Chapter 199

Qin Su and his group entered Qinglong Village just after midnight on July 15th.

It was late at night, the moonlight was dim, and everyone in the village was asleep. However, after she walked through the illusion, when she opened her eyes again, it was already noon on the fifteenth of July.

Zhang Yan, Hu Meng, Qiao Yijing, and the others were lying haphazardly on the ground beside her, all with furrowed brows and pained expressions.

That wasn't the worst part. The worst part was that at that very moment, the sun was high in the sky, and the villagers were gathered in a circle, watching them like they were watching a monkey show.

Qin Su opened her eyes and moved slightly, which was immediately noticed by them.

"Oh, the prettiest girl has moved!"

"What are you doing? Is this some kind of performance art? Where are the cameras hidden? I can't see them."

"Young lady, I've seen you standing here all morning, from morning till now. Aren't you tired?"

Everyone bombarded Qin Su with questions.

Everyone else was still unconscious, leaving Qin Su, who was left alone to face the death of the company, to the utterly helpless state of affairs: "..."

She kicked Tang Xuan, who was closest to her, but Tang Xuan didn't react. She then kicked Zhang Yan, who turned his head slightly but didn't wake up.

She paused for a moment, then calmly rambled on, "We're conducting an experiment, which is confidential and cannot be disclosed to the public at the moment. So, I'm sorry, it's not convenient to talk about the specifics."

When Qin Su opened her eyes, she was strikingly beautiful and even a little aggressive, and her words carried an air of conviction.

The villagers who were watching believed her and asked her more questions.

When are these people getting up?

Are they awake or asleep?

Qin Su really wanted to leave these people here to enjoy some social death, but she couldn't, after all, Qin Lide was still inside.

Fortunately, it's still late summer and the temperature isn't low, otherwise, Qin Lide, at his age, would definitely catch a cold after sleeping on the cold ground all night.

Qin Su made up an excuse and paid someone to find a unicycle to transport all these people to the home of a villager's aunt nearby.

My aunt's house didn't have that many rooms, so she laid out a few large straw mats in the yard and put everyone on them.

Qin Su then asked the family child to run errands and buy some yellow paper and cinnabar. She folded a few small paper figures by hand and burned them before Qin Lide and the others finally woke up.

Zhang Yan lifted his heavy eyelids, and before he could see the outside world clearly, he smelled the aroma of chicken stew with mushrooms.

"Hungry……"

He grabbed at the ground with his hands hanging by his sides, only to be pricked by bamboo splinters from the mat.

The stinging pain brought him back to his senses. He suddenly remembered that he was on his way to Qinglong Village and had encountered the terrifying paper figure. He sat up abruptly.

"W-Where am I?" Zhang Yan looked around and was dumbfounded. "Zhuang Zhou dreaming of a butterfly? A butterfly dreaming of Zhuang Zhou? Am I still not awake?"

Hu Meng, who was standing next to him, rubbed her throbbing temples and punched him.

Zhang Yan cried out and clutched his shoulder where he had been hit, saying in pain, "I'm awake, I'm awake, big sister, did you have to use so much force?"

However, his outburst brought the confused group of people to their senses.

"Chu Er set up an illusion at the village entrance, and everyone fell for it." Qin Su told them before they could ask any questions, "It's 5:30 pm on July 15th now."

Tang Xuan jumped up in surprise and said, "It's been so long? What are we waiting for here? Let's go find him right away."

Qin Su raised her hand to stop him, saying, "No rush. We've broken his illusion. He must be seriously injured now and can't escape. But we've all been unconscious for too long and need to eat something to recover."

She had already asked the hostess to cook a large pot of food; the aroma of chicken stew with mushrooms that Zhang Yan had smelled earlier was it.

Tang Xuan agreed. His own stomach was growling with hunger, and he was too weak to walk. The others were even weaker than him.

However, everyone looked at each other and felt embarrassed.

One by one, they fell for the trap, fainting on the ground. Qin Su, a pretty young girl, had to figure out a way to cover up the lie and move the battlefield. She even thoughtfully considered what they would eat after they woke up.

That's really embarrassing.

Tang Xuan scratched his head and asked Qin Su, "Did you pay?"

He asked this not because he doubted Qin Su's character or morality, but because he knew that nowadays everyone uses online payment and doesn't carry cash, so they might not be able to come up with money in such an emergency.

"I gave it to you," Qin Su replied.

Tang Xuan had just breathed a sigh of relief when she slowly added, "But I didn't have any cash on me, so I had to take out your wallets one by one to make up the difference."

The ashamed crowd: "..."

Seeing their stunned expressions, Qin Su laughed: "I was just kidding. What era are we living in? You can pay by phone in the village now. As soon as I said I wanted to pay, they showed me their QR code."

Hu Meng breathed a sigh of relief and said seriously, "You scared me to death. It's not that I'm worried about the money, it's that I'm afraid you'll see my ID photo when you take my wallet. That's the biggest black mark on my life."

Especially if a stunning beauty like Qin Su were to see her, she really wouldn't want to live anymore.

Qiao Yijing said, "Even if you really took it, it's nothing. It's an emergency, and you're doing this for us."

Amidst the banter, the woman of the house came out of the kitchen and called out, "Dinner's ready! Would you like to eat in the yard or inside?"

"It's fine to eat in the courtyard." Several men quickly went to help move tables and chairs, and serve rice and dishes.

At the dinner table, everyone talked about their experiences in the illusion they had just encountered.

Zhang Yan said with lingering fear, "I used to say when I played games that Chinese horror is the scariest. Paper figures are such normal things, yet they can be so terrifying. You guys didn't see how scary it was when their eyes and mouths moved. I almost thought I was going to die there."

Unaware that he was in an illusion, he remembered Qin Lide saying that Chu Er was skilled at using paper figures in combat, and assumed that the paper figures he was seeing were created by Chu Er, so he frantically fought with them.

Hu Meng said she was in a forest, and as she walked, she found a human head on every tree. Qiao Yijing, on the other hand, was boating on a lake, and countless skeletal arms reached out from the deep water to grab her.

Tang Xuan said, "Perhaps my worldview has been too chaotic lately. In the illusion, I returned to the first time I went to a murder scene. I saw the soul of the deceased float out of the corpse, grab my neck and ask me to die in his place. The forensic doctor next to me acted as if he couldn't see it."

Everyone laughed, saying that his statement was both scientific and mystical.

Qin Su lowered her eyelashes, slightly lost in thought.

It's not hard to guess from the conversation that the scene in this illusion is not fixed or pre-set; it's more like a form of hypnosis and psychological suggestion, making people see scenes they are afraid of or have vivid memories of.

For example, Zhang Yan subconsciously remembered the paper figures Qin Lide had mentioned and was somewhat afraid of them, so he saw the army of paper figures. The forest Hu Meng saw was a mountain she had visited as a child, where she had gotten lost and it had always been a childhood trauma. Tang Xuan, on the other hand, could not forget the first time he went to a murder scene.

Similarly, the black mist, the waterfall, and the giant dragon she saw must not have appeared out of nowhere; they must have some hidden connection to her, but...

She seemed to have forgotten.