CH 82

Translated by: Dust Bunny

Edited by: Crooked 

Two people crouched by the window, appearing like birds startled by the mere twang of a bow, trembling uncontrollably.

“Your theory is that anyone related to the disappearance of Old Lady He will become its target, but I think everyone in the village has eaten meat, ba,” Gu Xizhou said, raising his eyebrows and wiping his neck. “Tomorrow, will all the people in the village…”

Si Yu: “They probably won’t all die. Xu Hao at least won’t die.”

“Him?” 

Si Yu: “Use your head. I just told him about the corpse hider. Old Lady He’s corpse was hidden in someone’s stomach.”

Gu Xizhou: “Can’t you just tell me?”

Si Yu: “No.”

Gu Xizhou thought, saying: “I remember, he said he hasn’t eaten any human meat therefore he can’t be the corpse hider.”

“En.”

After the two people spoke, they saw someone push open a window next door revealing a familiar face.

“Have you two ostriches finished shaking?” Gu Xizhou asked bluntly.

Yu Yizhou and Xiao Nan had just heard Gu Xizhou and Si Yu talking, and they were not so nervous. “Good, much better. Are you alright?” 

“We’re fine.”

“That’s good, that’s good. What happened in your room just now?”

Gu Xizhou glanced at Fang Zhi who was still in a daze and didn’t know how to deceive them. After entering Lin Meng’s room, Si Yu said Fang Zhi’s prop’s function could easily cause others to covet it, and it was best to keep it a secret.

Yu Yizhou saw that they didn’t answer, and although he was very curious, he didn’t continue to question them. When they had saved him and Xiao Nan just now, it made Yu Yizhou realize something—— 

His desire to live was so strong that lying in a hospital bed was a fate worse than death. He had even wanted to go abroad for euthenasia, but today he was happy to be alive.

He looked at the red numbers in the air strangely. So long as he kept escaping the mission worlds, he could live forever. Would anyone be willing to give up eternal life, and choose death?

No, no one wants to die.

“They probably won’t come again tonight,” Si Yu continued, “Everyone should sleep, ba.” 

Everyone returned to their rooms. Fang Zhi held the tiny circular mirror in the palm of his hand and scraped it with his thumb. It was this very same small circular mirror that had saved them.

“Take this thing with you, and don’t tell others casually. When the owner of these props die, they become unclaimed,” Si Yu warned, “It’s too easy to kill someone in a mission world.”

Gu Xizhou nodded in agreement.

For example, in the previous world, if they hadn’t told those people the death route, they almost certainly would have died. 

“I know. Thank you, Si Ge.” Fang Zhi said in a small voice.

“Well, go to sleep, ba,” Si Yu continued, “I need to sort through the information we collected over the past few days.”

Early the next day, Gu Xizhou’s group had barely gone downstairs and sat down to breakfast when they heard an impatient knock at the door.

Several people looked at eachother and looked out at the bright white sky. It shouldn’t be the old man or the pig head monster knocking. 

Gu Xizhou asked: “Who is it, ah?”

The person outside didn’t answer.

Everyone simply packed up. Gu Xizhou opened the door. The person outside the door took a step back and regarded Gu Xizhou with caution before rushing into the office and retreating under the desk fearfully.

Qtja’r eq klat sbe? Qts vlv sbe revvfcis gec lcab atf boolmf?” 

“Gbc’a yf jogjlv. Glv rbwfatlcu tjqqfc bearlvf?”

We Ljb vlvc’a rqfjx. Lf bcis qblcafv bearlvf, tlr ojmf gfnfjilcu j afgglolfv fzqgfrrlbc.

“We Ljb?” Wljb Rjc gjlrfv tlr fsfygbkr. “Qtja’r eq klat tlw?”

“P veccb.” Xe Wlhtbe rtbbx tlr tfjv, jcv mbcalcefv: “Qts vbc’a kf jrx tlw? P’ii ub bea ab ajxf j ibbx ja atf rlaejalbc.” 

