The players in the official training program are all well-versed in a wealth of folklore, far more knowledgeable about such subjects than ordinary players.
Everyone is actually quite familiar with things like the Yellow Springs and the River of Oblivion. When Qi Yongyi mentioned it, they instantly realized the resemblance. This ferry crossing, and the boat itself, really do resemble the River of Oblivion.
According to legend, the waters of the River of Oblivion are blood-yellow and muddy, filled with turbulent waves and restless souls who can’t reincarnate. This is why the Bridge of Helplessness (Naihe Bridge) spans the river. To cross the bridge, one must drink the soup of Lady Meng, which erases memories of past lives, allowing them to reincarnate. Those unwilling to drink the soup and instead try to swim across the river become wandering souls, forever stuck in the water, never able to reach the shore.
The ferry on the River of Oblivion is their only hope of reaching the shore. Once a player is pulled from the boat, they will become its substitute, trapped in the river forever.
You Jingmeng joked, “How is this any different from a pirate ship? It should be called the Oblivion Boat instead.”
Owen Dong replied, “Why don’t those wandering souls count as pirates?”
You Jingmeng: “……”
Well, when you put it that way, it’s not wrong.
“The second wave of monster attacks will be even fiercer,” Li Zhi laid out the tactics, “This time, Xiao Qi will sit opposite me diagonally. I’ll guard the left side of the boat with Chi Yi, and Xiao Qi and Owen Dong will guard the right. We’ll defend both sides to keep the ferry from capsizing.”
Everyone nodded in agreement.
You Jingmeng solemnly handed the leg of their chair to Qi Yongyi.
For the second round on the boat, everyone was more prepared. Li Zhi and Owen Dong sat in the front row, while Chi Yi and Qi Yongyi sat in the second row. This time, Owen Dong sat next to the seasoned player, holding his military boots with even more confidence than in the previous round.
He said to Li Zhi, “Boss, I’m counting on you to cover my back!”
Li Zhi smiled and nodded, “No worries, leave it to me.”
With a splash, the bow of the boat hit the water again, and the white fog surrounded them. The blood-yellow water lapped against the sides of the boat, bringing a nauseating wind. The ferryman appeared at the bow and began to pole them towards the far shore.
Countless wandering souls and restless spirits emerged from the water, surrounding the small boat, hurling themselves at it in waves.
Li Zhi started another round of action.
The audience exclaimed how thrilling the scene was.
This time, Qi Yongyi, with his military background, joined in, and the overall combat strength of the team significantly increased. Owen Dong realized he didn’t even need to do much—Xiao Qi could defend the entire right side of the boat on his own. Splashing sounds of falling spirits constantly echoed around them.
The ferry bobbed up and down on the churning waves, and water began to flood the cabin. Their feet were already submerged, the water rising to their ankles. Li Zhi glanced back, then swiftly grabbed a skeleton emerging from the water. With a crunch, she twisted its skull off and tossed it to Chi Yi.
“Use this to scoop some water out.”
Chi Yi, holding the skeleton’s head: “……”
The skeleton, suddenly beheaded and repurposed as a water scooper: “……”
Ahhh! You can kill a ghost, but you can’t insult one!!
The now-headless skeleton flailed its bony arms like a headless chicken, rushing at them, only to be kicked back into the water by Li Zhi.
“We should be getting close to the shore,” Li Zhi calculated, and warned his companions, “The closer we get to the dock, the fiercer the monsters will become. Stay alert.”
Qi Yongyi shouted, “Got it!”
The ferryman at the bow of the boat had his back to them, continuing to pole the boat forward. With each push and pull of his movements, the ferry sped across the river.
After they had rowed some distance, Chi Yi, who was scooping water out with the skeleton head, suddenly spoke up, “Something’s not right, Zhi Zhi.”
She glanced around, adding, “Why do the ghost attacks seem weaker than in the last round?”
The closer they got to the dock, the more frenzied the wandering souls and ghosts in the river should become. They would only calm down once the ferry reached the dock near the pier. But right now, they couldn’t even see the pier’s shadow, and yet the ghosts’ attacks were weakening.
*Swoosh—*
The ferryman at the front kept pushing the pole, and the boat moved faster and faster.
In the vast river, surrounded by thick fog, it was hard for the players to discern their direction as they drifted on the water.
Suddenly, Li Zhi stood up and took two quick steps forward. The ferry rocked violently, as if trying to throw her off balance, but with her powerful core and sense of balance, Li Zhi stayed steady. She even used the rocking momentum to move closer to the ferryman, stopping just behind him.
