Transformed into a heartthrob's simp, every day is a battleground.

Chapter 316 Call Me Grandpa

Lou Yanchuan directed the ostrich egg, which had grown arms and legs, to help him retrieve the things from the pit.

The ostrich egg was unhappy, but it could only swallow its anger.

Lou Yanchuan looked at the severed arm, admiring it from side to side for a while, and said, "It's quite ugly."

Then he called Yan Xun.

Strangely, no one answered the phone, and the smile on his face gradually disappeared. It wasn't until the call was finally connected that Lou Yanchuan told Yan Xun about his discovery in the fields at home.

Yan Xun seemed to be in a hurry, only asking him to come to the White House before quickly hanging up the phone.

Lou Yanchuan glanced at his arm with some disdain, then asked the ostrich egg to hold it for him, before turning his wheelchair toward the white house in the center.

Around the same time, a similar scene unfolded at the remaining four companies.

The crew-cut man kept an eye on the house, worried that the bamboo pole might suddenly appear... and then he furtively dug around in the yard.

Du Yun also found a severed arm in the ground in his own yard.

The Shu Fan family and the Lin Wen family each found two legs.

With his head still on the house, his work efficiency was naturally low. He shoveled dirt for a long time... and felt the light in the yard getting dimmer and dimmer. When he looked up, he found that dark clouds had already covered the moonlight.

He felt a sense of fear and could only speed up his movements.

Finally, he felt as if his shovel had struck something, and he dug it out with even more force.

—After the thing was dug out, it rolled around on the ground several times.

Then it rolled to someone's feet.

Buzz cut: "!!!!!!!"

He was holding a shovel in one hand, and he was so scared that he almost jumped out of his skin.

He looked at Xie Qingdu, who was bending over, and didn't understand when he had come out of the house... Xie Qingdu lowered his head and quickly straightened it.

The light was dim, and the man with the buzz cut took a few steps back, holding a shovel.

"Are you digging for this?" Xie Qingdu asked.

The man with the buzz cut wasn't sure if Xie Qingdu had seen the head clearly—he was terrified, and his voice trembled as he spoke, "...Yes."

"you……"

He wanted to ask Xie Qingdu if he had seen the front of that head clearly.

He wanted to say that he wasn't a bad person! He was just an ordinary person who came to play a role in a murder mystery game, and he didn't do anything bad.

"Then come and get it," Xie Qingdu said.

The buzz cut remained unchanged.

Xie Qingdu stood there, and because of the light, it was difficult to see his expression through his buzz cut. All that could be seen was him bending down and picking up the head.

"Why aren't you moving?" Xie Qingdu asked.

The man with the buzz cut held a shovel in one hand and moved toward Xie Qingdu, saying, "You don't need to hold it in your hand."

"Just throw it on the ground, I'll pick it up later."

Xie Qingdu ignored him and simply held the head in his hand.

The man with the buzz cut swallowed hard, feeling his heart pounding so hard it felt like it was going to jump out of his throat. "Weren't you just inside the house? How did you suddenly come out?"

"I saw you digging something and wanted to ask if you needed help," Xie Qingdu said.

"Haha, no need for that." The crew-cut man chuckled dryly.

"I didn't pay rent, so it's only right that I help you," Xie Qingdu replied.

The man with the buzz cut gripped the shovel tightly, glancing again at the exit of the yard. "So polite..."

As he spoke, he suddenly accelerated, snatched the head from Xie Qingdu's hand, and ran out by the hair.

He ran as fast as he could, as if he were being chased by a ghost!

By this time, the dark clouds had completely obscured the moonlight, leaving only the streetlights to illuminate the community.

But the houses next to them gradually became restless, as if something was trying to crawl out of them.

"Aaaaaaah!!!" the crew-cut man screamed inwardly as he ran wildly toward the white house.

He glanced behind him out of the corner of his eye and saw Xie Qingdu following him at a leisurely pace. He wondered how the other person did it. Although he didn't look like he was running, his movement speed was not slow at all.

Aa ...

He disregarded the shovel in his hand and threw it behind him, hoping it would hit Xie Qingdu, who was relentlessly pursuing him.

"You dropped something." Xie Qingdu's voice was closer.

"Ahhh, it's yours!!!" the crew-cut man shouted.

He grabbed the head by the hair in his hand, and seeing the white house right in front of him, he sped up and ran towards it.

He was the last to arrive; the lawn of the white house was already full of players.

"He's here! He's here!" The crew-cut man threw his head on the ground and hid behind Yan Xun.

"Xie Qingdu is here!"

While dodging, the man with the buzz cut tugged at the hem of Yan Xun's shirt, as if playing a game of eagle catching chicks, with Yan Xun acting as the mother hen protecting him from being caught by the eagle.

Yan Xun: "..."

"You owe me for my clothes." He said as he snatched the hem of his clothes, which had been pulled out of shape, from the man with the buzz cut.

