Inside the crude dormitory, everyone could only manage a rough tidy-up of what was left.
“Tidying up” really just meant smoothing out the beds a little and stacking the teaching materials in the corner.
Lü Jia was still cursing. Xu Jixing, meanwhile, calmly pushed up his glasses and pulled a small notebook from his bag, seeming to jot something down.
Fang Ruiyang glanced at his watch. “It’s three in the afternoon now. We still have a few hours before dinner at the principal’s house. Let’s all go out together and walk around the village—get a feel for the terrain and the basic situation. Don’t go off alone.”
No one objected.
The seven pushed open the rickety wooden door and walked out of the temporary dormitory.
The mountain village in the afternoon was not as dead silent as expected.
Fu Songcheng walked in the middle of the group, his gaze unobtrusively sweeping the surroundings.
The village’s buildings were densely packed—each household stood extremely close to the next, almost close enough that opening a door would let you see the courtyard wall opposite.
Yet the quality of these houses was wildly uneven.
Most were crude single-story buildings of rough brick, tile, and mud, their walls peeling, exuding a decayed, rotting smell.
But a small portion of the houses stood out strikingly.
Fu Songcheng lifted his head and keenly caught sight of several black power lines crisscrossing in midair.
Following the lines, he saw a few two-story buildings with white ceramic tiles scattered sparsely around the village. Not only did they have electricity, but there were even dust-covered motorcycles parked in their courtyards.
“The wealth gap here is pretty big.”
Xu Jixing, walking ahead, muttered under his breath.
“Poor mountains and harsh waters breed unruly people. Who knows how those nice houses got built,” Lü Jia snorted coldly.
Just as he said that, several villagers returning from farm work appeared one after another on the dirt road ahead.
Most were middle-aged men in mud-stained coarse cloth clothes, hoes or sickles over their shoulders.
From years of labor in the mountains, these men’s skin was tanned dark and rough, their frames broad and large, radiating brute strength.
Seeing Fu Songcheng and the group of outsiders, the men’s footsteps visibly slowed.
Fu Songcheng immediately lowered his head, his shoulders shrinking slightly, and edged a little behind Fang Ruiyang.
He could feel the men’s gazes sweeping over their group like greasy, venomous snakes.
They skipped past the sturdy men like Fang Ruiyang and Lü Jia and clung tightly to him and Shen Ning.
Especially when Fu Songcheng passed a few villagers squatting at the base of a wall smoking dry tobacco—that nauseating feeling reached its peak.
“Yo, so these are the new city teachers?”
A scrawny, dark-skinned man missing a front tooth blew out a thick white smoke ring, his murky eyeballs rolling back and forth over Fu Songcheng and Shen Ning, the corners of his mouth splitting into an extremely twisted arc.
“Soft and tender—can they handle the hardships of our mountains?” another man chimed in, his tone carrying undisguised mockery.
“Can’t handle it, they’ll have to handle it anyway. Once you’re in our Ya’nan Village, consider it home, hahahaha…”
The men exchanged glances and suddenly burst into a bone-chilling round of raucous laughter.
The laughter was full of a certain unspoken lewdness and malice.
Lü Jia’s face instantly darkened. He stopped dead in his tracks, his fists clenched so hard they cracked. “What are you laughing at?!”
“Lü Jia!” Fang Ruiyang grabbed his arm and warned him in a low, stern voice. “Don’t cause trouble!”
Shen Ning’s face was cold as she quickened her pace without a sideways glance.
In the shadows where those men couldn’t see, Fu Songcheng’s eyes were cold as ice.
If this weren’t inside the game, he would have struck out and beaten these men to death.
……
The group continued walking forward.
The closer they got to the village’s edge, the stronger the oppressive feeling became.
Fu Songcheng lifted his eyes and looked toward the end of the village.
Beyond the dense residential area beneath their feet, everything was surrounded by an endless, tightly packed forest.
It was clearly not summer now—the trees covering the mountains had taken on a gray, lifeless, withered yellow.
The branches twisted and stabbed at the sky like dried, skeletal hands, locking the entire Ya’nan Village firmly inside this natural prison.
That forest looked extremely dangerous, radiating an eeriness that even sunlight couldn’t pierce.
“Stop looking.” Fang Ruiyang followed Fu Songcheng’s gaze, his own face a little pale. “That forest definitely has problems. Until we figure out the rules, no one goes into the woods.”
Fu Songcheng cooperatively shrank his neck and answered quietly: “Okay.”
Of course he wouldn’t go in.
Until he had absolute certainty, he would never touch an unknown area.
Time passed amid the oppressive exploration.
In the mountains, darkness fell extremely fast.
It was only a little past five in the afternoon, and the sun had already sunk completely behind that gray, dense forest.
The light in the entire village dimmed rapidly, and the already dilapidated houses turned into eerie silhouettes in the night.
“It’s getting dark.”
Xu Jixing glanced at the sky. “We should head back. We still have to go to the principal’s house tonight—let’s not stir up trouble at a time like this.”
Everyone nodded and turned to retrace their steps to the temporary dormitory.
On the way back, the atmosphere was even heavier than when they’d come.
The night wind blew through the mountain hollow, carrying a piercing chill and a faint, bloody earthy smell.
Because he had to play the timid female university student, Fu Songcheng deliberately slowed his pace, walking at the very back of the group. He kept about two steps of distance from Shen Ning ahead of him.
Just as they were about to turn past a mud-walled courtyard.
Rustle, rustle…
An extremely faint sound—like a shoe sole scraping against dry dirt—came from the darkness behind Fu Songcheng.
Fu Songcheng’s spine instantly went rigid.
He still maintained his slightly trembling, delicate posture, but the muscles throughout his body had secretly tensed, like a fully drawn bowstring.
Rustle, rustle…
The sound came again.
It wasn’t a human footstep.
Someone was following him.
And the distance was neither near nor far—just enough that he could hear it, yet not see clearly.
This shadowing, ever-present sense of being watched was like a cold venomous snake crawling slowly up his ankle.
Fu Songcheng rapidly calculated his countermeasures in his mind.
“Zhang Xinci, walk faster!” Fang Ruiyang ahead seemed to notice the group stretching out and turned back to urge him.
“Oh… okay!”
Fu Songcheng answered as if granted a reprieve, his voice carrying just the right amount of panic.
He suddenly quickened his pace, almost jogging to catch up with Shen Ning ahead—and even, out of “fear,” accidentally bumped into her.
“Sorry… it’s so dark, I’m a little scared.”
Shen Ning frowned, glanced at him, and said nothing—only slowed her pace slightly to walk side by side with him.
The instant Fu Songcheng quickened his steps, the footsteps behind him also quickened.
That person didn’t seem to care about being discovered—rather, he seemed to be enjoying this psychological game of driving his prey into a corner.
That malicious gaze nearly burned through Fu Songcheng’s back.
As prey, Fu Songcheng had been marked.
Ahead was the worn wooden door of the temporary dormitory.
Fang Ruiyang was the first to push it open and walk in, with Lü Jia and Xu Jixing right behind.
In the instant Fu Songcheng stepped over the threshold, using the motion of turning to close the door, his peripheral vision swept coldly backward like a blade.
In the shadows of the mud wall not far away.
An extremely blurry, hunched black figure stood silently.
Because the light was too dim, Fu Songcheng couldn’t see the person’s face. He could only vaguely make out a pair of murky, glinting eyes in the darkness, staring fixedly at him.
Seeing Fu Songcheng look over, the black figure didn’t dodge at all. Instead, it slowly split its mouth open, revealing a bone-chilling smile, then slowly retreated into the deeper darkness.
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