The gong-and-drum music from Master Hu’s house drifted uphill on the mountain wind.

Warbling and reedy, impossible to make out clearly.

“The party’s over eight people.” I set down the water ladle and spoke to Xiaoman, who sat on the doorsill. “I have to go down the mountain.”

This was the rule the Evil God had set for us.

Once the headcount was enough, we went down to help, in exchange for a little “food.”

I only came back at dusk, dragging a gunnysack that leached bloodwater the whole way up.

The mouth of the sack gaped open, revealing a few thick, sauce-darkened bones.

“Master Hu is kind-hearted. He gave me meat,” I said, tossing down the cleaver.

Xiaoman didn’t turn around. She was staring at the static-roaring television, not batting an eye.

Her bowl sat by her feet, half full of rice she hadn’t finished picking at.

It was a long while before she spoke. “Why do you always get to go? I want to go too. I miss Grandma.”

I walked over and tugged her withered yellow braid.

“You really are starving out of your wits. He isn’t our grandma.”

“Brother!”

She whipped her head around. On her gaunt face her eyes were frighteningly large; sallow skin hung tight over bone.

“Grandma said if I’m good, I get sticky taffy. You’re the one who isn’t good.”

But Grandma had been gone for what felt like a very long time.

The one Xiaoman had met was the Evil God.

Not our grandma.

After the Evil God came to our village, many strange people began to appear.

The moment the rain came, they would surface.

Wedding guests.

Men come to help Widow Wu move a grave.

Mourners come to wail at Squire Zhao’s vigil.

...The moment the rain stopped, they would vanish without a trace, like so much vapor.

The sky turned grey again.

Down the mountain, fresh red lanterns went up at Master Hu’s house.

I was braiding Xiaoman’s hair. My hands are clumsy; one braid ended up high, the other low.

She didn’t mind. Bowl in hand, she stared blankly at the wedding procession down the mountain—only four people strong.

“Brother,” she said around a mouthful of rice, voice thick and unclear, “that groom... is a woman.”

Rumble——

Without the slightest warning, the rain came crashing down again.

Unhurried, the procession took shelter inside the Hu family compound.

I tugged at the higher braid, trying to pull it looser. It wouldn’t give.

Oh well.

“High or low, it’s all the same.” Next time the sky cleared, I’d redo them even.

“Either way, they’ll all end up as Master Hu’s meat buns in the end.”

On the third night, no sound of chopping meat for buns came from Master Hu’s house.

Instead, the place blazed, terrifying to look at.

Walls of fire swallowed the curtain of rain.

Piercing howls tore the night apart. They didn’t sound like foxes. Even less like humans.

Xiaoman stood on the doorsill, nostrils flaring violently.

“Brother, do you smell that...” she murmured.

Firelight danced in her oversized eyes.

“The smell of burning meat. It smells so good. Just from the smell, I could eat two more bowls of rice.”

Deep in the firelight, several twisted shapes thrashed in frenzy.

I was horrified. This was the first wedding procession I’d ever seen walk out of Master Hu’s clutches whole and unharmed.

And crucially, she had killed Master Hu!

The figure of the female groom appeared down below. She looked up toward our old house on the mountaintop.

Her eyes were unreadable, dark and obscure. With open menace, she drew a finger across her throat in a slitting gesture.

Then, like a martial-stage actor taking his final curtain call, she led her companions step by step back into the sea of flames.

Behind her, the whole village fell deathly still for an instant.

Earth slid in whispers down Widow Wu’s grave.

In the ancestral hall, Squire Zhao’s coffin boards knocked again and again.

A blinding burst of light exploded in the sky, resolving into several huge twisted characters.

Xiaoman and I could only make out the one in the middle: “Fox.”

Xiaoman’s hand clamped around my arm, nails sinking deep into my flesh, her whole body shaking as if sifted through a sieve. “They killed Master Hu! Brother! I’m so scared! We have to go find Grandma! Right now!”

Fear had drenched her like ice water.

We played rock-paper-scissors.

She won.

And so she went down the mountain to “find Grandma.”

I went back inside.

Cooked rice.

Fed the chickens.

Kept the door.

The rice jar was already empty; tattered cobwebs crusted its bottom.

On the rainwater collected in the water vat floated a film of milky-white foam.

When the ladle went under, what came up wasn’t water.

It was half a ladle of dense, frantically writhing white worms.

I flung the whole ladleful into the yard for the chickens to peck at.

I bowed my head and counted.

The chickens... seemed to be one fewer again.

I couldn’t remember for sure.

The rain-smell was heavy with a fishy reek.

Xiaoman still hadn’t come back.

The very moment the first cold raindrop struck my forehead, she returned.

One side of her braid had come undone, plastered wet to her face; red bloodwater dripped from her clothes.

She saw the cold stove, the empty pot.

She said nothing, just shot me a glare, then went into the kitchen to light the fire and cook.

She carried out two bowls of rice and pushed the fuller one in front of me.

Then she began to mutter:

“Brother, Grandma said that group isn’t like any of the outsiders who’ve come before... That woman is a ‘Cleanser.’”

“She’s torn down so many ‘homes’ already.”

My throat went dry. “What happened to the ‘people’ who were in those ‘homes’?”

Xiaoman mumbled indistinctly:

“Grandma said... all the useless things got ‘cleansed away.’”

I looked down at the bowl in my hands. The rice grains were shrunken and yellow; countless white and black worms crawled slowly between them.

I watched them, thinking of the frantic things in the ladle that afternoon.

Seeing me motionless for so long, Xiaoman lifted her head. Her oversized eyes stared at me unblinking, pupils black and bottomless.

“Brother.”

Her voice was flat, stripped of all intonation.

“Grandma said.”

“Next time a ‘guest’ comes, we have to invite her to ‘stay.’”

“To ‘stay’ forever.”

I shook my head.

“Xiaoman, I don’t have that kind of power. Neither do you.”

She wasn’t even afraid of Master Hu.

What would she care about two little brats who knew nothing but scaring people?

We wouldn’t even be enough to wedge between her teeth.

The daylight was ashen and spent, pressing down so hard one could barely breathe.

I sat on the doorsill, watching those never-sated chickens peck at the muddy ground.

Seen from far away, they looked almost like a person lying on their side.

The rain began to fall again.

