Chapter 7: Crossing the River
Shi Yuntian liked to turn his brain off when he played games, but he was no idiot.
After hearing Lu Shufan’s horrified whisper and taking a closer look at the heavy iron chains inside the cages, Shi Yuntian quickly figured out what this place was used for.
“You mean…?”
Lu Shufan dropped the rusted chain. The easygoing smile he always wore was completely gone. Faced with a scene this twisted, even an award-winning actor wouldn’t be able to force a smile.
He pointed a trembling finger toward the end of the tunnel. “That door should lead outside. Let’s see what’s behind the mountain.”
“Alright,” Shi Yuntian grunted. He gathered his strength, raised his massive sword, and smashed the reinforced door apart in two brutal strikes.
The heavy door crashed to the ground, but no sunlight spilled into the cave.
The two men looked up and froze. Blocking their path was another “mountain.”
Except, it wasn’t made of stone or dirt. It was a towering slope piled high with snow-white bones.
At the sudden, overwhelming sight of so many human remains, Lu Shufan violently shuddered. Even the fearless Berserker didn’t dare take a step forward.
Swallowing hard, Shi Yuntian tentatively reached out with his heavy blade and pushed aside the bones near the stone wall, carving out a narrow pathway. Ignoring the sickening numbness crawling up his scalp, he carefully squeezed his way through the pile of remains.
“Dumbass, don’t just stand there! Get over here and look for clues!” he called back.
“…” Lu Shufan swallowed dryly. He quickly drew a cross over his chest, then clasped his hands together like a Buddhist monk. After frantically praying to every god from East to West, he curled his shoulders inward and nervously crept through the mountain of bones.
He kept himself at one hundred and twenty percent alert the entire time, terrified that his clothes might brush against a single skull.
Once they finally pushed past the horrific pile, they found themselves looking down at a neighboring village.
The game’s season was late winter, and the villagers below were busy loosening the soil to prepare for spring planting. Hearing the clattering of bones, several elderly farmers looked up toward the mountain. Seeing the two strangers, their eyes filled with intense caution and disgust.
Lu Shufan quickly raised his hands, swearing up and down that he and Shi Yuntian had absolutely nothing to do with Gangan Village.
An old farmer approached cautiously, sniffing the air around them. “You don’t smell bad. I believe you.”
“Does everyone from Gangan Village stink?” Lu Shufan asked in surprise.
“That’s right,” the old man answered, his voice laced with bitter hatred. “Every last one of them reeks. You can smell their rot from a mile away!”
Shi Yuntian and Lu Shufan exchanged a quick look before pressing the man for the story.
According to the neighbors, Gangan Village used to be a beautiful settlement nestled between the mountains and the river. The soil was rich, chickens and ducks ran through the yards, and the locals were known for being honest and hardworking. It was considered a model community.
Whenever families in the surrounding areas wanted to find good husbands for their daughters, they eagerly married their beautiful young women into Gangan Village.
But no one ever expected that every single one of those perfectly healthy brides would vanish without a trace shortly after the wedding.
When worried parents traveled to Gangan Village to visit their daughters, the village thugs violently blocked them from entering. Late at night, the neighboring villagers began hearing the faint, mournful wails of women echoing from the mountains.
“Women naturally like to cry and make a fuss, so we didn’t think much of it at first,” the old farmer sighed heavily. “Until one day, that heavy door up there opened…”
A skeleton was tossed out into the dirt. Every scrap of flesh had been stripped clean.
At first, the neighbors assumed they were just pig or cow bones. But when they got closer, they realized the horrifying truth. They were human remains.
There was a doctor in the neighboring village who recognized the shape of the pelvis immediately. It belonged to a young woman.
The next day, it happened again. And the day after that.
More and more stripped remains were thrown out the door every single day.
