Since entering the game, most players had lost a couple of pounds. The only exception was Li Zhi, who, despite eating three meals a day, had somehow gained weight.
It wasn’t because she ate more, but before entering the game, she had been eating a high-protein, low-carb diet. Now, in this game world, she had no choice but to eat bread and rice at every meal.
After finishing breakfast, they stepped outside. In the courtyard where the body was kept, four elderly men, skinny and dark-skinned, with graying hair, stood together. Uncle Jiu was handing them cigarettes. The players had seen these men during the funeral feast two days ago—they were among the few remaining villagers.
These men had been invited to help carry the coffin. Four male players, along with the four villagers, would make up the group of eight responsible for the burial.
Qing Lin muttered quietly, “Why couldn’t they have found some stronger people? These four old men look so frail—what if they get crushed under the weight?”
Chi Yi replied, “Didn’t they say there aren’t many people left in the village? Finding even four to help is already impressive.”
Sure enough, just before the burial began, the players knelt in front of the coffin and burned paper offerings. They overheard the elderly men sighing as they chatted, “The village chief still has us to carry his coffin. Who knows, when we die, there may not be enough people left to carry ours.”
“Guanping Village is doomed sooner or later. I knew this day would come ever since they decided not to include our village in the development plans.”
“Damn it, if I’d known back then, I wouldn’t have agreed to build that bridge. It emptied everyone’s savings, and what was it good for?”
Li Zhi tossed paper money into the fire basin in front of her and glanced toward the bridge looming in the distance, suspended in midair. From where she stood, she could only see half of its structure. Thick white fog shrouded the area beneath it year-round, and it was the village’s only route in and out.
Her gaze flickered, but before she could dwell on her thoughts, Li Jianxi approached the coffin, holding an axe. Coldly, she announced, “Pay respects to the deceased. Seal the coffin with nails.”
No one was particularly eager to view the body, but the ritual had to be followed. They circled the coffin, squeezed out a few tears, faked a couple of sobs, and prepared to nail the coffin shut.
“Anyone born in the Year of the Tiger or Monkey should avoid this, and the deceased’s children should stay away from the nailing,” someone warned.
Finally, the coffin lid was sealed. Six of the players hid inside the house, listening to the sound of nails being hammered into the coffin. They all looked relieved.
“It’s finally going to end!”
“Now that the coffin’s sealed tight, he won’t be able to get out, right?”
As the last nail was driven in, the sound of mournful suona horns and drums suddenly filled the air outside. The funeral music began, sorrowful and haunting. With the end of the task in sight, the players, feeling a surge of excitement, put extra effort into their roles. Even Zhu Zhibo, who had been weak throughout, now seemed slightly energized.
When it came time to tie the coffin with ropes, Uncle Jiu took out a key and opened the main house beside the hall. This had been the village chief’s residence before his death, and it had remained locked ever since. Now it was finally opened.
His face solemn, Uncle Jiu instructed, “Go inside and gather the village chief’s belongings. Burn them with him during the burial to ensure he won’t suffer from the cold on his journey to the afterlife.”
After the deceased is buried, it’s customary to burn their personal items for them. The main house was even damper than the hall, and as soon as Li Zhi entered, she smelled the cold, musty scent of mildew. The room was sparsely furnished, and a peeling wooden desk stood in front of the window.
Li Zhi glanced outside. Uncle Jiu was busy directing everyone to tie the ropes around the coffin. She pulled the bamboo-printed curtain over the window slightly, then quickly opened a drawer.
Inside the cobweb-covered drawer were a few folded newspapers, some old books on productivity development, a fountain pen, and a few notebooks.
Li Zhi flipped through the notebook but found it mostly filled with scattered, unimportant notes. There were fewer notes in it than in the old books. It seemed the village chief had been eager to improve the village’s poverty-stricken state and had been dedicated to finding ways to bring prosperity.
But clearly, he had failed.
The isolated and mountainous location of Guanping Village made development difficult.
Why didn’t they consider tourism? Maybe turning the village into a rural retreat or a summer getaway would have worked. Li Zhi mused as she picked up the newspapers at the bottom of the drawer. These papers were old and yellowed with age. Just as she was about to take a closer look, a loud knock on the window frame startled her.
Through the thin curtain, Uncle Jiu’s voice rang out, “What are you doing? Haven’t you finished gathering his things yet?”
“Right away.” Li Zhi grabbed the newspaper, turned toward the wardrobe, and discreetly stuffed it into her coat.
With everything ready, a crisp sound of a shattered ceramic basin echoed, followed by the melancholic tune of the suona. Li Zhi raised the soul banner and the mourning staff, while Chi Yi carried the ancestral tablet. The funeral procession, with the coffin held aloft, left the courtyard and headed toward the burial grounds.