The “outsiders” who came today were more than ever—eighteen of them, no fewer.

A thick, heady fragrance, riding the rules the Evil God had written, flooded toward the mountaintop, urging us down.

At their head was none other than the “female groom.” She had traded her ruined wedding dress for a crisp old Western-style outfit. She looked like a little cake dusted with sugar.

Xiaoman huddled fearfully behind me, fists knotted in the hem of my clothes; I could feel that she was shaking too.

And yet she couldn’t stop twitching her nose, her voice thick with sobs and an incomprehensible craving.

“Brother, that bad woman is here. She smells... so good.”

“Grandma? Why is Grandma standing beside that woman too?”

The woman down below seemed to sense something. Her head snapped up, her gaze nailing itself to Xiaoman.

Beside her stood the faint figure of a man.

His features were too perfect, as though every last line had been calculated with care; a beauty verging on the uncanny, utterly out of place in this broken, rotting world.

I tucked Xiaoman further behind me.

He smiled at the gesture. A voice sounded directly inside my skull, carrying the faintest thread of something that brooked no argument.

“Xiaoming. Be good. Take your sister down the mountain.”

Looking at the divine-grade gear on the eighteen down below, my heart gave a violent lurch.

These were the “cores” that only appeared after other “homes” had been utterly destroyed.

They were slaughterers, through and through.

How many “homes” had they ruined?

A bone-deep chill shot from the soles of my feet straight to the crown of my skull!

I seized Xiaoman’s thin, sharp wrist and half-dragged, half-hauled her back into the yard.

I slammed the door with all my strength and shot the bolt home.

“Brother! By the rules, we have to go down today!” Xiaoman struggled, still trying to bolt outside.

“Quiet!” I cut her off savagely, my back braced against the door, heart hammering.

In that one instant, I understood everything.

Why Master Hu’s whole household had died.

Why other villages had vanished.

It wasn’t only because this woman was powerful.

More importantly... the god of this world loved to watch His toys tear each other apart.

And we—Xiaoman and I—were nothing but two old dolls in a corner, all but forgotten.

We couldn’t afford to play.

The living fragrance of eighteen people. Thick enough to drive the whole village mad!

Xiaoman clawed at the crack of the door, an anxious gurgle in her throat.

“Brother! Open up! Eighteen whole people—twice as many as last time! It isn’t even raining yet; the rules let us go down! Let me out!”

Her voice was hoarse, distorted by the force of her craving.

“The rules have changed.” I pressed my whole body against the door. “Master Hu is dead. Now I am the rules. I’m your older brother. You have to listen to me.”

The fragrance was almost solid, seeping through every crack, soaking into our marrow, waking an ancient and savage hunger.

“Let me out!” Xiaoman suddenly snarled and lunged, her sharp teeth sinking hard into my arm.

As blood welled out in earnest, she suddenly came to her senses and stumbled back in panic, then burst into loud tears, fumbling to tear a strip from her clothes and bind my wound.

“Brother, I’m sorry, how could I bite Brother?” she sobbed. “Xiaoman will listen to Brother, she won’t go out, you... you mustn’t die... don’t leave Xiaoman behind.”

The rain came down like the sky itself had split.

The standing water in the yard had long since risen over our ankles, thick enough to glue our feet in place.

The rain that had always stopped within three days, once these eighteen came, fell for five days straight.

On the night of the fifth day, the curtain of rain suddenly split along a seam.

A moon hung in the sky out of nowhere. It turned slowly, as though patrolling its domain.

I thought of the chickens in my yard. Their eyes were exactly like that.

The village stirred to life.

Squire Zhao’s coffin boards let out an earth-shaking din.

Sister Wu’s black resentment, thick as tar, rolled off her gravehead and poured toward the village.

The outsiders’ footsteps throughout the village fell into chaos.

Those footsteps, those screams, seemed to ring directly on my tongue.

Their “fragrance,” mixed with the smell of blood, was like the rice wine Grandma used to brew—mellow, sweet, heady—magnifying the craving at the end of every last nerve.

Xiaoman lost all control. Eyes blood-crimson, on all fours, she scrabbled and thrashed through the standing water, chasing and biting our own chickens.

“Brother, let me out!”

“No!”

I threw myself at her, seized her braid, pinned her down, and stuffed her into the empty rice jar, then set the heavy board over the top.

“Go out and get yourself killed?” I held the board down, growling at the thing clawing frantically inside. “Grandma told me to protect you!”

The wailing in the jar dissolved into pure, repeated shrieks:

“Hungry—! Brother—! So hungry—!”

And I, too, was nearing my limit.

The light of that “moon” fell on me like scalding oil. I held the rice jar, feeling my own flesh peel away strip by strip, melting.

Invisible teeth were tearing at my body; and through the searing pain, a forgotten memory stabbed suddenly into my mind—

Another desperate rainy night exactly like this.

Grandma was shoving me and Xiaoman with all her might into the largest rice jar.

Outside were torches, shadows of people, frenzied shouting.

She whipped her head around.

“Xiaoming! When they leave, take your sister and run for the mountain! Never come back!!” Then the door was smashed in... light poured through... the crowd swallowed Grandma...

“Aah—!!!” I let out a ghastly shriek. I could no longer tell whether it was the pain of the present or the burning of the memory.

Protect my sister.

Run for the mountain.

But the mountain is here! Home is here! Where else is there for us to run?!

The cold moon watched it all, as though admiring a meticulously staged play.

“Xiaoming. You’re not being a good boy.”

A low, heavy sigh.

Two bursts of fireworks went up, one after another, that night.

The sky was blasted bone-white.

Pity I didn’t know many characters.

All I knew was this: Sister Wu had scattered. Squire Zhao was no more. The whole village was gone, save us on the mountaintop.

We hadn’t been cleansed yet.

In the morning, the damp mildew smell was heavier than ever.

Xiaoman was still rustling and fidgeting with something inside the rice jar.

I waded through the murky standing water in the yard and carefully lifted the latch on the chicken coop, still clinging to a thread of hope—maybe one or two were hiding in a corner.

But the coop was empty. Only a few wet chicken feathers clung to its walls, swaying feebly with the ripples of the water.

In the dead silence, the sound of water parting came from behind me.

I whipped around. A man-eating serpent was gliding soundlessly through the flooded yard.

