Everyone shook their heads slightly. No one dared listen to a ghost story in a Deceitful Land.
"What do we do next?" Wang Buku asked.
Li Qingxian said, "First, I’ll write a letter home and have someone deliver it to arrange a meeting with my mother at lunchtime. Then, using my house as a base, we’ll search the area for games. When it’s almost noon, we’ll go back to my house to eat. If you’re scared, you can stay outside. I’ll go in alone."
"Let’s do that," Wang Buku said.
The group walked for a while longer. When the time came, the children once again began to clap and sing a nursery rhyme.
"Little chick, little chick, crying cheep, cheep, cheep, making a fuss to jump the rope!"
"Beat the baddies, beat the Demon Race. Beat the baddies, beat the Demons. Take down the Demon Fiends and save the children!"
"What’s my shadow’s name? What’s your shadow’s name?"
The group followed the routine, dodging the rope. Then, as they were dodging the sandbags, someone suddenly cried out in alarm, "I..."
Li Qingxian whipped his head around to see that the Literature Cultivation examinee’s hands had slipped. He’d accidentally let go of the child he was holding, and the child, unable to dodge, was struck by a sandbag.
BOOM!
As if struck by an Upper-Grade Expert, the child instantly exploded, its body scattering in all directions. The pieces gradually turned transparent and vanished, leaving behind only a sigh.
"What a shame, I can’t play games anymore..."
The rest of the group couldn’t spare a thought for anything else and hurriedly braced for the shadow battle.
Everyone made it through. They all gathered around the Literature Cultivator.
"Guanzhou, what happened?" Songg Baige asked, his face dark.
Guanzhou, his face a mask of misery, said, "I got distracted. I thought I could dodge it easily, and then I started thinking about the shadows. Who knew the kid would be so fidgety... my hand slipped, and he got hit by the sandbag. It’s over. I’m finished."
A middle-aged Martial Cultivator frowned and said, "Children aren’t grown up. They don’t know any better, and they can’t control their bodies well. They’re bound to make all sorts of movements. As an adult, you should have been prepared for that. Besides, we already said on the way here to be careful with the children. So was it really the child who was being fidgety, or was it you, the adult, who wasn’t using his brain?"
Guanzhou’s face flushed red with shame.
Wang Buku didn’t say anything. Earlier, when Li Qingxian was chanting into his Spirit Platform, this Guanzhou had frowned.
Li Qingxian said, "Don’t panic. Having a child with you is good, but even without one, there’s still a chance. Besides, we’re all here. As long as you stick with us, nothing terrible will happen to you."
"But..."
Songg Baige interrupted, "Stop whining. We don’t have time for this. Don’t overthink it, just focus on staying alive! Whether you have a child or not, you have to survive. We’re not going to abandon you, understand?"
"Understood." Guanzhou sighed softly and nodded with effort.
He glanced at the other children and found them looking at him with strange expressions, which made his heart clench with panic.
"Walk in the middle. If something happens, we’ll warn you," Li Qingxian said.
"Thank you!" Guanzhou was filled with gratitude.
Guanzhou followed the group. After walking for a while, he suddenly noticed all the other examinees picking up their children. Confused, he asked, "Why are you picking up the children?"
Everyone froze for a moment. Li Qingxian instantly understood and said urgently, "Careful, the game is about to start! Can’t you hear the children singing the nursery rhyme?"
"I can’t hear it... I understand. Thank you." Guanzhou hastily looked around, preparing for the game.
The others shot Guanzhou a sympathetic look and held the children in their arms even more carefully.
The children, giggling, continued to sing their nursery rhyme.
Guanzhou’s heart sank. It turned out that the child, who had seemed like a burden, was actually a constant source of warnings.
The game ended quickly.
"Let’s go."
Guanzhou followed the team silently, all alone, watching the other examinees talking and laughing with the children beside them.
The group rounded a bend and stepped onto a road paved with gray stone slabs. Sparse moss grew in the cracks between them.
