The No. 1 Hunfen King in the Entire Server [Interstellar] Chapter 3

Blondie’s full name turned out to actually be Huang Mo*. Upon learning this, Lin Jing decided to stick with that nickname.
* Yellow fur/hair which is basically blondie

The village chief held a candle to guide them. The village had no streetlights, only moonlight illuminating the dark surroundings.

They passed several clustered houses before reaching a desolate corner.

“We’re here,” the village chief announced.

It was an old wooden house, damp with decay and carrying a faint musty smell. It had two floors.

Lin Jing glanced around. In front of the house was a small yard with a low wall, a cow shed, and an outhouse nearby. The combined stench was overwhelming. The yard held some firewood, a few bundles of straw, and red cloth hanging to dry.

Inside, the village chief lit a small bulb that barely illuminated the room.

Facing the group, he said coldly, “Outsiders like you can only stay here for seven days. After that, get out. Got it?”

No one replied.

The village chief continued, “But staying here isn’t free. You need to pay rent.”

Sunglasses Guy frowned. “Rent? None of us brought money.”

The village chief tilted his head, the deep wrinkles on his eyelids casting shadows over his murky eyes. “No money? Then go earn some.”

Seeing the man in sunglasses about to speak, the village chief waved dismissively, his tone hostile: “It’s late. Go to sleep. No one is allowed upstairs. There are four rooms on the first floor. Sort it out yourselves. And unless it’s something serious, don’t bother me!”

The old man dragged his legs upstairs, leaving the seven of them looking at each other awkwardly.

Lin Jing, having just been discharged from the hospital, tired easily after entering the game. Already drowsy, he patted Blondie on the shoulder. “Let’s share a room.”

Blondie couldn’t agree fast enough. In this eerie mountain village, he wouldn’t dare sleep alone. But just as he followed Lin Jing a couple of steps, a chill ran down his back. Turning around, he saw nothing.

“Why are you so slow?” Lin Jing urged.

“Coming, coming.” Blondie quickly caught up.

They chose the room on the right. It was extremely bare—just a bed, a table, and an old-fashioned light.

Lin Jing glanced around but didn’t find anything strange. Exhausted, he collapsed onto the bed. “I’m going to sleep now. Goodnight.”

Blondie, hoping for some late-night conversation, gawked. “You’re just going to sleep? Hey!”

This guy is way too relaxed!

Lin Jing, already under the covers with his eyes closed, muttered lazily, “What else? Climbing that mountain today drained me.”

Blondie: “…”

The countryside was eerily quiet at night. This village, Qinghe, was so silent that even the chirping of insects was absent.

When Blondie closed his eyes, all he could see was the bloody, mangled old man from earlier. The more he thought about it, the more terrified he became, goosebumps crawling up his arms. In extreme fear, the mind tends to project horror onto ordinary objects. Out of the corner of his eye, the broom and scythe in the corner morphed into a long-haired woman dangling upside down.

Shaking his head, Blondie quietly scooted closer to Lin Jing.

Lin Jing’s steady breathing gave him some comfort. Taking a deep breath, Blondie finally managed to fall asleep.

But in the middle of the night, he woke up.

He heard a strange sound—scritch, scritch—like someone weakly scratching at wood with their fingernails. The noise was faint yet sharp, coming from the second floor. At first, Blondie was still groggy, but the scraping grew faster and more frantic, as if something was desperately trying to tear through.

Then, after a brief silence, a sudden thud, thud, thud echoed through the air.

Blondie jolted awake, shaking Lin Jing’s shoulder frantically, his voice trembling in the darkness. “Lin Jing, Lin Jing, wake up, wake up!”

Lin Jing wasn’t the type to be grumpy when woken up. He rubbed his eyes lazily and asked, “What’s wrong?”

Blondie’s hands were shaking. “Do you hear that?”

Lin Jing yawned, ruffled his hair, glanced upward, then nonchalantly pulled the blanket over himself. “Yeah, I hear it. Don’t worry, we won’t die.”

Blondie froze in disbelief. “Don’t worry?!”

Still drowsy, Lin Jing reassured him, “This is a paranormal setting. Having ghosts is normal. It’s only the first day—we haven’t even done anything. How could we possibly die?”

Blondie: “……”

As the night stretched on, he silently shed tears of regret. He wished he had picked a different partner. Lin Jing was friendly, sure, but completely unreliable. He should’ve swallowed his pride and teamed up with Brother Xu instead.

The whole house was wooden, and the thud, thud, thud gradually faded until it finally disappeared.

