Lu Jiuchuan led the savage out of the treehouse and said, " What's the shortest route to Mass Grave? Show us the way."
A flicker of fear crossed the savage's eyes: "What are you going to do in Mass Grave?" His eyes clearly said, "You don't mean to kill me and then dump my body in Mass Grave, do you?"
Lu Jiuchuan patted him on the shoulder with a smile: "Don't worry, we have no grudge against you and won't kill you. Just lead the way."
Tang Ci took out a silver ingot from his pocket and handed it to him, saying, "This is my reward."
The savage looked at the two suspiciously. He really didn't understand who these two were. They suddenly appeared and knocked out the trap he had set, then tied him up with ropes, threatened him and asked him many strange questions. Now they were asking him to lead the way to Mass Grave and even offered him money.
The savage muttered something under his breath, reluctantly took a few steps forward, and said, "There are two paths to Mass Grave. One is a small path on the front of the mountain, and the other is a cliff on the back. Which one do you want to take?"
Tang Ci looked at him in confusion: "The cliff is so high, is there a way to get up?"
The wild man explained, "There are vines you can climb up, but it's very dangerous. I've lived here for over ten years. Once, I chased a wild boar to the back of the mountain and found a long vine hanging down there. You can climb up the vine and go directly to the top of the mountain."
Lu Jiuchuan nodded and said, "Show us both the way."
The savage led them to the front of the mountain first.
At the end of the woods, a path leads directly to the top of the mountain. The path is winding, but fortunately it is relatively flat and has many footprints left by travelers. This should be the path that the town's residents usually take to get to Mass Grave.
The other path is relatively hidden. It goes around the woods and comes to the back of the mountain, right at the bottom of the cliff, where there is a large area of strangely shaped rocks of varying heights.
The cliffs rise high into the clouds, and it's difficult to see the top from the bottom, as the view is obscured by thick white fog.
As the wild man said, there was indeed a vine hanging down from the mountaintop. Last night, they stood on the edge of the cliff; it was late at night, and the light was too dim, so they didn't notice the vine's existence.
Lu Jiuchuan and Tang Ci exchanged a glance. Lu Jiuchuan temporarily tied the savage to a tree and said, "Thanks. We'll climb up and take a look. We'll release you when we come down."
It wasn't that he wanted to make things difficult for the stranger, but he was afraid that if he released him now, the guy might attract the Hunter, which would be troublesome. Lu Jiuchuan simply chopped the savage into the ground, knocking him unconscious.
He grabbed the vine and tugged hard, then whispered to Tang Ci, "I'll climb up. You wait here for me to teleport."
Tang Ci said, "I'll go up with you."
Lu Jiuchuan shook his head: "Climbing along the vines is too dangerous. Besides, there are many sharp rocks on this cliff. What if you trip and fall and get injured?"
Tang Ci wanted to argue, but Lu Jiuchuan stopped him with a smile and a gesture: " Xiao Tang, you stay here and keep an eye on this hunter. If anything happens, communicate with him via the voice headset."
Tang Ci had no choice but to give up, and instructed, "Then be careful."
Climbing a cliff three thousand meters high is no easy feat, but Lu Jiuchuan has loved rock climbing since childhood and was fascinated by the cliff in front of him. In fact, he could have easily flown up on his Vermilion Bird, but he climbed it himself to test whether he could successfully reach the summit by following the vines.
If so, it means that someone deliberately placed this vine for escape.
Lu Jiuchuan quickly tied a ring around his waist with the end of a vine, gripped the vine tightly with both hands, and used his long legs to push off the cliff face, climbing upwards at lightning speed. The man was extremely agile; Tang Ci looked up and saw that in the blink of an eye, he had already climbed dozens of meters high.
Tang Ci pressed his earpiece and said, "If you go straight up like this, what if someone at the top cuts your vines?"
Lu Jiuchuan laughed and said, "Then I'll ride the Vermilion Bird to escape, or I might as well go back to Peach Blossom Spring. Don't worry, I know what I'm doing."
