The sage was determined to die.

"Have the water plants come to life?"

Ji Bai swam further downstream. What was clearly a very eerie scene became somewhat absurd when he interpreted it from the perspective of a horror game player.

When he grabbed the corpse's hand, he even subconsciously squeezed it, but the feel of the other's fingers was very strange, not like a human at all, but more like some kind of resin.

As he was pondering what was different, a tremendous force pushed him outwards.

The scene shifted again, and he was pushed ashore by this force.

"What's going on?" Ji Bai swallowed hard, thinking, "Could this be discrimination against me?"

The group of people on the shore, who seemed frozen in time, came back to life the moment they saw Ji Bai. When the village chief saw him, a vivid look of suspicion instantly filled his face. He looked at Ji Bai and wondered, "How did you come back to life?"

Ji Bai wiped his face, his mind flashing back to where he had gone wrong.

He didn't reply, which to outsiders appeared as if he were stunned. After a while, the man slowly touched his face, which was pale from being soaked in water: "There are many corpses at the bottom of the river, I'm scared..."

After saying this, his eyes suddenly widened, and he looked at everyone as if they were monsters.

Ji Bai pinched his leg secretly, and asked in horror, "You...did you secretly kill someone and throw the body into the river before?"

This sentence seemed to be some kind of password, unlocking the "successful conspiracy" expressions on everyone's faces in the next second.

The village chief's lips curled into a wide, semi-circle smile, his bruised and swollen face looking even more eerie. He chuckled and said, "So you found out?"

He grabbed Ji Bai by the neck in one go. The other tried to resist, but seemed to lose all strength. His hands fell limply to his sides, and a painful struggle flashed in his eyes. Soon, he closed his eyes as if he was having trouble breathing.

"Huh?" The village chief, still struggling despite his injury, looked surprised. "How could it be so fast?"

As soon as he let go, Ji Bai, who hadn't even reached the shore, sank back down smoothly.

Watching his figure sink deeper and deeper into the water, the village chief murmured, "Before this process, I always felt uneasy, thinking something might happen. Now I can finally relax..."

After finishing the ritual, he clasped his hands together in a gesture of utmost devotion, repeatedly chanting towards the river, "River God, please bless me, River God, please bless me..."

The invisible hand that had pushed him out of the water pulled him back in after this process.

Ji Bai kept suppressing his thoughts, trying to make himself as clear-headed as a dead man. As he thought this, he couldn't help but feel a toothache and said, "What kind of perverted Wen Xin is this?"

Finally, he became one of the many "little green onions" who reached out to him.

Ji Bai then opened his eyes. Although he was underwater, he could breathe freely, and the faces of the people around him before they died were very close to his.

Unfortunately, that highly contagious terror and sorrow could not sway his heart of stone.

"What's the next step?"

He was thinking about his limited gaming experience when suddenly the girl's face flashed through his mind.

It wasn't her expression after being replaced, but rather her scholarly, cheerful, and innocent demeanor.

The next second, Ji Bai pursed his lips and looked at the corpse beside him. The corpse felt very unreal to the touch. The surface of the skin was rough, more like stone than rubber.