The old woman found herself lost in memory.
Back then, she was still young, the heir to her family's traditional medical knowledge, and already serving as the village healer of Dàhé. When the villagers hauled up dismembered remains from the river and summoned her to examine them, she recognized immediately — the bite marks on the flesh were unmistakably human.
But how could that be possible?
If she had known that this was merely the prelude to Yinghua's bloody vengeance, she might have... she might have taken her own life first.
The old woman paused. *Might have fallen into* what?
A vague, forgotten memory tugged at the edge of her mind — something long buried. What was it?
As her grandson massaged her arms, he suddenly felt the texture beneath his palms shift. In her old age, her skin had grown soft and sagging, but never had it felt like this — like decaying sludge. Glancing up, he saw one side of her face rotting, festering like a corpse.
Terrified, the boy cried out, "Grandma!"
At once, the old woman snapped back to herself. A ripple of unseen power swept across the room, like a stone skimming the surface of water — smoothing away the turbulence, restoring calm.
"What is it, child?" she asked, turning to him with a gentle smile.
The boy rubbed his eyes. "N-Nothing… I'm just scared. I don't want to kill any more human-headed fish." Surely, it was a hallucination, brought on by handling too many of them today.
In the depths of the forest, Erik and Delilah climbed up into a great tree, where they reunited with Brooks. Each perched on their own branch. Erik turned to Wang Peirong with gratitude.
"Thank you for saving me. When we clear this instance, I'll treat you to a meal."
Delilah waved it off. "No need to be so polite. I happened upon you while a ghost was attacking, and I happened to have a usable item on hand. Of course I'd help. Did you get any intel from the NPCs?"
"I did," Erik replied. She hadn't expected Nora's mother to suddenly transform into a ghost mid-interrogation. People couldn't just *become* ghosts — unless Nora's mother had been one all along.
"Could it be… all the NPCs in this village are ghosts?" Erik whispered, shaken. Perhaps they had forgotten their pasts, but once she questioned them, it was like lifting the lid on a cursed box.
"You encountered one too, didn't you?" she asked Delilah. How else could she have said her item "happened to still be usable"? She must have used it just before saving Erik.
"I did," Delilah confirmed. "I went to find the mother of the brothers I mentioned. She turned into a ghost right after I questioned her. If I hadn't had an item ready, I wouldn't be here now."
"I had wanted to find that old woman too, but I didn't know the way — I only heard you mention her. So I went for someone I could locate… a little girl's mother, Nora's."
Erik shared all the information she had gleaned.
Delilah nodded. "Some of what I found overlaps with yours, so I'll skip to the origin of the Dragon King Festival."
This isolated village deep in the Dàhé River valley had lived off fishing for generations. Their livelihood was tightly tethered to the whims of weather. Over time, men and women were viewed through the brutal lens of physical utility — and thus took root a culture of rank misogyny, thick as sludge.
Women were seen as unclean. If a fishing boat was touched by a woman, misfortune was sure to follow — at best, a meager catch; at worst, capsizing and death. Every mishap at sea could be blamed on a woman.
When a son was born, red lanterns were hung on the boats in celebration.
When a daughter was born, she was greeted with loathing. If fortune smiled, she was fed just enough to grow. If not, she was cast into the river — fed to the fish. The horror taught unborn souls to never again seek rebirth into such a home.
Countless baby girls met their end in the bellies of river fish.
But the retribution came swiftly. When the boys of Dàhé reached marrying age, there were no women left to wed. And the surrounding villages had suffered the same fate, sharing the same cruel customs.
Desperate to continue their bloodlines, the villagers turned to *buying brides* from outside the river basin.
These purchased brides were forced to bear children. The sons were treasured. The daughters — still seen as curses — were tossed into the river like waste.
Thus began a macabre cycle. Dàhé and its neighboring villages continued buying brides for years.
Until one day, Dàhé bought Yinghua.
She was a university graduate, young and full of dreams. She was abducted and trafficked to this remote village. Even aboard the boat, she plotted her escape. A skilled swimmer, she dove into the river, swam far — but was recaptured by villagers from downriver.
On her wedding night, she bit off her "husband's" ear.
In retaliation, the villagers subjected her to the harshest of punishments — caging her and repeatedly submerging her until she nearly drowned, then dragging her back up at the brink of death.
She became pregnant. The village midwives confidently declared the baby a boy. Her in-laws rejoiced. That night, she slammed her abdomen into the corner of a table — miscarrying the fully-formed male fetus.
