Lucky billion players, you've never seen one before / I can accumulate my own luck

This statement contains an element of deliberate provocation and challenge.

Fan Xiao didn't expect the village chief to fall for it, after all, he had just said it casually.

To his surprise, the village chief actually reacted.

It was as if a sore spot had been hit.

"Heh, stop trying to make yourself look good!"

The village chief scoffed, "Just a change in the weather and two of your men have died. With this little strength... you dare to say you can break the curse?"

"Oh?" Fan Xiao laughed, "The Ghost Queen really is a curse?"

"..." The village chief sneered, "What's the use of getting more information out of me? It won't change your current situation at all."

"We can work together."

Fan Xiao suggested, "Since we have a common enemy, why hurt each other?"

“Tell us the whole truth and all the rules, and we will help you break the curse, how about it?”

"Young man, trying to get something for nothing won't work here."

The village chief sneered, "Your strength is no match for us! If you want to cooperate, you'll have to survive until the wedding day first."

"Isn't the so-called wedding procession essentially a ceremony to become a villager of Hongcun?"

Fan Xiao said, "Players from White Village become the 'deceased' in the funeral, while players from Red Village become the 'bridesmaids.' With the Ghost Goddess as witness, the two parties complete a ghost marriage and can then obtain the status of Red Village villagers together."

"Of course, it's not just players who can participate in ghost marriages; villagers from both villages can too, right?"

“You are indeed clever enough, and you can guess quite well,” the village chief said. “But knowing these things is not enough. I will only hold the Ghost Goddess ritual for those of you who survive.”

“I’m not saying this to show off my wisdom,” Fan Xiao said. “I just have a small question that I hope the village chief can answer for me.”

He then posed the question: "For the villagers of White Village, becoming villagers of Red Village is actually a pretty good outcome."

"Since everyone has become a monster, there's no need to worry about being eaten by monsters. Living in a different life form will resolve the monster crisis in the village. Why not?"

"You'd really give up a spot like this to us players? I find it hard to believe."

"There is no limit to the number of slots," the village chief replied.

“You’re getting a bit impatient, village chief. You can’t even tell it’s an obvious trap?” Fan Xiao grinned. “If there were no limit on the number of people, the people of White Village would probably all have become people of Red Village by now. After all, nobody wants to be food all the time and live in a dangerous environment every day.”

"Heh, how can you be so sure that there are other living people in White Village besides you players?" the village chief retorted. "Many of your previous guesses were based on the premise that there are still living villagers in White Village. What if... there are no living people left there? Are your guesses really correct?"

"If my guess is wrong, then... as someone on the opposing side, village chief, don't you think that remaining silent and letting me guess wrong is the best choice at this time?"

Fan Xiao chuckled and said, "You're so eager to guide my thinking... What, did I hit the nail on the head?"

village head:"……"

"Becoming a resident of Hongcun Village is probably not a good thing, is it?"

After reaching this conclusion, Fan Xiao began to ponder.

This conclusion is slightly contradictory—if becoming a villager in Red Village is a bad thing, then from the village chief's perspective, the best option is to dump all these troubles on the player.

In this way, the villagers should not have harmed the players, and should not have caused the players to suffer heavy casualties before the wedding day.

The more players who survive, the more "ghost marriage slots" they occupy, and the greater the risks they face.

"It seems contradictory, but actually... it's not contradictory; it's a helpless move."

"Because if they don't harm the players, the people of White Village will replace the players and become the food source for the people of Red Village. Eating is unavoidable; only when they are full can they suppress their instincts."

Fan Xiao quickly figured this out.

By this point, he had a pretty good grasp of the general background of this instance.

The dungeon boss is always the Ghost Queen.

The villagers are just a bunch of pathetic creatures.

On the other hand, the village chief did not respond to Fan Xiao's question.

She seemed a little afraid to continue talking to Van Chau.

Seeing his expression, Fan Xiao kindly reminded him, "Village Chief, you haven't forgotten what I said before, have you?"

“If you don’t cooperate… hehe, we’ll take advantage of the ‘clear weather’ to leak information to the red figure we see.”

