The sky is dim, there is no sunlight, and layers of gray clouds are evenly spread in the sky, giving everything a lifeless tone.
When Yu Xing opened his eyes from his sleep, what he saw was such a strange scene.
The streets in front of us are simple, old and narrow. White money is floating everywhere in the shops on both sides. The plaques have very directional words such as "Funeral Service" and "Shroud Hearse" written in black ink. Some shops have hanging hangings on their doorways.
The black and white portraits show dignified smiles on their white faces, old or green, looking directly at him.
He was sitting at the entrance of the alley, and the sound of suona came faintly from the end of the alley, accompanied by a group of tuneless howls, and the cold wind lingered on his collar.
It seems that Yu Xing came to a funeral alley somewhere.
But……
The decoration style of this alley is a bit too retro, like a street scene from 20 to 30 years ago.
He lowered his head and looked at himself. The warm down jacket had disappeared, replaced by a pure white gown. The gown was old, and the cuffs and other easily worn areas had been washed away, revealing a color that was weaker than pure white. If you were not careful,
It's not easy to see.
The lower body is wearing white trousers and a pair of simple flat cloth shoes. Like the long gown, it looks like it has been worn for a long time, washed, rubbed, and mended.
Except for this miserable white outfit, he didn't bring any of his belongings with him. He only had a small red cloth bag hanging around his waist.
Zhao Yijiu and Zhao Ruru were not in Yu Xing's sight. After observing himself amidst the faint funeral sounds in the distance, he looked around again. He didn't find his teammates, but he saw a small stool placed at the door of the nearest store.
There was an old man sitting on it, wearing a vest and wide trousers.
Is it an NPC?
Seeing Yu Xing wake up, the old man looked at him while smoking his pipe, shook his head, and said in an old tone that sounded like a smile and a sigh: "You can't go back, young man, you can't go back."
Yu Xing was not in a hurry and asked with a smile: "Old sir, what did you say?"
"I said, if you enter this ghost alley, you will die and you will never return to the human world! Young man, look back."
Yu Xing turned his head and looked cooperatively, and saw that the exit of the alley that was supposed to lead to other roads was actually blocked by a wall, without any gaps.
In other words, he was trapped, with no way out except to the end of the street.
But this is not bad news for him. The rule of Death Parallel is to complete the task in stages. He has to find the task target in the scene and then go to the next stage.
This alley has always been the scene in the first stage. It cuts off a path for him, but eliminates the option of wasting time for him. He can just walk along the front and find what he needs to do.
Yu Xing stood up from the ground, patted the spider webs stuck to the corner of his gown, and looked polite and casual: "It doesn't matter, old gentleman, I want to ask, apart from me, have you seen anyone else enter by mistake?"
Here?"
There were two beads hanging on the small bag about the size of a palm around his waist. When he stood up with his legs bent, they collided with each other and made a soft sound.
The old man took another look at him, his eyes lingering on the small bag for a moment, and he only saw the word "鬼" neatly embroidered on it.
"It turns out it's the little guy who got entangled in here, cough cough cough..." The old man choked on his cigarette, and coughed while holding his chest. After a while, he regained his breath, and then continued, "Two or three people your age have already come here.
, haven’t we found a way out yet, cough cough cough… If you delay for two more days, you will die. Why don’t you stay here to accompany me, an old man, and I can give you some food.”
As Yu Xing woke up, the barrage in his live broadcast room also became active. He had been discussing the atmosphere of setting up the scene before. At this time, after hearing the old man's words, he watched the excitement happily, and people who didn't observe carefully spoke one after another:
[Is this a hint? This old man definitely knows a lot, talk to him!]
[Fortunately, I am calm. I was shocked when I followed his gaze just now and saw the old man. This old man was too distorted]
[No way, the old man obviously wants to keep Xing, but can’t Xing find Zhao Ruru and Lengjiu?]
[Accompany the old man, have something to eat, get the clues, feel happy]
"It seems that someone has indeed been here recently. Thank you, old man, for reminding me." Yu Xing seemed not to have heard the old man's dissuasion, and it was even more impossible for him to see what the barrage was saying. His eyes slid over a circle of black marks on the old man's neck.
Then he moved away quietly.
"You'll be hungry if you go in." The old man also wore a pair of cloth shoes on his feet. The soles rubbed against the dusty ground a few times. Seeing that Yu Xing didn't intend to stay, he added, "It's nothing to get entangled in."
What a happy ending... let’s eat and then hit the road.”
Yu Xing smiled gratefully, like a young man rejecting the kindness of his elders: "No, I'm not hungry."
The old man stared at him for a long time, then blew out a puff of smoke from his pipe, sat on a stool and hummed a tuneless tune, as if he didn't intend to pay any attention to him anymore.
