Taoyuan Village

After entering the mountain, Ding Shi began sorting through his luggage. Lifting the shoulder pole with one hand, he formed a hand seal with the other and obtained a Luggage Card. Next, he began organizing his items. Each person had only four item slots. First off, the Bell Card could not be unequipped—it possessed the ability to attract ghosts and could not be kept on his person, or it would jingle with every step, instantly turning Ding Shi into Tang Seng and drawing countless demons and monsters. The Luggage Card was also a necessity; only an idiot would climb a mountain carrying thirty-five jin of luggage. He hadn't learned how to use the talisman paper yet. Though it could be kept on his person, it was too precious, so he had to reserve a slot for it. The remaining items were sweet potatoes, water, cigarettes, matches, a flashlight, and a claw hammer. Ding Shi tried putting the sweet potatoes and water into the luggage, but the system refused to convert them into a card. The reason was that the luggage had been packed by the village chief, so it could be regarded as a single item unit. A player could turn a bag into a card, but they could not stuff a bag full of items and then turn the bag into a card. This was to prevent players from exploiting loopholes—such as storing hundreds of cards inside a card album. However, this rule did not apply to small items; as long as a player could hold identical items in the palm of one hand, they could be turned into a card. Examples included the "Bunch of Earthworms" card, "Bunch of Small Stones" card, and the like. If your hand could hold two sweet potatoes, you could turn both into a card; the concept of "holding" required the hand's coverage area to exceed fifty percent. If you could lift or support a single item with one hand, such as a rock, you could also turn that rock into a card. The mechanics of card conversion were relatively complex, and even after spending quite a bit of time studying them, Ding Shi hadn't fully figured them out. Taking advantage of the remaining daylight before the sun set, Ding Shi found a spot to eat one sweet potato, converted the second sweet potato into a card and stowed it away, and stuffed the third sweet potato into his left pocket. In his right pocket went the cigarettes, matches, and water. With the claw hammer tucked into his waistband behind his back and flashlight in hand, Ding Shi set out on his way. This mountain path was less than thirty centimeters wide, and the long leaves of weeds spreading from both sides essentially covered the trail. Every season, Daoist Baiyun would take this path to make a trip to the village, where the village chief would prepare grain, vegetable seeds, and other daily necessities for him to carry back. Thinking of this, Ding Shi felt a deep admiration for the seventy-year-old Daoist Baiyun. A round trip between Baiyun Temple and Taoyuan Village took six hours, not to mention hauling tens of jin of supplies. Conclusion: There was wool to be sheared from this Daoist. With his mind made up, Ding Shi quickened his pace. After walking for about half an hour, the sky had turned completely dark. A sky full of stars indicated that the moon would not be showing itself for the time being, leaving him to rely entirely on his flashlight to navigate. All of a sudden, a fork appeared in the path ahead. Ding Shi instantly drew his claw hammer. According to the village chief, Mount Taoyuan had only one path, which led straight to Baiyun Temple. If he wasn't mistaken, he had encountered a shanxiao. What a bullcrap casual instance. At night, the insects in the grass were incessantly noisy. Ding Shi listened quietly for a minute, but heard no unusual sounds around him. Which path should he take? Ding Shi chose to retrace his steps. Ding Shi's reasoning: First, the path he came from was safe. Second, once he retreated, the shanxiao would face the dilemma of whether to follow. If it followed him, the illusion of the fork it had set up would collapse, and a swift dash back would let him pass through this area before the shanxiao could reset it. The shanxiao was clearly a bit cleverer than Ding Shi had anticipated. After backtracking about twenty meters, Ding Shi discovered that a fork had appeared on the original path as well. Worse still, the two paths were identical, like twins. Ding Shi realized a problem: Blind Zhao hadn't told him how many shanxiao were in the mountain. Sure enough, pitfall-laying bastards were everywhere. Ding Shi turned around and resumed heading forward, walking twenty meters back to the fork. The left path led into darkness; the right path led into darkness as well; and shanxiao were lurking in the grass on both sides. Once he chose the wrong path, the shanxiao would lead him to the deserted graves, where he would be trapped by malevolent ghosts. Squatting at the fork, Ding Shi reached out to grab a handful of yellow soil from the