"Whatever you want!"

The village chief remained unmoved, saying, "I'll say it again: if you want to cooperate with me and know the truth, prove your strength to me! Otherwise... get out of my house."

"Are you really not going to reconsider?" Fan Xiao asked.

"roll!"

……

After leaving the village chief's house, Canglang looked worried and said, "Wouldn't it be bad if we offended the village chief like this?"

"You call yourself a cannibalistic player? How can you be so cowardly?" Owen said disdainfully. "That guy was trying to kill us, why should we be polite to him? We're on opposing sides anyway!"

"They are not necessarily on opposing sides."

Fan Xiao then said, "Judging from his reaction... we might have further cooperation with him in the future."

"The premise is that we can survive until the wedding day," You Guo sighed. "This village chief is really realistic. Players who can't survive probably won't even catch his eye."

"We don't need to follow his lead."

Fan Xiao smiled and said, "The way to pass the level has been figured out. As long as you participate in the ghost marriage, you will gain the status of a villager in Red Village, receive the protection of the Ghost Goddess, and have the ability to walk out of the fog. This corresponds to the game hints, so it can't be wrong."

"The third dungeon quest, Ending the Curse, should refer to killing the Ghost Queen. The Ghost Queen is currently in a slumber, with only her subconscious mind active in the village... The subconscious mind is probably the monster that lured us into the village, capable of disguising itself and interfering with our minds. If we want to eliminate the Ghost Queen, we can probably only wait until she awakens, which is after the ghost marriage."

"As for the night..."

He glanced at the village chief's house in the distance and continued, "There are probably rules to follow at night too. I tested the village chief before, and his reaction told me that breaking into villagers' homes at night and imitating them was the right choice, and I can do it with peace of mind."

“What if the village chief is an Oscar-winning actor?” You Guo reminded him, “He might be playing us.”

"Don't worry, if anything unexpected happens, we can just fight our way out," Fan Xiao said expectantly. "It'll be a good opportunity to test the strength of the Red Village villagers. If they're really weak..."

Chapter 541 The Return of the Dead

7 p.m.

The light dimmed and the thick clouds blocked the last rays of sunset, making the sky appear dark and oppressive.

Fan Xiao looked around and, based on his experience, estimated that there was at most half an hour left before dark.

He took out two bottles of mental recovery potions from his storage space and inhaled them rapidly.

At this point, he had completed the "surveillance deployment" plan—that is, to create a large number of flesh and blood creatures and distribute them to the homes of many villagers to monitor them in real time at night.

With more objects to observe, you naturally won't have to worry about being misled by isolated cases and making mistakes when imitating.

After taking the pills, Fan Xiao casually tossed the medicine bottle onto the roadside.

His mental exertion was actually not that great, far from the point where he needed to take drugs.

After all, he possessed mental strength close to the A-level range as a foundation, and since he only created some extremely small flesh and blood creatures, he didn't actually consume much mental energy.

The reason I take drugs is purely out of habit... well, habitually lying to people.

If it's a player who's hostile to him, or a monster or boss in the dungeon, and they notice his weakness and choose to attack him directly... he'd naturally welcome it with open arms.

Are you alright?

Owen was successfully fooled by Van Shaw and asked a question.

He breathed a sigh of relief—as expected, players with exceptional talent often lack sustained combat ability; exceptional talent requires more mental energy to maintain.

"It was very tiring, but it was worth it. There shouldn't be any unexpected problems tonight."

Fan Xiao said, "Of course, we can't let our guard down completely. If an unexpected danger arises, you will be the main fighting force next."

Upon hearing this, everyone became more vigilant.

Canglang tilted his head and observed Fan Xiao a few times, some thoughts that he shouldn't have had popped into his mind.

She hadn't forgotten that this guy had almost killed her.

If she gets the chance...

“I used to think that Hongcun was not very big, with at most a few hundred or a thousand people, since it is named after a ‘village’.”

You Guo withdrew his gaze from observing his surroundings, and said with a slightly wistful tone, "I didn't expect... there to be so many people here! There must be tens of thousands of villagers!"

The size of Hongcun... in terms of the village itself, it is quite large.

