The First Mirrored Instance.
Lin Jianguo led several people toward the old locust tree at the entrance of the village.
Several elderly villagers sat there. Their hair was completely white, and their sunken mouths made it look like they had lost all their teeth.
On the way, Yang Hexuan was still muttering, “What's there to be so touchy about when it comes to rats... With so many cats in the village, how could there still be a Rat Infestation?”
“The stranger it is, the more it means there's a problem.”
Lin Jianguo glanced at him. “Don't talk out of turn in a moment. Let me do the talking. Xiao Yang, especially you—don't just blurt out things about the human-headed rat, you hear me?”
“I got it, Uncle Lin,” Yang Hexuan said, a bit disgruntled, but he agreed nonetheless.
The other players walked alongside them. They didn't say much, but their eyes were busy scanning the bases of the walls as they walked.
As they passed a house, one of the players squatted down and pointed at a small hole at the base of the wall.
“Look, a rat hole. The edges of the opening are completely smooth, which means rats go in and out of here constantly... But why is this rat hole so big?”
It looked several times larger than a hole made by an ordinary animal, and a few fresh rat droppings were scattered nearby.
Such a large rat hole stood out prominently against the side of the house, looking like an ugly patch.
Yet, the residents of this house hadn't bothered to fill it in.
...
Three old men sat cross-legged beneath the old locust tree, puffing away on their pipes and chatting idly.
“The harvest was good this year, and our children and grandchildren are all filial.”
“In the eleventh lunar month, a young lad went into the mountains and was carried off by wolves—”
“Oh my, his parents must have been absolutely heartbroken. Raised him to an age where he should be starting a family, only for him to die like that.”
Seeing the players approach, the old men stopped talking and looked over, their eyes devoid of emotion.
...
“Hello, elders. Resting here?”
Lin Jianguo walked over with a smile. He reached into his pocket, only to lower his hand in frustration when he realized he had nothing. “We're the camera crew the village chief invited to shoot a documentary on local folklore. We wanted to ask about the village's local customs so we can edit them into the film.”
The old men stiffly turned their necks.
“Shooting a documentary? Go ahead. Our village's happy funeral is being held with such grandeur that it'll probably make us famous for miles around.”
The white-bearded old man spoke, a hint of envy in his voice.
“Old Lady Huang is blessed. Her four sons are all successful and filial, and her birthday feast is being held so grandly.”
The old man beside him chimed in.
“Indeed. Her husband passed away early, and she had to be both father and mother to raise those kids as a widow. If those four sons weren't filial, they'd surely be struck down by heaven.”
“Our village is wonderful. The people are good, and the water is good.”
“Yes, yes, yes.”
Lin Jianguo squatted down, casually steering the conversation.
“I see that every household in the village is living well, with multi-story houses and cars. It's even better than the city.
But there's one strange thing. I noticed there are rat holes on almost every house. Does our village have a lot of rats?”
The moment he said this, the smiles on the three old men's faces instantly froze.
As if he had asked something he shouldn't have, the white-bearded old man's eyelids drooped, his expression turning inexplicably sinister.
“Rats? What rats? Our village is clean as can be. Don't talk nonsense, young man.”
“Right, right, no rats.”
The other old man immediately chimed in. “On the other hand, the stray cats have become a real menace, stealing chickens and ducks every day. It's infuriating. But rats? None. Never. And you're not allowed to hit rats either...”
The three of them opened and closed their mouths, their eyes vacant.
They didn't look like living people at all. Instead, they resembled a pre-programmed script replicated on puppets or paper-mache figures.
There was clearly something bizarre going on.
There were rat holes all over the village, yet they claimed there were no rats.
But then they turned around and said they weren't allowed to hit rats.
Nevertheless, this was a highly critical clue.
Lin Jianguo understood. “So that's how it is. Those stray cats screaming every day really are annoying. When I entered the village last night, I heard cats yowling all night. Are there many cats nearby?”
“Many! So many!”
At the mention of cats, the old men became much more talkative, their voices filled with terror.