From then on, the men of Gangan Village stopped farming and raising livestock, yet somehow, they comfortably survived year after year. Gradually, a sickening stench of decay began seeping from their pores. The surrounding villages were so disgusted they refused to go anywhere near the place, let alone marry their daughters to the men there.
No one knew exactly when it started, but the men of Gangan Village, unable to find wives, began gathering at the village entrance every evening. Whenever outsiders passed by, they would sing their eerie nursery rhymes, demanding wives and mountains of gold.
“Pah! Even if my daughter grew old and died alone, I would never let her marry into Gangan Village!” the old farmer spat furiously at the ground. “Those beasts eat people—and they specifically eat women!”
The old man explained the village’s dark secret. After a new bride’s wedding night, her husband’s family would drag her into the caves, chain her up in an iron cage, and force her to breed a big, healthy son for them.
When the infant wailed for food, the husband wouldn’t feed it grain or animal meat. First, he would force the child to drink its mother’s milk. If she ran out of milk, he made the child drink her blood.
And when her blood ran dry, the child was encouraged to gnaw directly on its mother’s flesh. This was how they “continued the family line.”
“I heard that in Gangan Village, they call human flesh ‘pork.’ If one family can’t finish all their meat, they share the extra ‘pork’ with their neighbors…” The old farmer stopped talking and looked closely at Lu Shufan. “Young man, your face is completely white. Are you alright?”
Lu Shufan couldn’t speak. He clutched his stomach, dropped to his knees in the dirt, and violently clawed at his throat, retching uncontrollably.
He remembered their very first evening in Gangan Village. Granny Li had warmly served them a plate of stir-fried vegetables with little bits of minced meat mixed in.
What had the sweet old village chief said at the time? “We slaughtered a pig before the New Year.” A pig. Pig…
Lu Shufan’s stomach violently revolted, and he threw up until there was nothing left but burning stomach acid.
Seeing Lu Shufan collapse, Shi Yuntian remembered the meal too. His face drained of all color. He turned away and began vomiting with heartbreaking force.
The two men knelt in the dirt and threw up for half an hour, nearly passing out from the sheer physical and mental exhaustion. Only then did they manage to support each other back to their feet. They thanked the old farmer and stumbled back through the bone pile to tell Su Qiong and Yu Qimiao the horrific truth.
“I just remembered something,” Shi Yuntian rasped, his face still pale green as they walked back. “That night… Yu Qimiao didn’t touch the food.”
From the moment they entered the game, the Orphan Alliance had done everything together. That single plate of food was the only difference between them.
“So that’s what happened,” Lu Shufan groaned, filled with agonizing regret. “I remember we even made fun of him for being a bleeding heart and losing his appetite.”
“…” The two men exchanged a miserable look. Karma.
When they finally dragged themselves back to the cave to report their findings, Lu Shufan took one look inside and screamed.
“Ah! Who are you?!”
A stunning beauty dressed in a traditional red bridal blouse and skirt, her long black hair pinned up elegantly, lifted her eyelids and gave him a look of absolute disdain.
It was a look from someone who was very used to being the smartest person in the boardroom.
It was unmistakably Yu Qimiao.
“Wh-why are you wearing women’s clothes?!” Shi Yuntian’s eyes nearly bulged out of his skull.
Yu Qimiao was mortified beyond words. He firmly kept his mouth shut, refusing to speak.
Su Qiong floated out from behind the billionaire. “I borrowed these clothes from Li Ting. Granny Li said she was saving them for the girl’s wedding.”
“Okay, but why is Boss Yu wearing them?”
“We need to cross the river at dusk. The warning sign explicitly says men are forbidden from entering,” Su Qiong explained in his sweet voice. “My Mimicry Cloak can blur the river’s perception just enough to help him cross, but it can’t change his actual physical appearance. He has to look the part.”
The Yang-Yin River had one absolute rule: Men must not enter this river.
There had originally been several female players assigned to Gangan Village, and the system likely intended for them to complete this hidden quest. Unfortunately, the terrifying old bachelors had scared them all into quitting before they even stepped foot in the village.
