A bizarre and terrifying experience; I messed up the dungeon world.

"March 15th—"

It stopped there, as if the carver had suddenly stopped.

Han Yingying wrote these down and continued walking deeper into the village.

Passing by a few more houses, she found a yellowed booklet under the stove in the seventh house. The cover read "Village Chronicle," and inside was written in tiny print.

She didn't look at it closely, but put it in her inventory first, planning to study it later.

When they met up at noon, Lin Yuan had also made a discovery. He retrieved a string of bone beads from the well to the west, which, after examination, was determined to be a prop.

"【Bone Bead】, when worn, it allows you to sense non-natural entities within a radius of thirty meters." Lin Yuan handed the bead to Han Yingying, "If you wear it, your exploration range will be greater than ours."

Han Yingying didn't stand on ceremony and took it, hanging it on her wrist.

We continued exploring in the afternoon.

By the third day, Han Yingying had roughly figured out the village's layout. It was circular, with a stone tablet in the center, houses surrounding it, and farmland on the outermost edge. There was no way out—all directions led to thick fog, and going in would teleport you back to the stone tablet.

That evening, the five of them sat together to analyze the clues.

Han Yingying opened the village chronicle and read aloud the key information: This village suffered a plague a hundred years ago, killing most of its inhabitants. The survivors performed a "ritual" by paving the road with the bones of the dead, saying it would ward off the plague demon.

"Paving the road?" Fang Xu squatted down and ruffled the dirt under his feet. "You mean this stuff we're standing on—"

"Yes." Han Yingying turned a page. "And the ritual requires a living sacrifice. The village chronicle says that the soul of the sacrificed person will remain in the village forever, maintaining the seal."

Su Qing stood close to Han Yingying: "Then... what about the soul?"

"They should still be in the village."

As soon as she finished speaking, the bone bead on Han Yingying's wrist vibrated.

She looked down, and dark red specks of light appeared on the surface of the bead. One, two, three—

It is spread all around.

"Don't move," Han Yingying said in a low voice.

The grey sky suddenly darkened, and footsteps sounded outside. Not just one person's footsteps. Many. A rustling sound, like withered branches dragging on the ground.

Fang Xu's expression changed: "Didn't you say they wouldn't be aggressive for the first three days?"

Lin Yuan pressed down on his shoulder: "It's not mentioned in the village chronicle. Don't panic."

Han Yingying stood up and took out a dagger she had brought from the previous dungeon.

The door was pushed open.

Standing outside was a person—no, a humanoid creature. A withered body, sunken eye sockets, skin clinging tightly to bone. It opened its mouth, but made no sound, yet Han Yingying could read the movement of its lips.

"Walk."

It wasn't a threat, it was more like being driven away.

Han Yingying's mind raced. Where should she send them?

She glanced back at the others and gestured: Follow.

The five people followed those "things" for about ten minutes and arrived at the location of the stone tablet in the very center of the village.

A crack has appeared at the base of the stone tablet. It wasn't there before.

Han Yingying crouched down to look—there was light in the crack, a pale light, shining up from the ground.

At that moment, a figure emerged from the fog.

Zhou Lang.

Han Yingying was stunned for a moment: "What are you doing—"

"I got dragged in too." Zhou Lang glanced around, looking at the other three, his gaze lingering on Fang Xu for a couple of seconds. "What's going on here?"

"It's a long story," Han Yingying briefly recounted her discoveries over the past three days.

After listening, Zhou Lang squatted down next to the stone tablet, looked at the crack, and frowned: "This wasn't triggered normally."

"What do you mean?"

"The rules of the instance state that the secret must be found within seven days. It's only been three days, and it's already revealed the entrance—either we triggered some hidden condition, or…"

He paused, not finishing the second half of his sentence.

Fang Xu leaned closer: "Big brother, what's the choice?"

Zhou Lang stood up and dusted off his knees: "Either this instance has a bug."

Everyone fell silent.

Han Yingying looked at Zhou Lang's profile. When he said the word "bug," his tone was too flat, as if he were stating a fact that had been confirmed many times before.

"You noticed it before?" she asked.

"Hmm." Zhou Lang didn't hide anything. "Starting from the second dungeon, I noticed that some things didn't match the published rules. The difficulty fluctuated abnormally, the reward mechanism worked sometimes and didn't work at all, and the behavior logic of some NPCs was contradictory."

Han Yingying's heart skipped a beat.

She had always assumed all dungeons were of this difficulty. She had always assumed everyone faced the same challenge. After all, she had lost her previous memories, so without comparison, she naturally didn't find anything amiss.

But what if all of this isn't at normal difficulty...?

What level of dungeons did she enter?

"Don't overthink it." Zhou Lang didn't look at her. "Let's get through this first."

Han Ying suppressed her unease. He was right; they could talk about anything else after they got out alive.

The crack under the stone tablet widened on the morning of the fourth day.

Zhou Lang was the first to go down.

There was a passageway underground, the walls of which were embedded with bones, arranged in a dense and orderly fashion. At the end was a stone chamber, in the center of which sat a coffin.

The coffin was open.

It was completely empty.

"The sacrificer is gone." Han Yingying checked the village chronicle to confirm.

Zhou Lang walked around the coffin and found several lines of writing at the bottom. They weren't carved; they were scratched out with his fingernails.

"I'm not reconciled. Let me out. Let me out. Let me out."

The entire page was repeated.

Han Yingying and Zhou Lang exchanged a glance.

The soul of the sacrificer broke free of the seal—that's why those plague demons could appear in the village. The seal was broken.

"How do I pass this test?" Su Qing asked weakly.

Zhou Lang glanced at the system panel; the rules hadn't been updated. Seven days to find the secret and leave alive.

The secret has been found. But the conditions for "leaving alive" have not yet been unlocked.

He stared at the empty coffin, his mind racing.

"We have to get that thing back," he said, "or reseal it."

On the fifth and sixth days, the group searched the village for the soul of the escaped sacrificer. The process was perilous—the plague demons began to attack actively, and Su Qing was almost dragged away. It was Han Yingying who cut off the hand holding her ankle with a dagger.

On the sixth night, they finally found the soul at the edge of the thick fog on the outermost edge of the village.

It wasn't withered and ugly like a plague demon. It looked like a young woman, dressed in a white dress, standing in the mist, tears on her face.

"I don't want to go back," she said. "I don't want to be locked up for another hundred years."

Han Ying's heart tightened. Fang Xu took half a step back.

Zhou Lang stepped forward.

"You don't need to go back," he said.

Everyone looked at him. Including the soul.

"The rules say that finding the secret allows you to leave." Zhou Lang pointed to the village behind him. "The secret is you. You don't have to go back to the coffin—but you have to choose to let us go."

The expression on the soul's face changed.

You're lying to me.

"I never lie to ghosts," Zhou Lang said without changing his expression.