Chapter 124 The sound of the suona brings joy and sorrow. The all-powerful red zhong (a type of suona) can…

The instance has begun, and the players and the host are unable to leave Baitou Village. Ayun died outside the village, and to retrieve her body, we need to use another method.

On their way here, the Five Poisons group saw white lanterns hanging in some houses, and knew that the East Gate had been buried by the broken snow mountain and that several people had died.

Instead of making a big fuss by changing the entire house to white, so that people could immediately tell there was a funeral in the house, they only hung a white lantern and placed two paper figures at the door.

The paper figures were also strange; they were naked, without facial features or hair, resembling two pale paper models, but their skulls were open, rustling in the wind.

Naga reached into the paper figure's "Welcome" head and pulled out a strand of hair that was half black and half gray, with a clean cut, as if it had been cut off.

There was another one in the head of the other paper figure, but it was very short, like a man's hair.

The couple had just come out of the house; the man was chopping wood and starting a fire, while the woman went to the open kitchen to cook. She looked middle-aged, with half-black and half-gray hair.

Their son was buried in the rocks at the East Gate.

It's understandable to hang white lanterns and place paper figures after one's son dies, but why put one's own hair inside a paper figure?

The steamer was billowing hot air, colliding with the cold sky. It was hard to tell who won. A swirling mist, seen from afar, made it impossible to imagine the temperature difference.

The boy wrapped in cloth suddenly spoke up: "It's for the dead."

Man A, wrapped in cloth: "To prepare a last meal for their son?"

However, when the door to the main room was opened, there was no portrait on the square table, but a memorial tablet made of whitish wood, placed in an exquisite shrine with animal carvings. In front of the shrine was a small incense burner with three sticks of incense inserted.

The woman's tears were dried by the wind, her eyes were red, but there was no longer any grief in them, and she had no expression at all.

She lifted the lid of the steamer, and the rising steam obscured her, revealing only a pair of yellowish-black hands methodically plating the food, like a pair of ghostly hands behind a white mist.

The boy wrapped in cloth said, "Offering sacrifices."

They were not cooking for their deceased son as parents, but rather offering sacrifices to the gods as mortals.

Naga added, "Hair."

Her fingertips brushed against the hair peeking out from between her two teammates' cloths, breaking off a small tuft from each and tossing it into the paper doll's head to replace the couple's hair.

She quietly "looked" at the boy, who then silently walked to a few more houses. There was one house with a white lantern hanging there, and he put his hair into one of the paper figures.

The couple served dish after dish, placing them on the square table. Then they left the main room, kowtowed three times at the door, and muttered a long string of words in a low voice. It was impossible to understand what they were saying; it sounded like a strange language with a pronunciation different from Chinese.

Naga stood outside the door, unable to hear clearly, but his three teammates felt as if the words were right next to their ears, murmuring them.

Then came the sound of mahjong tiles being rubbed.

The "possession" test result was 78/15, which failed.

The "possession" test result was: 11/15, successful.

The "possession" test result was: 22/25, successful.

The man wrapped in cloth suddenly felt the murmurings fade away, as if they had been pulled from his ears and returned to their normal position in the courtyard.

The paper figure in front of me was still pale and shapeless, its skull heaving in the wind. But when I turned my head, the skull of another paper figure had closed, and it slowly grew taller, growing hair like a human.

His head was wrapped in black paper with silver patterns, only the tip of his nose and chin were visible, and he looked exactly like him!

He immediately looked at his companions. The man wrapped in cloth stood stiffly, as did the boy in the distance, as if his soul had left his body.

He recalled a skill check he had never heard of. Was it that not only did the dice have to adapt to local customs, but skills also did?

He still has an initial value of 15 points, all because he is a poison master with spiritual abilities and some talent in the mysterious!

So they "possessed" the paper figures?

The remaining two people, upon "opening" their eyes, saw themselves standing frozen in place.

