Chapter 673: A God Enshrined in a Wooden Cabinet
“Do you remember the game background mentioned that the locals here would offer their best room to guests? That best room is actually where they enshrine their gods,” Tian Kunwen said. “As for which specific god, it’s unclear. They say the idol is kept inside a wooden cabinet.”
“Has no one ever opened it to look?” Yi Pei asked.
“Most of those who opened it have gone missing,” Fu Danhong said. “Last night, two players also disappeared from the guesthouse. When Tian Kunwen and I went to check, those two families had already been interrogated three times, and one person was dead. They refused to confess, insisting that they must have offended the god and that’s why they were being punished.”
“With that premise, the other players wouldn’t dare open the cabinet to see what god is enshrined inside either.”
So after searching around, the players still had no clue why the disappearances were happening.
If only those who had seen the idol went missing, then You Jun’s disappearance didn’t make sense.
“Could it be that You Jun saw the idol somewhere?” Yi Pei suggested.
“He came with us, went to the same places, and saw the same people. If he had unknowingly triggered the instance’s killing condition, then we should all be marked,” Tian Kunwen said, more worried about that.
“You Jun might have seen the idol,” Xu Huo said at this point. “He was the one who went to open the door last night. Logically, he should have looked through the peephole first. If the idol appeared outside the door, then he would meet the condition.”
The group exchanged glances. Fu Danhong dialed the front desk and asked the manager to bring some snacks up.
The manager quickly ran up. As soon as the door opened, Tian Kunwen and Wei Xian dragged him inside, pinned him to the ground, and demanded, “Was it you who knocked on the door last night!”
The manager’s face was distorted as he mumbled, “What do you think you’re doing! Let go! Or I won’t be polite!”
“How exactly are you going to be impolite?” Xu Huo stepped on his head, leaned down, and pressed a dagger against his neck. “I ask, you answer. If you don’t, don’t expect to leave this room alive.”
The manager’s face showed fear as he said, “Boss, what do you want to know? Ask away! I’ll tell you everything I know!”
“Was it you who knocked on the door last night?” Xu Huo asked.
“What knocking?” the manager said. “I got off work early yesterday. Didn’t you call the front desk earlier?”
“Not answering the phone doesn’t mean you weren’t there,” Wei Xian twisted his arm back. “If you don’t tell the truth, you can say goodbye to this arm!”
“What’s going on with the missing people? Talk!”
“So that’s what you wanted to ask…” The manager twisted his mouth. “Why didn’t you say so earlier? Why go through all this trouble…”
Xu Huo pressed down harder with his foot. “You can skip the unnecessary words.”
The manager bit into the carpet, and only when the pressure on his head eased did he quickly say, “All of us in Sifang Palace City have gods protecting us. Any outsider who bullies us will face retribution!”
Tian Kunwen’s grip loosened slightly.
Xu Huo pressed down even harder. “Do you think we’re that easy to fool?”
“What I said… is the truth…” the manager struggled to say. “Every household here enshrines a god, so of course we receive divine protection. You want to bully people? Just wait—you’ll get your comeuppance!”
The players weren’t fazed by verbal threats. Fu Danhong pushed Xu Huo aside and stood in front of the manager, placing a rapidly spinning watch before his eyes. “Stare at this, watch it carefully. I’ll ask, and you’ll answer.”
The manager resisted at first, but soon his expression became dazed.
“How did those people disappear?” Fu Danhong asked.
The manager’s face twitched for a moment before he answered, “They disrespected the god.”
“Why did You Jun disappear?”
“I don’t know…”
“Is the idol not allowed to be seen?”
“Looking directly at the god is an offense to the god.”
Fu Danhong asked a few more questions, but the manager kept repeating the same kind of answers.
“Under the influence of the item, he can’t lie,” Fu Danhong said with a sneer. “No wonder he’s still alive and well despite so many players going missing. He really doesn’t know anything.”
Unable to get any leads, Tian Kunwen threw the manager out, closed the door, and said, “The most likely person to have knocked last night was the manager, followed by other players who arrived early. If the manager doesn’t know, could it be another player?”
The guess that the knocker was a player was reasonable. Wei Xian had gone to the door almost immediately and found no one—the manager shouldn’t have been that fast.
“But wouldn’t seeing the idol trigger the killing condition? That doesn’t make sense,” Wei Xian said.
“Maybe the god here really does protect the locals,” Xu Huo said slowly.
The others fell silent for a moment, then Fu Danhong said, “We just ran into a few troublemakers. Whether attacking the locals triggers a condition will be clear by tomorrow morning.”
“If there’s a power beyond our understanding in this instance, all we can do is avoid triggering the conditions,” Yi Pei said.
“By the way, have you found any bodies—You Jun’s or anyone else’s?” Tian Kunwen changed the subject.
“There’s no sign of anyone being buried in the woods,” Xu Huo said. “Unless the killer really is a god, they should be hidden somewhere in this county town. Even if they were eaten, there would be bones left behind.”
Aside from cannibal players, there was no guarantee that the people in this town didn’t eat humans.
The players’ faces showed varying degrees of disgust. Yi Pei said, “I don’t think so. Most of the people here are elderly or children. The number of young adults is less than a tenth. Some households don’t even have a single young person.”
“Not surprising. In such a closed-off place, with the locals being so superstitious, if I were young, I wouldn’t want to stay either,” Wei Xian said.
“I’m going back to rest,” Xu Huo said. The wound on his arm was acting up again, and sweat was beading on his forehead.
“I’ll eat first and then go out,” Fu Danhong said, crossing her arms as she saw him out.
Xu Huo turned and headed to his room. Yi Pei caught up and handed him a bottle of medicine, smiling as she said, “You look pretty badly hurt. This is a special medicine—it might help.”
“Thanks,” Xu Huo accepted it, then added, “Could I borrow your voice recorder to listen to?”
Yi Pei readily handed it over.
“Let’s go eat together,” Wei Xian called out to her.
The group left together. Xu Huo closed the door, checked the room, and then pressed play on the recorder.
Just as Yi Pei had said, when the topic of Sifang Palace City’s religious history came up, the locals couldn’t explain much. When asked about the enshrined deity, they dodged the question or changed the subject, as if they truly didn’t know.
This contradicted the manager’s account.
The residents avoided the topic of enshrining gods, while the manager claimed that the god they worshipped could protect the locals from being bullied.
Xu Huo didn’t think a god would be so idle or have such a broad scope of protection—otherwise, no one would have knocked on the door last night.
But regardless of how people disappeared, it was tied to religion, which meant it was tied to the idol… He swept his gaze over the walls covered in relief carvings, then shifted his attention to the peephole on the door and the mirror in the bathroom. He picked up the phone and called the front desk to order a batch of small mirrors from the manager.
(Chapter End)