Its trunk was as thick as a rice bowl. Its whole body was covered in dull black scales, and from between the scales grew dense, waterweed-like tufts of green fur that billowed beneath the surface as it moved, like a woman’s hair.

Its dim yellow eyes had locked onto Xiaoman, sitting vacant on the doorsill.

The water was cleaved without a sound!

“Xiaoman!”

My heart stopped. In three bounds I was back at the doorsill, and amid the spray I hurled Xiaoman aside. She yelped and landed in a heap on the dry ground beneath the eaves.

I snatched up the cleaver and, without thinking, brought it down with all my strength on the lunging serpent’s head!

The monster let out a piercing shriek, whipped its body around, scrambled up the courtyard wall, and vanished into the thick morning fog beyond.

Cleaver in hand, heart pounding, it took me a long moment to collect myself. I hurriedly hauled the deathly pale Xiaoman to her feet and patted frantically at her clothes.

“It’s... it’s all right now.” My voice was still trembling.

Today was the seventh day. The whole sky had taken on an ominous dark-red cast. The familiar fishy stench in the air was so thick it could barely be breathed, pressing heavy on the chest.

“Xiaoman, don’t be afraid.” I forced my voice to sound steady. “Today is the seventh day.”

Once the seven days were up, everything would pause. This was the rule of this world, and the hard deadline by which the outsiders had to leave. Otherwise, they would become part of this place forever.

Xiaoman hugged the empty rice basin, thin to nothing but a handful of bones, her oversized clothes hanging loose and empty on her.

She lifted her head, and those eyes, made larger still by how gaunt she was, gazed at me hollowly. Nothing remained in them but the most primal craving.

“Brother,” her voice came thin as a gossamer thread, with a heartbreaking sob in it, “I’m hungry.”

Her eyes drifted, as though remembering something. “I still remember. Sister Wu is buried over there. She was kind-hearted once. She would always...”

“Xiaoman!” I cut her off, my chest tightening, and gave her braid—long since tangled into a bird’s nest—a sharp, exasperated tug, trying to call her mind back.

“Today Brother will cook for you.” I took a deep breath. “You sit tight. Don’t move.”

I sat her down on the cold doorsill, moved behind her, and clumsily worked my fingers through her dry, knotted hair.

“Brother will fix your braids.”

Her hair was coarse as a handful of dead grass; it took all my effort just to work through it, and I tied two lopsided braids, one high and one low.

“There.” I cupped Xiaoman’s face and turned it left and right.

“Pretty.” Xiaoman grinned too, showing her small white teeth.

“Brother, I was only teasing you. I’ll go heat water and cook; you go answer the door. We have a guest.”

I was still puzzled when a knock came at the courtyard gate. Very soft, but with a stubborn rhythm to it. I went to answer; Xiaoman turned and walked quickly into the kitchen.

Outside stood a woman in a snow-white jacket. Her brows and eyes were long and fine, her lips a glaring, vivid red; she looked like a young lady from a wealthy official’s household.

“Little brother,” she began, her voice soft and seductive enough to drip water, “the rain outside is simply dreadful. Could you let your big sister come in and take shelter?” With that, half her body, trailing a cloyingly sweet gust of perfume, began to edge its way inside.

I frowned and shoved her firmly back out.

“No!” My voice was flat and final. “Our grown-ups said no strangers may enter while they’re away! Go to the village ancestral hall!”

Grandma had once said: when the rain went on too long, you could no longer tell what manner of thing was knocking at the door.

The woman’s powder-white, delicate face—painted-on as it seemed—froze for an instant. But her smile didn’t falter at all; instead, as if remembering something, her tone grew even more familiar.

“Your sister isn’t a stranger. I’ve come to your village for a matchmaking visit. Reckon it properly, and I’m half a member of your family already.”

She put on a pitiful, beseeching look and leaned closer; that cloying perfume bored straight into my nose until my head swam.

“Look, my makeup is about to be washed clean off. Whatever shall I do? The rain is still so heavy; even if I wanted to leave, I’d have to wait for it to soften a little, don’t you think?”

Strange. They were plainly ordinary features, yet in that moment I found her so beautiful I couldn’t drag my eyes away; my very heartbeat skipped several beats. My tongue tied itself a little, my consciousness growing faintly foggy.

“You can shelter under the eaves... but you—you have to follow my rules!”

The woman nodded with a smile, her eyes darting ceaselessly past me. “All right. I’ll do everything little brother says.”

I took a deep breath, forced myself to focus, and spoke one word at a time.

“First, without my say-so, you may not take a single step into the house! Second, the rice jar Grandma left may not be touched, and may not be opened. Third, my little sister is very timid; you mustn’t frighten her—when she cries, it’s a terrible nuisance. Fourth,” I paused slightly, “my sister... she tells lies sometimes. Of anything she says, believe at most half.”

“Don’t you worry,” the woman agreed with remarkable readiness. “I know all about rules.”

I led her to the small strip beneath the eaves that barely kept the rain off, then hesitantly closed the door.

Just then, the dark-red light outside the window flared, throwing the woman’s shadow sharply against the window paper—

I jolted awake.

That was no human shadow at all!

It was the shadow of a hideous, savage serpent!

I sucked in a cold breath and stumbled backward.

Damn it all! I had let that thing into the courtyard!

Right at that moment, Xiaoman came out of the kitchen carrying a basin of red broth.

I caught hold of her, pointing at the window, my voice trembling beyond my control: “A snake! It’s the long-furred serpent from this morning!”

Xiaoman suddenly grew angry. “Brother! How can you leave a guest out in the rain!”

“But she’s a snake!”

“If she’s a guest, the rules say we should invite her in. If she’s a snake,” an eerie light flickered through Xiaoman’s oversized eyes, “then our supper has just walked right to us.”

Without hesitation she opened the door and stepped outside. I heard her young but crystal-clear voice: “Big sister, if you want to come into the house, you have to remember my four rules.”

A coldness rose in me unbidden. Xiaoman’s game had begun.

“First, Brother loves to lie more than anything. Never believe him.”

“Second, Grandma said guests who have lost something may go look for it in the rice jar.”

“Third, Grandma said the answer is inside the pot.”

“Fourth, Grandma said before a guest enters the house, they must drink the broth I’ve brewed.”

