In Zhang Yuanqing's experience, in a dungeon where the objective was to survive for twenty-four hours, the worst thing one could do was wander around like a headless fly, drifting aimlessly from place to place until disaster struck and sent them back to the Spirit Realm in death.
It was not like dungeons with explicit objectives that straightforwardly spelled out what to do and what to look for.
Thus, what Zhang Yuanqing needed to figure out first was what dangers lurked in this dungeon. Once he understood that, everything would become much simpler.
There was no rush to find Wang Xiao'er just yet; he would ask what the Cat King Speaker knew first... Standing outside the courtyard gate, Zhang Yuanqing pulled the compact, delicate Cat King Speaker from his trouser pocket.
"You've been here before, right? Got anything you want to tell me, like information about the dungeon?" Zhang Yuanqing asked.
Silence was his only answer.
*This thing never behaves without a beating...* Zhang Yuanqing raised a hand and slapped it twice across its body. "Think carefully!"
Having taken a beating, the Cat King Speaker crackled with electric static. The next second, 3D surround sound blasted through the surroundings:
"Aaaah... Lord Demon Lord, please, be gentle..."
*Clap clap clap clap...*
Zhang Yuanqing's lips twitched. Silently setting the Cat King Speaker down by his feet, he drew the chipped Bloodthirsty Blade and pressed its tip against the speaker, saying expressionlessly, "So these are your last words? Very well, I'll send you to see your previous master right now!"
He silently exerted force, the tip of the blade etching a tiny nick into the speaker's black metal casing.
The decadent moans were instantly replaced by electric static.
The Cat King Speaker had capitulated, cueing up the next audio clip.
Holding his threatening posture, Zhang Yuanqing inwardly breathed a sigh of relief, muttering to himself, *Actually, I kind of wanted to know who the female lead was this time...*
*Besides, judging by the sounds, Demon Lord, you were acting as the man behind a mistress again...* Having developed an experienced ear, Zhang Yuanqing thought quietly to himself.
Just then, a young girl's tender, ethereal singing drifted from the Cat King Speaker:
"You clap one, I clap one, play a game before day is done."
"You clap two, I clap two, touch your tongue and ears will do."
"You clap three, I clap three, with a shadow we are three."
The song was sung in a monotonous rhythm; the more one listened, the more spine-chilling it felt.
It was at once the most innocent and the most terrifying thing.
*What kind of underworld nursery rhyme is this...* Zhang Yuanqing listened quietly until the end. After confirming that the playback was finished with nothing following, he shoved the Cat King Speaker back into his trouser pocket and turned the rhyme over in his mind.
"'Play a game before day is done'—a blatant hint that danger will come after dark, and playing the game is the method to avoid disaster. But what game? Uh, if I remember correctly, the song itself describes a game, just like 'Drop the Handkerchief.'
"So the game to play is clapping hands—you clap one, I clap one? The second line, 'touch your tongue and ears will do,' is easy enough to understand...
"The third line, 'with a shadow we are three'—three should represent the number of players."
*Hiss—*
Zhang Yuanqing suddenly felt something was off. The line "with a shadow we are three" was deeply eerie.
How could a shadow play a game? If a shadow really joined in, it would be a game of pure horror.
Based on his understanding, he figured the third line was a warning: if they could not gather three people, a shadow would join the game.
The shadow was very likely the danger itself.
"Myself plus the yin corpse can count as two. Little Doubi is a spirit body and cannot speak, so he probably cannot be chosen as a player. That means I need to find one more person to play with me."
*Wait!*
Zhang Yuanqing looked toward the rammed-earth cottage, thinking to himself, *Isn't that old man right there ready and waiting?*
However, an intuition struck Zhang Yuanqing. Controlling the yin corpse, he re-entered the rammed-earth house and pried open the old man's mouth despite his frantic struggles.
There was no tongue in the old man's mouth—it had been cut out.
"Sure enough, it's not that simple. The second line, 'touch your tongue and ears will do,' completely blocked off this shortcut... No, rather, it's telling me what I must do next."
Find the tongue!
Or rather, restore the old man's tongue.
"I'll follow this line of thought and try to confirm it first. In a dungeon like this without explicit instructions, the only way to find a path to survival is through constant probing and deduction.
"I don't have much choice anyway. If my reasoning is wrong, my only option will be to clash head-on with whatever monstrosity haunts this village."
He looked up at the sky.
A thin layer of clouds shrouded the dilapidated mountain village. There was no sun, which made it easy to lose all sense of time.
"Danger will come after dark, so I don't have much time left. The anomalies in the village originated with Wang Xiao'er, so if I want to find the tongue, Wang Xiao'er ought to be my breakthrough point." Zhang Yuanqing's thoughts were crystal clear.
The village was not enormous, but it was not small either. Finding Wang Xiao'er's house would not be easy. Clearly, this was a hurdle designed to stall for time and ramp up the difficulty.
If he wasted too much time on this step, he would not find the tongue before nightfall.
Then he would have to face the crisis directly.
How could he locate Wang Xiao'er as quickly as possible? After a moment's contemplation, Zhang Yuanqing thought of a solution.
*Thud!*
Corpse No. 1 bounded over the rammed-earth wall and landed beside its master, carrying the violently struggling old man on its shoulder.
"Ah, ah, ahhh!"
The old man shouted angrily, thumping Corpse No. 1 with all his might.
He seemed furious; they had clearly said goodbye!
"Old sir, you need to take us to Wang Xiao'er," Zhang Yuanqing said.
The old man ignored him, continuing to struggle stubbornly.
