Chapter 10

Normal

"For the love of—!"

Little Jia scratched furiously at himself. He'd been bitten into a constellation of enormous welts by tiger mosquitoes.

Two hours crouched under a tree — two hours of being used as a blood buffet. And the whole time, a light in one of the rooms of Chao Musheng's house had stayed stubbornly on, keeping him from daring to go inside.

It was all this village's fault for being too normal. Normal to the point of being almost sinister.

No ghost bride. No dark deity cult. No monsters. Not a single suspicious death. They'd even managed to put on an entire folk performance without a single blood-soaked killing or creature attack. What kind of respectable rural horror instance was this supposed to be?

The instance was meant to have them hunting for vital intelligence and seizing some precious treasure hidden within the village.

Where in the blazes was he supposed to find any treasure?

If the Main God wanted to kill its players, it could just come out and say so. No need for this level of torment.

He brought his palm down hard, killing a small cloud of mosquitoes, then stood up and shook out his legs, which had gone numb from crouching.

"It's past one in the morning — who stays up this late." Little Jia muttered resentfully. "Doesn't matter how good-looking a man is, pull enough all-nighters and you'll turn ugly!"

He waited a little longer. At last the light in the building went out. Little Jia nearly burst with relief. The pretty boy finally decided to sleep!

He waved away the mosquitoes dive-bombing his face, pulled his mask up, and used the cover of darkness to move toward the building one step at a time.

He was too wound up to notice how unnaturally quiet everything had become around him. Even the insects in the grass had stopped chirping.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Sprinting low and close to cover, Little Jia vaulted over the courtyard wall. His heart was hammering.

A sound from upstairs made him flinch — he threw himself into the nearest flowerbed.

Hiss!

These flowers had thorns, blast them!

In the faint moonlight, Little Jia made out what they were: roses. Of course they had thorns.

Biting down on his own arm to keep from making noise, he crouched in the rosebed in agony. Mosquitoes all evening. Scared by a dog. Now impaled by flowers. He came close to shedding actual tears.

The red lanterns hanging at the gate swayed with an eerie glow. Little Jia ground it out in the rosebushes for a full ten minutes, and only after confirming there was no further sound from upstairs did he haul himself out of the flower bed, his clothes riddled with thorn-holes.

Starting strong before the battle even begins — with injuries. He was definitely going to make that pretty boy pay for this later.

He twisted the lock and slipped through the front gate. Something was flickering red inside — he broke into a cold sweat before looking more carefully and realizing it was just the standby light on the TV set.

He did a circuit of the kitchen, the living room, and the dining area. Nothing useful. Little Jia gripped his knife and crept on quiet feet toward the ground-floor bedroom.

This must be where the two old fogies sleep.

[Ding: Six hours remain before your health reaches zero. Please manage your time wisely, value your life, and complete the instance objective as soon as possible.]

Fear of death makes people do desperate things.

Little Jia's face twisted as he closed his hand around the bedroom door handle. He'd deal with the two old ones first, then go upstairs to settle accounts with the pretty boy.

Bang!

A tremendous force slammed him off his feet and onto the floor.

"What are you looking for?"

Little Jia lay sprawled on the ground and looked up in terror.

In the darkness, a young man stood over him, looking down, a steel pipe gleaming cold in his hand.

Little Jia's legs had gone completely to jelly. He couldn't even get upright, let alone run.

Items. Right — he still had items.

Knockout spray. Puppet doll. Venomous spirit snake...

Nothing. Why weren't any of them working?!

Little Jia scrambled backward in mounting panic, staring up at the young man in the darkness as though he were the most terrifying thing in existence.

Chao Musheng glanced down at the things that had fallen at his feet, his expression indescribable.

Sunscreen spray. A little straw doll. A plastic toy snake.

What was the plan here — throw these at him until he laughed himself to death?

He dragged the steel pipe forward as he advanced. Little Jia, scrabbling frantically across the floor, let out a screech of terror: "Don't come near me! Stay back!"

