"Wedding night?" Wang Zikai perked up, "That sounds intense!"
"What’s the bride’s name? And her family?" Gao Yang asked.
"That's the strange part. There's no trace of her identity at all," Officer Huang lit a cigarette.
Gao Yang fell silent.
"The bodies of the entire family were dismembered into hundreds of pieces and scattered across the village. It took the forensic team two days to reassemble the corpses. They identified four male bodies and one female, but the woman's head was missing and has yet to be found," Officer Huang took a puff from his cigarette.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!" Someone banged on a gong and shouted, "Dinner’s ready!"
The villagers, who had been working, immediately stopped and rushed inside. Soon, ten tables were filled. A few women brought in steaming dishes, quickly filling the tables with fish and meat. The group exchanged uneasy glances, none daring to touch their chopsticks.
Gao Yang called out to the system in his mind, hoping to analyze the dishes before him. Then he remembered the system was unable to operate here, and sighed inwardly. He glanced to his side and jumped — Wang Zikai had already grabbed a piece of braised pork and shoved it into his mouth.
"Wang Zikai, you—"
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"What about me?" Wang Zikai, his mouth greasy from the food, exclaimed, "It’s delicious! You should eat too."
"I'm not hungry," Pang Jun said, though his mouth watered, betraying his true feelings.
Though they didn’t know exactly how long it had been since they entered Gujia Village and endured all they had, they were already exhausted, hungry, and parched. But in such a perilous and unknown environment, it was common sense not to eat recklessly.
Unfortunately, Wang Zikai wasn’t a normal person — he was an idiot.
Wang Zikai devoured his meal, drank his fill, and even struck up a conversation with a drunken villager beside him. Though their dialogue was disjointed, they bonded, drinking two bottles of baijiu together.
When the feast ended, the group left early.
Gao Yang and Pang Jun supported the drunken Wang Zikai as they made their way to the village entrance.
Officer Huang, looking troubled, remarked, "Judging by the current situation, this village exists in a time period thirty years after the crime occurred, ten days after the incident. The villagers decided to hold a funeral for the deceased family because the case hadn’t been solved. It’s all recorded in the case files."
"Could time really have rewound?" Pang Jun, deeply unsettled, thought for a moment. "When did the villagers all disappear?"
"The day after the burial. When my team leader returned to the village to investigate, not a single soul remained," Officer Huang replied.
"So that’s tomorrow," Gao Yang said.
"Seriously? We have to wait another day?" Wang Zikai, reeking of alcohol, was about to say more when he suddenly retched and stumbled to the roadside, vomiting violently.
Qing Ling looked at him with disdain, "Drunk? Or poisoned?"
Officer Huang shook his head and walked over, patting Wang Zikai on the back twice. His expression darkened. He waved the others over, "Come and take a look."
Gao Yang felt a deep sense of dread. He hurried over and felt his scalp tingle.
At Wang Zikai’s feet was not undigested food, but a mass of wriggling earthworms and mud bugs.