Chapter 93: Folklore Horror (23)
Li Yang was a restless wild fox; wherever there was commotion, he would be there. Seeing that his clan members still had a long way to reach Mother Goddess Village, and that his own Celestial Fox Young Heir was giving him the cold shoulder, he was almost bored out of his mind.
Hearing the clamor of drums and gongs coming from the direction of Mother Goddess Village, he ran over without hesitation to join the spectacle.
He crouched between the ridges.
The gray fox blended into the thick, swirling snow, looking completely inconspicuous.
Along the village path, at least four or five hundred people had gathered, jostling tightly together. Priests dressed in shaman robes carried a golden statue of the Mother Goddess and performed strange, rhythmic dances on higher ground, their movements bizarre and oddly hypnotic.
“The sun rises high, the sun sinks low.”
“Let evil scatter, let divine light shine.”
“May offspring be summoned—”
The villagers below seemed entranced, their eyes filled with awe and anticipation toward the high priest. One by one, they knelt and bowed devoutly in the direction of the golden statue.
Dong dong dong—
Dong dong dong—
The drumbeats grew faster and faster. The scene of supplication reflected in Li Yang’s vertical pupils like a crimson scroll slowly unfurling in the sky, filled with grotesque images of human life.
“Huh?” Li Yang twitched his fox nose, unable to believe what he was seeing, and crept closer to sniff. After a moment, he shook his head in astonishment, covering his nose with one paw.
“These humans are wilder than I am!”
His nose was full of musky scent, with an indescribable, provocative undertone. Li Yang’s curiosity was piqued, and he watched the grotesque, pathological ritual with growing interest.
Tap tap—
Tap tap—
The village path suddenly fell silent. Under the worshipful gazes of the villagers, the high priest strode to the Mother Goddess statue and delivered an impassioned “speech.”
“This year, why has the birth rate in Mother Goddess Village declined again?!”
“Because there isn’t enough reverence for the Mother Goddess!”
“What should we do?”
“Revere the Mother Goddess more devoutly! Offer all the harvest to her, and beg the Mother Goddess to bless Mother Goddess Village with new life!”
The crowd erupted into fervent cheers.
Seeing the villagers so enthusiastic, the high priest nodded in satisfaction, raising his hand to silence all the noise.
He paused, then raised his voice sharply. Even the veins in his neck bulged as he shouted, “So, what shall we do tonight?!”
“Night of Gratitude! Receive the Mother Goddess’s blessing! Welcome offspring!!!” Cheers erupted, and countless villagers’ faces flushed crimson.
Amid the snowy whiteness, even Li Yang, the fox spirit, shivered from the cold. Yet the villagers, as if drugged, felt no chill. Their clothing was thin—on a mountain peak with blowing snow at night, most wore only short sleeves, their arms turning purple in the cold.
They didn’t feel the cold.
Not only that—they felt heat. A scorching heat surged from their feet, coursing through their veins and straight to their foreheads, reddening their eyes.
This—this was the Mother Goddess’s blessing!
A bonfire burned beside the golden statue, turning the night into a spectacle like a festival. The flames bent under the cold wind, sometimes leaping like fierce beasts to the sky, sometimes cowering like timid creatures near the ground.
The firelight cast everyone’s faces in ghastly shadows—no, they looked even more terrifying than ghosts.
“Thirty, twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven…” Everyone’s gaze burned on their wrists, counting down like it was New Year’s Eve, fervent and excited.
Strong men, elderly villagers, women, and middle-aged ladies—all merged into the crowd, their reason scattered, collectively counting down this thrilling moment.
Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen.
Ten, nine, eight!
“Five! Four! Three!!!” Hundreds of voices merged into a tremendous roar.
As Li Yang watched with growing anticipation, a group of nimble young men and women suddenly appeared from the back of the street. One second they were at the end of the street; the next, they had raced beneath the golden statue.
With a whoosh, they scattered the villagers like leaves in the wind.
“What are you doing?!” The high priest’s face went pale, and he stepped back several times, trying to dodge.
“Two—…”
The villagers were still counting down with their lips, but their expressions wavered as they glared angrily at the players.
Before anyone could react, Li Mingsha vaulted up the steps with a flawless front flip, landing in front of the Mother Goddess statue. With several Sinister Monster Type allies, he timed it perfectly to the countdown at ‘one,’ and violently toppled the golden statue.
Boom! Boom! The statue crashed to the ground, sending up clouds of dust and ash. The dust swirled into the air as Li Mingsha straightened his back and stepped onto the statue, sneering.
“The god you worship is a fake! From start to finish, it’s the priests behind all this. Children aren’t born because of them. Women disappearing from the village? That’s because of them! People may sometimes be lost, but they won’t stay lost forever. Now is the moment you should wake up!”
He sounded like a rebel leading an uprising, his words carrying tremendous force. Facing the villagers’ blank, hesitant stares, Li Mingsha shot a triumphant grin at his girlfriend below.
