You made all the streamers on the internet kneel before you when you were asked to make a game.

Lu Zhixing stopped and looked in the direction of the sound.

In the middle of the road, there was indeed a small ball made of colorful strips of cloth.

You have triggered a random event: "Little Red's Ball".

[Task objective: Help the little girl "Little Red" retrieve her ball.]

[Mission Reward: Unknown.]

[Mission Risk: Unknown.]

Lu Zhixing looked at the ball, then at the door crack that was only a finger's width wide.

He couldn't see the little girl's face behind the door.

All that could be seen was a pale little hand clinging to the door frame.

He was silent for a moment before asking.

Where are your parents?

Why am I leaving you home alone?

The voice behind the door fell silent.

It took quite a while before it rang again.

"Father... went to chop wood."

"Mother...is making me new clothes."

"They'll be back soon."

Lu Zhixing nodded, but instead of walking towards the ball, he spoke softly through the crack in the door.

"It's getting dark, it's not safe outside."

"Don't open the door to strangers when you're alone."

"Go back quickly."

After saying that, Lu Zhixing stopped and continued walking towards the end of the village.

Behind the door, silence fell once again.

Just a dozen meters after Lu Zhixing walked out, a shrill scream suddenly came from behind him.

"My ball! My ball!"

Why didn't you help me pick it up!

"You're a bad person!"

With a scream, the wooden door was suddenly pushed open with a "bang".

A little girl wearing a red bib and with two pigtails rushed out of the house.

Her face had no features, only smooth, white skin.

In her arms, she was holding something bloody and still throbbing.

That thing looked like a...

human heart.

But the faceless girl did not catch up.

There seemed to be an invisible boundary that confined her to her own front door.

Lu Zhixing never looked back.

He simply memorized the keywords "Little Red," "Faceless," "Ball," and "Human Heart" into his mental database.

This village was indeed full of traps.

That seemingly simple random task could have disastrous consequences if accepted.

When he bent down to pick up the ball, perhaps what was being hollowed out was his own heart.

Lu Zhixing continued on his way.

Along the way, we encountered several more similar "random events".

There was a woman hiding by the well, crying, asking him to help her retrieve something.

There was an elderly man lying on the roadside, groaning and asking him to help him up.

There was also a child sitting on the roof, singing a creepy nursery rhyme, inviting him to play "hide-and-seek".

Without exception, Lu Zhixing chose to ignore them all.

He kept Professor Chen's advice in mind.

Observe more, listen more, and speak less.

Before understanding the core rules of this village, any excessive kindness or curiosity could drag one into an abyss of no return.

Finally, Lu Zhixing reached the end of the village.

A building taller and more complete than any other house appeared before him.

It was an ancestral hall built with blue bricks and black tiles.

Two huge, pale white lanterns hung at the entrance of the ancestral hall.

Instead of ghost faces painted on the lanterns, two large, elegant characters were written in vermilion ink.

[Chen Family]

Upon seeing this surname, Lu Zhixing's heart stirred.

The Chen family?

Is it the Chen family from "Double Happiness" and "Out of the Dark" who hired a murderer to arrange a ghost marriage?

Or is it just a coincidence?

The main gate of the ancestral hall was open.

It was pitch black inside, like a giant maw ready to devour its prey.

The sound of chanting emanated from inside, accompanied by the monotonous "tap, tap" sound of a wooden fish being struck.

Lu Zhixing straightened his clothes and stepped inside.

The ancestral hall has a large interior space.

A rich aroma of incense wafts towards you.

But mixed in with the scent of incense was a faint, almost imperceptible, stench of rotting corpses.

In the very center of the ancestral hall, hundreds of black memorial tablets are enshrined.

In front of the memorial tablet, there is a long offering table.

On the offering table, dozens of white candles were lit.

The flickering candlelight stretched the shadows of the memorial tablets on the wall into jagged, menacing shapes.

A middle-aged man, dressed in a black robe, thin and with a goatee, was kneeling on a prayer mat with his back to the door, chanting sutras while striking a wooden fish.

He must be the "village chief" the one-eyed old man was referring to.

Lu Zhixing didn't make a sound to disturb them, but simply stood quietly at the door.

About five minutes later, the chanting stopped.

The sound of the wooden fish stopped.

The middle-aged village chief slowly stood up from the prayer mat and turned around.

His face was very pale, a deathly pale color devoid of any blood.

Her lips, however, were so red they looked as if they were smeared with blood.

His eyes were long and narrow, and sinister, looking at people like a venomous snake lurking in the shadows.

"So you're the new scholar?" The village chief's voice was high-pitched and thin.

