[There's a problem in our world.]
As soon as Xia Bai opened the [Never Say Die] group, he saw this message from Lao Wang.
His eyes froze for a minute, and he wondered what he was thinking. When he looked back down, a number of messages had popped up in the group, including nearly all the other members.
Lao Li: [You old idiot, you usually don't say a word, but now you start spouting nonsense.]
Lao Liu: [What's wrong? Aren't there already a lot of problems?]
Lao Qian: [I just put on my reading glasses, why are you talking again?]
Lao Wang: [I'm being frugal with my words, I don't usually talk nonsense! Did you all really not notice? Or are you just playing dumb?] As
soon as Lao Wang's message was sent, a brief, profound silence fell in the group.
Xia Bai fell silent, as if thinking about something.
Lao Li: [Lao Wang, is that true?]
Lao Wang: [Really? The problem is getting worse. Quanguang City should be shut down by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.] You're already quite old, be careful. Don't let anything happen to you before you die.]
Old Qian: [Quanguang City? Doesn't Old Xia live in Jiangqi City, right next to Quanguang City?]
Several of the older people in the group who knew how to tag someone tagged Old Xia, while those who didn't were also shouting at him, asking him to be careful.
Xia Bai came to his senses and immediately responded.
Old Xia: [I saw it!]
Upon hearing what was about to happen in Quanguang City, their first reaction was to call out to Old Xia, who lived nearby. Only after seeing that Old Xia knew about it did they start discussing why Quanguang City was being sealed off. Sealing off a city is no small matter; it would immediately cause a social uproar.
Old Lin: [I heard a lot of deaths in Quanguang City recently. Was it because of some infectious disease?]
Old Li: [Heard? Where did you hear that? Ha, you smell death, don't you?]
Old Liu: [What era is this? Stop talking nonsense.
Messages from the "Never Contact Each Other Again" group popped up at the top of Xia Bai's phone. Xia Bai searched online for information about Quanguang City. When he clicked back into the group, Lao Wang was apparently busy with something else, leaving only a link that never reappeared. The
remaining members, perhaps not even clicking on the link, were arguing again.
Xia Bai, accustomed to this, clicked on the link and began to read.
Lao Wang's link led directly to a post with a simple date: September 2nd, today's date.
The poster said nothing, simply posting a few pictures. The other followers also said nothing, just pictures. The entire post was devoid of words, just pictures.
Based on the information he had just seen about Quanguang City, as well as basic information like license plates and landmarks, Xia Bai found a few photos of Quanguang City among them.
Lao Wang was right; Quanguang City might be closed down.
The latest photo, posted five minutes ago, just a few minutes after Lao Wang's announcement, was a photo of a national highway entrance in Quanguang City.
Quanguang City is an ancient city. Its entrance is built like a city gate, with two tall arched doors, one for entry and one for exit.
In the darkness, there were no bright lights. Someone had secretly laid a fence around the entrance.
There was no fence around the exit, seemingly implying that from now on, people could only leave Quanguang City, but not enter.
This photo shows people exiting. Some had calm expressions, some were excited, and some were ecstatic. Each of them was covered in blood. One person was drenched in blood from head to toe, even his hair dripping with blood, a bloody figure.
It's hard to imagine if he, or those around him, had bled so much, they would have become mummy. But each of them was intact, without a single injury.
The second photo shows a dozen people holding down something outside a popular online restaurant. The exposed hands reveal human figures, their fingers grayish-purple, unlike those of a normal person. One person is injecting something into the wrist.
The third photo showed people outside the Quanguang City Wax Museum, carrying what looked like human bodies. Wrapped in black bags, their contents were unclear. This photo captured blood dripping from one of the bags.
Xia Bai carefully examined each photo. Earlier, while searching online for Quanguang City, he'd seen a lot of events there in the past six months: numerous business closures and numerous deaths. Some online were wondering if Quanguang City was cursed.
He didn't need to search online; as a neighboring city, there were also people discussing bizarre incidents there. Most of the discussion was just gossip, perhaps a source of anxiety, but not much panic.
These photos, along with Lao Wang's words, opened a door for Xia Bai, offering a glimpse into another world that had been diligently concealed, but was about to be uncovered.
Beyond the Quanguang City photos, the photos posted elsewhere were equally bloody and eerie.
This post led him to a forum simply named "September." There were only two posts on the entire forum: the one Xia Bai had just read, from September 2nd, and the other from September 1st.
The September 1st post was the same: no text, just photos posted by different people. Some of the photos revealed the city's location, but many were taken and where the events took place.