The next instant, the jarring sound of an earthen basin shattering on the ground reached me, mixed with the sound of the woman retching.

Xiaoman’s voice shot up, wounded and furious: “You’re wasting food! You smashed my broth! You bad woman!”

Outside the door fell instantly dead silent, then came the frantic splashing and rolling of something enormous in the standing water! A giant serpent shadow reared up toward the sky.

The woman’s voice turned ghastly and twisted: “Let me in! Let me in!”

“Aah—!”

Crimson bloodwater, mixed with rain, seeped in beneath the door in a gurgle, crawling across the floor as though alive.

The door creaked open a crack, and Xiaoman poked her head in, an innocent, crafty smile on her face. Lightly, she spoke to what was outside. “Big sister, come in. You’re my guest now.”

“No!” I cried out in spite of myself. But it was too late. A white shape shot into the house like lightning!

The woman in the white jacket stood in the middle of the main room, staring shaken at the door outside; half of one arm was already soaked in blood.

“Sister. You are a guest who breaks the rules,” I said coldly.

In an instant, the woman’s pretty face was overspread with jet-black scales; her neck stretched unnaturally long; a pair of cold slit pupils fixed themselves on Xiaoman. Her voice was hoarse and venomous.

“You little bastard. Tricking me... The key is on you, isn’t it?”

She lunged at Xiaoman!

Without thinking I threw myself forward and shielded my sister with my body. The serpent-woman coiled around me at once, her cold, slick strength squeezing until my bones creaked, until I could barely draw breath.

“Two nuisance little things... Once I’m done with you, I can destroy this anchor for good...” she snarled with a grin.

“Let my brother go!” Xiaoman threw herself at the woman, locked her arms around the woman’s leg, and bit down hard!

In pain, the woman seized Xiaoman’s small body and hurled her against the wall!

“Brother, it hurts so much.” Xiaoman collapsed to the floor in agony and began to sob in a low voice.

“Xiaoman!” My eyes went instantly bloodshot! I seized the cleaver and hacked at the serpent-woman with wild abandon.

I don’t know how many times I struck; the cleaver’s edge turned, and crimson fluid splashed everywhere.

...Staring at the empty, blood-soaked white jacket, Xiaoman and I slumped together amid the filth and wreckage, clinging to each other, trembling all over.

I patted Xiaoman’s head. “Don’t be afraid. The monster has been driven off.”

The room was dead silent, save for the two of us breathing hard and the endless rain outside the window.

After a long while, Xiaoman suddenly lifted her head, looked at the vanished stain on the floor, then looked at me, and asked in a small voice: “Brother. Does that mean our ‘supper’ is gone too?”

Breathing in the thick smell of blood, I felt my throat itch. Looking around the empty room, I nodded.

Neither of us noticed that while we fought for our lives against the “serpent-woman,” everything had also been watched by another group of people.

Song Yiqing slowly lowered the military binoculars in her hands. Her knuckles had gone faintly white from gripping so hard.

The last image the lenses caught was Zhao Meng—the “Painted Skin” of her party, the one best at disguise and breaking through.

But now she was covered in blood, one arm twisted at an impossible angle, crawling in vain toward the door.

Behind her, the two seemingly innocent little brats had hold of her ankles, one on each side; on their young faces was a bloodthirsty delight as they slowly, leisurely dragged her back into the deeper shadows of the old house.

The last look Zhao Meng cast toward the lens was filled with the utmost terror and despair.

“Boss! Save me!”

“Tch.” Song Yiqing made one short sound, her face blank of all expression, only her eyes growing a few degrees colder.

Without hesitation she used a revival card. In an instant, Zhao Meng vanished from the mountaintop, teleported back to the safe house.

This was the seventh and final day of being trapped in the “Barren Mountain Village” instance. According to the vast databases of the Guild, this was a forbidden-zone instance with a death rate as high as ninety-eight percent, among all survival-type games.

What made it so vile was that the system had crudely jammed three originally independent S-rank supernatural incidents—the Fox’s Wedding, the Widow Moving Her Coffin, and the Vigil in the Mourning Hall—onto a single map.

Players normally chose one of them as their main line to clear; finish it, and they could escape.

But before she went in, the Guild’s legendary powerhouse, Su Ming, had given her a secret order: “If possible, try to ‘cleanse’ every last ‘anchor.’ The reward... will exceed your imagination.”

And so she had chosen the most dangerous path.

Seven days passed. Of the eighteen-strong elite party, only five remained.

They had torn apart the Hu family wedding hall, filled in Widow Wu’s grave, even nailed Squire Zhao’s coffin boards shut for good... and still it wasn’t enough.

It was as though the village itself had come alive. One moment of carelessness, and the village would digest you.

They might as well have been trapped in the jaws of a hungry ghost.

And still they couldn’t find the final “key.”

Until last night. The party’s “Spirit Medium,” at the cost of one eye, had finally received a single vague lead: “The key is on the mountaintop. It is a grain of rice that has ‘eaten its fill.’”

The target was none other than the old house they had given a wide berth all along.

Zhao Meng had volunteered. With her “Silver Tongue” talent and her “Painted Skin” ability, she should have been the perfect one for the job.

Who could have guessed that the two brats’ rules would be so bizarre—brother’s and sister’s codes flatly contradicting each other, a monstrous serpent in the yard attacking all comers without distinction—and Zhao Meng had fallen right into it.

“Captain?” Behind her, a teammate held up the blood-soaked Zhao Meng, voice tight. “Sister Meng, she...”

“Rule backlash.” Song Yiqing raised the binoculars again, sweeping them slowly over every inch of the old house. “The key is still inside. We don’t have much time.”

Dusk was coming; the seventh night would be the final judgment. Leave, or become part of this twisted world forever.

“Then... a frontal assault?” the teammate forced himself to sound calm as he reasoned. “Those two kids don’t look half as hard to handle as the fox spirit.”

“Kids?” The corner of Song Yiqing’s mouth curved into something close to mockery. “Fool. Haven’t you noticed? Once the three S-rank instances fell, the spiritual-energy readings across all Barren Mountain Village spiked to SSS rank. The fox, the widow, the corpse-ghoul... they were all decoys. That house. Those two children. They are the true ‘core’ of this composite instance!”