Tang Ci looked up at his back. Soon, the figure became a small black dot in her field of vision.
Gradually, Lu Jiuchuan's figure was obscured by the white mist and disappeared. However, many pebbles were trampled down by Lu Jiuchuan and fell into the valley with a clatter.
After an unknown amount of time, Lu Jiuchuan's voice came through the earphones: "I've reached the top of the mountain, but something's not right."
Tang Ci's heart tightened, and he hurriedly said, "If it's dangerous, let's retreat first."
Yu Hanjiang also asked in the voice channel: "Are you surrounded by zombies? If there are too many zombies, retreat and think of another way."
Lu Jiuchuan shook his head and said, "It's not that there are too many zombies, but that there are no zombies at all on the mountaintop."
Everyone was stunned upon hearing this. Xiao Lou was the first to react: "They went back to Mass Grave? Or is it that the danger in this escape room will only occur at night?"
Lu Jiuchuan said, "It's probably going to happen tonight. I'm in Mass Grave right now, and there are rotting corpses all around. These things haven't turned into zombies, and I haven't seen any of the tombstones from last night."
He placed Li Qingzhao's mark nearby and said, "Wait 5 minutes, I'll bring you over."
Five minutes later, a teleportation notification appeared before everyone's eyes. Xiao Lou said to his teammates, "Everyone stay at the inn for now. Hanjiang and I are going to Mass Grave. After we've investigated the clues, CEO Shao will use another Li Qingzhao to bring us back."
Shao Qingge said, "Understood, be careful."
The screen flashed, and Xiao Lou, Yu Hanjiang, and Tang Ci instantly appeared.
Take them to the top of the mountain.
Xiao Lou looked closely—just as Ninth Brother had said, there were indeed no traces of zombies here, but rather a number of rotting corpses scattered haphazardly on the ground. Some of the corpses had been gnawed on by hawks and hounds to a gruesome state, and the stench of rotting flesh permeated the surrounding area.
Compared to the horde of zombies last night, the Mass Grave wasn't much better during the day. The only advantage was that these things didn't attack them on their own.
Tang Ci covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve and said, "Is this what Mass Grave is really like? Was the instance we entered last night a different one?"
Yu Hanjiang said, "It seems that this secret room alternates between day and night. Everything is normal during the day, but at night, zombies will crawl out of Mass Grave, and the town will turn into Ghost City... Challenger will be forcibly teleported into the survival instance."
Xiao Lou said, "It's much better than I expected. Without zombies, it will be easier for us to investigate and collect evidence."
Looking at the corpses scattered on the ground, Xiao Lou calmly stepped over them.
In the ancient world, there were no rubber gloves. He used scissors to cut Yu Hanjiang's white silk card and made two pairs of white cloth gloves on the spot. Lu Jiuchuan joked from the side: " Professor Xiao can not only make hand warmers and parasols, but also sew!"
Xiao Lou said helplessly, "I was forced into it."
He put on cloth gloves, lifted the hem of his coat, and strode into Mass Grave, searching for his target.
He was looking for the wedding procession from three years ago; these people were all dressed in bright red, so they were relatively easy to find. There were quite a few people dressed in red among Mass Grave's corpses, but dozens of them gathered together in red were very conspicuous.
Yu Hanjiang pointed to a spot not far away and said, "Over there."
The four walked quickly to the scene, where dozens of red-clad corpses were piled up like garbage. Among them, the one wearing a phoenix crown and dressed in finery should be Zhao Zean, the bride from the Zhao family.
Xiao Lou squatted down beside the body and roughly examined its surface.
"Judging from the state of decomposition and lividity, the time of death was about three years ago, which matches up. As for the cause of death, I need to investigate further." He gestured for Yu Hanjiang to turn the body over and examine it carefully, saying, "There are no marks of sharp objects, no signs of poisoning, and it doesn't look like strangulation..."