"Hm?" Chao Musheng bent down and picked up the knife that had clattered to the floor. The blade was pocked with rust and carried an unpleasant metallic reek — hard to tell whether it was blood or just corrosion.

"You break into someone's home with a knife and you're scared of me ?" Chao Musheng advanced one step at a time. Little Jia scrambled back until he hit the wall with nowhere left to go.

"Please let me go, I don't want to die." Little Jia dissolved into heaving, ugly sobs. "Please — please let me go."

"Musheng, what's going on?" Grandpa had been roused by the noise outside his door. He pulled it open and took in the scene — a man crumpled and weeping in the corner, and Chao Musheng holding what appeared to be a rather decrepit knife. He spoke quickly: "Put that knife down!"

Little Jia's crying hitched. He looked up at Grandpa with imploring eyes.

"Look at how filthy that thing is — put it down." Grandpa reached behind the door and produced a shovel, which he held out to Chao Musheng. "Use this. Much more satisfying."

Little Jia wept harder.

"Absolute nerve, coming all the way to our Chaojia Bay to steal." Grandpa rolled up his sleeve, revealing impressively solid biceps. "Do they not know the reputation of this village? Anyone within ten li who knows what's good for them knows better than to give us trouble."

He looked down at the floor and his expression changed sharply. "Musheng, watch out — there's a snake!"

"It's a plastic toy." Chao Musheng gave the toy snake a prod with his foot. The texture was terrible. A two-yuan bargain bin special?

Grandpa switched on the room's light, confirmed beyond doubt that it was a plastic toy, and settled down again. Getting old and his eyes were going — how had he thought for a moment that the plastic thing had reared its head?

"Let me find some rope — I'll tie him up. You call someone in the village and don't forget to ring the police. We can't let him get away." Grandpa, worried the criminal might bolt, hurried off to the storage room and came back with a rope that had last seen use tying up the New Year pig.

Grimy, yes. But solid.

"Grandpa, don't rush — he's not going anywhere."

Chao Musheng suppressed a helpless laugh. He'd given the intruder a precise strike to the pressure point on his thigh. The man wouldn't be standing for at least half an hour.

Grandpa trussed Little Jia up comprehensively, then reminded Chao Musheng to call the police.

The other three players still had no idea Little Jia had been caught, and were busy turning houses upside down in search of clues.

After several unproductive searches, the three of them wound up outside the village Party secretary's home.

"Your companion's not here?" The female player noticed Chubby had come alone.

"Probably got held up at Chao Musheng's place." Chubby kept his voice low. "We don't need to worry about him for now. Let's find what we need inside."

Using items, the three of them popped the lock and slipped into the village Party secretary's house.

The first thing they saw was a dark shape drifting lazily toward them. All three scrambled out of the way.

"A balloon?" The male partner only realized what it was once it floated closer. He batted it away and produced a scanning item to check the room for precious metals.

Chubby accidentally stepped on a toy on the floor and received a ferocious glare from the male partner. "Watch where you're putting your feet."

Chastened by Chubby's example, they moved with painstaking care for every subsequent step.

Just as they neared the staircase, the living room lights snapped on.

All three spun around.

The doorway was packed wall to wall with burly men gripping hoes and shovels.

The red lanterns at the gate swayed in the breeze. Red light drifted across the men's faces in flickering waves, making them look like something that had come up from the underworld.

The players backed away one step at a time. The villagers advanced one step at a time.

Then someone — no one could say who — accidentally trod on a toy on the floor. It let out a mechanical, high-pitched laugh.

"Get them!"

Faced with the villagers closing in from all sides, Chubby and the others bolted for the window. Chubby drove his elbow through the glass, and they tumbled out one after another.

"Village secretary," the village chief said, staring at the shattered glass on the floor in mild bewilderment, "is your window glass not a domestic brand? How else could it be this flimsy?"

Village Party secretary: "Rubbish, that's genuine Chinese-made."

"The thieves are running — after them!"

The quiet village erupted into chaos. Cats yowled, dogs barked, and lights came on in every household.

