Chapter 45

The mud hut wasn't big to begin with. With more than thirty people squeezed inside, there was only enough space for each person to stand.

After Anthony and his team entered, the other trainees in the mud hut felt slightly awkward.

Most importantly, they didn't dare to enter the mud hut behind the old locust tree. They had taken over the spot where they handed in their food and were now sitting there peacefully. They were caught red-handed.

Looking at Anthony's vaguely hostile expression, Zong Jiu was very casual.

He put down his hand without batting an eyelid. His expression was so lazy that not a single drop of water could be seen.

"Since you guys weren't back yet, we decided to stay here temporarily. Since we're back, we're just about to leave. Goodbye. "

The white-haired youth smiled and waved his hand. Everyone in the mud hut followed him out.

[Magician's rookies are really good. They just survived a terrorist attack and it's so dark outside. Yet, they dare to walk out.]

[The most important thing is that no one objected. Sigh, everyone trusts Magician so much. I'm looking forward to their expressions when they find out that Magician is a mole. 78888]

[I've turned off the livestream next door. I'll just watch this livestream and see what this mole group can do.]

"Wait."

Just as the other team was about to step out of the mud hut, Anthony suddenly asked in a deep voice, "Where did Yi Yuesi go?"

It's here.

Zong Jiu tilted his head slightly, and there was an unfathomable light in his light pink eyes.

"He's from your team. What does it have to do with us?"

The others also realized that the atmosphere wasn't right and became alert.

Xu Su mumbled softly, "No way, they're asking us when their people are missing. Crazy."

Anthony stared at the white-haired youth with a malicious expression. "Yi Yuesi has been following you."

"Oh." Zong Jiu yawned lazily. "Is he following me openly? Why didn't I see him? Do I have to be responsible for someone's safety if they're following me? Do I look like such a kind person? "

The two groups of people were facing each other across the door frame of the earthen hut. The atmosphere was tense.

At this moment, a blurry shadow suddenly appeared in the rainy night.

Both teams looked over at the same time.

Azan in black walked in the rain.

The cold rain fell from the sky and flowed on the garuda pattern above his head. His black robe was completely soaked and hung heavily on his back. With every step he took, a puddle of rainwater would appear.

He clutched his shoulder as blood seeped out between his fingers. His expression was extremely ugly.

Gasps could be heard from the crowd.

Even Zhuge An, who had been staying out of the matter, became interested.

He was No.8, and Azan was No.9. From a certain point of view, according to the main system's classification of strength, the two of them were very close.

Even No. 9 was injured, which was enough to prove the seriousness of this matter.

Not to mention the trainees, even the bullet screen was flooded with comments.

[F * ck, why is Azan in black injured? Was he acting alone just now?]

[Yeah, acting alone in the second instance won't be shown on camera. I'm so curious.]

[He can injure Azan in black?? F * ck, how scary is this instance? I'm scared, I'm scared.]

Under everyone's unblinking gaze, Azan in black frowned and loosened his hand, revealing the hideous black wound below.

Strangely, even though he covered it for so long, there was still blood gushing out from the wound. It mixed with the cold rain and quickly diluted.

The experienced old people all exclaimed in surprise.

The wound that was difficult to heal was obviously caused by an extremely cold existence.

Azan in black brought back two pieces of information.

"The woman in the woodshed is dead."

If Zong Jiu and the others could figure out that the woman was the breakthrough of this mission, how could the experienced elders not think of it?

Therefore, after searching for the necessary information and verifying his own guess, the black-clothed Ah Zan went straight to the woodshed north of Tong Bai Village.

When he arrived at the woodshed, the sky was already dark.

There were a few villagers guarding the woodshed, but when night fell, they were all gone.

Azan in black became suspicious, so he summoned a ghost and had it go to the village chief's mud hut to gather information.

Then, he heard a conversation.

"Dad, what about that bitch? The traffickers will be here tomorrow! "

Wang Shou paced back and forth in the mud hut, sounding very anxious.

"I told you not to go overboard."

The village chief slammed the butt of his cigarette against the brick bed. "Twenty yuan!"

Twenty yuan was a huge sum in this era of famine.

Wang Shou only got six yuan for the little girl he sold. Six yuan was the family's expenses for half a year, let alone twenty yuan.

Wang Shou regretted it. "I just wanted to play with my brother, I didn't expect that bitch to be so hot-tempered."

"Forget it, forget it. What's done is done. We have more important things to do tonight. Take care of it tomorrow and sell it at the west entrance of the market. You can at least get one or two yuan. "

The village chief was exasperated. "We'll keep half of it and store it in the water tank at the back. That way, we won't have to worry about winter."

.....

The information contained in this sentence was enough to shock anyone, adding to the answer he already knew.

Azan in black told the ghost to keep an eye on the two people in the mud hut, then he turned around and went to the woodshed.

If he guessed correctly, the woman should be dead.

If a person had just died, their soul wouldn't immediately descend to the underworld. As long as the body was intact, Azan in black could use the spirit flag to draw out the soul and get clues from the dead.

The woodshed reeked of blood.

The woman lay on the ground with her hands tied. Her body was stiff, covered in semen spots, green and purple. Not a single part of her body was intact.

There was a huge bloody hole in her forehead, and her eyeballs were rolled back.

There was a bloodstained chopper on the pile of firewood beside her.

Perhaps it was because his daughter had been sold and he had been captured and humiliated here that he had the will to die.