—Pretty cool, huh?
Earlier that morning, the cup of tea with the drug was just an accident. He had deliberately been captured and sent to the dungeon so he could rescue his girlfriend—that was Li Mingsha’s excuse.
“…” His girlfriend looked at him as if he were an idiot.
Help. This was so embarrassing.
Maybe… she thought, is it still possible to break up now?
Under his girlfriend’s “admiring” gaze, Li Mingsha suddenly felt as if his body was brimming with inexhaustible energy.
Today, he thought, the spotlight was definitely his!
There were two streamers in the instance, but to him, they were no different from cameras. If only they had stood further apart—the two were so close that the camera angles barely captured his heroic, dragon-like movements.
“I propose we abolish the priestly class and hand them over to the authorities!” Li Mingsha actually had decent oratory skills. At first, the villagers still protested, trying to drive him off the altar. But one resounding, forceful rebuke after another silenced them.
“What era is this, still clinging to the idea of lineage continuation? Fine, you want offspring, I won’t stop you—but think about it! All the harvests you offered this year were fed to those beasts who harmed your daughters!”
“And how many spirits are buried in the dungeon…? Bones, mountains of bones, all victims and casualties!”
“Take action! Let these atrocities end here and now!”
The villagers fell silent, staring at him in shock.
Li Yang, hidden among the snowy trees, scanned the suddenly appearing youths and young women with his slender fox eyes. Such a large-scale event—and the person Young Heir liked actually wasn’t a leader here?
Li Mingsha didn’t carry Fuzhu’s scent—so Li Yang carefully searched through the crowd, eventually fixing his gaze on a particular spot.
[Player Main Quest Updated]
[Congratulations! Player has completed Main Quest Step 2]
[Proof of the Demon Part 2]
[Player, please prevent the villagers during the Night of Gratitude and expose the high priest’s true face.]
[Player: Jian Yuntai]
[You have successfully gained fifteen days of survival reward!]
Jian Yuntai had no interest in showing off at the altar. Since Li Mingsha volunteered to be the loudmouth, Jian Yuntai was happy to stay relaxed.
The most important thing—
Jian Yuntai felt something was off.
Even Sun Bin noticed Jian Yuntai’s expression had changed and immediately tensed up. “Oh no! Whenever the Boss shows this look, nine times out of ten something bad is about to happen.”
He asked nervously, “What is it?”
“The main quest says the Night of Gratitude requires a contracted demon beast to be present, or it will be dangerous.” Jian Yuntai scanned the area. Many other players had come alone as well.
Right now, it didn’t seem dangerous at all.
If it weren’t for the instance background reminding him, Jian Yuntai might have even thought he was close to completing the quest.
So what exactly did “danger” mean?
So many people had died in Young Master Xue’s previous instance… what had killed them?
Suddenly, a weight pressed down beside him.
Jian Yuntai, caught off guard, staggered slightly, then steadied Fatty with one hand.
“Not feeling well?”
Lord Fatty pounded his head, eyelids drooping heavily. Hesitantly, he said, “I think I’m having low blood sugar…”
Except for the banquet that day, Fatty hadn’t eaten much since, so low blood sugar was possible. Yet more and more players nearby were beginning to stagger. Within minutes, even Jian Yuntai—who had previously lifted Fatty single-handedly—felt black spots before his eyes, the early signs of low blood sugar.
“Let’s go.”
Jian Yuntai decided almost instantly. Just as he helped Fatty turn, a group of people suddenly blocked the village path behind them.
Guide Black Dog stood before the villagers, smiling as slickly and shrewdly as the first time they met.
Bang bang! He tapped one end of an iron rod with the other in his palm, still smiling. “Hey, where are you trying to run off to? Need me to show you the way?”
Behind him, more than fifty villagers stood, all staring hungrily. Their gazes were so intense it made the hairs on the back of the neck stand on end, as if inspecting merchandise, sizing up Jian Yuntai.
Sun Bin panicked. “You still don’t believe the priests are harming people?” he shouted. Then, hesitating, he added, “Go check the person on the altar. He’s the one leading this chaos.”
Guide Black Dog sneered at Sun Bin, then shifted his gaze to Jian Yuntai’s face, whispering to the villagers behind him, “This one’s the most wanted. Don’t let him escape.”
“……” Jian Yuntai furrowed his brows, his eyes glinting under the moonlight. They finally fixed on Black Dog. Coldly, he asked, “You two were in cahoots?”
“You guessed right,” Black Dog chuckled. “Beautiful and smart—the most wanted in Mother Goddess Village. You’re in for it soon.”
The livestream viewers were dumbfounded:
“Ahhhh? What’s going on? The villagers don’t trust the players? Then how did Step 2 of the main quest complete?”
“What does Jian Dadan mean by ‘cahoots’?”
