The sketches were all done by hand. Suer didn't have this skill, so Ji Heng was the one who drew them. Due to limited manpower, there were only less than ten of them posted on the street.
Su Er did not expect to find the loyal servant guarding the grave with the help of the missing person notice. Only when there is a big reward can a man be brave enough to take risks. Without some benefits, who would be willing to take the risk of sending a person with potential violent tendencies to the justice bureau?
"If the missing person notice doesn't appear tomorrow morning, it means the host is in town just like us," Suer said as he thought, "and will be active at night."
Ji Heng suddenly caught some sounds, looked at him, and signaled with his eyes to find a secluded place to hide.
Perhaps he had a connection with trash cans today. Sur looked around and finally found that the only place he could hide was behind the trash can.
Looking through the gap towards the source of the sound, I saw a woman in prison uniform running towards me. Her slender arms were covered in bloodstains, probably from being hooked by something like wire.
"Why haven't you come yet..." The moonlight illuminated her face clearly. It was a very strange expression, one of anxious anticipation, panic, and many complex emotions mixed together.
Grain Rain.
Su Er saw the name on the other person's badge and whispered to Ji Heng, "I also met a female player this morning named Xia Zhi. She played the role of a woman who was being abused."
Coincidentally, both of them are named after solar terms.
"Xia Zhi said that a player poisoned the husband in the dungeon and was arrested. Could it be her?"
Ji Heng looked at the tattered prison uniform and nodded: "Escape from prison."
Suer felt strange and didn't understand why at such a critical moment, the other party didn't seize the time to run away, but instead stopped and waited.
Just as he was wondering, heavy footsteps suddenly sounded on the street. Two people carrying a coffin came from a distance. Both of them had pale faces and walked in unison.
The female player named Guyu quickly took out a stamp, held it in her hand and seemed to pray.
The coffin was lowered in front of her, kicking up dust from the ground.
Guyu didn't care about all this, instead he stepped forward and handed over the stamps.
The pallbearers checked the stamps, opened the coffin, and said in a cold tone, "Enter."
After hesitating for a few seconds, Guyu took a deep breath and lay down on his own initiative.
"Get up." The person in front spoke, and the two of them worked together to carry the coffin forward again.
After they walked a little further away, Ji Heng said softly, "Let's follow them and take a look."
To avoid being discovered, they kept their distance. Carrying the coffin in the middle of the night, just looking at the back was very eerie. After about 300 meters, a scream suddenly came from inside the coffin.
"Wrong! Wrong choice!" He was so frightened that his voice was shrill, "Let me out now!"
Dong—dongdong——
At first, he hammered the coffin wall frantically, and then he scratched it with his fingernails. From the intermittent cries for help, one could imagine the person's despair.
"ah!"
The player in the coffin didn't know what had happened, and like a goose with its throat strangled, its screams stopped abruptly.
The pallbearers then stopped, threw the unconscious player into the ditch on the side of the road, and continued on their way.
Ji Heng walked over first and asked Suer to wait behind and come out only when there was nothing unusual.
"Dead as hell."
Ji Heng turned around and shook his head at Suer.
The numbers on Guyu's badge were gray, her hands were kept in front of her body, and her eyes were tightly closed, as if she saw something before she died, which made her not even have the courage to open her eyes.
Soul recalled what he had seen earlier: "She gave stamps to the pallbearers before entering the coffin."
Ji Heng took off one of Guyu's shoes, which still contained three stamps. A cold look flashed in his eyes. "The mission is to find the correct stamp leading to Free Town. It seems the game is like looking for a needle in a haystack."
Sur tried to summarize the information he had obtained. First of all, the coffin bearers could take the players to the free town, but the players could only give the coffin bearers one stamp at a time, and they might die if they failed.
At this moment, Ji Heng suddenly turned around, holding a talisman between two fingers.
Su Er realized that someone else was coming and became secretly alert.
At first, the distance was too great, and the man was dressed in black, so I could only see the corner of his coat. He casually threw something over, and when it rolled to his feet, I could see it was a small ball of paper.
Su Er picked it up and opened it. It was the missing person notice that he had personally participated in making not long ago.
At this time, the distance between the two sides was less than one meter, and the person who came revealed his true identity, and it was the host.
The loyal servant guarding the tomb always had a sad face, and it looked like he had just cried, with tear marks at the corners of his eyes.
Ji Heng put away the talisman and stood there without any intention of speaking.
The loyal servant who guarded the grave also remained silent. He walked to the ditch, slowly squatted down, and tears suddenly flowed out when he saw the corpse. Behind him, a young man in a cloak hurriedly handed him a piece of yellow paper.