“They're all stray cats with no one to care for them, black ones, yellow ones. At night, they yowl like crying babies. It's terrifying.
Not long ago, they even mauled Old Li's son to death. They're wicked things.”
Hearing this, the faces of several players turned pale.
What kind of cat could maul a person to death?
They instinctively thought of the paw prints left in the quicklime outside.
“Grandpa, did Old Lady Huang use to keep a cat too?” Yang Hexuan seized the opportunity to ask.
“She did.”
The white-bearded old man nodded. For some reason, his lips trembled.
“When Old Lady Huang was alive, she kept a big black cat. She brought it home when it was just a tiny kitten, and she truly raised it like a son.
But once the old lady died, the cat vanished. No one knows where it went.”
“How... how big was that cat?”
“Pretty big.”
The old man next to him gestured with his hands.
“It was almost half a person tall. She kept it for over a decade, and it practically became a spirit. The old lady wouldn't even bear to eat a steamed bun herself, feeding it to the cat first.
Later, when the old lady couldn't get out of bed anymore, the cat would go around stealing things to feed her—steamed bread, meat, and whatnot... Sigh, let's not talk about it.”
—It seemed that not a single one of the four Huang brothers was filial.
Lin Jianguo became increasingly certain. The biological mother couldn't even afford a single steamed bun. When she was gravely ill and bedridden, it was actually the cat repaying her kindness by "feeding" her.
So, could the eerie cat yowling in the village be related to that missing black cat?
Yang Hexuan could barely contain himself. He winked at Lin Jianguo, urging him to ask about the human-headed rat.
The latter carefully weighed his words and shot him a warning look.
Yang Hexuan immediately blurted out:
“Grandpa, when we were filming the shrouding earlier, we saw a rat in the mortuary room with a human head. It scared us half to death! What was that?”
The moment the words left his mouth, the faces of the three old men turned paper-white.
Their necks emitted a series of clicking sounds as their heads snapped toward him in unison, their voices dry and raspy:
“There are no rats in the village.”
“The village is suffering from a cat plague.”
“There are no rats in the village.”
“The village is suffering from a cat plague.”
The shadow of the locust tree fell directly over the three old men's eyes, casting them in darkness so deep that their pupils were invisible.
Combined with their eerie, monotonous tone, a collective shiver ran down the players' spines.
Lin Jianguo at this highly inappropriate moment remembered that in his hometown, locust trees were called "ghost" trees—
Were the people in this village truly alive?
The moment this thought arose, a chilling dread crept up from the soles of Lin Jianguo's feet, rushing straight to his head.
...
...
Seemingly terrified of the night in Wenshan Village, the remaining two groups of players also rushed back to the ancestral hall before dusk.
Su Ya and Yang Asha returned with a bag of lime—the quicklime they had sprinkled the night before had been mostly washed away by melted snow, so Su Ya had asked Huang Facai for a bit more.
Yang Hexuan, Lin Jianguo, and the others also made it back.
Once all ten of them were accounted for, they entered the ancestral hall one after another, closed the doors, and gathered in the side room to compile their information.
“These are the points we can confirm so far,” Su Ya said.
She used a pen and paper to list them out one by one on a notebook—fortunately, since her role in the Instance was the director, she was able to find these materials.
“First, Old Lady Huang died with a deep grievance. Her four sons appeared filial on the surface, but the reality was quite the opposite. The villagers are highly secretive about how she died, which suggests she likely did not die of natural causes.
Second, when she was alive, the old lady kept a massive, pitch-black cat that was highly intelligent.
After her death, the cat vanished. The villagers are incredibly wary of this cat, and their expressions change instantly whenever it's mentioned.
Third, there are extremely many stray cats in the village. During the day, they even dare to perch on top of walls and stare at people, and they become even more aggressive at night.
Village Chief Huang Facai repeatedly emphasized that quicklime can ward off stray cats, which indicates these cats indeed break into houses and might even kill people.
Fourth, the village has a Rat Infestation. Every household has rat holes, but the villagers refuse to talk about it, turning hostile the moment it's brought up.”
