Chapter 438: Chapter 376: Two-Bodied Corpse
"Dong."
"Dong."
"Dong."
The muffled sound of striking a wooden fish came from behind the curtain, but eerily, the shadow cast on the curtain didn’t move at all, as if it were an inanimate object.
Yang Xiao and the others dared not make any sudden moves, silently observing the changes. However, the situation quickly developed as the sound of the wooden fish grew faster, and it seemed as if their heartbeats were impacted, syncing with the strange rhythm.
The situation escalated, with cold winds blowing in gusts, making the curtain flutter, and the wine cups placed on the stone table started to tremble.
Knowing they could not wait any longer, Yang Xiao was the first to approach the stone table. There were five cushions in front of it, and he chose the one in the middle, sitting directly across from the shadow behind the curtain. The others followed suit, taking their seats. Tong Han quickly uncorked the wine pot and filled the cup in front of her with liquor, which steadied as soon as the wine was poured in.
There’s a way!
The wine pot was passed to the next person and then to the next. Soon, all five cups were filled. As the last person, Cheng Cha noticed something interesting. Once his cup was filled, not a single drop of wine came out of the pot.
He could clearly feel that there was still wine inside, felt the liquid swishing in the pot, curious, he shook it a few more times. But the next second, his face changed dramatically. He suddenly felt something else in the pot, round and plump; he dared not shake it any further and quickly put the pot down and resealed it.
Sitting just a curtain away from the Ghost Monk, it would be a lie to say they weren’t fearful. Yang Xiao sat upright, as though prepared for sacrifice, and then the wooden fish’s knocking stopped. The shadow of the Ghost Monk started to move, lifting one hand slowly.
Yang Xiao understood, it was a signal for them to drink. No one knew what the taboo was this time, and for a moment no one dared to move. Tong Han looked down at her cup, but couldn’t find anything unusual until the Ghost Monk’s other hand also rose.
The message was now obvious—they were all to drink, and to drink together.
They all picked up their cups, feeling nervous. This final task would certainly not be so simple. Wuma Haoming’s face looked especially unhappy, suspecting the wine to be poisoned. But Yang Xiao didn’t think so. Even if the wine was poisoned, it wouldn’t be the kind of poison that would kill them immediately; otherwise, the final task would be pointless.
The liquor was strong, and Yang Xiao had thought it would be a fiery sip, but when everyone drank, their expressions immediately became strange. Mi Shu felt a surge in his throat and nearly vomited. The "wine" was unbearably bitter and even had a faint stench—it wasn’t wine at all, but water... River water!
No, to be precise, the wine seemed to have been brewed with the muddy water from the deep silt of a riverbed, carrying an enduring evil Qi. The evil Qi, mixed with the liquor, made the five, including Yang Xiao, feel dizzy. Cheng Cha swayed a few times before collapsing onto the table with a "thump."
Then Mi Shu, Wuma Haoming, Tong Han, and Yang Xiao, who was trying to stabilize himself by holding onto the stone table, all failed in the end. In a haze, he saw a shadow moving in front of him—the curtain was blown open by the wind, creating a gap. Through the gap, Yang Xiao faintly saw a woman sitting behind the curtain, dressed in red like blood, exuding an overwhelming evil Qi, and before he could see her face clearly, he collapsed.
"Hey, wake up, wake up!"
"Can you hear me talk?"
After an unknown length of time, Yang Xiao felt someone shaking his body in a groggy state, and his face stung as if someone was slapping him.
Finally, after several attempts, he managed to open his eyes a bit. There were several familiar silhouettes in front of him. As his blurry vision finally focused, the sight in front of him shocked Yang Xiao to the point of almost jumping up—the person holding him was Sui Chengguo, and the one slapping him fiercely was Hu Yanming.
Seeing Yang Xiao gaping, unable to utter a word, Hu Yanming finally stopped and boasted to Sui Chengguo as if he had accomplished a great feat, "See how I told you, for someone unconscious, you need to slap their face to wake them up. It’s an old trick; I used to wake my dad up like this when he drank too much!"
Not just Sui Chengguo and Hu Yanming, but also Lu Youcheng and Liu Haiping had come around, appearing unharmed before Yang Xiao, which was staggering to witness.
The first thing Yang Xiao did was to look behind the door at the straw men, but there were no straw men now; the space behind the door was empty.
Soon, the others were also awakened. Cheng Cha Tong Han managed quite well, noticing something was amiss but not screaming, opting to observe the situation first. Wuma Haoming, however, didn’t have such mental fortitude. After realizing that it was Hu Yanming who had been slapping his face, he suddenly jumped up, shouted "ghost", and fainted again, this time from sheer fright.
"What is he talking about?" The performance of Wuma Haoming also scared Sui Chengguo, Hu Yanming, and others, causing them to look around as if searching for the "ghost."
Now, the temple was not the same as when they arrived, all the candles had been extinguished, and the entire temple was cold and damp, as if it had been neglected for many years.