Fang Zhi said hastily: “Gu Ge, I’ll go with you.”

“Okay,” Gu Xizhou responded and said to Si Yu who was next to him: “We’ll be right back, keep watch here.”

Si Yu waved his hand to reassure Gu Xizhou. Gu Xizhou left. At this moment the street was empty, just like yesterday. Fang Zhi looked vigilantly in all directions and finally caught sight of someone.

Gu Xizhou said mockingly: “It seems that there is no death.” 

“En.” Fang Zhi was already accustomed to Gu Xizhou’s manner of speaking and nodded. Fang Zhi walked quickly to catch up with the person ahead of them.

Gu Xizhou watched as, after Fang Zhi called to the other, he suddenly retreated backward and looked frightened. The woman Fang Zhi was talking to turned her back on him and left.

Gu Xizhou quickly supported him and asked: “What happened?”

Fang Zhi looked like he wanted to say something, but he hesitated, turning to look at the woman in the distance, who hadn’t gone far. Gu Xizhou patted his shoulder and said, “Come on, let’s go over there and talk.” 

Gu Xizhou finished speaking and supported Fang Zhi as they walked. Fang Zhi turned to watch the woman receding into the distance. “There’s a hole in her stomach.”

Gu Xizhou was stunned. Then he met several villagers one after the other who all had the same circumstances as that woman, and he knew the answer.

“These people’s stomachs are all scooped out. Their intestines are nowhere to be found.”

As for where they were, he already had the answer. 

Gu Xizhou knocked on the door of the office. “It’s me, Gu Ran. We’re back. Open the door.”

“Okay!” Yu Yizhou answered and trotted over to open the door.

Gu Xizhou noticed that  Xu Hao was crouched on the office floor inside the office holding his knees to his chest and shivering.

Si Yu asked Gu Xizhou: “What’s the situation outside?” 

“All the villagers have holes in their stomachs.”

Gu Xizhou said it lightly, but Xiao Nan’s state of mind instantly collapsed: “We’re all gonna die. This time there is no escape… No escape…”

Gu Xizhou was somewhat impatient. Why was he met with the emotional collapse of his teammates every time? He really didn’t want to console these people. Unexpectedly, it was Fang Zhi who, despite his own fear, controlled his feelings to console Xiao Nan. 

“What are we gonna do tonight now that the villagers are dead?” Yu Yizhou asked in a low voice.

Si Yu shot him a look and pointed out: “Not all of them are dead.”

Yu Yizhou felt a sudden chill at his back. He looked to see Xu Hao sitting on the ground and shivering, looking very pathetic. His mouth was moving, but he didn’t speak.

Gu Xizhou glanced at Si Yu and joked, “It really is a werewolf.” 

Si Yu: “…It’s just an NPC. Eventually, he will die easier than we will. In addition, everyone else has died. That old man still hasn’t eliminated his resentment. Haven’t you thought of anything?”

Xiao Nan’s expression was helpless.

Yu Yizhou and Fang Zhi spoke at the same time: “Xu Hao is not a witness, but a murderer. Is he conspiring with the butcher?”

Gu Xizhou fell silent for a moment and shook his head saying: “While you’ve told me that the murderer is Xu Hao and not the butcher, they aren’t conspiring together.” 

“Remember Lin Hao? The day Lin Hao died, Xu Hao saw his body, and we saw a pig. We thought the scene we saw was real, until he told us later.”

“After the butcher died, his head was replaced with a pig’s, which was a hint to us that the butcher was pig-headed.”

Si Yu nodded and tacitly accepted Gu Xizhou’s words: “Correct, that’s exactly it. The butcher actually saw the same thing that we did. In his eyes, Lin Hao’s body was a pig, not a human. He actually wasn’t aware that he was selling human meat, and neither were the people in the village.

“But Xu Hao knew. Why would Xu Hao know so clearly that the butcher was selling human meat? Have you thought about it?” 

