"Where did he come from?"
Under the dim candlelight, the three of them suddenly started performing a "Qiong Yao drama." Jian Hou, with a constipated expression, asked, "Really... no matter how many times I watch it, having two Yu Xiu beside Yan Yan still feels very strange. Could this main system be doing this on purpose?"
[Short note - A "Qiong Yao drama" is a melodramatic Taiwanese romance, known for emotional conflicts]
At this moment, the sounds of the wandering ghosts outside disappeared. Fang Rui was still being pressed to the ground by a paper figure who had entered with Yu Xiu. The ancestral hall was silent, and the players had varied expressions.
Tao Shi quickly shot a glance at Yu Jia in the corner. "What's going on?! Is Yu Jia trying to kill Jiang Yan? No! The Puppet Workshop is trying to kill Jiang Yan?! Why? Because of the 'Best Actor's' orders? That shouldn't be the case... Why would Sang Luan kill Jiang Yan for no reason?"
"Could it be jealousy...? But he and Sang Luan have a good relationship privately. Sang Luan is definitely not the type to be jealous of talented people!"
Cao Youfeng was annoyed as he adjusted the bandages on himself. "This is such a hassle! This whole instance feels wrong from the beginning, but I can’t say exactly what’s off. It just feels like everything is constantly stumbling."
As the players were each lost in their own thoughts, the instance's script continued to progress. The originally dazed mayor and his wife, who had pale faces, looked at the suddenly appearing son, and their eyes immediately filled with a light of life.
"Yu Xiu!"
The mayor's wife, who had been mumbling prayers in front of the mountain god statue, immediately sprang up from the ground and rushed toward her son. "You're back! You're not hurt, are you? Huh? What's going on outside?"
She spoke while scanning her son from head to toe.
Facing his suddenly rushing mother, Yu Xiu could only release his "sister-in-law" and stretch out his arms to catch his mother, so she wouldn’t fall.
At that moment, his dead older brother took the opportunity to pull Jiang Yan into his arms and gave him a provocative smile.
Seeing Jiang Yan almost being taken away and pulled into the other’s arms, Yu Xiu's mood instantly soured. He met the other’s teasing grin and, looking at his mother who had her hands on his shoulders, said expressionlessly, "I'm fine."
"That's good, that's good..."
Yu Xiu’s gaze darkened. The mayor froze, his eyes filled with fear. The words he had not finished speaking were suddenly cut off.
The mayor’s wife hesitated, withdrawing her hands from Yu Xiu’s shoulders and, feeling panic, stepped back to her husband’s side. The next moment, she returned to her previous tearful appearance.
---
The flickering candlelight, the scent of incense, and the humid air of the town wrapped around the players' noses.
Everything happening was too strange, and the players each had their own thoughts. Except for Jiang Yan, no one noticed the momentary abnormality in the mayor's wife.
What’s going on?
Jiang Yan tilted his head slightly. How could a mother be afraid of her own son?
She’s not afraid of her dead son who can still move and speak, but she’s afraid of a living son?
Jiang Yan looked over at his husband, whose skin had a grayish-blue, dead hue, with strange golden patterns drawn on it, giving him a ghostly, eerie appearance.
He then turned to his healthy "little brother," who noticed Jiang Yan’s gaze and smiled with his usual harmless expression.
One brother was lively and healthy, while the other was already starting to rot, like a flower that had already wilted. Yet, both had the same cold, emerald eyes.
A chill ran down Jiang Yan's back. "663, are all your system NPCs based on real people and created according to the needs of the instance?"
663: "Of course, why?"
Jiang Yan raised an eyebrow. "So, all their reactions are related to the instance?"
"Otherwise?" 663 replied. "Each reaction from real NPCs should, in theory, also be related to the instance."
Jiang Yan felt something was off.
He instinctively shrank closer to his husband's arms, feeling a slight pain from the rotting ribs that had flowered.
He looked up, and his husband, with his golden totem patterns, showed a pampering expression.
At this point, Yu Xiu, who had taken charge of the situation, adjusted his clothes and spoke: "The outside is calm now. There won’t be any issues tonight. By morning, we can leave the ancestral hall."
The mayor stepped forward, sternly asking, "Who? Who is it tonight?"
Yu Xiu didn’t directly answer him. Instead, he smiled and said slowly, "Naturally... it’s the one who betrayed the agreement."
"Betrayed the agreement?" Jiang Yan asked.
Hearing his sister-in-law speak, Yu Xiu’s smile brightened, and he replied, "It’s the agreement between the Red Ghost Lady and the town!"
"Agreement? Wasn’t it a curse?" Jiang Yan asked curiously. "Earlier, Father started talking about the Red Ghost Lady, but was interrupted by you. What’s the real story?"
"This story is long..." Yu Xiu suddenly looked at the silent Cang Rou and smiled. "Cousin, tell us!"
Cang Rou who had been called on, paused.
She slowly began, "The mayor uncle mentioned that one day, after the Red Ghost left, she returned to find her two daughters were gone..."
Cang Rou’s clear voice echoed faintly in the basement.
The dim candlelight flickered, and the surrounding black plaques stood silently. The murals of the mountain god on the steps of the ancestral hall were illuminated, their outlines faintly shaking.
"The husband and mother-in-law said they didn’t know where the daughters went. She went out to search, but couldn’t find them anywhere. No sign of them—alive or dead."