Fangfang pointed ahead excitedly. "We’re home."
Li Qingxian looked up, and his heart skipped a beat.
Red walls and a black gate.
Standing at the gate were four Guards. They wore coarse white clothes with white sashes, and they held White Tassel Spears. Their faces were ashen and gaunt, their gazes vacant, like corpses.
One of them wore a Hanging Red Tassel Double Fish Pattern Jade Pendant at his waist.
In Deceit Village, they had worn red clothes.
Li Qingxian took a deep breath to suppress the chill in his heart. "Fangfang, in a moment, I’m going to write a letter home. Have one of the Guards at the gate deliver it."
"Okay," Fangfang agreed with a nod.
Li Qingxian took out a brush, ink, and paper. He wrote a short letter, placed it in an envelope, and handed it to Fangfang.
Fangfang skipped over to the gate, handed the letter to a Guard, and said, "Tell Mother that my brother and I will be back for lunch."
The Guard nodded, then turned and entered with stiff strides.
Li Qingxian peered into the courtyard. The walls and gate were identical to the ones in Deceit Village.
The difference was, there was no White Tower inside. It looked more like a larger version of an ordinary house.
Li Qingxian breathed a sigh of relief. No White Tower meant no Five Goddess Temple. In theory, that made him a little safer.
"You’re looking a little pale," Songg Baige teased.
"If you knew the reason, you’d look even worse," Li Qingxian replied.
"Lantern Soldiers. A minor nuisance," said Wang Buku.
"Are they strong?" Li Qingxian asked.
"Not very strong, but they’re a pain to deal with."
Li Qingxian surveyed the surroundings and said, "Alright, now that we’re near my house, we can proceed to the next step: looking for games. But let me be clear, every game here will only get more uncanny and more difficult. If you don’t want to participate, you can back out. I even suspect that the moment we find a game, we’ll be forced to play it. Anyone who doesn’t want to go should speak up now."
Everyone was silent.
"At a time like this, taking a chance with you is better than just staying put," said Songg Baige.
The others nodded in agreement.
"Alright then. I’ll use a Fate Skill now to start searching. But this is a Deceitful Land, after all. I can’t guarantee success."
"Should we get on the roofs to scout?" Wang Buku asked.
"You dare get on my family’s roof?"
"I wouldn’t dare."
"Then how can you be sure you won’t step on another Deceit creature’s house?"
"Never mind." Wang Buku shook his head helplessly.
A glint flashed in Li Qingxian’s eyes. The Mother Immortal-Seeking Bee appeared above his head, and Child Immortal-Seeking Bees flew out in all directions, plunging into the black fog.
One by one, the Child Immortal-Seeking Bees vanished. The way some of them disappeared even sent an inexplicable wave of terror through Li Qingxian.
Li Qingxian silently committed those directions and locations to memory.
Before long, all the Child Immortal-Seeking Bees had perished. Li Qingxian recalled the Mother Immortal-Seeking Bee.
Li Qingxian said, "I didn’t find anything."
Disappointment showed on everyone’s faces.
Li Qingxian then added, "But I know some places we can’t go. They’re extremely dangerous."
A jolt went through the group.
Songg Baige rubbed his chin. "All the games have traps. Does that mean this Outer City also has traps?"
"No wonder Ye Han asked Fangfang to lead the way. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have had such a smooth journey. The ’scary things’ Fangfang mentioned are probably those traps."
"It’s a bit unfair to the examinees who ran into those traps, but in this world, unfairness is the norm," Qiu Ye sighed.
"Where are the traps, roughly? Are there any signs?" Wang Buku asked.
A strange, subtle expression appeared on Li Qingxian’s face. "Inns, gambling dens, brothels, brokerages... and some other unexpected places, like the Academy, the Government Office, and others."
"Those are mostly places children aren’t allowed to enter. If any examinees actually went near them, we can only pity them."
"Tell me," Li Qingxian asked, "do you think this place is the Myriad Phenomena Map, or a Deceit City?"