“Oh my god, I’m stunned. The camera turned and suddenly captured all these villagers. It scared me! The split-screen effect is insane.”
“This Black Dog keeps saying ‘wanted.’ Does he mean wife is wanted? What does ‘you’re in for it’ mean?”
“Sisters, I have a bad feeling… Could ‘cahoots’ mean the villagers are working with the priests?”
“???! What?!” Among a flood of exclamation marks in the livestream chat, Jian Yuntai slowly exhaled.
Finally, he understood how the female players had disappeared.
Previous speculation about demons aiding, secret rooms in houses, or player assistance—all of it relied on a premise: when the female players vanished, no one noticed. But the premise had been wrong.
It wasn’t that no one noticed.
—The villagers all saw it.
Everyone tacitly concealed the truth, pretending not to see the priests taking the female players away. This created the illusion that the female players had disappeared without a trace.
Gods knew, ghosts knew.
From start to finish, it had been human hearts at work.
When had things gone wrong?
From the moment the bus arrived and that missing person notice was picked up.
It was a trap.
They had all fallen for it from the beginning.
As Jian Yuntai pondered this, the livestream chat buzzed with analyses from sharp viewers, and everyone suddenly understood.
Then came the spine-chilling realization:
“My god… what’s wrong with this village? From root to leaf, to the treetops, everything is rotten!”
“At first, I thought it was the Mother Goddess acting, but then I realized the priests were controlling her, indulging their own greed. And later… the villagers of Mother Goddess Village were participating too?!”
“Why are they doing this? I just can’t understand!”
“Because of the desire for offspring… The people who couldn’t bear the situation had already left Mother Goddess Village. The few hundred left behind were those unwilling to leave their ancestral homes, yet they also didn’t want to be childless. So what if they knew the priests’ schemes? Look at their eyes—they only want children. They… they’re all insane!”
Mother Goddess Village no longer had any victims.
Everyone was a perpetrator.
They harmed and harmed until there was no one left to harm, so they turned their twisted minds on outsiders. Using a missing person notice as bait, they lured outsiders straight into the trap.
Men—they borrowed for breeding.
Women—they borrowed for wombs.
A ridiculous, brutal “ritual” had passed… with so many outsiders now at their mercy, surely a few could produce offspring for Mother Goddess Village.
[Main Quest Updated]
[STEP3: Destroy the Temple]
[Congratulations! Player has uncovered the true secret of Mother Goddess Village. When you spot a single cockroach, it means countless others are hiding where you can’t see. Mother Goddess Village has had little contact with the outside world, education is limited, but the belief in lineage continuation is even stronger.]
[The less you can get, the more you want. Villagers will do anything for offspring.]
“…” Anything?
What did that mean? Jian Yuntai felt dizzy. Countless greedy eyes were now on him, making him frown; his expression was like frost forming across his brow.
More and more villagers were closing in.
The instance background sound shifted tone:
[At dawn, a terrifying disaster will destroy all of Mother Goddess Mountain. Before the avalanche strikes, please escort Nong Lingling down the mountain and then destroy the Mother Goddess temple at the summit.]
[A decayed, unenlightened civilization is waste. To build a new civilization, the waste must be discarded!]
“How could this be?” Fatty leaned heavily against Jian Yuntai, wildly slapping himself, but his eyelids were growing heavier. “We didn’t even eat prison food…”
Boom! He collapsed to the ground in a heap.
Jian Yuntai knelt on one knee. His eyes fell on the countless villagers’ mud-smeared boots, and the distant cold smile of the high priest.
They hadn’t eaten the dungeon food, true—but the problem was that this had been a setup from the start. All food on Mother Goddess Mountain came from the villagers; water was drawn from rivers controlled by the priests.
That meant that from the very first day of the instance, it was already destined that today would be filled with this kind of predation.
“Run!”
“Get out of here, fast!”
The players erupted into chaos. Some with contracted demon beasts lifted players and broke through the chaos, fleeing into the forest. Those without a contracted demon beast were in serious trouble—
Bang!
A heavy crash echoed.
Amid the livestream viewers’ gasps, Jian Yuntai fell heavily to the ground, unmoving for a long moment.
The last thing he heard before losing consciousness was Guide Black Dog’s greedy, sinister laugh:
“You lot, carry him into the houses and force-feed him the strongest medicine!”
“A perfect opportunity!”
Li Yang, the gray fox who had been watching the entire scene from the forest, went through a rapid emotional shift—from anticipation, to shock, to disbelief, and now to a fully fired-up state.
The wild fox had no sense of restraint. He wasn’t thinking, “The Young Heir’s loved one is in danger,” nor “Yay, the Young Heir gets to play hero!”
No—he thought:
This is a perfect chance for things to be set in motion!
Whoosh!
The gray fox immediately turned and shot back into the forest, excitedly racing to find Fuzhu.
Young Heir, your spring is about to arrive!
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