand what Tian Baiwei meant when she said in the group chat, "another kind of terror that she couldn't describe":
The missing companions soaked in blood, the corpses that had lost their breath but were still rising and falling rhythmically, the death and bloodshed permeating the air... shattered all his reason, courage, and even cognition.
It was a terror from a completely different system than any "fear" he had ever experienced before.
At that moment, the only sound in the entire backyard was the rhythmic, viscous sound of the bloody water in the vat, rising and falling with Fang Haoyu's body...
"Splash..."
"Splash..."
……
It goes on and on, endlessly.