As a man, Yu Qimiao would definitely trigger a lethal punishment if he tried to force his way across. So, Su Qiong came up with a brilliant workaround: Yu Qimiao would crossdress as a bride, and the Mimicry Cloak would cover up the flaws.
Su Qiong might just be a string of code, but he had great fashion sense and was surprisingly good at doing hair. In the red bridal gown, Yu Qimiao was undeniably gorgeous.
Su Qiong sighed inwardly. It was a shame his own character model was a featureless marshmallow; there was no way to dress himself up. He was still incredibly jealous of Apple’s fancy throne, her little cape, and those giant sparkling diamonds.
“Brother,” Shi Yuntian patted Yu Qimiao’s silk-covered shoulder, his voice deeply solemn. “Go without fear. The Alliance will never forget your brave sacrifice.”
Yu Qimiao slapped his hand away coldly, then looked at the little marshmallow. “Is this enough? What about you?”
“I’ll be fine.” Su Qiong looked down at his squishy white belly. “I don’t even have a real body. How could I have a gender?”
His soft, cute voice made them all feel a little sorry for him. Yu Qimiao’s overflowing capitalist compassion flared up again. “Can you buy a body from the system shop?”
“Mm,” Su Qiong nodded, opening his shop panel.
To obtain a physical body, Su Qiong needed to pay exactly 5,000,000 KPI.
There were five million rookie players currently logged into IF. That meant he would have to murder every single player in the game once. Alternatively, if he just farmed Those Who Obey Me Win for points, the murderer would have to revive over 1.6 million times.
It wouldn’t matter much to him, Su Qiong reasoned logically, but my bandages would definitely get frayed after slicing his neck a million times.
If Those Who Obey Me Win knew what the marshmallow was thinking, he would have coughed blood. You’re really planning to shear the same sheep to death, aren’t you?!
After a long, deathly silence, Lu Shufan cleared his throat dryly. “Actually, being a marshmallow is pretty cute.”
“Exactly! There’s no need to get a human body, right?” Shi Yuntian quickly agreed.
Su Qiong obediently held up a little sign: I want one.
The three men simultaneously looked away, whistling innocently. Sorry baby, we can’t afford that price!
Desperate to change the subject, Lu Shufan quickly recounted everything they had learned from the neighboring village behind the bone mountain.
After listening to the gruesome tale, Yu Qimiao felt deeply relieved, but his sharp mind immediately went to work. “So… could eating the village’s food be the trigger condition for the boss’s elimination skill?”
“I think the specific trigger is eating the meat,” Su Qiong corrected. “Humans need basic food to survive. The game wouldn’t create a scenario where you have to completely starve to death to win.”
“That makes perfect sense. Let’s test it tonight,” Yu Qimiao said.
“How?”
Su Qiong laid out the plan. “Yu Qimiao will divide his money into three equal portions. During dinner, one player will eat absolutely nothing. The second player will eat only the plain cornbread. The third player will eat the dish with the minced meat.”
“No, no, no!” Lu Shufan and Shi Yuntian violently shook their heads, absolutely refusing to touch the cannibal meat.
Yu Qimiao had narrowly dodged a bullet the first time and obviously didn’t want to eat it either.
“It’s just meat,” Su Qiong said. As an emotionless string of code, he didn’t understand the psychological horror of cannibalism. Still, he decided to be cooperative. “Fine. I’ll find another player outside to serve as the meat-eating control group.”
“Mm-hmm!” “Su-su, you are my literal god!”
In the blink of an eye, the sun began to sink toward the horizon.
The Orphan Alliance sat nervously around the dinner table, none of them daring to even look at the plate of minced meat.
Granny Li noticed and frowned. “Is there too little meat in the dish? Do you boys not like it?”
Lu Shufan shook his head so hard it blurred. “We’re all vegetarians! We don’t eat meat at all!”