The loyal tomb-keeper wiped his tears, his nails growing longer and thinner without warning. He meticulously peeled off the skin of the deceased player's face, then used tear-stained yellow paper to make a rubbing of the remaining flesh. As the flesh and blood were squeezed out, the yellow paper sank deeper and deeper, finally successfully covering the entire face.
When it was taken down again, a miraculous thing happened: the face on the paper was exactly the same as Guyu's face when he was alive. The only difference was that the face on the yellow paper was still shedding tears of blood, as if it was still suffering great torture after death.
The loyal servant guarding the tomb asked the young man to put the paper away. His tear incontinence caused his eyes to turn red from time to time. Compared with his blood-stained fingers, the scene was particularly strange.
"I like your face very much," the crying face showed a contradictory smile, "it is very suitable for printing on ghost money."
"Thank you for your appreciation." Soul said expressionlessly, "But shouldn't I explain the rules in detail?"
The loyal servant who guarded the tomb kept smiling: "I've already introduced it. It's just a matter of luck."
The information obtained from the prompt sound when entering the dungeon was too little. Seeing that the host had no intention of saying more, Soul picked a less sensitive question: "Will I die if I choose the wrong stamp?"
"Of course not." The loyal tombkeeper made an exaggerated expression, as if he had suffered a terrible injustice. "Even if it's not a stamp to Freetown, some of it can bring you great benefits."
Without giving anyone another chance to ask questions, the host resumed his steps and disappeared into the endless night.
"Run separately." As soon as the loyal servant guarding the tomb left, a sudden voice came.
Su Er raised his head in confusion, confirming that it was Ji Heng who was speaking.
Ji Heng sneered: "There are so many streets, and the coffin just happened to stop in front of us."
Soul took a moment to react, then quickly looked at the body in the ditch and made a bad assumption: "Are you saying that we will be arrested as murderers?"
Ji Heng: "No matter how well the female player who was abused by her husband hides, she will still be found due to bizarre coincidences."
The host specifically mentioned luck, and I'm afraid their luck will be weakened to a negative number here.
The saying "negative for positive" does not apply in the dungeon. Two unlucky people getting together will only make them more unlucky.
I don't know if it was a psychological effect, but it seemed like there were really people from the Administration Bureau coming in the distance. But when I listened carefully, it was just the sound of the wind.
Suer made a prompt decision and decided to do as he said. It was impossible for all the people in the Administration Bureau to be mobilized to hunt down a fugitive. The chance of being caught would be lower if they ran separately.
Ji Heng seemed to be deliberately slowing down.
Su Er suddenly turned around and said, "No need to take special care of me."
Ji Heng: "Oh?"
Su Er: "I wrote down the address of the woman who reported the crime during the day. I'll go to her house and read love poems outside her door. Even if I get caught, I'll just be charged with hooliganism."
"…"
Instead, Soul opened his mind: "You can come with me."
Although Ji Heng was also capable of speaking nonsense, he had not yet reached that level and rationally refused: "No."
In contrast, he loves to escape.
Suer didn't force it. The wall-climbing skills he had learned in school came in handy. He easily climbed over the high wall and chose another path to run away.
The consequences of the continued erosion of luck are obvious.
Ji Heng didn't know what was going on back in Sur, but he'd been chased almost non-stop all night. Wherever he went, he'd run into patrol cars. Interestingly, in this small town with a population of only a few thousand, there were only two patrol cars, and even if they were on different streets, they'd still be there for various reasons.
In the end, he was able to escape not by wisdom, but by forceful resistance, which allowed him to avoid being captured and taken to the judicial bureau.
After a night of wandering the streets, Ji Heng had an unexpected discovery. Just before dawn, he found a crumpled stamp on the wheel of a tricycle. The colors on the stamp were a bit distorted, and it vaguely showed a magpie.
The nearby snack stalls opened very early, and the aroma of steamed buns and soy milk wafted around.
Ji Heng was penniless. He stared at the steaming dumplings that had just come out of the oven and began to think about how to get a full meal.
"Boss, two drawers please."
The person who spoke was a woman, wearing a headscarf that covered her entire face, and her badge revealed that she was also a player.
Summer solstice.
Ji Heng saw her name tag and found that it was the female player that Suer mentioned.
Xia Zhi waved his hand: "I'll treat you."
Ji Heng sat down and opened the chopsticks once.
"I've heard some rumors about you," Xia Zhi was a little surprised, "and I thought I'd be rejected."
The cool and arrogant bosses usually don't like to have too many entanglements with strangers.
Ji Heng frowned: "If someone invites you to dinner when you're hungry, what's the reason for refusing?"
Xia Zhi blinked, speechless. She began to wolf down the buns, even more ferociously than Ji Heng, who had been hungry all day.
