Sun Han looked around. They were standing by the roadside with a wide view. Although it wasn't the best place to chat, they didn't have any other options.
“Yes,” he said. “After pulling Miss Han up from the cliff, a lot of mud and rocks flew down from the edge of the cliff, which is how I found this!” He took out a worn wooden box, the patterns on the box covered with a lot of mud.
"Now that we're all together, we can start it together."
Cheng Shuang put on gloves, took the box, and immediately scraped away the dirt, revealing two grooves on it, one engraved with a crescent moon and the other with a sun. The box was airtight, without any gaps, and the only markings were the sun and moon grooves.
Han Meimei leaned closer to examine it, then frowned and said, "Is it a mechanism? If you find the right one, you can open the box, but if you force it open, the contents inside will be destroyed first."
“The groove is smaller than the one hanging outside the yard.” After observing it, Cheng Shuang handed the box to Du Jun and the others, since accommodating her height would make the posture a bit awkward for them.
Sun Han and Li Lei spent most of the day on the mountain, and that was about all the clues they could find. The ones they couldn't find, they would have to fill in the gaps with Du Jun and Cheng Shuang.
“It’s about the same size as the sun and moon hanging in the ancestral hall.” Du Jun looked at the sky. “Now is the time when the villagers are full of energy. I suggest that they go to the ancestral hall in the afternoon and try to find the correct sun and moon markers to activate the mechanism.”
With a few seconders, it passed unanimously.
Cheng Shuang raised her hand, "I roughly counted the players who entered this instance, and there are about sixteen of them."
Several people nodded, so there must be at least eight ancestral halls.
"And another thing, Qingyun's partner last night was Qingfeng, so who was her real teammate's partner? And how did they escape the village chief's capture?"
Du Jun lowered his eyes and thought for a moment. They entered the instance as a group of three, but the instance defaulted to two people per group. If the number of players was controlled within the range of sixteen, there would inevitably be one group that entered with an odd number of people. When the so-called murderer was executed in the morning, almost everyone walked side by side in pairs, so the remaining person might have been acting alone the whole time.
Qingyun's ability to launch a sneak attack right under Sun Han and Li Lei's noses undoubtedly demonstrates her skill as a protector. However, the fact that her opponent managed to escape after Qingyun's teammates were tricked into drinking alcohol and opening the door to the room of the bride in mourning clothes next door, only to be caught red-handed by the village chief, shows that she is quite capable.
He and Cheng Shuang exchanged a glance. Seeing the girl deep in thought, occasionally glancing at Han Meimei, he suddenly had a flash of inspiration.
Fishing line tools!
Since the player possesses the items, why does he insist that Qingyun and her teammates are protectors? Perhaps they are just two players who have concealed their identities.
Du Jun raised an eyebrow slightly. If they were players, this Death Land would be even more unpredictable. The players were natives, yet they knew of the existence of the Protectors and used the Protectors' identities as cover to attack without restraint in the dungeon.
Could it be that some indigenous people and homeless people have joined forces?
What is the purpose?
Increase the probability of dungeon failure and devour the natives' life force more quickly?
Upon hearing this question, Cheng Shuang and Du Jun looked up almost simultaneously, their eyes filled with surprise and uncertainty. But the moment their eyes met, they realized that their guesses were pretty much right.
Sun Han: How can eye contact be complete without one person? (Heartbreaking experience of age discrimination in the workplace.)
The group dispersed again and each found a corner to have lunch.
Cheng Shuang and her companion chose a dilapidated old temple. Perhaps because the villagers hated the curse so much, few villagers would give this old temple a second glance.
Coincidentally, Lianrong and the old man were also sitting inside eating.
Both sides were in a hurry and didn't exchange much information. Cheng Shuang, recalling the infant remains, felt there were still many stories hidden within them.
As the little girl's wish was granted, the old man and Lianrong unearthed the ancient legend of the Twin Village.
In the old days, Fengluan Mountain was a place of lush green hills and fertile soil. As natural disasters and man-made calamities struck other areas, refugees from all directions fled to the beautiful Fengluan Mountain. However, after settling there for half a year, strange things began to happen. In what was already a time of scarcity and barely enough to eat, the women in the village became pregnant one after another. The old doctor, upon examining their pulses, discovered that all the babies were twins. Not only that, but even the livestock they raised were giving birth to twins, no more, no less…
By this time, the villagers were already terrified by the natural disasters and were afraid that they might have broken some taboo and offended the mountain god. Twin births were considered an ominous sign, and it was a year of famine in which everyone was struggling to make ends meet. How could all the women in the village suddenly become pregnant? The whole village was filled with anxiety and fear, suspecting that monsters were causing trouble and trying to bring chaos to the world by being born in human form.
They deeply believed in ghosts and spirits. When a woman gave birth to a child, one of the twins had to serve heaven and earth. Because the stream water of Phoenix Twin Mountain was exceptionally sweet, they buried the living little life under the stream water.
As time went on, the chances of women conceiving twins became more and more frequent. Even those who had only recently moved in could not escape this calamity. Over the years, the accumulated bones gradually covered the clear stream. Phoenix Twin Mountain, once a beautiful paradise with flowers and clear water, became a place filled with bones and resentment. Only then was it about to meet its true calamity.
The bodies buried underwater caused dampness and decay, leading to disease outbreaks, first from water pollution, then from epidemics.
The villagers were filled with fear, which led to many women becoming pregnant that year simply out of reverence for heaven and earth.
The more people who conceived, the more people who were killed were killed. The karmic retribution fell entirely on the villagers. Countless people contracted strange diseases. Fortunately, Fengluan Mountain is surrounded by mountains and forests on both sides, and the official road does not pass through this area, which spared outsiders from suffering and prevented the strange diseases from spreading further.
That year, a young woman who had married far away to Fengluan Mountain Village without knowing her roots became pregnant. She was reluctant to part with her twins and wanted to secretly leave the village, but she was discovered by the villagers and trapped in the village with her loving husband until she gave birth.
The woman was already on the verge of death giving birth, and now she had to watch helplessly as her crying child was buried in the cold stream among the bones. Overwhelmed with grief and despair, she followed him to her death.
The woman's husband fled in grief with his other child, but the weaker of the twins could not withstand the hardships of the journey and died on the way.
Unable to bear the blow, the husband returned to the mountain village and killed everyone he saw, eventually dying there as well.
Fortunately, the husband killed mostly those afflicted with strange illnesses who couldn't escape far, while the healthy ones remained, continuing the bloodline and temporarily suppressing the strange illnesses.
Unfortunately, the killing, accompanied by resentment, completely enveloped Fengluan Mountain, and the strange disease quickly rebounded and struck the entire village.
The curse has truly taken shape.
If it weren't for a Taoist priest who had cultivated himself to this point and discovered that killing was the root of all problems, Fengluanshan Village would probably have perished.
The Taoist priest was a skilled practitioner. He performed several rituals by the stream, communicating with the yin and yang, and finally determined that the twins' fate was set at eighteen years old. Before the age of eighteen, the siblings could not see each other, and after the age of eighteen, one of them would be devoured by a curse.
The woman died without a complete body, and the man's body was completely destroyed.
Eighteen is a delicate age; the yin energy is not yet too strong, and the yang energy has not yet dissipated, making it the best age to suppress the rampant curse.
Eighteen years of education have glorified death and made young men and women willing to die for their villages!
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