Yang Xiao and Tong Han exchanged glances, then started to fish for information from "Sui Chengguo", and from him they learned a different "fact." In the memories of Sui Chengguo and his team, they had not died. In the previous four missions, only Quan Doufeng had died, and there were a total of nine participants in this last mission.
For the sake of caution, these nine people split into two teams; Yang Xiao led the first team of five people who set out in advance, while Sui Chengguo led the remaining four as the second echelon. After waiting in vain for Yang Xiao’s team of five, Sui Chengguo decisively led the second team to advance, rushing to support them. However, when they finally found the entrance to the temple, upon entering, they discovered Yang Xiao’s team of five lying on the ground, reeking of alcohol.
What was truly terrifying was when they heard Sui Chengguo recount their journey here. In Sui Chengguo’s memory, they first encountered a fog and were chased by ghost villagers, then managed to escape to the opposite riverbank via a wooden bridge, and later found ghost footprints on the mudflat, which they followed all the way to this decrepit temple.
This discovery sent chills down everyone’s spine; this... this was clearly their own prior experiences, so why were they eerily grafted onto Sui Chengguo’s team?
And now, what exactly was the deal with Sui Chengguo’s team of four? Were they human, or ghosts, or had they been cursed, becoming something not human, not ghost, like Du Family Village?
Cheng Cha found an excuse to move away from Sui Chengguo and those people and quietly talked to Yang Xiao aside, "These people have returned from the dead, and their memories are also problematic. We must confirm what exactly they are, setting aside other matters for now."
"Do you have any ideas?" Yang Xiao lowered his voice; this was the first time he’d encountered such a scenario.
"Have you heard of the Two-Bodied Corpse?" Cheng Cha quietly asked while keeping an eye on Sui Chengguo’s group.
"I haven’t."
Cheng Cha wasn’t sure how best to explain it to him, so she rapidly shared a story, "It’s said that at the end of the Song Dynasty, a good official was to be executed on trumped-up charges. The night before the execution, the executioner secretly came to the prison cell, claiming he could save him, and stuffed a piece of paper into the official’s left ear. He told him not to take it out and that when his beheading was supposed to happen, his sword would not sever his head but the ropes binding him instead. When he yelled ’go,’ the official was to run for his life and never look back."
"The official was skeptical, but the next day, when the executioner’s sword fell and he heard ’go,’ he rose and ran. Strangely, among the many onlookers, no one stopped him. He ran out of the city and didn’t know how far he had gone until he finally arrived at a secluded place in the countryside. There, he changed his name, started a business, married, and had children."
"One day, while drunk, he blurted out this story to his wife, who didn’t believe him, laughing that he was talking nonsense because he was drunk. Egged on by the alcohol, the man used a needle to pry the piece of paper out of his ear. The husband and wife looked closely at it by candlelight and saw the words ’Two-Bodied Corpse’ written on it. Before the wife could react, the husband let out a shriek and fell backward onto the floor, dissolving into a puddle of blood."
"Are you saying Sui Chengguo and his team are like the Two-Bodied Corpse? They don’t know they’re dead, but the moment anyone calls them out or they find out for themselves, they’ll immediately die." Yang Xiao understood that this was an opportunity for Sui Chengguo—if they just muddled through and successfully left Nightmare World, then according to the rules of Nightmare World, they could be restored to their original state.
But knowing the nature of Nightmare World, Yang Xiao was not so optimistic. In Cheng Cha’s story, the Two-Bodied Corpse turned to dust upon learning of its own death, but Yang Xiao believed that Nightmare World wasn’t so kind-hearted. Once Sui Chengguo and his team realized they were actually dead, they would probably instantly turn into malevolent ghosts. Having these people with them was like having four ticking time bombs.
On the way back, they had to face numerous dangers and deceive Sui Chengguo’s team nonstop, making them believe they were still alive.
The difficulty of this task was imaginable.
"First, help me out; gather them together and have them turn their backs to me. I need to figure out what exactly they are," Cheng Cha quietly suggested.
Yang Xiao went back and naturally herded Sui Chengguo and his team together, holding a brief meeting. Meanwhile, with her back to them, Cheng Cha bent down and peered between someone’s legs at the four people.
That one glance sent a chill through her, making her shiver. She saw Sui Chengguo and the other three standing rigidly in place, their bodies made of roughly bound straw, with their severed heads barely held in place by a few strands of grass rope, swaying as they spoke as if they might fall off at any second.
"We’ve rested enough; let’s get going," Sui Chengguo couldn’t help urge. At this moment, Wuma Haoming also came to again, looking pale, very pale, and hardly speaking. He didn’t understand why.
As Yang Xiao’s group headed for the door, they hadn’t even opened it when they suddenly noticed an old couplet pasted behind the door.
The first line: A curtain reveals a world
The second line: A bag contains the universe
The horizontal inscribed board: Peace of mind without duality