"She asked everyone in town, and they all said they hadn’t seen the two girls. If they had been abducted, someone should have seen something, right? But the neighbors said they hadn’t seen the two girls leave the house that day."
[Heh! Isn’t this strange? The family says the daughters went out to play and didn’t come back, but the neighbors say the girls never even left the house]
The autumn in Qingstone Town was chillingly cold, with the plants withering, and there was not a trace of color in sight.
"Where did they go?"
The Red Ghost Lady's voice calling for her daughters spread through the town with the autumn wind. The townspeople dared not show themselves—if they did, she would surely stop them to ask about her daughters.
But there was no sign of them.
People could only hide behind their doors, peering out secretly.
The stone slabs in the town had just been laid. The Red Ghost Lady’s red embroidered shoes had already worn down on the smooth stones.
It had just rained, and the stone slabs were slick. The Red Ghost Lady walked, then suddenly stopped, looking down. She saw her youthful face reflected on the wet stones, with light brows, red lips, and a young woman's bun.
At that moment, the little woman was searching for her two young daughters.
She didn’t understand what had gone wrong.
When she left in the morning, the two girls were still at home. Her husband and mother-in-law were also at home. The town was small.
So why? Why had no one seen her daughters?
The two daughters—both gone.
She looked up at the sky. The color was as pale as the low-quality paper on her husband's desk.
She thought about her two daughters, who never even got a name.
She had originally thought that her husband, who could read, would give them beautiful names, write them on paper, and hang them in the house. The children would grow up looking at those names on the wall.
But her husband refused, saying girls didn’t need proper names. Calling them casually was better for raising them.
So every time she calls them, all she can say is “Niu,” with no formal name.
But in Qingshi Town, most unmarried girls were called “Niu” before marriage. Had she known, she would have given them a proper name. Now, every time she calls them, she wonders if they will even recognize that it’s her calling them.
She was dazed for a moment, but she could only continue walking, calling out:
“Niuniu! Come home!”
“Did she find them?” Jiang Yan asked.
Cang Rou nodded: “She found them.”
“Where?”
“In her own backyard well.”
Everyone frowned.
Cang Rou scanned the room and said softly, “You guessed it right. It was her husband and mother-in-law’s doing. The purpose, as you all guessed, was to hold a ritual for her to bear a son.”
“A ritual using her daughters as sacrifices.”
Although they had guessed it, the players still couldn’t help but sigh when they heard the confirmation.
Cao Youfeng’s bandages were already loose. Looking at Cang Rou’s grim expression, he turned his head and muttered, “I hate these kinds of stories.”
“Does the main system have a problem? Always tormenting the old, the young, and the women and children!”
Cang Rou gave him a cold look.
Tao Shi gently pulled at his loose bandages to signal him to remain silent and turned to Cang Rou, asking, “And then?”
Cang Rou continued: “Then? Then, of course, she couldn’t accept the truth. What mother could?”
“So she kept searching every day, endlessly, trying to find her living daughters.”
“She searched every street in Qingshi Town, every field surrounding the town, her hair disheveled and her shoes worn out. People in the town said she had gone mad, but she knew she wasn’t the one who had lost her mind.”
“Finally, one day, fate stood by her side.”
“On one evening, she encountered a pitch-black deity in the mountains…”
The Red Ghost Lady didn’t know what the enormous figure before her was. She thought it must be the god she had heard about in the stories.
She slowly knelt down and prayed to the deity.
“The god told her that her daughters would never return, but she could make one wish.”
“At the time, she was still young and innocent, and the wish she made was pure.”
“What wish did she make?” someone behind asked.
At this point, the mayor sighed and took over the story: “Her two daughters died because her in-laws wanted a son. The lady prayed to the god, asking that each family in Qingshi Town must have an equal number of sons and daughters, one son and one daughter, balancing the yin and yang.”
“Since the town wasn’t wealthy, if families had too many children, they would inevitably show favoritism. So she wished that every household in the town should only have one son and one daughter, ensuring that children grew up safely and the elderly were well cared for.”
“She would walk through the town every day. If any household didn’t follow this rule, their children would be taken by the long ghosts.”
Cang Rou smiled. “The townspeople call her wish the ‘ancestral curse.’”
“So, all the men in your town disguised themselves as women to deceive her?!” Jian Hou asked incredulously.
He suddenly remembered the dead girl he had encountered on the road when he first entered the town, the man in a cheongsam skillfully stuffing the female corpse into a small stone tower by the roadside, and... and the small stone towers standing in front of every household in the town...
A chill ran up his spine.
Cao Youfeng was extremely confused: “Why... I really can’t understand how the system team who writes these instances thinks.”
Jiang Yan replied solemnly, “I don’t understand either, but looking at the male-to-female ratio in this ancestral hall right now, it seems like this kind of thing isn’t happening just in the game.”
In the ancestral hall, there were 12 people who could move, including Yu Xiu, who was already decaying. After excluding Jiang Yan, who was currently acting as the bride, there were only two women: Cang Rou and the mayor’s wife.
Cao Youfeng was speechless.
Jiang Yan tucked his disheveled hair behind his ear, feeling that his character was really starting to become disgustingly cliché.
“But…” Jiang Yan asked the mayor, “Why do you have two sons?”
In an instant, all eyes turned toward him.
Hearing this, Yu Xiu, who was holding Jiang Yan, gave a bright, radiant smile and said, "What? Have you forgotten? I’ve already… died."
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