"My name is Lu Zhixing. I greet the village chief." Lu Zhixing bowed respectfully.

The village chief scanned Lu Zhixing from head to toe with his venomous eyes.

"Hmm, not bad, he's a scholar."

He nodded, a stiff smile on his face.

"Now that you've come to our village of the unjustly killed, you're one of us."

"However, the village has its own rules."

"The people in our village don't engage in production, and they don't concern themselves with outside affairs."

"I only do one thing every day."

He pointed to the densely packed memorial tablets behind him.

"We make offerings to our ancestors, recite scriptures and pray for their well-being, and try to dispel their resentment."

"Since you are a scholar, you must be literate."

"From today onwards, you will stay in this ancestral hall and follow me to chant scriptures for our ancestors."

"When did you memorize all the names and life stories of all the ancestors in this ancestral hall?"

"When did you become a true villager of our Village of the Wrongfully Dead?"

The main questline has been updated.

[Task Objective: In the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall, chant scriptures for three days and recite the life stories of ten "Chen Clan Ancestors".]

[Mission Reward: Obtain the identity of "Villager of the Village of the Wrongfully Dead".]

[Mission Penalty: Failure will result in being regarded as an "outcast" by the village chief, and your soul will be extracted and used to make an eternal lamp in the ancestral hall.]

Memorizing his life story?

Lu Zhixing glanced at the hundreds of memorial tablets and understood.

This is the test of his identity as a "scholar".

It is also a test of his talent of "photographic memory".

"Yes, village chief," Lu Zhixing replied respectfully.

"Hmm." The village chief nodded in satisfaction.

He took a new prayer mat from under the offering table and threw it next to himself.

"Kneel down."

"I will teach you first the 'Rebirth Sutra' of our Chen clan."

Lu Zhixing did as instructed and knelt on the prayer mat.

The village chief knelt down again and struck the wooden fish once more.

"The profound origin of heaven and earth, the root of all vital energy."

"Through countless eons of cultivation, I will prove my supernatural powers..."

The high-pitched chanting of sutras once again echoed in the empty ancestral hall.

As Lu Zhixing recited along, he also diverted some of his attention to observe the memorial tablets.

Although these memorial tablets all bear the surname Chen, they are arranged without any particular order.

Some of the memorial tablets looked very new, with the inscriptions clearly visible.

Some were covered in dust and cobwebs, clearly indicating that no one had cleaned them for a long time.

He fixed his gaze on the memorial tablets in the front row.

[The ancestor of the Chen family, Chen Fugui, was born in... and died in... His life was filled with good deeds and generosity, but he died tragically from ingesting poisonous mushrooms, his intestines ruptured and his spirit remained unyielding.]

[The ancestor of the Chen family, Chen Dazhuang, was born in... and died in... Biography: He possessed superhuman strength and was an honest and kind man. While chopping wood on the mountain, he was struck by a runaway horse and plunged off a cliff, his body shattered to pieces, and he died with his eyes wide open in disbelief.]

[The ancestor of the Chen family, Chen Qiao'er, was born in... and died in... Biography: Skilled and beautiful, she fell in love with a scholar from a neighboring village, but her parents betrothed her to a local gentry as a concubine. On her wedding day, she committed suicide by jumping into a well.]

……

Each memorial tablet has a brief biography imprinted on it using magic.

And the ending of each life story describes an unnatural way of dying.

As expected, they were all people who died unjustly.

Lu Zhixing recited the scriptures while rapidly memorizing this information.

With his photographic memory, he memorized the life stories of nearly fifty memorial tablets in the first three rows in less than half an hour.

But he discovered a strange place.

These biographical descriptions are all too "simplistic" and "stereotypical".

It's as if...someone deliberately made it up.

The wealthy, who are generous and charitable, often die in accidents.

Honest and simple-minded strong men always meet a bad end.

Beautiful and kind-hearted girls are often troubled by love.

This doesn't feel like real life.

It's more like... a scene from a play.

A hint of doubt arose in Lu Zhixing's heart.

What you see is not necessarily the truth.

Perhaps the "truth" recorded on these memorial tablets is itself a deception.

He decided to test the waters.

"Village Chief," Lu Zhixing stopped chanting and asked.

"Hmm?" The village chief also stopped and gave Lu Zhixing a dissatisfied look.

"I have a question," Lu Zhixing said, pointing to the memorial tablet named "Chen Qiao'er."

"Since this ancestor Chen Qiao'er committed suicide by jumping into a well for love, why didn't the person she loved die with her?"

"After her death, did she become a water ghost, seeking revenge on the unfaithful scholar and her parents who had forced her to commit suicide?"