Having already figured out the proper way to interact with the old man during their previous exchange, Zhang Yuanqing rested the Bloodthirsty Blade against his neck.
Sure enough, the old man fell silent.
The two people and one corpse reached an understanding and headed toward the west end of the village.
Walking through the lonely, desolate mountain village, there was neither barking of dogs nor chirping of birds. Oppression and eerie dread permeated every corner.
Zhang Yuanqing secretly summoned Little Doubi and sent him into houses along the road at random to scout. He discovered that every house contained villagers; they were hiding indoors, looks of panic on their faces, constantly glancing toward the windows and doors as if terrified of something.
*A bit strange. The people in this village are actually all alive?*
*Although that means Wang Xiao'er is likely alive as well, which is a good thing, it's still rather bizarre... What are they afraid of? Sigh, too bad they cannot communicate or speak, so I'm destined to get nothing out of them...*
*Also, where is the female ghost? I haven't sensed the aura of a vengeful spirit at all.*
After walking for about ten minutes, the old man on Corpse No. 1's shoulder suddenly let out two muffled "ah, ah" cries.
By then, they had stopped outside a small courtyard at the west end of the village. Its walls were built from irregular stones.
The courtyard gate was unlocked, standing half-ajar.
"Is it here?" Zhang Yuanqing raised the Bloodthirsty Blade.
The old man nodded warily.
Zhang Yuanqing split his will in two at once, leaving one half in his physical body and channeling the other into the yin corpse. He then made Corpse No. 1 set the old man down and walk up to the gate alone, pushing it open with a creak.
As soon as Corpse No. 1 stepped into the courtyard, a bout of coughing sounded from the stone house, followed by a voice that sounded choked with thick phlegm:
"Who is it?"
*He can speak?* Corpse No. 1 raised an eyebrow and replied in a similarly phlegm-choked rasp:
"Are you Wang Xiao'er? I'm an outsider. I heard about what happened in the village, so I came to have a look."
He spoke very cautiously, terrified of saying a single wrong word that might trigger a hidden hazard. Thus, he avoided words like "ancient tomb" or "female ghost," and did not even specify what had happened in the village.
Hearing the man inside the house speak, Zhang Yuanqing knew his reasoning was correct.
This Wang Xiao'er was a key figure in the dungeon. While the other villagers could not communicate, Wang Xiao'er could.
The person inside the house fell silent for a few seconds before asking:
"What do you want to know?"
Zhang Yuanqing probed, "Why is everyone in the village unable to speak?"
"...A while back, I ran into an itinerant Taoist priest. He said the back mountain was a treasured land of feng shui, and there was bound to be a grand tomb hidden in the hills. He wasn't wrong. Ever since I was young, I heard the village elders say there was a tomb in the back mountain, supposedly from the Ming dynasty.
"Buried inside was a noble commandery princess, accompanied by copious funerary goods, but no one had ever been able to find the tomb's location. That Taoist priest gave me a string of copper coins, saying he needed someone familiar with the mountain paths to guide the way, so I agreed.
"We entered the mountains at noon and wandered around for an entire day. By nightfall, that Taoist actually managed to find the tomb."
*That Taoist could pinpoint tombs by feng shui? Which sect was he from...* Zhang Yuanqing groused inwardly.
Wang Xiao'er continued, "The Taoist told me he wouldn't take a single coin of the funerary goods; they would all belong to me. All he wanted were any ancient texts inside the tomb, if there were any.
"So the next day, I gathered tools, food, and water. Spending a full day and night, the Taoist and I dug open the ancient tomb."
Hearing this, Zhang Yuanqing interrupted, "Ancient texts? What kind of ancient texts was he looking for?"
The phlegm-choked voice replied:
"The Taoist said that the princess was a cultivator in life who lived for two cycles of sixty years. The imperial family scoured the world for secret arts, including no small number of ancient classics, so there had to be secret methods among the princess's funerary goods. Approaching the end of his lifespan, he wanted to risk it all by entering the tomb... What a fool. If the princess knew the secret to immortality, how could she have died?
"What use are ancient texts and secret methods compared to solid gold and silver treasures?"
*Yet another one chasing longevity. Cultivators from the Ming dynasty all seem obsessed with immortality.* Zhang Yuanqing asked:
"And what happened after that?! What does any of this have to do with the villagers being unable to speak?"
"Of course it has something to do with it..." Wang Xiao'er said from inside the stone house. "My health is poor, and speaking across this distance is exhausting. Come inside. Come inside, and I'll tell you."
***
Gladiator Arena.
Yin Ji, her face veiled in black gauze, frowned as she overheard the conversation among her fellow sect members nearby. "Mute Village..."
She felt the name sounded somewhat familiar.
A few seconds later, she remembered where she had heard it.
Yin Ji looked toward Fu Qingyang, who was clad entirely in snow-white, and spoke in a soft voice:
"Mute Village is extremely dangerous."
Fu Qingyang turned to look at her, his gaze deep and calm. "How do you know?"
Yin Ji said, "I remember the Demon Lord mentioning that Mute Village was the only dungeon during his Transcendent stage where he almost died and suffered severe injuries. Even the S-rank dungeons he entered before Mute Village never left him in such a wretched state."
When speaking of the Demon Lord, her tone was natural and her demeanor graceful, as though that ill-fated romance was not something shameful to be hidden away, but an open, upright memory that could be recounted without hesitation.
Hearing this, the Elders turned around one after another.
Elder Gou's button-like eyes opened slightly as he pressed in a loud voice, "Why do you say that?"
Chapter 224