“Then I’ll say goodbye. I have something to do here. I’ll burn some good cigarettes for you another day.” Nodding slightly to the old man, Yu Xing looked at the endless funeral shop in the alley and walked a few steps forward.
[He refused??]
[Such a great opportunity to find out information, it would be a pity to miss it like this. Although it doesn’t seem necessary now, it might slow down the progress]
[Oh my God, please shut up those people upstairs. Can’t you tell there’s something weird about the old man?]
[The handsome guy is at the scene and can see it much more clearly than you guys who are mindless. Of course he has his own reasons for not agreeing. This is the parallel line of death, not one of those unpopular little live broadcasts. I beg you to move.
Think about it, please don’t lower your barrage IQ, okay?]
[Didn’t you hear? What Xing said was “I’ll burn some for you another day”, emphasis added, he thought the old man was a dead man]
[I seem to see strangulation marks on the old man’s neck]
[real?]
Yu Xing’s white cloth shoes made no sound when he stepped on the dusty stone road. However, after walking for about ten steps, he seemed to hear an old sigh.
Looking back, the old man just now had disappeared, leaving only an empty small stool with a layer of dust that had accumulated for a long time.
A cloth shoe stood crookedly next to the stool, with a drop of dried blood congealed on the toe.
"..." Yu Xing's eyes moved, and he saw that he was right. The old man had died a long time ago. If he agreed to stay with him, he might not even be able to survive the two or three days that the old man said, and he would not be able to escape by force without using sacrifices.
It's just a dead word.
As for the food, the food in the ghost's mouth is not something normal.
The atmosphere of this deduction was different from all the deductions he had experienced before. It was ordinary, but it seemed that a crisis would come inadvertently.
At this moment, he quickened his pace and walked towards the direction where the suona came from.
The road was filled with wreaths and baskets. I don’t know who died, but they actually reported the funeral on the funeral street. The flower baskets were collected one after another, stretching all the way to the street.
The sonorous music is not as sad as in the real world, but has an indescribable weirdness in it.
Yu Xing listened carefully and even heard a hint of joy and reconciliation in the music.
The appearance of the old man is not just a trap. He asked Yu Xing not to enter this street. To a certain extent, it also represents the position that the old man ghost and something on the street have an antagonistic relationship.
He also said that Yu Xing was "entangled in by ghosts", but he didn't know what he meant.
While secretly remembering the information revealed in the old man's words, Yu Xing carefully observed the shop behind the wreath, trying to find traces of the presence of living people. At least Zhao Yijiu and Zhao Ruru should not be too far away from him.
However, except for the old man ghost at the entrance of the alley, no shopkeeper appeared, and the shop was left unattended.
From time to time, a corner of the shroud is stretched out in each shop and swayed back and forth with the wind. If you are not careful, you will think that a living person is hanging on a beam and swinging.
The shelves in the shop were filled with paper money, golden paper ingots, and white paper flowers in bunches. Next to the shelf, a paper man with a big painted face painted with inferior paint stood there stiffly with big eyes.
Look outside.
There were coffins placed next to some paper figures. Yu Xing did not enter the store to check. He just walked forward along the alley. As he got closer to the end of the alley, the mourning sounds gradually became clearer. He paid attention to the surrounding shops and listened.
Wrote some words.
“Woo woo woo…”
"You died so miserably...hahahahaha..."
“Boss Liu, we all welcome you...”
“You’re finally down, my son and I are waiting for you!”
“Woo woo woo…”
Every line of mourning sounds so sincere that the word "wail" cannot be an exaggeration to describe it. Just by carefully correcting the lines, you can feel that the mourners have been looking forward to it for a long time and are gloating about the misfortune.
Insert an app: a perfect replica of the old version of the book-chasing artifact and a replaceable source app—— .
Yu Xing listened for a long time and couldn't help but want to joke: "Hey, you seem quite happy?"
“Woo woo, Liu”
At the moment when he murmured, the crying stopped and the suona suddenly stopped, as if his voice was heard, and they all died out.
Yu Xing was a little surprised.
No way, from such a distance, he could still be heard even if he said something softly?
He couldn't help but focus his attention and listened carefully to the movement at the end of the alley. A series of footsteps came from far to near, hurriedly. Yu Xing only felt a wave of great malice coming towards him. He calmed down and quickly hid.
Behind the wreath.
The footsteps were getting closer and closer, but Yu Xing still stood there without moving. He felt that with his own skills, he should be able to ensure that he would not be discovered by the coming things, but a helpless and urgent voice suddenly sounded in his ears: "What's wrong with you?
You don’t know how to hide, come in quickly!”
Then, a thin arm stretched out from behind the wreath, grabbed Yu Xing's arm, and pulled him to the coffin shop next to him with a slightly surprised expression.
The soft long hair poked Yu Xing's neck. He raised his eyes and saw a tired but faintly beautiful face.