"I have to hurry, I'm going to be beaten in half an hour." Xia Zhi tucked the fallen hair behind her ear, and a bruise on her face was revealed under the scarf.
Ji Heng stopped eating and didn't probe into the scars. Instead, he asked, "Is it easier for you to find stamps?"
Xia Zhi's eyes flickered, and he thought he could try to trade information for friendship, so he said, "That's right. The more demanding the identity setting, the better your luck in finding stamps. For example, if we walk down this street together, I might pick up a stamp directly on the side of the road, while you will find nothing."
She left in a hurry after finishing her meal. It was obvious that she was living in a tight financial situation. When she paid the bill, she paid with pennies on the dollar.
Ji Heng sat for a while longer, analyzing the information provided, and determined that Xia Zhi had made some kind of misunderstanding. Luck wasn't absolute. For example, last night he was being chased by the people from the Administration Bureau, and then he stumbled upon a stamp, and this morning he happened to run into someone who could treat him to a meal.
At present, the greater the crisis you encounter, the more likely your luck will soar during that period of time.
Ji Heng thought for a moment and decided to find another player to complete the clue puzzle.
·
After being beaten for a few days, I thought I had enough experience to deal with it, but the reality was more cruel than I imagined.
My luck today, the Summer Solstice, is extremely bad.
As she was beaten and bleeding and running for her life, she gradually realized that she had made a big mistake. She shouldn't have missed the chance to be the coffin bearer yesterday because of her cowardice.
Stamps sometimes provide protection to players. If you are lucky, you can get some small props from the coffin that are only for this copy. Last time, she recovered quickly because she got the medicine for her injury.
Shouldn't have hesitated.
Xia Zhi was filled with regret and ran forward with all his strength, finally realizing the importance of getting into the coffin.
Running put extra strain on her body, and the bleeding never stopped. Her mind began to become increasingly unclear, and before she knew it, she ran to the family mediation office.
The player whose identity was set as a family mediator was also shocked when he saw her like this, but he finally felt pity and helped stop the strong man who was chasing after her.
"I will definitely persuade her well. If you kill her, who will do the laundry and cooking for you..." The family mediator said all the nice words before he reluctantly persuaded the strong man to leave.
Xia Zhi said thank you and wiped the blood off his face. He was surprised to find Ji Heng here too and forced a smile: "Hello again."
Ji Heng helped her bandage the wound.
"I might die..." Xia Zhi smiled miserably. She could feel that her injuries were serious.
When people are in despair, they actually start to reflect: "I remember when I first started working, there was a girl next door who was often beaten by her husband. I even told my family about it, thinking that there must be something hateful about pitiful people. If she hadn't done anything wrong, why didn't she resist..."
Only when it happens to you do you realize that sometimes resistance is not that easy, and victims often need strong support.
Xia Zhi gave a bitter laugh: "Perhaps the game is deliberately punishing me by sending me to this dungeon, using a bloody lesson as a final lesson. Karma will always pay off..."
"Is it her?" A pleasant voice came from the door, interrupting her confession.
Ji Heng nodded.
Su Er quickly walked to Xia Zhi and said, "The captain said you treated him to a meal, and I will repay the favor. Don't worry, I will do my best to save you."
Xia Zhi suspected that he was hallucinating. When he met Sul yesterday, he was in an even more miserable state than himself. But now he was neatly dressed, his hair was specially groomed, and he exuded an elite temperament.
Su Er took the initiative to explain: "I read love poems at the door of an older woman all night. She was moved and bought me new clothes. She also offered to provide start-up capital to support my business."
Carefully wiping the blood off Xia Zhi's face, he said, "Then I specifically consulted the owner of an adult product store in town. She's been in this business for forty and hasn't married yet. After I expressed my interest in marrying into her family, she agreed to let me be her supplier... But the owner seemed to be a ghost in disguise. I saw her secretly eating raw meat and incense ash."
"Actually, it doesn't matter if you're a ghost. Having obsessions actually makes you simpler," Su Er promised. "Once I make my first pot of gold, I'll buy out the bad karma between you and your husband and make him sign the divorce papers."
Xia Zhi opened his mouth, but couldn't say anything. Finally, he turned his head and looked at Ji Heng with a complicated look.
Ji Heng said calmly: "Hold on."
Xia Zhi covered his chest.
Su Er didn't understand the deeper meaning of the words and nodded in agreement: "Yes, the hard times are almost over."
"…"
Originally, he had many emotions between life and death, but now they disappeared in an instant. Xia Zhi finally realized that the cycle of cause and effect and retribution... were all false!
Staring at Sur who was very gently wiping the blood and feeding him water, Xia Zhi's lips trembled... It turned out that scumbags, especially green tea scumbags, live an extremely comfortable life no matter in reality or in the dungeon.
Isn't it infuriating?