If there were forums for September, then were there ones for August and July? When did the earliest start?
Xia Bai searched online, but there was no trace of posts for the previous months.
When he returned to the "Never Contact Each Other Again" group, they were still arguing. Xia Bai skillfully and calmly broke up the fight.
Old Xia: "It's not a contagious disease. No one is allowed to enter Jiangqi City today, but people from Jiangqi can leave."
Old Qian: "Right! If it were a contagious disease, it would be the other way around—only entry allowed, not exit." Old Lin:
"Why has Old Xia been acting a bit more reliably lately?"
Old Liu: "In that case, Old Xia, you need to get ready."
Without them telling him, Xia Bai, his mind full of those photos, had already rushed off to prepare.
Instead of gathering food and water or taking safety precautions, he headed straight for the innermost room on the second floor.
The lights were off, the curtains tightly drawn. Only a faint, intangible light shone through the newly opened door. A cool, gloomy atmosphere, mingled with the scent of a certain cinnabar, slithered through the room against the light.
Xia Bai quickly walked to the bedside and called out, "Grandpa."
The figure in the bed was frozen stiff, a barely perceptible speck of corpse-like cadaver where the light fell. Naturally, he couldn't respond.
Xia Bai, accustomed to this, didn't expect a response.
He carried the old man from the bed to the ground floor courtyard, propping him against the wall. He returned to the room, pulled out a coffin, and deftly placed the man inside.
He turned and walked into the adjacent room, returning with a hoe. Standing in the doorway, hoe in hand, he looked up at the night sky, toward Quanguang City.
It was nine o'clock in early September, and the night was still and deep. The moon was hidden in a hazy gray fog, the stars barely visible, and a thick darkness threatened to overwhelm the sky.
Xia Bai gripped the hoe tightly, ran to the yard in a hurry, and started digging in the northwest corner of the yard.
The soil was not very hard, and was much softer than outside. It was damp from the night in the mountain village, so it was easy to dig. Small piles of earth piled up higher and higher at the feet, and the hoe suddenly stopped, on a dark coffin.
He immediately changed the digging place, and after twenty minutes, he stopped on another coffin.
He changed the digging place again and dug up another coffin.
He paused for a few seconds, and continued digging without giving up, disturbing someone again.
Xia Bai's eyes widened a little. The moonlight that had appeared at some point leaked through his eyelashes, lingering on his light brown pupils, dispelling the brief dullness in them. He gripped the hoe tightly and changed the digging place again.
Under the pale moon in the black sky, the thin boy dug in the yard. Small piles of earth appeared one by one like emerging graves, and finally he found a hiding place for his grandfather on the left side of the courtyard gate.
After burying Grandpa, Xia Bai leveled the other piles of dirt he'd dug up, and used potted flowers to hide them. Finally, a little after one in the morning, he breathed a sigh of relief.
There were no new messages in the "Never Contact Each Other Again" group. No matter how loudly the elders argued, they couldn't have made it past ten o'clock, having long since gone to bed.
Most of the previous messages were about Old Xia making preparations. Xia Bai glanced at them, pondered them, and prepared to go home to wash up and sleep.
As he stepped over the threshold, he pricked his ears, thinking he heard a rustling sound, not from the grass or treetops, but from beneath the ground.
Xia Bai slowly turned his head. A gust of night breeze brushed past his face, leaving the yard hushed and quiet. Several pots of aged roses and osmanthus, their branches heavy with age, rested securely on the ground.
Still worried, after washing up, Xia Bai moved the tent in the center of his room to the window. He leaned on the windowsill and watched for a moment before slowly crawling inside.
A quiet night followed.
The next morning, before dawn, Xia Bai was up, rummaging through his closet for money.
In the bottom drawer of his wardrobe was a paper bag with tuition written on it. Xia Bai felt it, put it back, and locked it. He threw down the pink piggy bank that had been with him for years, sorted the money inside, and put it into the small crossbody bag he carried.
Last night, in the "Never Say Die Together" group, everyone urged Xia Bai to stock up on food and water, just in case. He had plenty of food; there was grain at home and vegetables outside.
However, he was about to report to school, and it would be difficult to carry all that. So, despite having little money, Xia Bai decided to go to town to buy some convenience foods. In case of a real crisis, food might be more valuable than money.
Xia Bai carefully considered his purchases, but when he opened the door, he was stunned.
It was barely dawn, and the morning mist at the foot of the mountain had not yet lifted. A large earth pit was clearly visible in the yard, and the coffins in the pit were all opened, empty and bare.