Blondie tossed and turned, unable to sleep, afraid that at any moment, a hand or a head would suddenly emerge from above.

Lin Jing, disturbed by all his tossing, sighed in exasperation. “How about you go up there and fight it one-on-one?”

Blondie: “……”

At last, he quieted down.

Lin Jing draped an arm over his eyes, exhaustion washing over him again. His mind drifted toward sleep, heavy with fatigue.

But suddenly, for no apparent reason, Blondie sat up straight and cautiously poked him with a finger.

“Big bro, big bro.”

Lin Jing took a deep breath, removed his arm from his face, and sat up, his dark brown eyes staring at him. “Now what?”

Blondie’s voice was pitiful, almost on the verge of tears. “Big bro, I need to pee. I’ve been holding it in for ages, but I really can’t anymore. I don’t dare go alone. Can you come with me?”

Lin Jing: “……”

What kind of karma was this to end up with a partner like this?

Suppressing his sleepiness, Lin Jing dragged Blondie out of bed.

Just outside their room was the ancestral hall. The place was pitch dark, and they had to fumble around for a while before finding the light switch.

The village chief’s house was old, and the light flickered dimly, buzzing erratically when turned on.

The staircase was right next to the ancestral tablets.

Blondie was utterly terrified, convinced that something was watching him. He kept glancing around nervously, and when his gaze landed on the stairwell, his legs nearly gave out.

In the shadows at the base of the stairs, he saw a figure.

He couldn’t make out any details, but he could tell it was tall and thin, wearing loose, flowing garments. It stood completely still, rigid and unmoving.

Blondie clung to Lin Jing’s arm, trembling as he whispered in his ear, “Lin… Bro Lin, there’s someone by the stairs.”

Lin Jing turned to look.

The worn wooden stairs were empty, save for a few scattered planks.

“There’s no one there.” Lin Jing turned back. “You’ve scared yourself silly.”

Blondie didn’t feel reassured. The chill in his bones remained as a faint, suffocating smell of rot lingered in the air, making it hard to breathe.

The light flickered but finally grew steady.

Lin Jing rubbed his eyes and approached the door. The shrine’s wooden latch was missing, and the door had been pushed open slightly, leaving a visible gap.

Someone had gone out before them?

Lin Jing whistled softly, trying to calm Blondie. “Looks like you’re not the only one who needed the bathroom. Someone’s already there. You’ll have company. I’m going back to sleep.” He turned to head back.

But Blondie clung to his arm, nearly sobbing. “Don’t leave me, Big Brother! I can’t do this without you!”

Lin Jing said, “Alright then.”

The village outhouse was built right next to the house, adjoining a cowshed.

The mixed smell of the two hit Lin Jing as soon as he stepped out into the chilly night air, fully waking him up.

“I’ll wait for you outside. Hurry up and get it over with.”

Blondie couldn’t hold it anymore. Desperation pushed him to endure the awful stench as he clutched his stomach and rushed inside.

The outhouse was simple, with two pit stalls separated by red cloth curtains. Blondie, in a panic, entered the stall closer to the outside.

The setup was extremely crude: two long wooden planks laid over the cesspit served as footholds. As Blondie squatted down and prepared himself, clutching some toilet paper, unease made him glance around.

The walls of the outhouse were made of bricks, and the stalls were separated by a single wooden board embedded into the wall. The bottom of the board didn’t quite reach the ground, leaving a small gap that revealed the feet of whoever was in the neighboring stall.

Someone else was here, also using the outhouse in the dead of night?

Blondie swallowed nervously. “Hey, bro, did you get an upset stomach too?”

There was no response.

His gaze fixed on the feet visible through the gap. 

Under the faint moonlight, he realized something was wrong. Those feet didn’t belong to any of their group. They looked like an old person’s—brownish, wrinkled skin, with a deep, dark mark around the ankle, as if something had been tightly bound there.

“Village chief?” Blondie called out again, his voice trembling.

Still no answer.

Blondie squinted to get a better look, and what he saw made his face turn ashen. His blood ran cold, and his breath caught in his throat.

It wasn’t one foot. There were two—standing side by side, facing his stall.

The toilet paper slipped from Blondie’s hand. Every hair on his body stood on end, and he slowly tilted his head upward.

The wooden partition wasn’t very tall, and as he looked up, he saw an elderly face peering down at him from over the top of the partition. The moonlight cast an eerie pallor over the face, which was expressionless, with unblinking eyes staring straight at him. The old person wore a tall ceremonial hat and a voluminous burial shroud, the kind used to dress corpses for burial.

