Chapter 15: The Returner on a Snowy Night (9)
The corpse was dug up, but it was an unfamiliar man. He had been buried upright in a deep pit. The man was already dead, yet his hair continued to grow upward, up and up, until it pierced through the ground and transformed into a sapling.
This eerie and horrifying scene struck everyone dumb.
Tang Cuo had not taken part in digging up the body. Wrapped in his military coat, he watched from the side. “The corpse has already begun to rot. It must have been buried for quite some time.”
Jin Cheng, another lord who enjoyed reaping benefits without sowing, crossed his arms and said, “Then it’s a player from the previous batch who did this mission. If Li Shuangshuang and Qu Li were also planted in the soil to grow trees, their saplings might not have sprouted yet.”
“We’ll know once we look.”
Tang Cuo’s single sentence kicked off another round of misery for the laborer quartet. Over the next three hours, using the spot where the first corpse was found as the center, they dug up every single sapling within a one-kilometer radius.
Although Jin Cheng did not lift a finger either, he had a bear. It would be a waste of such massive paws not to use them for digging dirt.
To verify his theory, Jin Cheng even commanded the black bear to uproot a full-grown tree, unearthing a pile of white bones that had been buried underground for who knew how many years.
“Why do you think the firewood Li Yingjun chopped felt so greasy to the touch and carried that peculiar fragrance?” he asked Tang Cuo. Tang Cuo answered without a second thought, “Corpse oil, and the stench of decay.”
Qian Wei, who was resting nearby after tiring himself out from digging, overheard this and nearly threw up his breakfast. On their first day in this instance, they had checked the kitchen with extreme caution, never imagining that the meat was fine, but the firewood was tainted. Even if they were not putting the firewood directly into their mouths, how was food cooked over it any different from being soaked in formalin?
Qian Wei could not resist looking at the surrounding trees again. Those black, twisted trunks, at this moment, did they not look just like struggling ghosts powerless to escape?
East, west, south, north, the entire forest was filled with trees like this. Just how many people were buried here?
The sheer thought sent shivers down his spine.
Yet despite digging for ages, they still could not find Li Shuangshuang. Everyone was utterly exhausted. The weather was freezing, they were drenched in sweat, and their portable food supplies were depleted. If they did not head back, they would either starve or freeze to death.
Players in Yong Ye City shared a common habit of carrying beef jerky or compressed biscuits to fill their bellies, never knowing what situation they might face.
Tang Cuo was penniless and had nothing, but because everyone shared a bit with him, he ended up eating the most.
“Heading back?” Jin Cheng asked, tossing Tang Cuo a palm-sized hand warmer filled with self-heating water that was safe to drink. “Something Wen Xiaoming tinkered up. Pretty useless.”
Tang Cuo held it and looked it over. “Is he a scientist?”
“He has a nickname: Mobile Customer Service.”
“Why?”
At this, Jin Cheng seemed to recall something amusing, a smile on his lips. “Because his player ID is 10086.”
Tang Cuo remained expressionless.
Jin Cheng raised an eyebrow. “Not funny?”
Tang Cuo: “Can’t you tell my face is frozen stiff?”
Can’t be bothered to deal with you.
Warming his face with the hand warmer, Tang Cuo stood up and looked into the distance. He had a lingering feeling: Qu Li was not dead. She was the newcomer here to replace Xiao Yuan. According to Xiao Yuan, the newcomer was still in on-the-job training. Perhaps coordinating with Li Yingjun to carry out this serial resurrection routine was part of her training. Once she passed, she would have to clear her “Karma” here, so she could not be dead.
Yet if she was not dead, where could she be?
Tang Cuo wanted to search further, but Qian Wei and the others could not keep up physically, and his own Health had dropped below 20%. After some thought, he agreed to head back.
Peng Mingfan asked what they should do with the excavated corpses. Jin Cheng and Tang Cuo exchanged a look, finally discovering a trait they shared: they both belonged to the “dig them up, never bury them back” faction.
“Li Yingjun has to chop wood tonight anyway. When he sees them, he’ll definitely bury them again,” Jin Cheng said.
The others nodded and accepted his reasoning, for no other reason than that they were utterly spent and lacked the strength to bury them all over again.
Jin Cheng released the black bear, and the six began their trek back. Just like last time, no matter which way they turned, the compass needle did not budge. But with their prior experience, everyone was much calmer, trekking in silence without wasting breath on chatter.