Her voice was flat and final. “The ‘anchors’ Su Ming wants cleansed are them!”

For a moment, every teammate was too appalled to speak.

Song Yiqing, however, suddenly smiled. It was the excitement and coldness of one who has caught the scent of the ultimate prey.

“The intelligence Zhao Meng bought with her life is valuable. One: they kill by ‘rules.’ Two: they are ravenously ‘hungry.’ Three: after the first three instances are destroyed, Barren Mountain Village upgrades into a fourth instance... No wonder no one has ever cleared this place with a perfect score.”

Once again her eyes went to the old house in the dusk, lying like a crouched beast, contentedly licking its wounds.

“Since we can’t trick our way in and can’t steal our way in...” Song Yiqing’s voice dropped, brooking no argument, “then we tear it down by force.”

“All hands, check your gear. Up the mountain—break the anchor.”

“Since they are the ‘core,’ the ‘anchor,’ we’ll take that anchor and smash it out of this world entirely!”

The hunt had only just begun.

I squatted on the doorsill feeding the chickens. Xiaoman’s nose twitched. “Brother. Five of them came. This time I won’t let supper get away.”

I dropped the water ladle. The chickens scattered in an uproar and fled to Xiaoman’s side.

Xiaoman was wearing the white jacket that woman had left behind, its whiteness dyed dark crimson with blood.

She licked her cracked lips. “Except for that bad woman Grandma won’t let us touch, all the rest can be eaten, right? Slice the women thin for the hotpot; chop the men up for bun filling.”

I caught hold of her upturned braid and warned her: “Not a single one of them. This time is different. They’re dangerous.”

Xiaoman pulled at her own braid, trying to free it. “Brother, I’m hungry! Grandma said except for that woman, I can eat all the rest however I want.”

My face went cold as I seized Xiaoman’s wrist. The Evil God had branded His cruel rules into our minds, and Xiaoman believed them; but I still remembered what Grandma had really been like.

“Xiaoman, I’ll say it once more! He is not our grandma! Our real grandma is waiting for us outside. She would brew rice wine for us, make us pumpkin cakes—not this Evil God who treats us as toys for His amusement!”

It may have been the first time she had seen me so angry. Xiaoman trembled in fright.

Just then, a knock came at the door.

I let go of Xiaoman’s hand.

The chickens squatting beneath the eaves with their eyes closed in rest opened their cloudy eyes, flapped, and turned into coiling, gliding serpents that hid themselves within the walls.

I lowered my voice. “Xiaoman, listen to Brother. No matter how hungry you are, you cannot eat them. You cannot take part in this game.”

They could not die in Xiaoman’s mouth.

They had another use yet.

I pulled the wooden door open. Outside stood the female captain, cold as ice.

I knew her.

Song Yiqing.

The human the Evil God cared about most.

Last night, His voice had sounded in my head again. He said if I didn’t do as told, He would make Xiaoman disappear forever.

I had to open the game board and, at any cost, make Song Yiqing admit defeat.

The Evil God had created me. I ought not to defy His commands.

But Xiaoman was not meant to be part of that price.

I lifted my head and looked at Song Yiqing. “Sister. Maybe we can make a deal. I’ll tell you where the key is and let you leave this place alive. What do you say?”

Song Yiqing gave a cold smirk. “Nothing’s ever that easy, is it, kid? What are your conditions?”

I tried my best to look sincere. “Sister is clever. I let the other four leave, and Sister stays behind in the village to live here. What do you say? One for four—a very fair trade.”

“No!” A deathly pale woman caught hold of Song Yiqing. “Boss, they’re cunning as anything. Don’t trust this brat.”

Song Yiqing didn’t even turn her head; one faint shake of her arm threw the woman off. “Zhao Meng, do I look like some self-sacrificing saint?” She gave a cold laugh and looked back at me. “Get to the point. What exactly is your ‘game’?”

My heart sank. Sure enough: a pure egoist like this couldn’t be moved by a simple trade. Only a desperate corner could force out the “effect” the Evil God wanted.

“If it must have a name, Sister may call it ‘The Hungry Ghosts’ Pall.’”

I took half a step back and threw the door fully open. “Welcome, all five of you, to our home.”

Inside, a torrential blood rain fell without a sound; in the shadows along the walls, dim yellow serpent eyes lit up one by one.

“Sister, even though you’ve refused me, I’m still willing to help you ‘leave’ as best I can. The key is ‘a grain of rice that has eaten its fill.’ The door is ‘in the pot that boils the answer.’” I recited the riddle the Evil God had given. “There are three hours until dark. Don’t break ‘my rules,’ find it, and you can go.”

A burly man suddenly bellowed: “You know those S-rank bosses down the mountain? Our boss tore every last one of them down. If you know what’s good for you, hand over the key quick, and we won’t touch this little house of yours. Otherwise, you won’t even know how you died.”

It had been a long time since I’d seen a player so thick with the smell of the living.

He looked very tasty.

So much meat. So loud.

On any ordinary day, I’d have seized him on the spot and chopped him into meatballs.

But not now.

“Uncle, rather than threatening me, you’d be better off using the time to look for the key.”

With that, ignoring the mix of expressions on their faces, I slowly withdrew into the house and shut them outside—the deepening blood color, the hissing of serpents, and the five “offerings” together.

I went into the kitchen to find Xiaoman. She was standing on a stool, reaching up to the stove, brewing broth in the kitchen. A skull bobbed up and down in the pot. Her wrists were covered all over in dense bite marks.

Seeing me come in, Xiaoman hopped off the stool and held out to me a heaped bowl of rice from the counter. “Brother, I’ll go invite them to drink broth. You eat first.”

I didn’t take the bowl. Instead, I gently touched her withered, unkempt hair.

“Xiaoman.” My voice was eerily calm. “Your braids have come undone. Let me redo them for you.”

She blinked, faintly puzzled, but turned around obediently.

I hid Xiaoman in the rice jar. She tried to struggle still. I said: “Listen to Brother. Very soon, you won’t be hungry anymore.”

I turned and walked toward the courtyard gate. The door had opened no more than a crack when a blade of bitter cold light, wreathed in demon-breaking runes, came straight for my face!

