The ancestral hall's main doors let out a teeth-grating creak.
The old man didn't look back.
He simply carried the nearly burned-out kerosene lamp and slowly stepped over the threshold.
"Time... to refill the lamp..."
His hoarse voice drifted into the ancestral hall, as if notifying certain presences inside.
Su Nian didn't follow immediately.
She looked up at the lintel.
Thick dust covered a black wooden plaque. Two large, damaged characters could just barely be made out.
—Li Ancestral Hall.
Her brows furrowed slightly.
It wasn't a land god temple or a mountain god temple.
It was a clan ancestral hall.
Which meant the things worshiped inside weren't gods.
They were dead people.
"Are we... really going in?"
The girl with glasses was trembling so badly that even her voice shook.
No one answered.
Because everyone knew that if they didn't go in, they could only wait outside for the kerosene lamp to go out.
The old man seemed to know they were hesitating.
He didn't urge them. He only slowly raised the kerosene lamp.
The flame.
There was only a tiny flicker left.
As if it would go out the next second.
Su Nian gritted her teeth.
"Go in."
With that, she was the first to step over the threshold.
The instant her foot touched the wooden floor, a chill shot up from the sole of her foot.
There was no electricity in the ancestral hall.
The only source of light was the pair of white candles on the offering table in the center.
The candle flames swayed, making the entire ancestral hall flicker between light and shadow.
Behind the offering table.
Three full rows of memorial tablets.
Packed tightly together.
More than a hundred in all.
Every wooden tablet had a name written on it.
Su Nian only glanced over them, but her scalp already prickled.
Those names...
They were too new.
The wooden tablets hadn't decayed.
The characters looked as if they had been carved only recently.
Just then.
The last person stepped into the ancestral hall.
Bang!
The main doors swung shut on their own.
Everyone whipped around.
Someone rushed over and tugged at the doors.
They didn't budge.
As if something had locked them from the outside.
"Open the door!"
"Let me out!"
"Open it! Hurry!"
Cries and screams echoed through the ancestral hall.
The old man acted as if he hadn't heard a thing.
He slowly walked to the offering table.
Set down the kerosene lamp.
Then.
He took a rusty iron kettle from beneath the table.
With sluggish movements, he poured the liquid inside into the lamp.
The flame flared back to life.
Everyone let out a breath at the same time.
It had been refilled.
At least they didn't have to worry about the lamp going out for the moment.
But Su Nian didn't relax.
She kept staring at the iron kettle.
The liquid pouring from it...
was far too viscous.
It didn't look like kerosene.
It looked more like...
blood.
The old man put the lamp's glass chimney back on and suddenly revealed a strange smile.
"The oil... is enough..."
"Next..."
"It's time for incense..."
The instant he finished speaking.
The three incense sticks on the offering table lit by themselves.
There was no flame.
They simply ignited out of thin air.
Pale blue-white smoke slowly rose and gathered in midair without dispersing.
At the same time.
The System's notification descended once again.
[Side-quest rules activated.]
[Rule One: Before one stick of incense burns out, offer incense to every memorial tablet.]
[Rule Two: Do not offer incense to the wrong memorial tablet.]
[Rule Three: If the incense goes out, people die.]
[Hint: The dead are more honest than the living.]
The ancestral hall instantly fell into dead silence.
The girl with glasses stared wide-eyed.
"M-More than a hundred memorial tablets?"
"How could we possibly finish in time?!"
Su Nian swept her gaze over them too.
At least a hundred and twenty.
And on the offering table.
There were only nine incense sticks.
Her heart sank.
Something was wrong.
The System wouldn't issue an unavoidable death mission.
Since there had to be a way to solve it, the answer had to be hidden in the rules.
She hurried to the offering table.
Her gaze scanned the memorial tablets one by one.
Suddenly.
She stopped.
Several of the memorial tablets had different dates carved into them.
Some were dated twenty years ago.
Some ten years ago.
Some yesterday.
Yesterday?
Su Nian's breath caught.
Someone had died... just yesterday?
Just as she was about to examine them more closely.
A terrified voice suddenly came from behind her.
"D-Did she just move?"
Everyone turned around at once.
At the far left of the offering table.
A blank memorial tablet with no name on it.
It slowly toppled over.
Smack.
It landed on the tabletop.
The next second.
From behind the blank memorial tablet.