As they walked, a flash of red suddenly caught the corner of Tang Cuo’s eye. He whipped his head around and saw what seemed to be a silhouette darting through the woods to the left. The figure moved rapidly, vanishing in the blink of an eye.
“Red dress,” Jin Cheng said with certainty.
Against the pitch-black snowy forest, a red dress was glaringly conspicuous.
“It’s Qu Li!” Tang Cuo bolted after her like lightning.
Jin Cheng was even faster. In a mere heartbeat, he swept past from the treetops above Tang Cuo, his movement so light he did not disturb a single snowflake on the branches. By the time the two dashed off, the rest finally reacted and gave chase.
Unsurprisingly, Tang Cuo fell behind to the rear. But before running far, he pivoted in advance. After a few maneuvers, he actually circled ahead of Qian Wei and the others.
As he ran, he ran straight into Qu Li.
Eyes meeting, Qu Li looked shocked. “How are you here?!”
Just then, Jin Cheng caught up from behind her. Gritting her teeth, she bolted. Her movement was eerie, flickering in and out of sight, vanishing whenever they were on the verge of catching her.
This confirmed Tang Cuo’s suspicion: Qu Li was not dead. As an NPC, she was merely playing her role alongside Li Yingjun.
Five minutes later.
Qu Li completely vanished into the depths of the forest, as if she had never appeared.
Tang Cuo asked Jin Cheng if there was any way to track her down. Jin Cheng shook his head, so Tang Cuo dropped the matter. Qian Wei and the others were annoyed, but Tang Cuo remained calm, continuing on their way as before.
Half an hour later, the group of six arrived back at the lodge’s main entrance, exactly as expected. It was already 3:00 PM.
Only Xiao Yuan was in the lobby, sitting alone, looking completely dazed. They checked the kitchen; the corpse was still there, untouched.
Zhang Zhiqiu was nowhere to be seen. An Ning asked Xiao Yuan, who said he had been resting upstairs the whole time. Peng Mingfan gave Qian Wei a look, and the two went upstairs together, knocking on Zhang Zhiqiu’s door.
Zhang Zhiqiu looked sullen, seemingly unwilling to maintain even a facade. “What is it?”
“We found corpses in the woods.” Peng Mingfan kept a cold face, but shared what they had found. Without waiting for Zhang Zhiqiu’s reply, he turned and left with Qian Wei.
A few seconds later, a door slammed shut in the hallway.
Qian Wei rolled his eyes in irritation. “Pengpeng, why bother telling someone like that? Let him go die. We don’t owe him anything.”
Peng Mingfan: “Whether I tell him is my choice. Whether he dies is his.”
“Pengpeng, you’re so cool.”
“…”
Downstairs, An Ning was agonizing over whether to take a shower. Drenched in sweat, she desperately needed hot water, but the shower water was heated by a boiler. And the boiler burned firewood, not coal.
Tang Cuo and Jin Cheng had no such qualms, going in one after the other for a quick rinse. The lodge thoughtfully provided clean changes of clothes inside the lockers, featuring various sizes for both men and women.
Seeing Tang Cuo emerge looking clean and refreshed, Qian Wei felt a lingering chill, muttering under his breath, “These clothes weren’t stripped off dead bodies, were they?”
Tang Cuo turned to look at him with a slight smile. “Do you have a problem?”
“My mistake, Big Boss.”
In any case, Qian Wei was dead set against showering.
By the time Jin Cheng finished his shower and stepped out, Qian Wei had collapsed across a table, dozing off from exhaustion. Peng Mingfan remained the most dedicated to solving the mystery, scribbling on the small blackboard from the front desk used for today’s menu, trying to piece together the sequence of events.
An Ning and Zhao Ping went to the kitchen to prepare dinner, because Xiao Yuan had gone on strike yet again.
Tang Cuo curled up alone in an armchair in the lounge area reading a magazine. Jin Cheng walked over, tapped the table, glanced at the stack of books, and said, “Reading again?”
Tang Cuo raised his eyes. “Aren’t you still doing your puzzle?”
Most of the puzzle was complete, with the remainder scattered across the table.
Jin Cheng picked up a piece and turned it in his fingers. After a moment, he said, “This painting is Schiele’s Four Trees. The meaning of the painting itself probably has nothing to do with this instance, but what he painted was trees.”
“Another one of your so-called hints?”
“Perhaps.”
Tang Cuo had little knowledge of fine art, but he felt he had missed something. There had to be undiscovered clues hidden in this lodge, which was why he had combed through the books on the shelves once more.