The four clues were clearly listed on the paper, but putting them together still left them with a tangled mess.
“I think that black cat is back for revenge!”
Xiao Ding was the first to speak, her tone very certain. “I've seen plenty of stories like this. The sons aren't filial to their mother, so the intelligent cat seeks vengeance on behalf of its owner, coming out at night to kill!”
“Revenge?”
Yang Hexuan immediately countered. “If it wants revenge, it should go after the Huang brothers! Why target us outsiders? We didn't hurt the old lady!”
This hit the nail on the head.
Indeed.
Every debt has its debtor; they should go after whoever harmed her.
Why were those cats targeting their visiting camera crew?
No one believed that the cats circling outside the ancestral hall all night yesterday were just trying to come in and cuddle.
Those were killer cats.
“Could they... have mistaken us for someone else?”
Yang Asha whispered, “Back in my hometown, there's a saying that even if an animal gains intelligence, it's still not as smart as a human.
Maybe it can't identify the specific person who harmed its owner, so it's just killing indiscriminately? Or... does it think all outsiders are bad people?”
“That's possible,” a player agreed.
“A beast is still a beast. Even if it's intelligent, it's not as smart as a human. For all we know, it might think everyone in the village is the killer of its owner.”
The players discussed animatedly, the theory sounding more and more plausible the more they talked.
Su Ya's head was in a mess.
She felt it couldn't be that simple.
If it was just a cat seeking revenge, what was with the Rat Infestation?
How could they explain the human-headed rat that Yang Hexuan had seen?
Why were the villagers so secretive about the rats, to the point of forbidding anyone from hitting them?
“Let's not lose sight of the main quest,” she said, interrupting their discussion. “Our main quest is to help Old Lady Huang fulfill her wish.
The problem now is that the old lady is dead, and no one knows what her wish is.
Whether she wants justice, wants to find her cat, or wants something else entirely—right now, it's all just speculation on our part.”
“Then what do we do?” Xiao Ding frowned. “She's dead. How are we supposed to know the wish of an old village lady?
What if her wish is something abstract like 'having filial children' or 'living for another five hundred years'? We wouldn't be able to fulfill that anyway.”
“So the issue still lies with the quests,” Lin Jianguo said in a deep voice. His gaze swept over Xiao Zhuang and Xiao Qian. “Out of the five quests, we've only completed three, giving us three clues.
—If we had completed the food offering and the blindfolding as well, we might have learned more.”
At these words, the faces of the two turned pale instantly.
The gazes of all the players fell upon them.
“So it's all my fault?”
Xiao Zhuang said, rather incensed, “How was I supposed to know there were so many rules to serving a meal? I didn't do anything wrong either. If you're so capable, why didn't you do it?”
“Exactly.”
Xiao Qian also defended themselves in a low voice, “Failing the quest isn't just my fault alone.”
Seeing that they were about to argue again, Su Ya felt a bit exhausted. She quickly waved her hand to smooth things over. “Alright, that's enough, everyone. Arguing won't get us any results.”
She looked at the group, her tone calm.
“Tomorrow morning, we'll go back to the mortuary room. That should be the room where the old lady lived when she was alive.
Let's see if we can search the room for letters or something similar. Maybe we can find the old lady's wish there.”
“We... we have to go back there?” a player hesitated. “That room is incredibly eerie. What if the old lady's corpse awakes?”
“You don't have to go if you don't want to,” Lin Jianguo said indifferently. “Then everyone can just stay here and wait for the day the lime stops working and the cats come in to kill us.”
He didn't believe for a second that this lime could protect them forever.
The players looked at each other, and the leading players had no choice but to accept the proposal.
Thus, everyone prepared to rest and build up their strength tonight, intending to search for more clues tomorrow.
Tonight, Su Ya and Yang Asha were on watch duty. The first half of the night passed without incident.
However...
Su Ya touched the corner of her lips. She felt a prickly sensation on her skin, as if something were struggling to sprout out from within.
“It must be an illusion.”
She tried her best to comfort herself, tightly clutching the porcelain bottle and the silver bell hanging around her neck.
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