All I felt was the world spinning, my vision tumbling wildly, until it finally fixed on the image reflected in the thick, blood-colored water of the yard: my own headless body, still standing stiff where it had been, the bowl of broth held steady in its hand.

“Worthy of the divine-grade item ‘Xingtian Axe’—Boss, you...” a teammate’s fawning voice began, then broke off abruptly.

Because the headless body was slowly bending down, reaching out its other hand to pick up the head that had rolled away. Then—pressing it firmly back onto the severed neck.

Flesh writhed; bones knit with a soft rustling sound. I rotated my newly reattached neck and looked ahead.

Song Yiqing was expressionlessly wiping nonexistent blood from the axe’s edge. “Sorry,” she said, her tone as flat as if discussing the weather. “Just wanted to test it.”

I nodded.

Almost in the same instant, the shadows in the yard boiled over. A bowl-thick serpent lunged out and coiled around the burly man at the rear of the party—the one who had been shouting loudest just moments before!

“Aah—! Boss, save—!” His cry was swallowed on the spot.

Song Yiqing had barely moved when more serpent shadows flooded in like a tide, winding around her wrists and ankles, pinning her where she stood; she could only watch as that teammate was torn apart and devoured in the space of a few breaths, not even his bones left behind.

“Sorry,” I mimicked her tone with a harmless, innocent smile. “They’ve been hungry a long time too. Just wanted to test it.”

“You... you dare kill outside the rules! He didn’t break any rule!” Zhao Meng shrieked, her face as white as paper.

I worked my fully healed neck. “Rules? Whose rules? The Evil God’s?” I took a step forward and held out the still-warm bowl of broth toward Song Yiqing, the corner of my mouth curving into a smile without a trace of warmth. “I only listen to Grandma—‘Grandma said no strangers may enter the door.’”

“From the moment you raised your hand against me, you were already rule-breaking ‘wicked guests.’”

“I gave you your chance... So. Will you drink the broth now, Sister?”

The remaining four frowned and forced themselves, fighting their nausea, to drink the blood-red broth.

The moment it went down their throats, a rusty, metallic taste spread through the air; but at the same time, the serpent shadows patrolling the walls seemed to lose their quarry, the ferocity fading from their eyes, their bodies twisting and shrinking until at last they became docile farm chickens pecking at the ground.

I pushed open the creaking door and stepped aside. “Now. You may count as our family’s ‘guests.’”

The group wasted no time and rushed straight into the house. Before long came the sounds of rummaging, of cabinets and boxes being turned over.

Yet only moments passed before screams tore through the brief calm.

“In the pot... what on earth did they make me drink?”

“Ah! The rice jar! There’s a little ghost in the rice jar!”

As if I hadn’t heard, I squatted on beneath the eaves, and to the turbid bloodwater dripping from the corner of the roof, I sharpened the nicked cleaver one stroke at a time.

After a long while I lifted the blade and examined it against the dim light. Its surface, ground bright, reflected a face with flesh missing, covered all over in bite marks.

It was the seventh day. Xiaoman and I were, irreversibly, reverting to the truest shape we had worn before we died.

Xiaoman and I... were never very lucky.

We were born into a village bound hand and foot by mountains and ancient rules. Here the three clan surnames intermarried among themselves and looked on outsiders as floods and wild beasts.

Yet our mother, of all people, fell in love with the painter who had come from outside to sketch. After giving birth to us, she ran off with him. Only Grandma was left, raising us alone.

The year I turned eight, the rain fell without end; the mud in the yard was soaked through and swollen, the river had risen high, and the rice jar at home was nearly scraped bare.

Grandma tucked the few eggs we had into her clothes and went down the mountain to borrow rice from our great-aunt.

Before leaving, she warned us again and again: “Xiaoming, you’re the older brother. Guard the door well, remember to feed the chickens, and look after your sister.”

We waited and waited, until the sky was pitch black, before we heard Grandma’s footsteps stumbling back.

Her face was bloodless. She flung open the cellar cover and, without a word of explanation, stuffed me and Xiaoman into the long-empty rice jar.

“Hide well! No matter what you hear, don’t come out! Don’t make a sound!” Her voice shook violently; in her eyes was a fear we had never seen.

The cellar cover was shut. Then came the footsteps of many, many people forcing their way into the yard.

I heard Grandma fawning on the village chief in a tone humble to the point of servility. “The chickens are all in the yard. Take them, every one—count them as our family’s offering to the River God this year. I beg you, show mercy...”

Her voice cut off abruptly. In its place came the sound of rummaging and overturning.

In the cellar it was as silent as death. Xiaoman and I huddled in the jar, clamped hands tight over each other’s mouths, scarcely even breathing.

I don’t know how much time passed. A day? Two days? The few stray grains left in the jar had long since been eaten by Xiaoman.

She began to cry in a small voice, saying over and over: “Brother, I’m hungry...”

I could only stroke her head again and again and say: “Be good. Hold on a little longer. Grandma will be back any moment.”

Until I, too, was starving until my eyes went black, until I no longer had the strength even to lift my hand.

The last thing in the jar that could be eaten was damp wood shavings; I fed those to Xiaoman as well.

In the pitch-black jar nothing could be seen. There seemed to be a fire in my belly, terrible and gnawing. Toward the end of the burning I could feel nothing at all.

I thought I could hold on no longer.

Through the fog of my fading mind, a warm liquid dripped onto my lips. My cracked lips parted on instinct, greedily drinking in that fishy-sweet rain.

Xiaoman’s tearful murmuring, her voice pressed close to my ear: “Brother... wake up... don’t leave me... I’ll listen to everything you say from now on, I’ll never talk back again... Brother, answer me, please...”

I shook the water from the cleaver and stepped inside. Within, Xiaoman huddled in terror in a corner, knees hugged to her chest, the decay of her flesh worsened, tiny white worms crawling through the rotting skin.

“There’s nothing in the rice jar but this little ghost! Where’s the key?!” A girl with twin ponytails cried out in a tear-choked voice, nearly breaking. “Could it... could the key be inside her stomach?!”

Seeing me come in, Xiaoman looked as though she had caught a lifeline. She tore free of the circle around her and stumbled to hide behind me, her small, cold, rotting hand knotted tight in my clothes.

I turned to shield her completely and let the cleaver in my other hand drop, low and menacing. “Sister.” My eyes fell on the rune-carved dagger in Zhao Meng’s hand. “Too much recklessness will only make you die faster than the one just now.”