Flipping through them, he actually found something: content that had not been there during his previous reading.
It was an article on an inside page of a magazine, titled: History’s Best Forest Ranger Chops Up to 100 Tons of Firewood in a Single Year! Awarded the “Heart of Nature” Prize!
The accompanying picture showed Li Yingjun’s honest, smiling face holding a trophy. The trophy was the exact bronze statue that resembled an Oscar statuette.
Why would an exemplary forest ranger chop firewood?
Tang Cuo frowned slightly.
No, the firewood being chopped was human corpses, and the award Li Yingjun received was called “Heart of Nature.” Humans felled trees, only to be felled as trees themselves in the end. An eye for an eye?
Thinking this, Tang Cuo skimmed through several other books and magazines, but found no related content. Putting down the book, he stood and headed upstairs.
“Where are you going?” Jin Cheng asked from behind.
“Finding the waitress.” Tang Cuo kept walking without stopping.
As the sole waitress of the lodge, Xiao Yuan lived alone on the first floor. Tang Cuo knocked on her door and got straight to the point: “Has anything happened to the woods out there, or rather, to this mountain in the past?”
“Happened?” Xiao Yuan tilted her head, confused.
“An accident.”
“Do you mean the massive fire ten years ago? A few backpackers came to hike the mountain and accidentally started a fire, burning the entire forest bald. I wasn’t working here back then, but I heard it took a very long time of planting trees to bring the forest back.”
“How many people were there, exactly?”
“Hmm… probably nine? Or eight? Seems like eight.”
“I see.” Realization dawned on Tang Cuo. He added another question: “Do you know what kind of trees Li Yingjun is chopping?”
Xiao Yuan smiled. “Of course. Those are the highest-grade timbers. The food cooked with them smells wonderful.”
With that, she remembered Li Yingjun’s death again, her expression turning mournful once more. When Tang Cuo asked anything else, she could no longer answer, repeatedly lamenting useless phrases like “How could Brother Yingjun die?” and “When can I finally leave the mountain?”
Closing the door, Tang Cuo looked back to see Jin Cheng leaning against the corridor wall. Arms crossed, he asked, “Figured it all out?”
Tang Cuo certainly had.
The clues provided in the instance were trigger-based. The bronze statue was indeed a hint, but when he had searched all the books yesterday, there was no mention of any award, nor had Xiao Yuan shared the story behind the statue.
Yet once they uncovered the secret of the firewood in the woods, the clue surfaced.
Having observed the whole process, Jin Cheng spoke frankly as a veteran player: “Just as I judged initially, this isn’t a low-tier Zone F game. Judging by the number of corpses in the woods, previous batches of players were practically wiped out, probably dying without ever uncovering the truth. Look at the trigger mechanism for these clues; it’s at least Hard difficulty.”
Tang Cuo: “Because of the Blacklist modifier?”
Jin Cheng spread his hands, silently agreeing.
Without further words, the two returned to the lobby and briefly explained their latest findings to the rest. Looking at the shocked faces lapsing into stunned silence, Tang Cuo was silent as well.
Just how terrible was the luck of these four players to be placed into the same instance as two blacklisted players?
It was already 5:15 PM.
Tang Cuo glanced at the wall clock and said, “I plan to spend the night in the woods.”
He directed this to Jin Cheng, who caught his meaning immediately. “You want to bypass the condition of forced sleep after nightfall?”
Tang Cuo nodded. “Li Yingjun might bury Zhang Zhiqiu next to Li Shuangshuang.”
Peng Mingfan picked up on the implication and asked, “Why do you have to find Li Shuangshuang? Did you discover something?”
Tang Cuo: “I still need empirical proof.”
Peng Mingfan: “Then I’ll go with you.”
Qian Wei and An Ning exchanged glances. Recalling the horror of being treated as forced laborers by the duo earlier, they struggled internally before gritting their teeth. “I’ll go too.”
“We might still fall asleep out there,” Tang Cuo said.
“And we might fall asleep in freezing snow, turning into frozen corpses before dawn,” Jin Cheng added intimidatingly.
The double intimidation from the big bosses was effective. Considering the conditions outside, sleeping in the snow for a night really could kill them.
To their surprise, Zhao Ping was the one who spoke up: “Then we can hide in that cave first. Once the time for forced sleep passes, we’ll head out again.”
The other three looked at him in surprise. Zhao Ping offered a wry smile. “We’re all grasshoppers on the same rope. The way this instance is set up, it clearly wants to wipe us all out. Taking a gamble together is better than waiting to die here.”