Azan in black chanted the Rebirth Mantra. After making sure there was nothing out of the ordinary around him, he squatted down with the spirit flag and prepared to summon the soul.

Right at this moment, an unforeseen event occurred!

The eyes of the corpse suddenly rolled back, turning from empty white to clear black.

Her bloody fingernails suddenly grew and scratched Azan in black who couldn't dodge in time, leaving a wound corroded by Yin energy.

"I was careless."

This incident wasn't a big deal, but it wasn't a small one either.

In fact, Azan in black could've avoided it completely. Before he summoned the soul, he purposely sensed if the woman had any resentment in her heart, so that she wouldn't degenerate into a malicious spirit.

But she didn't. He didn't sense any presence of a ghost.

When it came to dealing with ghosts, the black-clothed Ah Zan could say that he was the best among all the trainees. After all, even a Yin Yang Master could only raise shikigami, not ghosts.

If he didn't sense any resentment from a ghost, then it could only mean one thing.

The ghosts in this village weren't resentful ghosts formed through normal means.

"Oh, I know that."

Zong Jiu interjected, "It's a person's heart that turns into a ghost. The Yin Granny in the temple said so."

Azan in black frowned, "It's not that easy to turn a person's heart into a ghost, unless there's an extremely favorable situation … Forget it."

"There's another piece of information."

His expression was serious, "The people in this village have a fetish for cannibalism."

As expected.

Zong Jiu wasn't surprised.

Not to mention the hint given to him by his "A Perfect Corpse" mission, anyone who knew a little about the dark side of history would know that cannibalism wasn't a rare occurrence in the famine era.

Not to mention the ancient times, there was the "Ding Wu Qi Famine" from 6322 to 6323 during the Qing Dynasty, and the "Famine of the Eighteenth Year of the Republic of China" during the Republic of China. Even in the modern era, there was a three-year famine from 6404 to 6416 due to the Great Leap Forward and the People's Communist Party.

Whenever there was a famine, the scene was almost the same.

How tragic was the famine?

Digging up tree bark and roots, eating wild vegetables, eating Guanyin clay … Anything that could be eaten was used to fill the stomach.

Under such extreme circumstances, cannibalism became a matter of course.

For humans, food was the foundation of survival. If they couldn't even ensure the most basic survival, then morals and laws would be useless.

In all famines, the corpses would become delicious food in the end.

The horrors of the Ding Wu Qi Famine were recorded or drawn in the "Jin Yu Disaster Strategy" and "The Tears of the Jin Dynasty." As long as someone starved to death, countless people would swarm over and even dig up the unrotten corpse from the ground and cook it in a pot. Some parents couldn't bear to eat their own children, so they would swap their children with others and eat them. In the end, it even developed into killing people for meat.

The late Ming poet Qu Dajun wrote a poem called "The Lamentation of the Vegetable People." It described how people didn't have enough to eat during a famine. A woman volunteered to be a "vegetable person" in the market in order to let her husband live.

Vegetable people, as the name implied, were people who went to the market to cook and sell themselves. Naturally, they were called vegetable people. Human meat was openly sold in the market. It was enough to imagine what a hellish scene it must have been.

"Wait, something's not right."

Just as everyone was shocked by the news brought back by Azan, Zhuge An suddenly frowned.

"The market opens in the morning. If Wang Shou wanted to sell human meat, he would have at least asked the butcher to wash and cut it overnight. Then why did they wait until the day after tomorrow to sell and not tomorrow? "

Azan paused. "I didn't pay attention to that. They seemed to say that they were going to the temple tonight."

This time, many people's expressions changed.

Azan didn't travel with Zong Jiu's group, so there was a lot of information that they didn't know.

For example, when they left the temple, Granny Yin specifically told them that the temple wouldn't open at night, so they could only find her during the day.

Thinking of the old village chief's cold face when he came out of the temple, it was clear what the villagers' intentions were.

Zong Jiu's expression turned cold. "Let's go. Something might have happened."

Just as he finished speaking and everyone rushed into the pouring rain, the Main System's cold voice sounded.

[Mole ID Card Main Mission: Find a perfect corpse. Mission failed.]

Not only Zong Jiu, everyone else also received the message.

[Normal ID Card Main Mission: Protect the villagers. Mission failed.]

All of a sudden, everyone was stunned.

[Both factions' main missions failed. Unable to determine. 'Famine Mountain Village' instance is restarting …]

In an instant, the pouring rain stopped.

The surrounding scenery changed and returned to stillness.

Not far away, the human traffickers were pulling a small cart slowly towards the entrance of Tong Bai Village.

Nearby, Wang Shou and the villagers were working together to tighten the hemp rope on the little girl's body.

The trainees stood in an open space and couldn't move. They could only watch the prelude repeat itself.

Everyone had the same astonishment on their faces.

No one knew why the missions of the two factions would fail at the same time, and no one knew why a mission with a seven-day time limit would wipe them out on the third day.

If they didn't know, the bullet screen was even more clueless. Everyone was talking at once and paying close attention to the latest developments in the live stream.

[Instance Dungeon 'Famine Mountain Village' has been successfully restarted.]

[This is the last time the instance dungeon will be restarted. If the mission can't be completed this time, the entire team will be eliminated.]

[Extracting the instance dungeon's punishment mode …]

[Punishment mode extraction complete.]

All the trainees suddenly felt a long-lost hunger in their stomachs. It was burning.

[Forced activation of 'hunger' value.]

[The upper limit of hunger value is 15. If the value drops to zero, you will die immediately. Please be sure.]