The fact that the group of people went to Mass Grave in the middle of the night, as if they had lost their souls, was itself eerie.
The fact that the body has been found but the cause of death cannot be determined has left Xiao Lou very puzzled.
He frowned and said, "The bodies were left in Mass Grave for three whole years, exposed to the elements and eaten by wild animals. The evidence has been almost completely destroyed... But judging from the expressions of some of the well-preserved bodies, most of the deceased looked horrified, as if they had seen something extremely frightening before they died."
Lu Jiuchuan interjected, "Could it be that he was scared to death?"
Xiao Lou analyzed carefully: "When a person is subjected to strong stimulation, the sympathetic nervous system will produce a stress response, and the body will release a large amount of adrenaline, which will cause the heart to suddenly beat faster, arrhythmia, and blood pressure to rise... Theoretically speaking, it is possible for a person to be scared to death. But usually, people who are scared to death have underlying cardiovascular diseases. It is difficult for a healthy person with a normal heart to be scared to death. At most, they will faint when they are extremely fearful."
Yu Hanjiang nodded in agreement: "It shouldn't be that many people were scared to death at the same time, including many young people."
Lu Jiuchuan asked in confusion, "Then what could have been the cause of their deaths?"
Looking at the corpse on the ground, Xiao Lou suddenly remembered a crucial clue— the origin of Mass Grave.
Twenty years ago, a famine caused many people in the town to starve to death, and their bodies were left lying around on the mountain, forming this large area of Mass Grave.
If the killer committed murders in Mass Grave out of a "revenge mentality," would he have let those people starve to death as well?
Thinking of this, Xiao Lou said in a low voice, " Hanjiang, help me out. I need to dissect the best-preserved corpse to see if I can find the cause of death."
Lu Jiuchuan: "..."
Xiao Lou is incredibly brave to dissect corpses in Mass Grave.
Yu Hanjiang was used to Xiao Lou's actions. He put on the gloves that Xiao Lou had made himself and calmly lifted a female corpse to the flat ground next to him and placed it down. The corpse was the maid who had been chatting with someone in the town last night, wearing the same pair of red embroidered shoes that Xiao Lou recognized.
Because she was covered by other corpses, she was not eaten by wild animals and was the most well preserved.
Xiao Lou took out a dagger and quickly cut open her abdomen.
The blood of the body, which had been dead for three years, had long since dried. Xiao Lou skillfully cut through the skin and dissected her internal organs—sure enough, the stomach was empty, with no remaining digestive contents.
Yu Hanjiang also sensed something was wrong. He often encountered various corpses during his investigations, and most of them had remnants of digested food in their stomachs after autopsies. This is because normal people eat every day, and the stomach takes a long time to empty. If the deceased had eaten something difficult to digest before death, it's possible that whole pieces of food could still be found in their stomach after death.
Once a person dies, the gastrointestinal tract stops functioning.
In other words, if a person dies after eating, before the food in their stomach has been fully digested, residue will definitely be found in the stomach. In some cases of death by poisoning, evidence can also be found in the stomach residue.
However, this corpse had an empty stomach and duodenum.
It's like you haven't eaten for days?
To confirm, Xiao Lou found another well-preserved corpse to perform an autopsy, but the result was the same.
He looked at Yu Hanjiang and said with certainty, "I know the cause of their deaths—these people were probably lured to Mass Grave by the murderer."
How were they controlled, and then starved to death? The combination of terror and hunger is why they had such expressions on their faces, and their bodies were generally emaciated.
Yu Hanjiang nodded and said, "It seems there really was something wrong with the famine 20 years ago. The murderer deliberately lured so many people to Mass Grave to starve to death, clearly out of revenge. Could it be that he had a relative who also starved to death 20 years ago?"
Lu Jiuchuan sighed helplessly and said, "This is too difficult to investigate. So many people starved to death 20 years ago, and Mass Grave was piled with tens of thousands of corpses. Whose descendants have come back for revenge? How are we supposed to find them?"