With matters stated so clearly, nothing more needed to be said.
The six rushed through dinner, made thorough preparations, and set out immediately. Their pace was much faster this time because the glowing powder had not dissipated yet, guiding them straight along the trail to the cave.
There was no other wood in the forest. To start a fire for warmth, everyone cast aside their inner taboos, gathering dry branches to build a campfire as they waited for time to pass.
7:00 PM: No one had fallen asleep yet.
7:30 PM: Some felt a hint of drowsiness, but it remained within tolerable limits.
8:00 PM: Instead of Zhang Zhiqiu carrying a corpse, a murky blotch of red suddenly appeared against the pale snow in the deep night.
Qian Wei stood up in shock. “Qu Li! Is that Qu Li?”
An Ning: “Looks like her. There doesn’t seem to be any other red in these woods besides her.”
Just then, the dark red figure swayed and reappeared a little farther away from them.
An Ning clenched her fists, turning to ask Tang Cuo and Jin Cheng, “Should we chase?”
Peng Mingfan cautioned, “It could be a trap. She ran the second she saw us during the day, so why would she show up again now?”
“I’ll go.” Jin Cheng stretched, stood up, rubbed his neck, and walked to the cave entrance with relaxed strides. Within his field of vision, Qu Li’s figure had drifted even further away.
Tang Cuo stepped up beside him. “Alone?”
Jin Cheng: “Are you worried about me?”
“No.” Tang Cuo: “I just wanted to remind you she’s getting away.”
Jin Cheng chuckled in exasperation. With a slight smile, he grabbed Tang Cuo’s wrist and slapped a handcuff onto it with a click. Just as Tang Cuo was about to ask if he was insane, Jin Cheng snapped the other cuff onto his own wrist.
“This is for tethering. You’re not allowed to take it off. If I can’t find my way back later, I won’t let you off even as a ghost.”
With that, he waved a hand, leaving everyone with a dashing view of his back.
Tang Cuo looked down at his wrist. Fine, whoever had more gear was the boss.
8:05 PM: Jin Cheng and Qu Li vanished from their sight one after another. Still awake, the others gazed toward the cave entrance with varying expressions, the only common trait being the worry in their eyes.
Except for Tang Cuo.
Tang Cuo was not worried about Jin Cheng at all. No matter how difficult this instance was, it remained a Zone F instance; how could it stump a Zone A elite? Jin Cheng likely held numerous trump cards they knew nothing about. Even if all of them died, he would survive.
8:30 PM.
Jin Cheng had not returned, and sleep still eluded the group.
Worry deepened inside the cave, prompting Qian Wei to suggest going out to look for him. Right at that moment, Tang Cuo felt a tug on the handcuffs. He stood up and walked to the cave entrance.
“He’s back.”
Through the dark blizzard, Jin Cheng was walking back carrying someone on his shoulder. He did not move fast, but his footsteps were steady. Upon nearing the entrance, he still had the leisure to ask:
“Were you waiting for me?”
Tang Cuo was not particularly inclined to answer him.
Right at that moment, Zhao Ping recognized the person Jin Cheng was carrying and cried out, “Li Shuangshuang!”
“Tsk.” Jin Cheng was annoyed at being interrupted, but finding these people tolerable, he put her down without saying anything.
To be precise, he laid the corpse down.
Tang Cuo checked the soles of Li Shuangshuang’s shoes first, finding nothing except a bit of mud. He looked up at Jin Cheng. “You dug this out from the ground?”
Jin Cheng crossed his arms. “Yes. Qu Li seemed to intentionally lead me there. I checked the pit as well; there was no powder residue at the bottom.”
“What does that mean?” Qian Wei blinked, exchanging baffled looks with An Ning and Zhao Ping. Why was the glowing powder involved again? Peng Mingfan seemed to realize something, but could not immediately connect the threads, frowning slightly.
Tang Cuo had no time to explain. He exchanged a glance with Jin Cheng.
Jin Cheng’s eyes flickered. “You mean…”
Tang Cuo: “Head back to find Zhang Zhiqiu! Fast!”
With that, the two dashed toward the cave entrance simultaneously. The others had not figured it out yet, but days together had built an unspoken trust in the pair, so they followed without a word.
Yet just as Tang Cuo’s foot reached the edge of the cave entrance, an overwhelming wave of drowsiness crashed into his brain.
Thud!
Thud!
Thud!
All six collapsed without exception.