“Exactly! If I eat meat, my poor mother in heaven will cry!” Shi Yuntian added shamelessly.
Granny Li was deeply moved. “Oh my, you are all such good, filial children!”
Having successfully fooled the mimicry NPC, they waited until the sky darkened. Following Su Qiong’s instructions, the three men quietly dragged the old ferryman’s bamboo raft to the water’s edge and helped Yu Qimiao step aboard.
Yu Qimiao wore the red bridal dress hidden beneath Su Qiong’s gray Mimicry Cloak. Just as they hoped, the cursed river didn’t reject him or sweep him away.
Yu Qimiao took the long wooden oar and began rowing toward the opposite bank. During the day, the river was barely fifteen feet across. But now, in the twilight hour, the water seemed to stretch endlessly into the horizon.
He rowed for a very, very long time. Gradually, the raft drifted into a vast, breathtaking sea of crimson flowers rising from the water.
The flowers bloomed in massive, dense clusters. Their petals were long, delicate, and threadlike, glowing with a color that looked like both fire and fresh blood.
Red spider lilies. Manjusaka—the flowers said to guide the dead through the underworld.
The flowers looked soft and weightless, but as Yu Qimiao rowed deeper into them, he felt a tremendous, heavy pressure trying to push him back. He gripped the oar tightly with one hand and clutched Su Qiong’s squishy arm with the other.
Su Qiong sat perfectly calm. Somehow, the little white marshmallow’s presence gave Yu Qimiao an immense sense of security.
“Are you afraid?” Su Qiong asked softly. “There’s still a long way to go. We can turn back now.”
Yu Qimiao shook his head firmly, tightening his grip on the NPC.
Then, faint whispers began brushing against his ears. It sounded like women talking.
One voice. Then two. Then three…
Countless voices began weaving together, growing from weak, ghostly whispers into a powerful, overlapping chorus of sorrow that physically pierced Yu Qimiao’s eardrums.
“When I was eighteen, I traveled a thousand miles to marry into your family. I entrusted the rest of my life to you.”
“I carried your child in my belly. You promised you would always treat me well.”
“Was locking me in an iron cage while I cried tears of blood and screamed my throat raw your way of treating me well?”
“You tore my own flesh and blood from my arms, no matter how desperately I begged you.”
“I was locked alone in the pitch black for so long… I pulled my own hair out strand by strand. I gnawed off my own fingernails.”
“And then… finally, you came back. You smiled and coaxed me. You said you were taking me home. You said you would slaughter a pig for me to eat.”
“I was so happy. I thought you had finally come to your senses. I thought we were going to live a normal life.”
“And then? You turned the butcher’s knife on me. You carved my flesh away, slice by slice, while I was still breathing, because you said the meat wouldn’t be fresh if I was dead.”
“How freezing was the snow behind the mountain? How freezing was the water at the bottom of the river?”
“Do you know?”
“DO YOU KNOW—?!”
Yu Qimiao clamped a hand tightly over his own chest, gasping for air. He hadn’t personally experienced any of it, but listening to the raw, agonizing betrayal left him unable to breathe. His heart ached so fiercely it felt like it was being crushed in a vise.
Su Qiong was just code. He had no human emotions and shouldn’t have been affected at all.
Yet, as he sat on the raft listening to the women’s weeping accusations, his code seemed to absorb their profound, bone-deep sorrow.
“Perhaps it was a mistake from the very beginning. We should never have let the promise of happiness blind us.”
“We didn’t hear the cries echoing across the mountains. We didn’t hear the weeping beneath the water. We didn’t hear the warnings…”
The voices stopped abruptly.
The bamboo raft bumped against the opposite shore.
Su Qiong and Yu Qimiao looked up. Standing on the bank was another broken stone monument. Carved deeply into the stone were the words:
Yin-Yang River.
Beneath the name, two desperate, blood-red lines were written:
Little sister, turn back! Do not cross this river!