After encountering the weather change, they made the decision to go directly to find the village chief without exploring the entire Red Village in detail.

In addition, the houses here are particularly scattered, with very few families living in close proximity, which is visually very deceptive. As a result, it was not until Fan Xiao completed the "surveillance setup" that they began to realize the scale of Hongcun.

There are tens of thousands of villagers... This is not normal!

Even Fan Xiao was slightly surprised.

Originally, he planned to monitor all the villagers.

However, after realizing the number of villagers, he had to abandon the idea and only selected one hundred households for monitoring.

At the same time, based on the approximate number of villagers in Red Village, he completed another piece of the background puzzle for this instance—the background outside of Red and White Village.

"I bet this dungeon has been opened many times already."

Owen continued, "Every time the dungeon opens and the ghost marriage takes place, the number of villagers in Red Village increases. Over time, this number accumulates... well, I still can't accept it! Tens of thousands of Red Village people, that's too outrageous! How many times would the dungeon have to open to accumulate this number?"

"This number is actually quite normal, even considered low."

Fan Xiao suddenly said, "Do you remember what we found out when we explored the surrounding terrain at the bus station?"

“Buried beneath the wasteland lies a destroyed city!” Owen immediately replied, “There should have been a city of considerable size on this land, but after being ravaged by the mountain spirits, it shrank to the size of Red Village… or rather, White Village.”

The people of Red Village were transformed from the people of White Village—he remembered Fan Xiao's conjecture.

"That's right, there used to be a city here. The 'Escape from Red and White Village' dungeon quest should refer to escaping the area encompassed by this city, not just escaping Red Village and White Village."

Fan Xiao nodded: "Even if a city is small, it must still have several hundred thousand people."

"A group of these hundreds of thousands of people were eaten by the mountain spirits in the mist, and the rest were kept by the Ghost Queen. As a result, the city shrank into a village, which is Bai Village—that is roughly the history of this place."

"Then, some of the people of White Village were transformed into people of Red Village by the Ghost Goddess. People of Red Village also eat people, but the number of people in Red Village at the beginning must have been very small, and they did not eat many people."

"So, after these rounds of reductions, do you think having 10,000 people in Hongcun is a small number, or normal?"

"Uh... Brother Fan, now that you mention it, the number suddenly seems normal."

You Guo's expression was somewhat conflicted.

Actually, while tens of thousands of villagers might seem like a lot for the definition of a "village," it's still acceptable.

In his world division, there are also villages with even more people.

The key is the villagers of Red Village... They're all monsters!

Tens of thousands of villagers are equivalent to tens of thousands of monsters!

If they accidentally break the village rules and get attacked by the people of Red Village... just thinking about it is terrifying!

At this moment, Fan Xiao suddenly said in a chilling tone, "I think that choosing 'slightly less' from the options of 'normal' and 'less' is more in line with the population base of a city."

Have you thought about what "relatively few" means?

"Where did those people from Hongcun who were absent go?"

"This is getting more and more dangerous!" Canglang frowned.

On the other side, after listening to Fan Xiao's words, Owen showed a thoughtful expression.

Then, he looked at Fan Xiao and said respectfully, "I wonder how many people are left in White Village, which corresponds to Red Village? If the number is also large... no wonder the village chief of Red Village wasn't afraid of your threats before."

"It's uncertain when the weather will change from cloudy to sunny, and when the sun will appear. If there are many people in White Village, the probability of us encountering players from 'Red Shadow' is very small. With these two factors combined... our chances of passing on the information are pitifully small."

"I'm afraid by the time we deliver the message, the wedding day will have already arrived."

“Is that so…” Fan Xiao laughed, “I have a feeling that the village chief didn’t consider this aspect at all, and was just throwing caution to the wind.”

Then he waved his hand and said, "It was just a probing threat, whether it succeeds or not doesn't matter. Besides, my purpose was not just to threaten, but more to test the village chief's reaction with words, and the village chief gave the reaction that met my expectations, so there's no need to mention it again. Oh, by the way, we guessed one of our rules correctly."

"Which rule?" You Guo asked hurriedly.