Chapter 674: Where the Young People Went
Just like when he ordered a late-night snack yesterday, the administrator didn’t refuse. “I can call and order it for you, but it’ll definitely arrive very late. I’ll come by to collect the money when it gets here. Have it ready in advance.”
“No problem.” Xu Huo finished speaking and hung up the phone.
After cleaning, reapplying medicine, and bandaging the wound again, he leaned back on the sofa and barely managed to sleep for less than an hour. When he got up, his head was splitting with pain. He unwrapped the gauze to check the wound—it was worse than before he had re-bandaged it.
The King Fungus couldn’t fully repair the wound, which at least meant that what he had been poisoned with wasn’t simple.
He took a container out of the luggage compartment, cut off another small piece of flesh from the wound and placed it inside, then poured in antidote until the piece of meat was submerged.
Putting the container into a prop box and storing it in his item slot, he cleaned the blood off his arm, replenished with a nutrient supplement, and left the hotel again.
He bought some fruit from a small shop nearby and carried it to the home of the grandmother and granddaughter he had visited that morning.
The two were repairing the door. When they saw him coming, their expressions turned wary. Xu Huo stood at the yard entrance. “Can I come in and talk?”
The old woman initially didn’t want to, but under her granddaughter’s pleading, she reluctantly agreed, though her expression was grim.
This wasn’t hard to understand. To the local residents, players might all be the same.
Xu Huo acted very familiar, put down the fruit, and took the initiative to help fix the door. As he came and went, he noticed that the side door next to the main hall was broken, and behind it, there was another door with a large padlock on it.
“Is that your guest room?” he asked. “Could I stay here? The environment at the hotel isn’t great, and I can’t sleep at night.”
Before the little girl could speak, the old woman said angrily, “My home doesn’t take in guests! If you want to stay at a bed-and-breakfast, go somewhere else!”
“I don’t mean any harm,” Xu Huo said with a smile. “Besides, aren’t you worried that the man from earlier might come back?”
“He won’t live much longer!” the old woman cursed through gritted teeth.
The little girl placed the money he had given her that morning on the table. “Thank you for helping me, but I don’t want your money.”
“Consider it a little compensation. Besides, I did damage your yard gate.” Xu Huo paused, then took out “Danger Makes People Blind” and handed it over. “You have something dirty on your face.”
The little girl immediately turned her head away, wiped her face haphazardly, and ran out of the room while urging him, “You should leave now.”
That morning, when he had used the mirror to deal with the player who tried to rape her, he had noticed that the grandmother and granddaughter behaved strangely. Compared to Xiao Yun’s ease with the mirror, they were afraid of it.
Fear—that was more than just an evasive attitude.
Next, he visited several other households with children. He gave the kids some candy and snacks, but when he mentioned letting the children play with mirrors, these people politely declined, as if avoiding a plague.
The resistance was so obvious that asking a few more people yielded some information—not looking into mirrors was their custom. The locals were very particular about it, while outsiders didn’t care.
When asked about religious history, they knew nothing, but they remembered this rule clearly and strictly followed it.
The local residents obviously wouldn’t tell the truth, and pressing them yielded no results. Fu Danhong’s prop had no effect on the administrator, so Xu Huo first thought of a high-level prop or a strong trait restriction. If that were the case, then it made sense that the locals, while terrified of the god they worshipped, still lived here in fear.
After leaving the residential area, he found a kid about ten years old to lead him to a nearby cemetery.
The child ate candy as he spoke. “We don’t do burials here. When someone dies, they’re sunk into the water pit.”
Xu Huo followed him to find the water pit and unexpectedly ran into the black-shirted player he had ridden with yesterday.
They met face to face, and the other nodded at him.
Xu Huo nodded back, then walked through a dense patch of woods. Behind a thicket of thorns, he found the water pit the kid had mentioned.
Calling it a water pit was an understatement; it was more like a lake. The pit was quite large, at least a hundred meters in length and width, stretching deeper into the woods.
This was already far from the county town, and there were almost no signs of people coming here.
“Do they bring all the deceased from the county town here?” Xu Huo tossed a pebble into the water. “No one’s even been here, have they? Are you just trying to trick me into giving you food?”
“I’m not lying!” the kid argued. “Everyone’s gone out to work and never comes home. Who knows if they die out there!”
“Did someone in your family go somewhere else too? Your parents? They never came back to see you?” Xu Huo asked.
“My grandma said they don’t want me anymore… Fine! I don’t want them either! When they get old, don’t think they can come looking for me!” The kid got angry, squatted down, and started pulling at the grass.
“Look on the bright side,” Xu Huo said, patting his head. “Maybe they died out there, and you just don’t know.”
The kid stared at him in shock, then shoved him away. “Your parents are the ones who died!”
Xu Huo smiled. “Think about it—if they weren’t in trouble, would they completely ignore their own child? Besides your family, are there other households where the young people left and never came back?”
The kid looked confused. “Then where did they go? My grandma says they all think home is too poor, so they don’t come back.”
“Then your grandma definitely knows,” Xu Huo said, his smile unchanged.
The kid took the hint and turned to run back, but before he could leave the woods, he ran into his grandmother, who had come looking for him. He rushed over excitedly, calling out “Grandma,” but before he could say anything else, she grabbed him by the back of his collar and smacked his butt twice with her slipper. “I told you not to run into the woods! If a snake bites you, no one would even know!”
The kid didn’t seem to feel the pain at all. “I went with someone else! Grandma, are my parents dead already? And Xiao He’s and Xiao Bing’s parents—are they dead too, and that’s why they never came back?!”
The old woman’s face changed color. She shot a resentful glance at Xu Huo, who had just stepped out from behind. “Don’t listen to outsiders’ nonsense. They just couldn’t take the hardship and ran off, unwilling to come back, leaving us old and young behind. Don’t you ever do this again, or I’ll smash my head against a wall first, and you can bury me before you go!”
With that, she grabbed the kid by the ear and dragged him away.
Xu Huo watched them leave. After a moment, he looked to his right. A man was backing out of the woods over there, bowing and muttering to himself, “No offense meant, I didn’t mean to trespass. Please don’t take it to heart…”
When he turned around, he also saw Xu Huo standing not far away.
Their eyes met, and both could sense something else in the other’s gaze.
Having done so many instances, this was the first time Xu Huo had encountered a real fool.
The man opposite probably felt embarrassed and said to him, “Whatever you do, don’t go rummaging through the statues in the woods, or you’ll get targeted!”
“I already did,” Xu Huo said. “You’re staying on the same floor as me, right? Did you come a day after I did?”
“Cao Dong,” the man introduced himself, then added with a hint of fear, “You saw the statue. Didn’t you notice anything wrong when you got back to your room?”
(Chapter End)