At Si Yu’s tip, Yu Yizhou pointed to the madman on the ground and said, somewhat alarmed: “It was Xu Hao who did something behind his back!”

Si Yu nodded, “It’s only a guess. Grab him. We’ll try to find that person together.”

The five people tied Xu Hao up and took him to the old man’s house. Gu Xizhou nodded to Si Yu who stepped forward to knock on the door.

“Have you found my wife?” 

As the old man walked out they could see that he also had a hole in his stomach. This meant… he had also eaten some of that meat.

Gu Xizhou immediately handed Xu Hao over to the old man, explaining, “Alright, don’t ink, he murdered your wife. Here you are. Hurry up and take out the props!”

The old man looked at Gu Xizhou deeply. The next moment, the pig-headed monster carrying a vegetable knife pushed open the door and came out. He picked up Xu Hao like a piglet and carried him into the house.

From inside the house came a blood-curdling scream like a pig being slaughtered and the sound of a knife cutting bone. 

“Ka ka ka.”

“Isn’t this…too cruel?” Yu Yizhou gulped, unable to bear the look of the despair on Xu Hao’s face.

“Cruel?” Xiao Nan sneered: “Once you see those memories inside of the door, you’ll know right away that this isn’t cruel. It’s nothing more than retribution.”

The old man took some crumpled papers from his bag. Gu Xizhou glanced at them causally. There were about seven or eight of them, and the old man gave one of each of them to everyone in Gu Xizhou’s group. He was just about to put the remaining two papers back into his bag…when he was robbed. 

The old man looked down to see his hands empty: ???

“Give me more, ba. You can’t use them anyway.” Gu Xizhou snatched two more papers from the old man’s hand.

Old man: “……”

Gu Xizhou raised an eyebrow: “Do you have an opinion?” 

Old man: “……”

Yu Yizhou and Xiao Nan felt a little flustered.

Gu Xizhou spread out the papers to look at them. It was a blank missing person poster with space at the front to put photos. 

“What’s this thing for?” Gu Xizhou asked, raising the missing person poster.

The old man let out a good natured laugh: “Naturally, it’s to search for people.”

The old man spoke matter-of-factly. Not only was his tone matter-of-fact, but it carried a hint of mocking as well. As the old man spoke, his body began to slowly crumble, and the door appeared in front of everyone.

“Why do I feel like it was teasing us? A couple worn out sheets are to be regarded as a prop?” Gu Xizhou raised an eyebrow. 

“Yes, let’s go, ba.”

“There’s no other choice. I didn’t expect the murderer to be Xu Hao.” Gu Xizhou glanced at the blood flowing from the old man’s door to the wooden door. He turned the handle and went in.

“Ke ke ke, ke ke ke.” Gu Xizhou glanced at his withered yellow hand. He’d passed through the door many times and knew that he had entered the old man’s body.

The old man was in the middle of making a stir fry. The soot irritated his nose and caused him to feel unwell. When he heard a noise coming from outside, he quickly said to the old lady outside: “Don’t worry, don’t worry, you can eat right away.” 

The old man spoke cheerfully. Gu Xizhou could clearly feel that the old man’s mood was…very sweet. He had never disdained his wife because she suffered from dementia.

He loved her quite a lot.

Every single little detail showed the old man’s love for his wife.

His wife couldn’t cook or do laundry. In that era, such a woman would be rarer than a panda, but the old man didn’t care. He could do all of the housework. 

He and Old Lady He fell in love freely. They got to know each other in a production team, eventually they got married and had children. They never quarreled, and became popular.

That day, when he called his wife to eat after he cooked the stir-fry, Mo Jiaqing discovered she was missing. Restless with anxiety, he went out and asked everyone, but he couldn’t find Old Lady He. All his children came home. The old man cried and blamed himself.

“It’s all my fault, It’s because I didn’t keep an eye on her that she wandered off and got lost,” the old man cried, “I don’t know if she’s eaten. Is she hungry or cold?”