*

Xiao You was woken by Dahuang's barking. Voices came from the corridor outside her door. She opened it to find Sister Ling gently reassuring several guests who'd been roused from sleep.

Once the other guests had retreated to their rooms, Sister Ling noticed Xiao You still hovering in the doorway and gave her a warm smile. "Don't be frightened — nothing serious. Just a few petty thieves. With the villagers on it, they won't get far. Go back to sleep."

Thieves.

Xiao You's mind snapped fully awake. She managed a stiff smile and returned to her room, then sat blankly on the balcony, staring in the direction where the sun would eventually rise, her eyes vacant.

They couldn't escape. And neither could she.

After Toxic Male's death, she had found an opportunity to look at the guesthouse's check-in register. His name was already gone — removed without a trace, as though he had never existed in this world at all.

*

With the help of their items, the players evaded the villagers' pursuit and sprinted all the way to the village entrance.

Beneath the old Chinese banyan tree, the deity statue in the roadside shrine grinned at them, its features blurred and indistinct.

"The statue's eyes — they're moving !" The male partner jabbed a finger at the shrine and fled toward the road outside the village.

But the instant he crossed the village boundary, thick fog surged up suddenly from the road outside. He stumbled into it and let out a cry of pain.

The female partner grabbed him and yanked him back out before he could go further.

"It's stopping us from leaving." Chubby's face had gone bloodless. He turned slowly to look at the earth deity statue in the shrine.

The earth deity was still grinning its wide, fixed grin, giving off a faint red glow in the moonlight — red as the lanterns hanging at every doorway in Chaojia Bay.

Chubby suddenly recalled the long list of wishes Chao Musheng had made to the statue that first day getting off the bus. One of them had been: protect the whole village and keep everyone safe.

From the statue's perspective — were they the threat to the village's safety?

A deity capable of keeping an entire village safe... could that be the village's true treasure?

The thought came to Chubby at the same moment the female partner reached the same conclusion.

Neither of them spared a glance for the player groaning on the ground beside them. Both lunged at the shrine simultaneously, grabbing for the statue.

By the time Chao Musheng arrived at the village entrance with several of the villagers, Chubby and the female partner were fully engaged in a brawl with each other.

He watched the two of them fighting tooth and nail over a resin figurine that had been sold, shipping included, for thirty yuan — treating it like the Crown Jewels.

Chao Musheng turned to Uncle Ming, who was standing beside him gripping a shovel. "Uncle, did you hide treasure inside the statue?"

Uncle Ming and the villagers of Chaojia Bay: ...Huh?

Was that a thing? Since when?

"Hey — you two, break it up." Chao Musheng pointed at the player crumpled and groaning by the roadside. "Deal with that one first."

Seeing the villagers close in, Chubby and the female partner each clutched a statue and stepped back.

Chubby: "One each."

"Fine." The female partner opened her system interface and selected Submit Quest.

[Ding: Quest submission error. Please keep trying, player.]

The treasure of Chaojia Bay wasn't this?

The female player stared blankly at the figurine in her hands. Its wide, fixed grin looked back at her — utterly merciless.

Taking advantage of the moment of stunned confusion, Chao Musheng stepped forward and delivered a precise kick to each of them. Both went down.

While the villagers worked together to get the intruders tied up, Chao Musheng retrieved the resin statues from the ground, brushed the dirt off them, and set them carefully back in the shrine.

The village's tourism souvenirs were not to be mistreated.

A few minutes later, a police car came wailing up the road.

Officer Xiao Lin looked at the thoroughly trussed-up row of captives, then at the two with spectacular black eyes and swollen faces. "So what you're telling me is... the reason these two are in this condition is that they got into a fistfight with each other over a thirty-yuan resin ornament. And none of you did this to them."

"Everyone." Xiao Lin closed his notepad, expression pained. "I completely understand your anger at finding thieves in the village. But lying to the police and obstructing an investigation is illegal."

And at least make it a believable lie.