This is a young woman, in her mid-twenties, wearing the same white gown as him. She looks like she is attending a funeral. She also wears light makeup, but the makeup is a little off, making her face not so clean, and her temperament looks like
They are people in the real world.
She quickly pulled Yu Xing to squat down behind the counter, raised her index finger and said "Shush": "Don't make any noise, don't show your head, it's coming."
“Who?” Yu Xing obediently hid his figure, and when he looked into the store again, he was a little surprised.
He and the woman were not the only two people in the coffin shop. Behind several coffins, there were many pale people hiding. They were all dressed in white shirts. Some were older, some looked to be in their teens, and some were lying on their backs.
Some of them were half-kneeling, covering themselves tightly. No wonder he didn't see anyone outside the shop.
One of the thin, middle-aged men emphasized: "It's a paper man. The paper man is coming! Stop talking!"
Everyone else nodded, as if they were afraid that Yu Xing would make any noise and everyone would be ruined.
Yu Xing understood and stopped asking questions for the time being. He quietly listened to the footsteps and stopped outside the coffin shop, with his thoughts flowing in his mind.
Among so many people, not one of them is a Deducer participating in the live broadcast, not to mention that it is impossible for him not to meet his teammates as soon as he comes in, but to meet other teams first.
So...these people are all NPCs automatically generated by the game? Just like the confused Zhou Qinghai who was kidnapped from the town by Carlos in Coffin Village?
should be.
He came to a conclusion and heard a very unpleasant sound outside.
"Who is it?" The sharp voice was neither male nor female, with excitement and coldness, "I heard someone talking, who is here?"
The woman who pulled him into the coffin shop had an ugly face. She squatted down and curled herself up into a ball, with a drop of cold sweat oozing from her forehead.
Looking at the woman's reaction, Yu Xing knew that the person speaking outside was the paper figure in these people's mouth.
The sound of footsteps lingered nearby, and it seemed that he was not planning to leave for a while.
Speaking of which, what does a talking and walking paper man look like?
Yu Xing took advantage of the woman's attention not being on him and secretly peeked out at the entrance of the shop.
He saw a piece of pale paper head.
It is really a paper man, a paper man the same size as a human being.
The paper man had his back turned to him at this time, and his colorful clothes were bright and shabby, but a little brighter than the real people wearing white gowns.
Its limbs are stiff, and it seems to fall apart every time it moves. Its body shape is similar to that of a human, but not so natural, which shows that the workmanship is rough.
It turned around.
Yu Xing adjusted his angle and caught a glimpse of the paper man’s face.
It is a piece of white paper pasted together, with a flat face and all the facial features drawn in ink. It has no hair, narrow eyes, a red mouth, and two particularly joyful blushes on its cheeks.
The mouth opened a slit, and a male-female voice leaked out from the slit: "Are you coming to attend Boss Liu's funeral? Wuwuwu... There are others attending Boss Liu's funeral. Who are they?
Come out quickly...I'll take you there and we can attend the funeral together?"
Those who were hiding were trembling and dared not come out.
No one could be found. The expression of the paper man did not change, it was the same exaggerated laugh, but its tone gradually became irritable, and the tone became higher and higher: "Come out quickly! Come out quickly! Let's attend the funeral together!"
The sharp sound echoed in the ears of everyone in the coffin shop. Some people almost cried, but their mouths were immediately covered by the people next to them.
The paper man has been walking around on the street, staring at every nearby shop with evil eyes, as if searching for his prey.
But it did not enter the store to search, otherwise Yu Xing and the people in the coffin shop would have been exposed long ago.
About five or six minutes later, the paper man reluctantly left and disappeared towards the end of the alley.
It wasn’t until the suona and mourning sounds started to sound again that the people in the coffin shop breathed a sigh of relief. The woman sat back and wiped her face nonchalantly. Suddenly, her face, which had already taken off makeup, became even more discolored.
Yu Xing looked at that miserable little painted face without words, and felt the urge to remind him.
Noticing Yu Xing staring at her face, the woman was stunned for a moment, then became embarrassed: "Handsome guy, if you want to flirt with me, why don't you go out from this alley?"
ˆ Yu Xing: “…”
He smiled politely: "Sorry, I have no such plan. I just wanted to ask, why are there so many people here?"
Including Yu Xing himself, there were actually seven or eight people crammed into a small coffin shop. Including the area occupied by the coffins, the place was already very crowded.
Furthermore, Yu Xing glanced around and didn't see Zhao Yijiu or Zhao Ruru. He had been prepared before he came in, otherwise it would definitely be Zhao Yixu who fished him in.
"Huh, speaking of this," the thin middle-aged man just now snorted angrily, "It's not that paper man. At first, we didn't know that we would be heard when we talked on the street. We were discovered by it. In order to avoid it, we
We could only stay trapped in the store. Later, more and more people came in. In order to prevent accidents, we quietly gathered everyone and hid together."
