The No. 1 Hunfen King in the Entire Server [Interstellar] Chapter 15

Halfway through copying, Lin Jing gave up, putting Scar Bro’s assigned task aside, too annoyed to continue.

Last time he’d been stuck at the station, he’d spent all his time on the computer. Now, with an extra day to kill, his attention wandered. Besides Ancient Love Stories, Scar Bro’s bookshelf held a mix of classics, both ancient and modern, domestic and foreign. He flipped through them for a while but found nothing of note.

Returning to his seat, Lin Jing opened a drawer, his gaze landing on a stack of documents. Something flickered in his mind, a sense of wrongness.

Why would the villagers, so wary of outsiders offending the dead on the mountain, allow them into the village at all? Was it just for the pittance they paid for lodging? Lin Jing doubted it. With the chaos they’d caused, the village chief would have been in the red long ago.

If they were supposedly here to seek the secret to immortality, there had to be a bigger reason behind their presence.

This game was in adventure mode, where luck and intuition played a significant role. The path to victory wasn’t always about avoiding danger; some rules were death traps, while others, merely a façade, concealed vital clues.

Lin Jing’s intuition was decent, but his luck seemed lacking.

He often spiraled into extreme thoughts when pondering problems. For example: What was the real condition for death in this game? He’d already broken two of the village’s three rules, not intentionally, but the evidence against him was d*mning.

Yet despite Scar Bro’s and the village chief’s fury, they hadn’t done anything to him. That didn’t quite match their ferocious personas.

Tapping the desk, Lin Jing lowered his head to examine the documents again.

The system had given them identities—basic profiles with just birthdates, which hadn’t been relevant beyond filling out forms. He scanned through the stack, the names all seeming perfunctory. The birthdates revealed no patterns either.

But then he noticed something odd. Under “life mottos,” most players had written random inspirational quotes, except his, which said “Save all beings.” Among the stack of mottos, there were outliers: someone had drawn a turtle, another had written an ellipsis, and yet another scrawled the numbers “12345678” in messy handwriting.

Wait—12345678?

Lin Jing froze, pulling out the sheet from the bottom of the pile. It felt as if a string in his mind had been plucked, reverberating sharply.

Sitting upright, he studied the page intently. The character’s name was “Yuan Mingxu,” age 20. His life story seemed ordinary—going to college, then somehow ending up in this cursed place… and never leaving.

Why would the villagers, so adamant about keeping outsiders away, allow them in?

“Xu Wanzhi,” Lin Jing called out suddenly.

Xu Wanzhi turned his head. “Hm?”

Lin Jing held up the paper, his expression serious. “I think I’ve figured out why the village chief has been so busy these past few days.”

Xu Wanzhi smiled faintly, his tone lazy but mockingly sincere. “Go on, enlighten me.”

“He’s been preparing for our funerals.”

Lin Jing placed the paper down, taking a deep breath. His mind flashed back to the undead in the coffin and the bizarre items on the village chief’s second floor. The so-called life mottos were actually epitaphs— engraved on coffins instead of tombstones.

Biting his finger lightly, he let a drop of blood well up and smeared it onto the paper.

“The curse on Qinghe Village… it’s been going on for a very long time.”

Lin Jing watched the blood spread across the page, first red, then faintly tinged with black—a subtle, ominous transformation.

“If I’m not mistaken, we… are all cursed. We were once Qinghe villagers ourselves.”

The night he’d mentioned attending a funeral, he hadn’t realized it would be their own.

Snapping out of his thoughts, Lin Jing turned to Xu Wanzhi. “Don’t tell the others yet. Let’s wait and see what the village chief does next.”

Sharing this information might cause problems.

Xu Wanzhi rested his head on one hand, his posture as carefree as ever. Aside from his earlier bout of laughter, it was impossible to discern his emotions.

“Alright,” he drawled, his tone calm and deliberate. “Let’s do it your way.”

But Lin Jing didn’t pay much attention to him.

Some people always tend to overanalyze—like Feng Haozhong. It was probably Xu Wanzhi’s inscrutable demeanor that scared him into thinking Xu Wanzhi was some bigshot. Lin Jing, however, didn’t bother with surface impressions. He was more practical: once he confirmed Xu Wanzhi wasn’t a threat, all he saw was a guy who wasn’t fully awake, breezing through life with a clear head.

After another day at the police station, they were finally let go by evening.

Back at the village chief’s house, Lin Jing noticed that the black cow had been found. It was munching on grass, trying to calm itself. This time, the village chief had locked the cowshed with three heavy locks, his wariness practically radiating off him.

After that, the village chief wouldn’t even eat meals with them anymore. He shut himself in his room on the second floor, working silently, saying as little as possible.

Every time he saw Lin Jing, he would involuntarily tremble with anger.

Lin Jing: “…”

Even though this old man was clearly preparing for their funerals, why did he look more guilty than they did?