With a raised hand, they felt incredibly light, as if the wind could blow them away, making a rustling sound—their consciousness was inside the paper figures!

Xue Chao: "Passing the sancheck results in a 0-point deduction on success and a 1D5-point deduction on failure."

The "Rationality" check result is 12/70, extremely difficult to succeed.

If the score is less than one-fifth of the attribute score, it is considered extremely difficult to succeed.

The man wrapped in cloth quickly adapted to the paper figure's body. Once he stepped down the stairs, he could move freely as if he were controlling his own body. He even felt that his five senses were more acute.

The "Rationality" check result was 83/75, which failed.

Failure means 1D3, see how much sanity is lost, but the cloth-wrapped boy didn't get to see the Keeper of the Secret roll the dice again.

Naga's gaze, hidden behind the black veil, calmly shifted to the compass on the chest of the cloth-wrapped man in armor.

The man in the cloth-wrapped position lowered his head; the compass had already spun around 14 cards.

In other words, all the cards inspected by the team will be recorded on the compass?

Xue Chao addressed all teams: "Some teams have already reached the required number of cards to discard, so the dealer will roll a concealed die to determine the bonus card."

To the west, the group of people with chronic illnesses, including the dejected uncle who couldn't get the door open of the mansion, led the group inside to inquire at other people's homes, just in time for dinner.

The three heartless cold weapons didn't care; he insisted that "food is the most important thing for the people." Under his onslaught, he had become the long-lost younger brother of his older siblings after only half a meal. Just as he was enjoying his meal, he heard the terrifying keeper of secrets telling him to roll the dice.

This time, however, it wasn't a real die.

After the sound of mahjong tiles being rubbed, his compass spun out a tile, but it was face down, and it was also face down in his panel records.

He was quick-witted and tried to catch the card to take a look, but as soon as he touched it, he felt a chill in his heart. Before he could turn it over, the card was turned back.

Xue Chao: "Why would you touch a concealed dice? It'll count as a penalty dice, which will cancel out your reward dice."

The颓废中叔: "??"

The dejected middle-aged man cried out, "No! Justice, sir!"

Xue Chao ignored him; all he needed was for the dealer to throw out a trump card.

"Let me briefly explain the rules of mahjong dice. In mahjong, which uses the Red Dragon tile, the tiles are only of three colors: Wan, Tong, and Tiao, plus four wild Red Dragon tiles."

"Let's talk about how to win the hand first."

"First, to win, you need four sets of straights/triplets and a pair of honor tiles, for a total of 14 tiles. A 'straight' is three consecutive tiles of the same suit, such as three, four, and five of the same suit, or five, six, and seven of the same suit. A 'triplet' is three identical tiles of the same suit, such as six, six, and six of the same suit, or eight, eight, and eight of the same suit. A 'pair' is two identical tiles of the same suit, such as two, two of the same suit, or red dragon."

"That is, mAAAA+nABC+DD (m and n can be 0)."

"Secondly, there must be a terminal or honor tile, that is, at least one tile with the number '1' or '9'."

Finally, the most distinctive feature of Red Dragon Mahjong is the "All-Purpose Red Dragon", which means that the Red Dragon can substitute for any other tile.

"For example, a pair of three of the three or five of the five can be combined with any other card to form a pair."

After explaining the rules for winning, Xue Chao then explained the process:

Each team starts with 13 cards. They re-examine the cards they draw. They can only replace one card, discard the rest, or discard all the newly drawn cards, until they win.

When you are one tile away from winning, you need to "call for a winning hand", which means you are ready to win.

Xue Chao turned back to communicate with the Five Poisons team privately: "So you need to discard a card now in order to continue 'drawing cards'."

The check involves drawing and discarding a card. Before you can check again, you must have only 13 cards left to complete the hand.

Naga didn't move, so the cloth-wrapped man A dragged the "eight cakes" into the Heavenly Pool. The compass spun, and the eight cakes disappeared.