In the yard, thick bloodwater carrying serpent after serpent spilled soundlessly over the doorsill, coiling and gliding at our feet; they raised their heads, bared their fangs, and let out menacing hisses, forming a second ring around the players facing me.

Song Yiqing reached out and pressed down Zhao Meng’s dagger hand. Her gaze was sharp; plainly she had already realized that the “game” on this mountaintop was nothing like the instances below, broken by brute force. Its rules were stranger, more subjective, and far more dangerous.

“Zhao Meng. Don’t do anything rash,” she warned in a low voice, then crouched down, her fingertips brushing the old scratch marks scored along the inside of the rice jar, and lifted her eyes to the badly decayed Xiaoman behind me.

“Kid,” Song Yiqing began, “before, you said you were willing to help us leave. Does that offer still stand?”

I gave a smile that was nearly torn at the edges. “Of course. As long as Sister is willing to stay.”

“That’s not how a deal is made.” Song Yiqing took a step forward, ignoring the restless serpents at her feet. “The key—we found our own lead. The door—we found its location too. Right now, I only want to talk with you... about some very interesting things we discovered.”

Piece by piece, she laid her chips on the table.

“Beside Widow Wu’s grave slope, we found a painter’s board half-buried in mud. When the Hu family compound was torn open, what it revealed was no fox-spirit hall at all, but an ancient altar built of human bones. From the beams of the Zhao ancestral hall hung rows of dried corpses; there was also a tattered village chronicle inside, filled cover to cover with petty, wretched little matters...”

Watching my reactions closely, she went on slowly. “But a few of those matters were especially interesting. For instance, the Wu family daughter eloped with a painter from outside—and that very night, the painter was ‘invited’ to be matched in a ghost marriage. And for another... in one year of famine, the villagers offered to the River God a pair of twins whose ‘bloodline was unclean,’ praying for the rain to stop.”

My eyes went cold through and through. Song Yiqing, however, smiled, and in that smile was the ice of one who sees through all things. “Then may I make so bold as to guess—that you and your sister are the pair of twins with the ‘unclean bloodline’ recorded in that chronicle?”

My pupils contracted sharply.

This woman was far too clever.

Song Yiqing pressed two fingers to her temple, swiftly fitting every clue together in her mind.

“There are only two ways to clear an obsession-type instance: resolve the core obsession, or utterly destroy its vessel.” Her voice was perfectly calm. “And so the true ‘door’ was never that broken pot in your kitchen. That was nothing but a cruel hint.”

I gripped the cleaver in my hands until my knuckles whitened. I’d never been a good man; for Xiaoman’s sake, I...

“She is the grain of rice ‘fed to fullness’—the offering kept alive on the flesh and blood of her own kin. And the ‘pot’ in which she would at last be boiled is the bronze cauldron on the altar down below. Am I right?”

I froze.

Every step of her reasoning was right. The conclusion was entirely wrong.

This woman was terrifyingly clever. And absurdly, laughably arrogant.

I lifted my head, and the rotting flesh trembled faintly with the motion. I let out a breath of relief. The cleaver fell from my hand to the ground.

Since you’ve assigned yourself a role... I could ask for nothing better.

Toward her, I slowly held out both hands, wrists together, in a posture of surrender.

“Now. Please take us to the altar.”

When we stepped outside, the last thread of daylight was about to vanish; only one hour remained until final dark.

The path down had turned damp, slick and clammy, as though we were sliding down the intestines of some living thing. The whole village lay steeped in thick filth and blood, gutted corpses scattered everywhere.

Xiaoman had never seen anything like it and buried her face in my chest. Her cold lips pressed to my rotting ear as she whispered: “Brother... I’m hungry... I truly can’t bear it anymore... I’ll eat just one. Only one.”

Without letting it show, I pulled aside the blood-colored vine creeping near Zhao Meng. “Hold on a little longer. If you truly can’t help it, bite Brother.” I held my wrist to her mouth. She shook her head.

The Hu compound had collapsed entirely, revealing at its center the bronze cauldron crusted all over in green patina.

Around the cauldron stood dozens of earthen jars, and from the mouth of every jar protruded the twisted, curled skeleton of a child.

As we neared the altar, the dry click and grate of joints rose in chorus! One after another, the small skeletons crawled out of the jars and rose unsteadily to their feet.

At the same time, the earth around the altar began to churn! Rotting hands broke through the soil—the players who had been buried there before! They dragged themselves up out of the mud, hollow deadness flickering in their eyes.

“Formation!” Song Yiqing shouted sharply. A pale-golden barrier unfurled at once from the artifact in her hand, barely enclosing us all.

“Kid! What is the meaning of this?!” For the first time, unconcealed panic leaked into Song Yiqing’s voice.

I shook my head. “Without you, Xiaoman and I could never have reached this place.”

They were not here to block the players. They were here to stop Xiaoman, should she try to flee.

Killing intent surged in Song Yiqing’s eyes; the Xingtian Axe pressed against my neck. “You’d better not be lying! Or else... I won’t mind kicking your head clean off.”

“I never lie.” Everything I said was true. It only depended on how they understood it.

I never assigned any player a role. It only depended on what they chose, and how they played it.

And so some chose to become Squire Zhao, climbing the mountain to seize people. Some decided they were Master Hu, presiding over the rites. And some wanted to play the “Mother,” come home from distant parts.

And so those players who sank deep into their parts I kept here forever, and made them into the door at the foot of our mountain.

Xiaoman’s face went dark and cold. No. I had no time to stop her.

“So hungry.” The twin-ponytail girl in the party suddenly murmured to herself, her eyes vacant and unfocused. Before the teammate beside her could react, her mouth gaped wide and she bit down hard on his neck!

“Aah—!” The protective barrier shattered at the sound! Like a breached dam, the dense ranks of skeletons and half-rotted players outside poured in like a tide!

They bore Song Yiqing to the ground and tore at her flesh; countless writhing maggots flooded madly in through her nose, mouth and ears.

They screamed. They thrashed and rolled. I raised a hand and gently covered Xiaoman’s eyes. Two lines of blood-tears leaked out between my fingers.

“Brother, don’t blame me, I truly can’t hold it back; just from smelling that filthy blood on them, I want to tear them into scraps!”