“Dad, our home’s contact details are inside mom’s pocket. Don’t worry so much. Someone can bring her back.” Mo Jiaqing’s son comforted his father. 

Gu Xizhou guessed that Old Lady He died the same day of her disappearance. Time suddenly fast-forwarded, and Old Lady He had been missing for half a year. Mo Jiaqing’s children wished their father would move on and come live with them, but Mo Jiaqing firmly refused.

“No way, I can’t move. What if your Mama comes home and can’t find anyone?” The Old man used this reason to refuse his children. Due to work, the two children couldn’t come back for a long time. They found it difficult, but the old man couldn’t be more stubborn, and in the end they chose to compromise.

Then time skipped. Gu Xizhou saw the people from the demolition office visit the old man again and again and call the old man’s children to attempt to persuade him to move.

“Over my dead body! Otherwise I won’t move! I absolutely will not move!” 

After the quarrel with the office, the old man returned home because he was indignant and let out his last breath… Gu Xizhou could feel the old man’s body was ice cold without a trace of Warmth. Just when Gu Xizhou thought the old man was going to turn into a ghost, he unexpectedly opened his eyes and got up to go to the store and buy some vegetables to prepare a meal, just like before, as if he was a living person. It carried on like this until his son came home to visit his father…

When his son found his father lying on the bed, rotting, he immediately shouted in horror, until Mo Jiaqing realized that he was already dead.

Mo Jiaqing turned into a ghost and continued waiting for his missing wife to return home. He wandered Citrine Village for a very long time until all of the houses were demolished to build new buildings. While laying the foundation, a lot of skeletal remains were excavated near Citrine Village. During the war decades ago, there was a mass burial pit.  The skeletal remains of Mo Jiaqing’s wife were also found in the foundations.

Because of the mass burial pit, the remains of Old Lady He were mistaken as the remains of a victim of war. 

The old man was resentful. He knew his wife wasn’t missing. She was murdered.

Revenge!

He must take revenge!

But who? Who killed her?! 

Then the scene changed. A new neighborhood capable of accommodating several thousand people had been built where Citrine Village used to be. The strange thing was that—people died in this city everyday.

Gu Xizhou, who had been watching through the perspective of the old man, knew that these were all done by the old man!

Is he seeing the future now? Or what?

Gu Xizhou fell into thought. Then his consciousness became fuzzy for a split second before everything in front of him suddenly became clear. 

After coming out, Gu Xizhou kneaded the space between his eyebrows. Fang Zhi and Si Yu were also there.

“Fuck, what did you see at the end? The future?” Gu Xizhou asked, raising an eyebrow.

Si Yu nodded: “If Xu Hao isn’t determined to be the murderer, that might be the future.”

Fang Zhi shivered, but he wasn’t cold: “In the end, what happened with Xu Hao?” 

Si Yu said: “Xu Hao killed Old Lady He. I guess it’s because he stole the butcher’s meat. The missing Old Lady He accidentally saw him, and in a moment of desperation, he killed Old Lady He. After that he carried Old Lady He home and cut her up to deal with the body…”

“…” Fang Zhi’s palms were covered in cold sweat.

Gu Xizhou glanced at Si Yu with the curiosity of a baby: “Go on, you don’t need to consider my feelings.”

“…” Si Yu fell silent, and then said: “He cut the old lady into mincemeat, and everyday at noon, he used this meat to trade with the butcher for pork. So, the butcher had no idea he was selling human meat. The people in the village didn’t know they were eating human meat. Only Xu Hao knew.” 

“That butcher is quite unjust…” Fang Zhi said.

Gu Xizhou answered first: “His death wasn’t unjust. The amount of meat Xu Hao cut certainly wasn’t allowed. Moreover, in order to dispose of those bodies as fast as possible, Xu Hao certainly put as much meat in the butcher’s shop as possible. The butcher knew that there was too much meat, but instead of checking the source of the meat, he helped Xu Hao dispose of the body. He also got what he deserved.”