Only Grandpa's grave remained intact; the bodies in the other coffins had vanished.
Xia Bai hurried to the second floor, retrieved a string of brass bells, and waved them from the window. Silence reigned, no response.
He had searched the back hills that morning and politely inquired with the neighbors, but there was no news of the body.
He rode his electric stove to town, but not to shop, but to the police station.
Qiaoyan Town wasn't considered impoverished within Jiangqi City. The town center had well-developed infrastructure, with supermarkets, hospitals, and restaurants, and two- and three-story buildings everywhere. The police station was housed in a three-story building with gray tiles and white walls.
The building was high enough, and from the second-floor window, one could see the entire street in front.
Old Yang, sitting there drinking tea, saw the young man hesitating at the police station door for over half an hour, practically peeling the bark off the old poplar tree in front of it, but he still hadn't come in.
It was obvious he was hesitating because he had something urgent to say but couldn't bring himself to speak.
Old Yang walked downstairs, holding a thermos cup. "Bring in that kid at the door and save that old poplar tree."
Xia Bai entered the police station and sat down in front of Old Yang and a pretty woman.
The woman asked him, "Little classmate, is there anything we can help you with?"
Xia Bai sat obediently, his hands on his knees, his head slightly lowered, not meeting their gazes, and nodded.
The woman looked at him, her tone becoming even gentler. "What's the matter?"
Knowing that he had been standing outside for a long time, not coming in, and that something must be bothering him, she said gently, "Don't be afraid. Tell us anything. We'll help you as soon as we can."
Perhaps touched by these words, Xia Bai spoke up, "I lost something very important. Can I come to you?"
"Of course." The matter was not as complicated as the pretty woman had imagined. She had assumed that the boy's reluctance to come in was due to being bullied, perhaps being harassed by thugs from outside the school and threatened not to tell anyone. She continued to ask enthusiastically, "What's lost?"
Xia Bai: "My... lost."
The middle two words were spoken so softly and quickly that neither Old Yang nor the pretty sister could hear clearly.
Pretty sister: "What's lost? A child or an elderly person? What's their name?"
Xia Bai rubbed his index and ring fingers on his knees and lowered his head even more. "God of Joy."
Old Yang was momentarily stunned. Pretty sister patiently asked, "God of Joy? Is that the name of someone who's lost? Very unique. Oh, and Xi isn't a surname, is it? What's the surname?"
Xia Bai fell silent.
"Puff!"
Suddenly, Old Yang spat out a mouthful of tea. "Pfft," he said, spitting out the tea leaves in his mouth. He shouted, "God of Joy? You mean your... God of Joy?... Gone? Lost?"
Xia Bai nodded obediently.
Old Yang's eyes widened. "Where did your God of Joy go?"
Xia Bai: "At home, in the yard at 152 Minshi Village."
Old Yang was at a loss for words. "You put the God of Joy in the yard?"
Xia Bai nodded again, his hands resting on his knees like an obedient elementary school student.
Old Yang gave him a strange look, "Does the God of Happiness have anything valuable with him?"
Xia Bai finally stopped nodding and shook his head.
Old Yang asked, "How do you know he got lost and wasn't stolen?"
Xia Bai answered seriously, "From the scene, he must have come out on his own, and there are five Gods of Happiness. If there were so many people stealing, I should have heard it."
This supplement was drowned out by Old Yang's loud voice, "What? You have five Gods of Happiness?!"
He looked at Xia Bai with an indescribable look.
The beautiful sister had been out of sync with them for a long time, and now she finally had the opportunity to interrupt, "Wait, what are you talking about? What exactly is this God of Happiness? Why are there five of them?"
Xia Bai opened his mouth, still a little speechless.
The pretty sister pulled Lao Yang's sleeve, "Teacher Yang?"
Lao Yang looked at Xia Bai with a strange look and said to the pretty sister, "Have you heard of corpse drivers?"
The pretty sister nodded, "I heard that there were many corpse drivers in Jiangqi City in the past?"
"Yes." Lao Yang said, "The corpse drivers here in Jiangqi City usually respectfully call the corpses they drive the God of Joy."
"Huh?" The pretty sister didn't react. She turned to look at Xia Bai blankly, "What are you talking about? Five of you are missing?"
Xia Bai lowered his head even more, "Dead body, my dead body is lost." The beautiful sister was even more confused
. Her hand on the keyboard pressed into the gap between the keyboard, and a series of h's were pressed out, and a "hahahahahahaha" was displayed in the input method.