Within the great bronze cauldron at the altar, a skull climbed again and again, and could never climb out.

Desperate? This is only letting you taste for yourselves, once, what we once lived through.

Back then, when the villagers dragged me out of the jar, the last thing I saw was Xiaoman at the bottom, her whole body crawling with the “rice” that writhed and fed.

Out in the yard, the starving chickens fought to peck at something on Grandma’s long-cold body.

They stuffed me into the great vat of boiling water. Through the searing agony, my soul drifted upward. I watched them gather around and share out my flesh, their faces wearing fanatical, devout expressions, saying this was “the River God’s blessing.”

I was the one who was the grain of rice fed to fullness—the “rice” offered to the River God.

My remains were not gathered into those earthen jars. That very night, a mountain flash-flood broke out, carrying mud and stone, swallowing Barren Mountain Village whole. Only a very few escaped.

Who knows how many years later, the towering resentment and despair of Xiaoman and me at last drew the gaze of That Which Exists. The Evil God chose us, and granted this eternal hunting ground.

But now, He means to destroy us.

I had no choice but to plan ahead.

“Crack—” A crisp, clear snapping sound rang out, as though some rule holding the world together had been broken once and for all.

The instant the Evil God descended, time froze. The skeletons that had surged in retreated like a tide and lay prostrate on the ground, trembling.

The Evil God, Su Ming, approached unhurriedly, stepping through the wreckage strewn across the floor, yet His eyes fell only on Song Yiqing, who lay where she had fallen. Gently, carefully, He lifted her in His arms—a tenderness utterly at odds with the bloody scene.

Her face was cold white, her breath faint; between her bloodstained fingers she gripped fast a Death God card.

“You finally bring yourself to call for me?” His tone held something Xiaoman and I had never heard before—an indulgent affection, almost unseemly.

I flicked Xiaoman a glance. She understood my meaning at once and slowly moved to stand in front of me, her small body screening my movements. I bent and picked up two pairs of points bracelets from the blood and filth.

I had not lied. This place truly was the “door.”

Without that Wu-surnamed player staying on the mountain of her own free will to act as a substitute, without these “descendants” carrying Barren Mountain Village blood “escorting” us the whole way, Xiaoman and I could never, by our own strength, have broken free of the old house’s bonds. Xiaoman would have been trapped in that rice jar for all eternity, just as I was nailed to this sacrificial cauldron.

I was the “key” that lets one leave. And Xiaoman was the “core” sustaining this place’s existence.

I had always been searching for a way out; the best chance was to seize an outside player’s body. But without a player of our own bloodline staying here in our stead, I still could not have won true freedom.

The eighteen players this time were no random match. They were offerings I had chosen. Only I had never imagined that the substitute I’d chosen—Song Yiqing—would win the Evil God’s favor. That became the greatest variable in my plan.

In Su Ming’s arms, Song Yiqing forced her eyes open. Her bloodstained fingers clenched tight in His collar; her voice was broken yet brimming with hatred: “Su Ming... they ate Zhao Meng... ate Wu Shan... ate so many people! I want you to kill them! Now!”

The Evil God lifted a brow, as though finding the demand amusing.

Xiaoman tilted her head and watched the Evil God coldly—yet the instant His gaze swept over her, she at once put on a sweet, sweet smile. “Grandma!”

He sighed. “Xiaoman. You haven’t been a good girl this time. I’ll have to give you a small punishment.” With a single careless wave of His hand, a bolt of black light condensed with the very aura of annihilation shot straight at me!

“Brother—!”

Amid Xiaoman’s scream, I held her tight and leapt into the great bronze cauldron brimming with murky rainwater! The instant I merged with my own bones, a shaft of blinding golden light shot up from within the cauldron! The door had opened.

I slipped the bracelets onto Xiaoman’s wrists and, with every last ounce of strength, pushed her toward that gate of light; then I turned and took that blow squarely on my back!

Agony flooded through me at once. I felt my body accelerating toward collapse, the rotting flesh peeling away in great strips and falling into the foul water of the cauldron.

“Don’t... don’t be afraid, Xiaoman.” I forced a smile for her. “Brother has already arranged a substitute. Very soon... we can leave.”

Xiaoman gazed at me, and on that rotting face appeared a sorrowful yet utterly clear-eyed smile.

“Brother. You’re always like this,” Xiaoman murmured softly. “You’re down to your last breath yourself, and still you think only of protecting me. But this time, it’s my turn to protect you.”

Her body began to give off a powerful pull, frantically drawing in the resentment accumulated within the cauldron—indeed, throughout all Barren Mountain Village.

“I’ve known the way out all along,” her voice carried a clarity it had never held before. “But I cannot leave. If I go, there will truly be nothing left here at all. That hatred, that pain—someone has to remember.”

“But Brother, there’s no hatred left in your heart long ago. You stayed only because I was here; because you believed failing to protect me was your fault. Isn’t that so?” She choked with sobs, every word written in blood. “It isn’t so, Brother. I was the one who drew Him here, who made us into what we are now. Because I hated. I hated every last one of them! Not one may be spared!”

With all her strength she pushed me toward the gate of light. “Go, Brother. You have to end this nightmare. But my road... is not yet walked to its end.”

A violent spinning overtook me, as though my soul had been wrenched out and stuffed into another narrow vessel. But this time, things were a little different.

Uncertain and shaken, I wiped the water from my face and looked across.

In the fog-veiled mirror was reflected a stranger’s face—the handsome, clear-cut face of a young man, healthy, warm, brimming with life.

Beside me, the screen of an old television hissed and crackled; amid the flickering static, Xiaoman’s figure gathered with difficulty, faintly wearing the clean, vivid smile she had had in life.

A playful voice, carrying a tremor she didn’t quite manage to hide, echoed through the bathroom:

[Silly brother. This time it’s my turn to fool you.]

[You go on to your future. I will keep watch over my hell.]

The screen flickered one last time and went utterly dark, silent forevermore.

I sat dazed in the cooling water. On my wrist, a cold metal bracelet lit up soundlessly with a faint glow, and a single line of deep-blue characters emerged:

[Identity verified: Player Xiaoming. SSS-rank instance cleared: Barren Mountain Horror — The Dream.]

（The End）