Then my teammate's 1D3 came in:

[1D3=2, Sanity -2]

Another new card, "Two of Bamboo," was added, and this time the previous "Seven of Coins" was discarded.

The boy wrapped in cloth moved, and felt a sudden dizziness, as if the soul nurtured within his body could no longer support it, causing him to lose his balance and fall.

The paper figure boy immediately ran to help his teammate up, nodded to the team leader, and helped the paper figure boy toward the north gate.

As they passed by, the Naga touched their paper collars, and two silver-striped centipedes fell in, deftly burrowing through the paper figures and biting the hair inside.

The two paper figures, one tall and one short, returned to the dye house first and took some of A-Yun's belongings from her parents, as well as a dozen blank talismans and other items supposedly needed for transporting corpses, all of which were put into the original mahjong box.

This couple is so well-prepared? It's as if they know what to do and are just waiting for professionals to take the risk.

The task of reconnaissance was left to his teammates, who stepped out of the north gate and disappeared into the wind and snow.

Once outside the village, the paper-figure boy fell again. The wind and snow didn't get any worse, but it felt like it was piercing his eardrums. He rolled around in the snow twice, then slowly got up and regained some feeling in his limbs.

But he still couldn't walk in a straight line, so he silently held onto the corner of his teammate's paper clothes.

The teammates did have a good sense of direction, but it was difficult to find a way in the mountains, and besides, they didn't know where they were going... They came from the north and didn't see any bodies.

The paper figure, male B, relied entirely on the mountain for navigation, circling around two narrow, pointed mountains before returning to the original path.

He frowned at the mark, the sound of paper creaking coming from his forehead.

This can't go on. He asked his teammates for their opinions. The boy, sitting on the box, pointed to a snow-capped mountain in the distance, the highest and farthest mountain range to the north.

It is also the mountain with the most red soil, winding and conspicuous, like unhealed scars on a snow-capped mountain.

So they set off for the mountain.

Ah Yun must have been dead for a long time. The snow kept falling, and her body was buried under the snow. He was thinking of going to scout the area, but when he actually walked around the mountain, he found that it was unnecessary.

She was not buried by the snow.

The sky was deathly white, and deathly white snow was falling. The mountains and the earth were covered in deathly white, while her wedding dress was as red as blood, and she lay in the vast expanse of white.

*

East Gate.

"...So why won't they leave?" The four of them huddled around a row of clothes, whispering nervously. "We've found the clothes, but the bodies have dissolved into the ground, so there's nothing we can do. Are we going to have to move mountains like the Foolish Old Man?"

The team leader blinked his eyes, one big and one small: "I think their money was stolen. Those old gamblers—see those cups? They went to gamble, but the bags and wallets we found were all empty."

"They've lost everything, haven't they? Gamblers have nothing left."

"Don't you think that saying this in the investigation team dungeon is an insult to all of us players? Be careful, the Dice Goddess might send you a crushing defeat."

Pu Fengchun examined several glass cups. Xue Chao must have taken the dice from here. She muttered jokingly, "You didn't take the money, did you?"

By establishing a dice system, Xue Chao can indeed communicate with all players.

But it also meant that his consciousness had separated again, although not as completely as when he was "ai", which still made him irritable.

Not only must everyone be tested, but there are also grounds for passing the test.

For example, when giving the inspiration to the cloth-wrapped male character of the Five Poisons Sect, he first sensed the anomaly through the medium of the dice... The strange entity attacked him, the innocent guardian of secrets, through the dice before he gave the inspiration to the player.

His inspiration didn't end there; he also indulged in the scent of cosmetics and the screams of women.

Although he doesn't have a dice system as a player, he feels that his rationality is the most dangerous thing in the whole game.

...For example, right now, he didn't actually hear what Pu Fengchun said. She didn't ask for an inspection or inquire about the rules, but he sensed something was wrong.

So my consciousness automatically shifted to that direction and I heard Pu Fengchun muttering.

He sneered, "Passing on inspiration."