Along the way, paper money fluttered through the air, accompanied by continuous funeral music. As the procession passed through the village, nearly all the remaining villagers came out to pay their respects. From afar, they appeared to be almost exclusively elderly, hunched over with slow, shuffling steps and expressions of numb sorrow.
A village without young people is destined for extinction.
Amidst the flying paper money, the funeral procession finally reached the burial grounds. After setting down the coffin, the players began preparing the grave, burning paper and lighting lanterns. The thought that the end of this wretched game was near filled them with excitement, and their hands trembled with anticipation. They worked with far more efficiency than usual.
Once the coffin was lowered into the grave, Li Jianxi used a compass to confirm the north-south orientation. After verifying everything was correct, she signaled the players to start covering the grave with soil.
Handful after handful of yellow earth was poured onto the coffin lid, only to slip down and gradually cover the coffin. The sky was overcast, and the wind howled. The soul banner and the mourning staff, stuck in the ground beside the grave, fluttered wildly in the wind, rustling and crackling.
When the final layer of soil was placed on the mound, visible excitement flickered in everyone’s eyes.
Is it over? Have we cleared the level?
The wind howled eerily, but nothing unusual happened. Chi Yi whispered, “Did we forget to burn the clothes?”
They hurriedly knelt before the grave and burned the deceased’s belongings they had brought along.
After waiting for a while, still nothing happened.
The surroundings gradually fell silent. Unbeknownst to them, the villagers had gathered behind them. All wore the same expression—an eerie, mocking smile, their faces twisted with malicious intent as they stared at the bewildered players, as if watching them make fools of themselves.
Gao Shijun was the first to crack. Clutching his head, he shouted in frustration, “What’s going on? Why haven’t we passed the level yet?! Are we going to be trapped in this game forever?”
Xu Shu glanced at Li Zhi, who was deep in thought, and said solemnly, “It seems you were right. Our real task is to properly bury our biological parents.”
“Where are our biological parents? How are we supposed to find them?” Gao Shijun wailed, kneeling in despair. “We don’t have a single clue!”
Zhu Zhibo, who had been holding on by sheer willpower, collapsed weakly to the ground. He had thought that once the burial was done, they would clear the level. Now that hope was gone, he seemed utterly defeated.
The villagers, apparently amused by the players’ despair, finally turned and shuffled away, leaving the burial grounds behind.
The only sounds remaining in the graveyard were the eerie wind and… the sound of flipping through a newspaper.
At some point, Li Zhi had begun to leaf through the old newspapers she had taken.
The others were confused. Chi Yi leaned in and asked, “Is there a clue in there?”
“There is.”
Li Zhi’s words were like oxygen to dying people; the others rushed over, eager to see what she had found. Li Zhi pointed to a section of the newspaper, circled in black ink. The headline read, “Connecting Points to Form a Network: Integrating Old Villages into a Green Ecological Community.”
The article described how the county government planned to develop a region into an ecological village to promote tourism and help farmers escape poverty. All villages within this newly planned area would be integrated into the development, with each village serving as a point in a broader network.
The newspaper was over twenty years old, and the shaky handwriting circling the article suggested the person who had seen this news had been excited—so much so that their hand trembled as they marked the page.
The second newspaper was from a year later. Its main headline announced the list of villages included in the new development plan. Guangping Village was conspicuously absent. A large black X had been drawn over the list, cutting deep enough to tear the paper.
After reading through the papers, everyone was confused. “What does this mean? What does it have to do with us?”
Li Zhi folded the newspaper and looked around. “We should search the graveyard carefully. The system tasked us with properly burying our family members. The use of the word ‘properly’ suggests that our biological parents have already passed away. It implies they were not given proper burials. They could be left exposed in the wilderness or perhaps something went wrong with their graves.”
Everyone agreed with her reasoning and quickly spread out to search.
However, finding useful clues in such a large graveyard was no simple task. None of them felt like going back for food, so they wandered through the entire graveyard like ghosts, searching for hints on the gravestones.
It wasn’t until nearly sunset that Qinglin’s excited voice called out from afar, “Come here! Could this be it?”
The area he had found was no longer part of the graveyard but lay in a rugged, desolate wilderness. According to Feng Shui principles, choosing a burial site involves finding a place that gathers energy, ideally sheltered by mountains and close to water. It strictly avoids places that are uneven, full of jagged rocks, or where the water flow is interrupted.
And yet, this desolate grave was located precisely in such a cursed location.
It was as if someone had deliberately chosen the most wretched place possible for the burial.