Without warning, she wrapped her arm around the ferryman’s neck, flipping him onto his back.
The bamboo hat tumbled off, revealing a rotting ghostly face beneath. The stench hit her immediately. His face was crawling with maggots, countless bugs and insects gnawing away at the decaying flesh.
Li Zhi glanced at the horrific sight for only a second before snatching the pole from his hands and kicking him off the boat with one swift motion.
The water beneath the boat instantly became more turbulent, and the number of wandering souls and ghosts around them had dwindled to only a few. Li Zhi noticed the smug, mocking expressions on their ghastly faces.
Gripping the pole firmly, Li Zhi resumed rowing, this time in the opposite direction from before.
Chi Yi called out, “Zhi Zhi!”
Without looking back, Li Zhi replied, “Guard the sides of the boat.”
The ferry turned halfway around, heading upstream.
Once they returned to the normal part of the river, the once-calmed wandering souls and ghosts gathered around them again. However, the bow of the boat seemed to act as a protective zone, with no ghosts daring to approach. Li Zhi could now focus on poling the boat.
Soon enough, the dock they had seen in the first round emerged from the white fog not far ahead.
Owen Dong, filled with surprise, pointed excitedly, “Boss! Over there!”
As they neared the dock, the ghost attacks indeed became more vicious. Li Zhi felt the boat being tossed about, tilting wildly from side to side, but with no hands free to help, she could only increase her rowing speed.
Twenty meters, ten meters, five meters…
Finally, the bow of the boat brushed against the wooden pier. A water ghost, unwilling to give up, slapped the side of the boat before diving back into the river.
The surface of the river returned to calm.
The ferry reached the shore, the bow knocking gently against the bank. Behind them, the River of Oblivion vanished, and they found themselves back on the pirate ship at the amusement park. Their soaked shoes, socks, and pants had miraculously dried, the cold, bone-chilling dampness now completely gone.
Owen Dong collapsed into his seat in exhaustion. “Who would’ve thought even the ferryman was a villain in this round?”
“Good thing we figured it out in time,” Qi Yongyi said as he stood up and got off the boat. “Who knows where we would’ve ended up otherwise.”
As they stepped off the pirate ship, a staff member smiled and handed them the clue box for the second round. Li Zhi accepted the box and glanced at the staff member’s hand. She remembered when they entered the first round, the staff member had been holding a yellow lantern, but after the first round ended, the lantern was nowhere to be seen, and the staff hadn’t carried it again.
Was that lantern just a decoration? Or a fleeting clue?
The four of them returned to the railing at the entrance of the passageway, where You Jingmeng was waiting outside. Her complexion had recovered, and she was standing on her tiptoes, waving at them.
Before she could ask, Owen Dong immediately filled her in on the pitfalls of the second round. When she heard about the maggots crawling on the ferryman’s face, You Jingmeng groaned in disgust.
Meanwhile, Li Zhi opened the clue box for the second round.
The card inside, like the previous one, was a photo. However, it only showed part of a person’s body, dressed in black. The frame was focused on the neck area, with everything above the neck cut off.
“These clues are so weird!” You Jingmeng said, comparing the two photos. “What are they even trying to tell us?”
Owen Dong pointed at the second card. “Isn’t it just a photo without a head?”
Chi Yi suddenly gasped. “That’s right! A photo without a head… it’s a headless ghost!” She excitedly patted Owen Dong’s shoulder. “You’re brilliant!”
Owen Dong, flustered by the praise, scratched his head awkwardly.
“It must be a headless ghost!” Chi Yi recalled something from the ghost wall, where they read about different ghosts. “A headless ghost is someone who was beheaded when they were alive. So, when its head falls to the ground—”
She raised the clue card they had found in the first round. “It would match the angle in this picture!”
The angle from which the head would look up at the sky after hitting the ground.
“We can’t be sure yet,” Qi Yongyi said cautiously. “There’s another type of ghost related to heads, called the ‘Luotoushi1 In some stories, Luotoushi is depicted as a being whose head stretches out on a long, snake-like neck or can roll away, then reattach to the body. This ghost or spirit typically haunts people and can be quite dangerous. In certain versions of the myth, it is able to manipulate its body even without its head, and the head may engage in mischievous or malevolent activities while detached..’ Its head can stretch out and fall off, too. With just these two clues, we can’t definitively say whether it’s a headless ghost or a Luotoushi.”