At dinner, Feng Haozhong wore his long-abandoned sunglasses, sitting smugly at the table. Meanwhile, Xiao Xu, holding her chopsticks, was beaming with excitement. “Lin Jing, today we finally got to talk to the village chief!”

Lin Jing paused. “What did you talk about?”

Talking to the village chief wasn’t necessarily a good thing right now.

Xiao Xu was elated. “Since we helped him find the cow, we couldn’t miss the chance to chat. So we brought up the legend of the Spirit Mountain. And guess what? The village chief actually responded! He said that if we help him with something the day after tomorrow, he’ll tell us where the cave is!”

Feng Haozhong snorted derisively, immediately finding a chance to mock. “We searched every inch of the mountain to find that cow—our feet were about to fall off. What were you doing at the time?”

Lin Jing rolled his eyes. What was wrong with this teammate? He replied flatly, “I was copying texts. What else could I have been doing?”

Feng Haozhong sneered. “Exactly. You were sitting comfortably, copying and chatting away. Clues handed to you, the way to win spoon-fed. You don’t even have to lift a finger.”

Blondie, who now considered Lin Jing a buddy, couldn’t stand it anymore. He immediately retorted, “Hey, enough already! Just because you’re doomed to be single forever, you can’t handle other people being in a relationship?”

Feng Haozhong was furious. “I just can’t stand slackers!”

Lin Jing: “…” What relationship? What slacker?

He felt the need to explain himself; otherwise, his reputation would be toast.

However, Xu Wanzhi was already playing along, quick to immerse himself in the role. The man, who found great amusement in this drama, tilted his head and smiled. “Boyfriend, they’re calling you a slacker.” His voice was languid, carrying a teasing charm, his deep eyes glimmering with mischief.

Everyone froze.

“???” Wait, what?! They’re really in a relationship now?

Lin Jing felt his mental state collapse. “Brother, could you stop adding fuel to the fire? We’re innocent!”

Xu Wanzhi simply gave a faint, amused smile.

Lin Jing took a deep breath and turned back to the group. “Let’s just focus on the village chief’s request. Clearing the game is more important.”

He was done explaining. If walking a cow up a mountain could be mistaken for some scandalous affair, there was no salvaging these people’s dirty imaginations.

Explaining further would only make him seem guilty. Forget it—once they were out of here, no one would know anyone anyway.

But Lin Jing was thoroughly bewildered. He’d been playing the game in his usual rhythm, from the market to the forest to the second floor. How had he ended up as collateral damage in this mess?

Xiao Xu quickly snapped out of her shock and nodded eagerly. “Oh, right! The village chief said we’ll need to carry corpses for him the day after tomorrow.”

Seeing Lin Jing’s stunned look, she explained seriously, “Not real corpses! The path to Spirit Mountain is too dangerous, so we’ll use straw people instead. According to the village’s customs, it’s the deceased’s family who’s supposed to do the carrying. But the families of the recently deceased are either out of town or too scared to come. Like that young man we saw last time—he looked like he’d die of fright just thinking about it. No way he’d show up.”

Carry corpses up Spirit Mountain?

Lin Jing asked, “How many people?”

Xiao Xu replied, “About ten or so. The village chief said it’s too much trouble to haul the coffins up one by one, so they pile up the dead and send them all at once. This time, he wants everyone to pitch in.”

Lin Jing’s expression turned strange.

Noticing this, Feng Haozhong sneered. “What’s your problem now? This is the first time we’ve gotten a direct lead from the main NPC. Whether you believe it or not, we’re doing it. Besides, we’ll need to go to Spirit Mountain sooner or later, so we might as well familiarize ourselves with the route now.”

Lin Jing: “Whether you believe it or not? If we carry those creepy straw people up the mountain, chances are the straw people will end up carrying us. Let’s just focus on staying alive for now.”

He’d been ignoring Feng Haozhong as much as possible, but his gaze shifted to the group. “Since we’ve already agreed to the village chief’s terms, we’ll do it. But before we carry anything tomorrow, there’s something else we need to do.”

Lin Jing glanced outside. The village chief was hanging his red cloth on a bamboo pole. They’d tested it enough to know the cloth had sealing properties against malevolent spirits. What about the straw people?

If they wanted the village chief to honor his promise, they’d need to ensure the straw people were safely transported.

Hearing this, Feng Haozhong immediately snapped. He tore off his sunglasses, his disdain and fury practically emanating from his scalp. “Are you trying to tell me how to do things?”

“…”

Lin Jing’s polite smile froze.

Fine. He’d put up with this guy all day.

If he couldn’t be a cooperative teammate, then Lin Jing would just have to act like his boss.

He stood up, grabbed Feng Haozhong by the collar, and hauled him up.

“???” The entire group fell silent.

Under Feng Haozhong’s furious glare, Lin Jing’s lips curled into a smirk. His deep brown eyes, usually gentle, turned cold and sharp. Pointing outside, he said, “No, I’m forcing you to do it.”

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