“Impersonated me?” Du Lai frowned. “You’re all right though?”

“We’re fine,” Shen Mo said. “The paper figure doesn’t seem to have any offensive capability. But that raises a question — if that’s the case, why did it appear at the door of our room?”

Was it just to frighten them — to add to the horror atmosphere of this game?

No one had any answers.

Bai Youwei said, “Let’s start with what you found out about the Bone-Carrying Woman.”

Du Lai saw the paper and pen on the table and picked them up to sketch a diagram.

There were twenty-three households in the village in total. He drew them as squares and mapped out their rough distribution, then circled two points — one at the far east and one at the far west.

“There’s an old willow tree at the east end and an old locust tree at the west end. Based on what I observed and the tracks from the cart wheels, the Bone-Carrying Woman’s route looks roughly like this…”

He drew a winding line running from the eastern point to the western point, then looping back — essentially a circuit around the entire village.

“A woman aged somewhere around seventy or eighty, pushing a flatbed cart, with a thatched mat on the cart. Beneath the mat — what looked like skeletal remains.” Du Lai gave a concise summary. “I didn’t show myself, so I can’t say for certain whether she’s aggressive.”

“You only saw the old woman?” Bai Youwei asked skeptically. “But the voice I heard sounded like a very young woman.”

“Mine too,” Fu Miaoxue also said. “The voice sounded very young.”

Du Lai shook his head. “I didn’t see anyone else.”

Shen Mo said, in a measured tone: “Then we now have two problems. One: why did the paper figure in the house suddenly appear at the door of our room? Two: why does the Bone-Carrying Woman’s voice sound so much younger than the old woman Du Lai actually saw?”

He paused at that point, looked at each of them, and said, “If you have any thoughts right now, go ahead and share them.”

“Every single household in this village has its doors shut — no one comes out, no one even opens up. Only the old scholar’s place had its door open for us. That means tomorrow, in addition to going into the village to ask around, it would be wise to find an opportunity to investigate this house.” Bai Youwei spoke first.

Fu Miaoxue said, “Don’t forget — the reason we got in here was because we recited that ancient text. If we want other villagers to talk to us, it’ll probably take some effort too. Just like the Riddle Kingdom I played before — every resident had their own test! The game themes are different, but many of the mechanics carry over!”

Bai Youwei nodded in agreement.

Once you’d played enough games, you’d start to notice: no matter how the rules changed, certain principles always ran through them.

“The fundamental purpose of carrying the bones is burial,” Shen Mo analyzed. “As long as we figure out why the Bone-Carrying Woman hasn’t buried them after all this time, the end of this game shouldn’t be far. Let’s wait until daylight and investigate together.”

A faint smile crossed Du Lai’s weary face. “So it looks like this is a mystery-puzzle game — to solve A, you usually need B; to solve B, you usually need C; and in the end, when A, B, and C all come together, you get your answer.”

Fu Miaoxue sighed. “So tedious. I hate having to use my brain~”

Bai Youwei said, “I love using my brain.”

“Why?” Fu Miaoxue blinked at her with wide, innocent eyes.

Bai Youwei patted her own legs and said, “Because everything else is hard to move.”

“Oh…” Fu Miaoxue suddenly understood.

A moment later, she felt something was off. She looked uncertainly at Bai Youwei, then at Du Lai, and asked in a low voice, “Why does it feel like she just insulted me?”

Du Lai laughed despite himself, took Fu Miaoxue’s hand, and said to the others, “We’re heading back to our room. Let us know if anything comes up.”

Shen Mo gave a slight nod.

None of the four were newcomers — they each had their own way of approaching the game. With the plan confirmed, they each returned to their rooms to rest. The frightening episode of that night seemed like nothing more than a small interlude.

—