Yinghua never submitted. No matter how they controlled her, she found ways to end each pregnancy.
In the end, her husband stared into her pale, withered face — still burning with scorn, defiance, and hatred — and understood: he could never break her.
The village chief decreed that the wrath of her unborn sons could only be quelled by feeding Yinghua to the fish.
Her husband pierced her heart with a harpoon. Her "parents-in-law" decapitated her with a hoe. They discarded her severed head and body separately into the river.
It was an ordinary day. The villagers returned to their boats after disposing of her remains, sailing home with the sunset and their catch.
But shortly afterward, whirlpools began to churn the river. The first fishing boat was swallowed whole.
"One by one, the boats vanished. Then came the scattered remains — fragments of wood and corpses washing ashore. The nearby villages had long honored the Dragon King of the river. They believed the unrest was due to insufficient offerings, and banded together for a grander ritual. But it was all in vain. People began dying, torn limb from limb. Only blood, bones, and shreds of flesh remained."
"Was it Yinghua?" Erik asked, then shook her head. "No… it wasn't just her."
It couldn't be.
What was happening across the entire basin — it was too vast. Yinghua was only the spark.
This was the wrath of every woman who had died in the river, every baby girl thrown away. The anguish and injustice of generations had coalesced into a force of vengeance.
"Yes. The dead had their retribution," Delilah sighed. "Yinghua awoke it — and wielded it."
The rain intensified. Below the mountain, the village shimmered with scattered lights. But they brought Erik no warmth. In that moment, the game world unfolded before her like a living nightmare — no longer fiction, but a grim reality of blood and sorrow echoing from decades past.
"Too many died," Delilah whispered. "Village after village vanished. Only Dàhé survived — because its people stopped fishing. But the shadow of death loomed. Rotting fish floated upriver into the village, reeking of decay. The elders claimed it was the work of vengeful spirits."
Then a wandering Taoist priest arrived. Under his guidance, the villagers constructed stilt houses shaped like fishing nets and enshrined the very harpoon that killed Yinghua. He told them Dàhé remained intact *because* of that harpoon. Yinghua had died by it — and feared it.
After offering countless lives, the villagers finally trapped Yinghua in that stilt house. With the priest's mediation, she made peace with Dàhé — on one condition:
She wanted vengeance against those who had trafficked and bought her.
The seven men involved were transformed into human-headed fish and offered to Yinghua as a sacrifice. She promised not to harm the village for twenty years.
The old woman said she was only seven then. She witnessed the entire offering — watched Yinghua devour those seven men. Before departing, Yinghua looked at her. That gaze drove the child mad for years.
She confessed that, as a child, she once saw Yinghua trying to escape and told the adults. Yinghua was caught, never smiled at her again, never secretly taught her to read.
On the night of April 4th, seven infants were delivered to the shore by fish. The fish spoke — carrying Yinghua's message: raise them well, let them study, send them to university. When they graduate, they must return — as offerings.
"And the fish soup?" Erik asked. Nora's mother had no answer.
"Those who consume the human-headed fish will birth the next generation," Delilah said. "Then the new offerings will feast on the ones who raised them — and so the cycle continues. Those men once devoured the flesh of women. Yinghua cursed them to consume themselves — again and again, in every lifetime."
Delilah's voice trembled with awe. "Her revenge is eternal. A perfect loop. She forced them down the same path she once walked — a bright future, then a plunge into hell."
This village, backward and closed-off, allowed only seven people to leave — the seven offerings sent to study. But what they didn't know was that graduation wasn't a beginning — it was the turning of the gears of fate.
"So… we are Yinghua's enemies?" Erik breathed.
"Yes," Delilah said. "That's what the old woman told me."
Erik exhaled deeply. The truth laid bare by Wang Peirong had shaken her to her core.
Had she not been cast as a sacrifice, she might have applauded Yinghua's revenge.
"At last, we understand the truth of this instance. The key to clearing it is the harpoon. It's nearly dawn — we can't act now. We'll strike again on the third night."
"We already have the harpoon," Delilah said lightly. "It was Brooks' idea. During our escape, we circled back and stole it from the shrine. Thank goodness we moved early — by the time we understood its importance, it might've been too well-guarded."
She shivered at the thought. When they'd slipped back up the mountain, they saw, from afar, large groups of NPCs returning to the village. At this point, not even a fly could escape.