When their eyes met, the old man’s pupils shifted slightly. His face twisted into a grotesque, venomous scowl full of malice.

Blondie: “…”

Blondie: “AAAAAHHHHHHH!”

Outside, Lin Jing had been watching the black cow in the nearby shed. The animal was enormous, with sharp, sturdy horns. Its tail swayed idly as it slept.

Just as Lin Jing reached out to touch one of its horns, he was startled by Blondie’s piercing scream, so loud it felt like it could shatter roof tiles. The sound was ear-splitting.

Lin Jing turned around and saw Blondie bolting out of the outhouse, barely pulling up his pants. Tears and snot streamed down his face, and he looked utterly terrified.

“Bro, there’s a ghost! A ghost!” Blondie was shaking all over, his hands trembling. “There’s a ghost in the toilet!”

Lin Jing deftly avoided being grabbed by him and asked, puzzled, “You didn’t wipe before you came out?”

Blondie choked, but the sight of the old man in funeral attire had traumatized him too much. He broke into sobs again. “That’s not the point! There’s a ghost in the toilet! It scared me to death!”

Lin Jing patted Blondie’s shoulder in a gesture of comfort. “I’ll go take a look.”

But before he could take more than a couple of steps, the village chief’s angry voice rang out from behind them. “What’s there to look at? What’s all this yelling about in the middle of the night? If you don’t want to stay, then get out!”

Blondie’s scream had been so horrifying it woke everyone in the house. Most of the lights on the first floor were now on, though no one came out.

The village chief appeared barefoot, holding a candle. His face was twisted with rage, and he yelled, “Who was screaming?!”

Blondie, still shaken, now found the village chief’s angry, sinister face surprisingly comforting. Trembling, he stammered, “Village chief, there’s something unclean in the outhouse!”

The village chief’s patience wore thin as he glared at Blondie like he was an idiot. “An outhouse without something unclean isn’t an outhouse! Is the stuff you cr*p out clean?”

Blondie was nearly in tears. “That’s not what I meant—”

Lin Jing interrupted with a smile, “Village chief, don’t mind him. He’s just acting up. We went to use the outhouse, and now we’ll head back to sleep.”

The village chief, looking thoroughly annoyed, shouted, “Sleep, my *ss! Get back inside and stay there! No more wandering around at night!”

Though the village chief was scrawny and bent like a stick, his aura was fierce, like a madman.

Blondie started to protest, but Lin Jing quickly clamped a hand over his mouth. Smiling apologetically, he said, “Understood, village chief. Thank you, and good night.”

The village chief shot him a cold look before walking into the outhouse himself, holding a red cloth in his free hand along with the candle.

As Lin Jing dragged Blondie back inside, he noticed the village chief’s red cloth but said nothing.

On the way back, Blondie was still rattled, babbling incoherently. “There really was a ghost in there! An old man in burial clothes, with a tall hat. He looked right at me, and his eyes moved. I swear there’s a ghost!”

Lin Jing licked his lips and decided to remind him, “Bro, haven’t you realized by now? We’re in a supernatural village script.”

Blondie froze in place, stunned, before his emotions collapsed again. He started crying anew and clung to Lin Jing’s arm. “Brother Lin, I can’t live without you!”

“Oh, too late for that.”

Brother Lin had already decided to abandon him. 

Making such a ruckus and disturbing everyone’s sleep, and now refusing to wash his hands or wipe properly after using the toilet? Unforgivable.

As they reached the house, Lin Jing spotted Xu Wanzhi at the doorway and paused briefly.

The imposing figure seemed to have been awakened by the commotion. Dressed in a black shirt and trousers, with a tall, lean frame and a cold aura, Xu Wanzhi stood silently in the moonlight. A string of dark red prayer beads glinted faintly on his wrist as he leaned against the rotting wooden door.

Xu Wanzhi’s gaze briefly swept over them before shifting to something behind them.

Lin Jing, already intrigued by Xu Wanzhi, felt certain they might have met before.

But for now, he had a priority: dealing with the stinking, bawling Blondie. As they crossed the threshold, Lin Jing paused and came up with an idea.

Turning his head slightly, Lin Jing’s slender fingers rested lightly on Xu Wanzhi’s shoulder. His eyes curved into a smile, as clear as a gentle breeze under a bright moon. “Brother, can I borrow your room to sleep on the floor?”

Blondie: “?!”