Skipping the third round challenge? Not a chance.
The system had plenty of ways to mess with them.
Chi Yi let out a long sigh.
Li Zhi put the card away and turned to You Jingmeng. “Are you up for it?”
You Jingmeng hesitated for a moment. “Do I need to join the third round?”
Li Zhi nodded. “The key to the second round was the ferryman. He was leading us into a death zone where we couldn’t reach the shore. We had to take control of the boat to navigate ourselves to the dock. For the third round, I suspect the ferryman will disappear, and we’ll have to row the boat ourselves to find the dock. I’ll be handling the pole, but you all need to fend off the ghosts trying to steal the boat. The more people we have, the safer we’ll be.”
They needed at least four people to start the challenge, and having more participants would increase their chances of success.
After hearing this, You Jingmeng didn’t hesitate. She nodded firmly, “I’m in!”
She re-scanned her ticket and re-entered the game. The five of them once again headed towards the pirate ship.
Owen Dong gazed at Li Zhi’s back and sighed. You Jingmeng elbowed him playfully. “What’s wrong? Scared?”
Owen Dong replied wistfully, “I’m just envious of the boss’s smarts, that’s all.”
You Jingmeng shrugged. “That’s the difference between a regular player and an advanced one. No point in being envious. But even the best player can’t beat the game alone. We may just be regular players, but we’re essential, like the nuts and bolts that keep everything running. We all have our roles, so there’s no reason to feel inferior.”
Owen Dong, encouraged by her words, straightened up. “You’re right!”
Once again, they boarded the boat, each knowing their role. Chi Yi and Qi Yongyi sat in the front row, while Owen Dong and You Jingmeng took the second row, maintaining the left and right defensive formation. Li Zhi sat temporarily in the front row. As soon as the bow of the boat hit the water, and the white fog rolled in, the place where the ferryman should have been was, as expected, empty.
A single boat pole lay on the ground. Li Zhi quickly walked over, picked it up, and began rowing the boat forward.
The raging river surged around them, and the wandering souls and ghosts closed in once again.
Even someone with as sharp a sense of direction as Li Zhi found it difficult to orient herself on the turbulent waters. She had to rely on her instincts, rowing forward blindly as though she were feeling her way across the river stone by stone, searching for the dock with each stroke.
The sounds of her teammates battling the ghosts—smacks, thuds, splashes—seemed to fade into the background as if Li Zhi had blocked them out completely. She never once looked back, trusting her teammates to watch her back while she focused solely on finding the dock to stop the boat.
She had no idea how long she’d been rowing, but this journey was clearly taking longer than the previous two. Everyone was growing tired, and even Li Zhi felt her arms aching—handling the pole was much more exhausting than lifting weights.
Suddenly, Chi Yi’s excited voice broke through the silence, “I see the dock!”
Li Zhi didn’t need her to say it; she saw it too.
A long wooden pier stretched across the water, the same dock they had seen in the previous two rounds, emerging from the white fog.
Li Zhi rowed toward it.
But then, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed something. Just a few dozen meters downstream, near the shore, a yellow lantern was floating on the water’s surface.
It looked like a ghostly lantern, its dim yellow light reflecting off the blood-yellow river below. The lantern swayed gently in the breeze, like a will-o’-the-wisp on the River of Oblivion, luring the dead toward it.
The dock was right there, so close.
Li Zhi’s movements with the pole suddenly halted.
She thought for only two seconds before making a decision. Her teammates, still locked in battle with the wandering ghosts, didn’t even notice her brief hesitation.
The boat slowly turned around, heading downstream.
Only then did her teammates realize they were drifting further from the dock.
Owen Dong shouted in alarm, “Boss? What’s happening? Why aren’t we heading to the dock? Are we not going ashore?”
Li Zhi’s voice floated back from the front, calm and steady, “The real dock is over here.”
Everyone turned to look, but all they saw was the yellow lantern bobbing on the water’s surface. There was nothing else in sight.
Yet, after several rounds, they had absolute trust in Li Zhi. If she said so, then it had to be true. There was nothing more to say—just follow her lead!
Since they were now rowing downstream, Li Zhi found the rowing much easier. Before long, the boat reached the lantern. Li Zhi pressed the pole into the water to steady the boat as it neared the glowing light.
In the next instant, the lantern floated up into the air, and its eerie yellow glow dispersed the thick fog around them. The entire scene shifted in the blink of an eye, and they were back on the amusement park’s pirate ship.