A pale hand slowly reached out...
The hand was so white that it had not a trace of blood in it.
Its fingernails were long.
Dark red traces of blood still clung to the fingertips.
It didn't attack anyone right away. It only slowly gripped the edge of the offering table and climbed upward inch by inch.
The wood rasped with a creak, creak.
The entire ancestral hall was terrifyingly quiet.
No one dared to breathe.
But Su Nian wasn't looking at the hand.
She was looking at the fallen blank memorial tablet.
"No name..."
She murmured to herself.
The System had been very clear just now.
They couldn't offer incense to the wrong memorial tablet.
Then did a nameless memorial tablet count as a memorial tablet?
If they offered incense...
what would happen?
And if they didn't...
what would happen then?
Just then.
A face slowly appeared behind the hand.
It was a young girl.
She looked about seventeen or eighteen.
She wore a student uniform washed so pale that its original color was barely visible.
Her wet hair clung to her cheeks. Her skin was swollen and white, while her lips were a vivid red, as if she had just finished drinking blood.
The strangest thing was that she kept her head lowered.
No one could see her eyes.
She simply stood quietly behind the offering table.
Like a lifeless doll.
The girl with glasses finally broke down.
"A ghost... It's a ghost!"
She screamed and stumbled backward.
Her foot slipped, and she crashed into the incense burner beside her, knocking it over.
Clang—
The bronze incense burner rolled across the floor.
Ash scattered everywhere.
Almost in the same instant.
The girl raised her head.
Those eyes.
They had no pupils.
Only a sheet of dead white.
She slowly opened her mouth.
Her voice was as faint as a whisper beside one's ear.
"The incense..."
"fell."
The next second.
Crack.
The first incense stick on the offering table snapped.
There was no warning.
It was as if something had broken it in half.
The System's cold notification sounded in everyone's ears at the same time.
[Time remaining has been reduced.]
[Players, complete the ritual as quickly as possible.]
Su Nian's heart sank.
This wasn't an ordinary countdown.
Any action that disrupted the ritual would shorten the remaining time!
She immediately rushed over and set the incense burner upright.
"Don't touch anything!"
For the first time, unmistakable anger entered her voice.
The girl with glasses had tears all over her face and nodded repeatedly.
"I-I'm sorry..."
No one blamed her.
Because everyone could see that she was already terrified out of her mind.
Su Nian set the incense burner straight again.
Then she looked once more at the hundred-plus memorial tablets.
She forced herself to calm down.
There had to be a loophole in the rules.
If they really had to offer incense to more than a hundred dead people, nine people couldn't possibly do it.
That would make this rule an unavoidable death trap.
And an Infinite-World scenario couldn't possibly be designed without a solution.
She reread every line of the notification.
[Before one stick of incense burns out, offer incense to every memorial tablet.]
[Do not offer incense to the wrong memorial tablet.]
[If the incense goes out, people die.]
[The dead are more honest than the living.]
The dead...
were more honest than the living...
Her gaze fell on the memorial tablets again.
Suddenly, she noticed a detail.
Every memorial tablet in the first row had incense ash on it.
The second row did too.
Only the far right of the third row had more than a dozen memorial tablets that were completely clean.
There wasn't even a trace of burned incense.
As if no one had ever worshiped them.
"That's not right..."
She hurried over.
By the candlelight, she finally made out the names clearly.
The first one.
Li Dequan.
The second.
Li Xiuying.
The third.
Li Jianguo.
The fourth...
The fifth...
She continued down the row.
Then suddenly, her steps halted.
One of the memorial tablets had three characters carved into it.
Wang Zhiqiang.
She froze.
The burly man who had just been swallowed by the darkness...
His name was Wang Zhiqiang.
She remembered it clearly.
During the introductions, the burly man had thumped his chest and loudly announced his name.
A chill shot up her spine.
She whipped around and looked at the others.
"Was that guy's name Wang Zhiqiang?"
A middle-aged woman nodded with a deathly pale face.
"Yes... He said he was a construction-site foreman..."
The ancestral hall fell into deathly silence.
Su Nian slowly raised her hand and pointed at the memorial tablet.
"His memorial tablet... is already here."
Everyone's faces lost what little color they had left at the same time.
If a person who had just died had a memorial tablet appear in the ancestral hall immediately...
then did that mean...
all their names had already been prepared?