left path. With a snap of his fingers, a Yellow Soil Card appeared in his hand. Interestingly, the image on this Yellow Soil Card showed plenty of weeds, yet Ding Shi's eyes saw no weeds on the path. Therefore, the left path was false. But was the right path genuine? Ding Shi followed suit, and the yellow soil on the right also contained some weeds. That meant both the left and right paths were false. In folklore, this situation was called ghost blinding—a ghost covered your eyes, allowing you to see only part of reality. In the Yita World, it was an illusion cast by a shanxiao. Ding Shi reached toward the grassy patch between the fork, pressed his palm into the earth, and scooped up a handful of dirt. Once it became a card, the Yellow Soil Card showed no weeds at all. In other words, the true path was concealed beneath the illusion; whether Ding Shi chose left or right, he would have been led to the deserted graves. This creature was truly cunning! While Ding Shi was playing in the dirt, a shanxiao in the grass on the left crept up on him from behind at an angle. A shanxiao's combat capability was close to that of an adult human. But what if it launched a sneak attack? What if it were two against one? Just as the shanxiao drew within half a meter, Ding Shi abruptly spun around and brought the claw hammer in his right hand mercilessly smashing down onto its skull. With a crack, the shanxiao's skull shattered, and it collapsed to the ground, shrieking in agony. Ding Shi lunged forward, pinning the shanxiao's neck with one hand while raising the claw hammer with the other, pounding it again and again into its forehead until all vital signs ceased before finally standing up. Only then did Ding Shi pick up the flashlight that had dropped to the ground to inspect the shanxiao. It had an ugly monkey face and some muscle, though far from the build of a chimpanzee. Ding Shi flipped the creature over with his foot and glanced down: male. He now had a clear grasp of a shanxiao's combat strength. Ding Shi disliked shanxiao that wore no clothes—it meant they carried nothing of value. Had Ding Shi forgotten there was still another shanxiao? Of course not. Shanxiao B had fled the moment it saw Shanxiao A's skull smashed, which was when Ding Shi threw himself onto Shanxiao A. Shanxiao B had bolted in terror, but it might regain its wits and return to support Shanxiao A. Ding Shi's decisive brutality was precisely to finish off Shanxiao A before Shanxiao B could potentially return. Then how had Ding Shi detected Shanxiao A? A shanxiao weighed around seventy jin. Although moving through the tall grass, its movements were agile, and in theory it wouldn't make much noise, especially with the deafening chorus of insects masking its tracks. Unfortunately, the shanxiao had overlooked one thing: its presence caused the insects in the surrounding grass to fall silent. When the shanxiao closed within five meters of Ding Shi, he had already noticed the anomaly. The shanxiao's strategy of creeping up slowly had afforded Ding Shi the time to plan his move, allowing him to successfully incapacitate it with a single strike. Against a pincer attack by two shanxiao, an ordinary person would have had virtually no way out. Not everyone could decisively swing that full-force blow with a hammer; not everyone would leap forward without hesitation to finish the shanxiao off for good, unbothered by blood and brain matter spraying over their body and face. ... With the shanxiao dead, although no experience points were awarded, the true path appeared. As he hurried along, Ding Shi mulled over a question: in theory, no players would take this path. Both the shanxiao and the ghosts at the deserted graves had an extremely low appearance rate. Put in Earth terms, the developers had poured a massive amount of resources into Mount Taoyuan, yet the utilization rate was abysmally low and entirely cost-ineffective. So why invest resources in Mount Taoyuan at all? Ding Shi thought of Zhang San and Zhao Liu. Both had recurring daily quests: Zhang San offered a stick of incense every morning, and Zhao Liu delivered a jar of pickled vegetables every morning. Furthermore, Li Si was on the night patrol, and Sun Qi suffered no penalty even if he couldn't complete his quests. In other words, all four of them had ample time to explore the instance world. Yet the players lacked this mindset; far from venturing into the mountains to explore, they were barely familiar with the village itself, living there entirely passively. Ding Shi's trip up the mountain this time was likewise due to quest requirements, not his own intention. Had Li Si and Zhao Liu not courted death, he never would have learned of Blind Zhao's existence in the village, nor would he have had any interaction with San Niang Temple, let alone climbed Mount Taoyuan in the middle of the night. Conclusion: Exploring the instance was an essential, must-do endeavor.