After the middle-aged man spoke, others started talking to Yu Xing.
“Yeah, it’s too dangerous!”
“Who says it’s not the case? My husband and I were really in trouble. When we first stumbled into this hellish place, we were scared to death!”
“I’m almost starving to death. Thanks to Sister Xue. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be alive now.”
“Yes, yes, yes, I’m really indebted to Sister Xue, she also gave me my medicine!”
In the midst of the quarrel, Yu Xing figured out what they wanted to express.
The seven or eight people present were all nearby residents.
At some point, they might be on their way home or out for fun, and they stepped into a strange alley, and their vision went dark. When they woke up again, they were here.
All of his original clothes were gone, replaced by white shirts for funerals, and all his belongings were missing.
The entrance to the alley was blocked by a wall, and there was a paper man guarding the end of the alley. No one dared to go there. A brave man found a knife to chop up the paper man, but his head was almost twisted off by the paper man, and the knife also broke.
.
After staying in this funeral alley for two or three days, there was no food or drink, and many people were almost unconscious.
Zhou Xue is the woman who dragged Yu Xing into the coffin shop. She came later. She originally went sightseeing in the ancient town with the tour group, but got lost along the way. Then she entered this alley in a daze and encountered this house while avoiding the paper man.
people.
The only good news is probably that Zhou Xue, as a tourist, brought a backpack of food, water, and medicine when she came in. She was kind-hearted and willing to share, so she was able to save the lives of the people who were trapped in the first place.
But now, the supplies are gone.
Being frightened by the paper man again, Zhou Xue looked tired: "That's the thing. Handsome guy, you are also very unlucky. Well... don't be too desperate. Now that you have come in, just adjust your mood. Instead of
In despair, why not work harder to find a way out."
Yu Xing nodded in agreement: "You are right. Do you have any ideas on how to go out these days?"
"It's only at the end of the alley. Although we don't know if there is such a thing as a way out here...but we can't give up hope, right?" Zhou Xue was a little frustrated, but she glanced at other people who were more decadent than her. These people
Injured and disabled, it is obvious that he needs mental support.
She paused and said: "I originally wanted to take a look at the end of the alley while I still had the energy, but the further I went there, the stronger the paper man's perception seemed. If he made the slightest movement, he would come out.
I tried twice without success, so I don’t dare to go again for the time being, it’s too scary.”
Yu Xing saw that she seemed to be out of sorts and seemed to remember the experience of avoiding the paper man at close range, so he comforted her and asked, "Is everyone in the alley here?"
“Probably, everything I’ve seen is there.” Zhou Xue said.
Hearing her answer, Yu Xing narrowed his eyes slightly.
Strange, aren't Zhao Yijius and Zhao Ruru here? Impossible, team deduction, in a stage, the team should not be directly separated.
He thought for a while and told a few lies: "But I met an old man before I came here. He said that two young people had come in."
Zhou Xue’s eyes widened a little: “Ah?”
She recalled carefully and shook her head: "I didn't meet them. When I came in, there were seven people in front of me. I took them to hide, and you were the last one."
She felt a sense of sadness in her heart: "This ghost alley goes straight and there is no other route. I have searched towards the end of the alley and I haven't seen anyone. If there are really two people, I'm afraid..."
“No, he shouldn’t be dead.” Yu Xing wanted to say that she hadn’t seen him before because Zhao Yijiu and Zhao Ruru hadn’t come in yet.
Now, these two people may have reached the end of the alley when they enter the deduction. In other words, there is definitely a safe area at the end of the alley, and there is a plot.
"They are my friends, I have to find them." After saying this, Yu Xing stood up and seemed to be leaving the coffin shop.
Zhou Xue hurriedly grabbed him: "Well... are you sure you want to find your friend alone? The paper man is right over there! Aren't you afraid? And... can you find a way out?"
She is usually quite timid, but when she gets too close to the paper man, she is so frightened that she pouts away. It can only be said that no matter how scary the ghosts in novels and other entertainment products are, they are not half as exciting as facing real ghosts.
This young man looks about the same age as her, so he dares to walk alone?
Yu Xing gently pulled Zhou Xue's claws off his arm and promised: "I believe I can get out, but my friends are very important to me. I must find them first before I can feel at ease."
He looked at the ordinary people who did not dare to interrupt, and said to Zhou Xue: "I'm going to find people. You continue to hide with them, don't let them get hurt again."
Standing in the corner was the man who initially planned to beat the paper man. He now had the gauze brought by Zhou Xue wrapped around his neck, looking pitiful.
Others were also exhausted and were in a state of starvation weakness.
Zhou Xue could only say: "...Okay, then be careful."