Just then.
A heavy thud suddenly sounded from deep within the ancestral hall.
As if someone had forcefully knocked on a coffin lid.
Then.
A second thud.
A third.
A fourth.
Nine pitch-black coffins slid out from the darkness behind the offering table, one by one.
And on every coffin lid, one person's name had been written in bright red cinnabar.
Su Nian's gaze slowly fell on the last coffin.
Two characters were starkly written across it.
"Su Nian."
The name Su Nian had been written as if in blood that had not yet dried.
Bright red.
Blinding.
Her breath stopped for a moment.
The people beside her followed her gaze. The next second, every face changed.
"Th-That isn't your name?"
The girl with glasses was trembling.
Su Nian didn't answer.
She simply walked toward the coffin one step at a time.
With every step, she observed.
No impulsiveness.
No fear so overwhelming that she lost her reason.
Because she knew that in a place like this, emotion was always the fastest way to die.
When she was three steps from the coffin.
She stopped.
She noticed a detail.
The name on the coffin wasn't written directly on the wood.
It had been written on a sheet of yellow paper and pasted onto the lid.
The four corners of the yellow paper were held down by four rusty iron nails.
"It's pasted on..."
Su Nian's eyes narrowed slightly.
If it was pasted on, that meant...
it could be replaced.
Just then, the System's voice sounded again.
[Side-quest hint updated.]
[Death does not mean the end.]
[The name determines ownership.]
A bolt of lightning seemed to flash through Su Nian's mind.
The names!
She suddenly looked at the other eight coffins.
Wang Zhiqiang.
Lin Meihua.
Chen Guosheng.
They were all the names of the players in this scenario!
Every single one!
A terrifying possibility suddenly surfaced in her mind.
These nine coffins weren't meant for the Li family at all.
They were meant for them.
"Back up!"
She suddenly barked.
Everyone instinctively stepped back.
The next second.
All nine coffins shook at once.
Bang!
As if something inside had slammed into one of them.
Bang!
Again.
Bang!
The impacts came faster and faster.
Wood shavings trickled down.
The girl with glasses burst into tears.
"There's... there's something inside..."
"Not 'there is.'"
Su Nian stared at her coffin.
Her voice was very low.
"It's waking up."
The instant she finished speaking.
Crack—
A split appeared in the lid of the first coffin.
A ghastly white hand slowly reached out.
Its fingernails were pitch-black.
A red cord was still tied around its wrist.
It wasn't the rotting hand of a corpse.
That hand...
was just like a living person's.
Only white as if it had no blood in it.
Then.
The second coffin.
The third.
The fourth...
Every coffin began to split open.
The ancestral hall filled with the successive sounds of splintering wood.
Someone finally broke down.
"Run!"
A middle-aged man charged toward the main doors.
He pulled hard.
They wouldn't open.
He rammed into them.
They wouldn't budge.
He kicked the door frantically.
"Open!"
"Open!"
Bang!
The entire wooden door suddenly swung open on its own.
The man was overjoyed.
"It's open!"
He rushed out without looking back.
Su Nian's pupils contracted.
"Don't go out!"
But it was already too late.
The man took one step beyond the ancestral hall.
Outside the door was not the town from before.
It was an endless expanse of darkness.
The next second.
Dozens of hands reached out from the darkness.
Not two.
Not ten.
But a dense mass.
Hundreds of pale arms seized the man all over at once.
"Aaaaaah!"
He let out a shrill scream.
His entire body was dragged bodily into the darkness.
Blood splashed across the doorframe.
The doors closed again.
As if they had never opened.
[Current number of survivors: 7.]
The System's notification sounded again.
No one in the ancestral hall dared to go near the doors anymore.
And just then.
Su Nian's coffin.
Let out an especially heavy thud.
Bang—
The lid was pushed open inch by inch.
A figure slowly sat up.
Its head was lowered.
Long hair hung loose around it.
It wore exactly the same clothes as Su Nian.
Even the shoes and bracelet on its hand were identical in every detail.
The girl with glasses sucked in a sharp breath.
"Th-That's you!"
The figure slowly raised its head.
Revealing a face completely identical to Su Nian's.
It smiled.
The smile was exactly the same as Su Nian's usual smile.
Except its lips stretched all the way to its ears.
"I found you."
"Now..."
"It's your turn to come inside."