Xie Qingdu stopped in his tracks, looking slightly bewildered. He seemed not to understand why the man with the buzz cut was so frightened, nor why Yan Xun was looking at him so warily.

After Yan Xun rescued the clothes from the crew-cut man's hands, he bent down and picked up the head that the crew-cut man had thrown on the ground earlier.

Buzz cut: "!!"

He covered his eyes with his fingers, wanting to look but not daring to.

Yan Xun held his head and looked for a while, then said, "Sure enough."

He was holding an extremely realistic paper effigy head.

He looked almost exactly like Xie Qingdu. His eyes were tightly closed, and his facial expression was somewhat distorted, making him look extremely painful.

The dark clouds quietly dispersed, and the players, by the dim light, could make out Xie Qingdu standing to one side and the head in Yan Xun's hand.

The scene was extremely strange. They didn't know if Xie Qingdu had seen the head in Yan Xun's hand... nor did they understand why Xie Qingdu was so calm.

He seemed a beat slow to react, staring at the head in Yan Xun's hand for a long time before suddenly muttering to himself, "...Is this me?"

He looked up at Yan Xun and said, "I am already dead."

"Hmm," Yan Xun said, "You should be able to remember what happened at the lakeside villa, right?"

A look of confusion returned to Xie Qingdu's face, followed by a moment of clarity. He looked up at the white house, then at the crew-cut man, and said, "It's you."

"And you."

A look of pain gradually appeared on his face, as if he were recalling everything that happened before his death.

Fang Shuo quietly took a step back.

Perhaps it was because he gradually remembered everything, but the limbs they brought slowly began to move.

Lou Yanchuan glanced at his arm, which he had placed on the lawn—his fingers were curled up.

The head that Yan Xun was holding slowly opened its eyes.

He looked at Yan Xun with an extremely painful expression, "Save me..."

Can a severed head still talk? Yan Xun looked at the head in his hand, and some inappropriate thoughts popped into his mind.

"How can I save you?" Yan Xun asked.

"Help me put my body back together," Xie Qingdu said in Yan Xun's hands.

"As long as we put it together..."

"I will never have to endure such pain again."

He told Yan Xun that he seemed extremely afraid of the magic used to suppress evil spirits, and his face was full of pain when he recalled it.

Yan Xun nodded, indicating that he knew. "Where is that Ning Hengyuan?" he asked.

"I'll go and avenge you."

"I don't know," Xie Qingdu said.

“Perhaps he’s not here.” His limbs and torso, scattered on the ground, were slowly moving—as if an invisible thread was guiding his scattered body parts to reunite.

“But we’re all here.” Yan Xun looked surprised. “We…”

He pointed to himself, "Besides my grandmother, there are your distant relatives."

“We are all in this community.”

He looked at Xie Qingdu, "Is he also hiding in this community?"

What is his hidden identity?

Xie Qingdu did not answer; he seemed to be thinking.

“There are a lot of people in this community,” Yan Xun said. “Besides the residents, there are also the staff in the white building.”

"Is Ning Hengyuan hiding among these staff members?"

“I can’t find him,” Xie Qingdu said.

He looked at the head in Yan Xun's hand, while the body parts were still slowly moving on the ground, looking as if they couldn't wait to be pieced back together.

He stepped forward slightly, trying to take his head from Yan Xun's hands, but Yan Xun dodged him.

"Why did your body turn into a paper effigy?" Yan Xun asked again.

He seemed intent on solving the puzzle once and for all, hoping to get the answer from Xie Qingdu.

Both Xie Qingdu and Yan Xun wore similar expressions of confusion as they held the heads in their hands. "I don't know."

They spoke at the same time.

"I only remember being in that villa."

Xie Qingdu, an NPC, looked at the white house and said, "I remember that night, he killed me."

He then turned his gaze to the man with the buzz cut, saying, "You killed me in that house."

"You don't know what happened after that?"

Upon hearing this, Xie Qingdu's face finally cleared of confusion. "I'm already dead, how would I know?"

He seemed to think that Yan Xun had asked a silly question.

“But I still find it strange.” Yan Xun held the head in his hands, looking at Xie Qingdu in his arms. “Why did you turn into a paper effigy?”

"Could it be that you were already dead before you entered the villa?"

"That's your secret."

Xie Qingdu immediately shook his head.

"That's impossible," Fang Shuo whispered to Lin Wen. "If this were a secret, we should have received a notification that the mission was completed."

Lin Wen looked at Yan Xun and Xie Qingdu, who were facing off to the side, and then at the arm that was slowly moving on the lawn. She simply stepped on the arm and stopped it in place.

"Let's wait and see," Lin Wen said.

The old man in her head told her, 'This is a good opportunity.'

Lin Wen calmly asked in her mind, "What good opportunity?"

"When Xie Qingdu remembers all of this, he'll definitely go mad," the old man said. "Let me possess him first, and when Yan Xun is too preoccupied to care about anything else, I'll deliver the fatal blow."

Lin Wen thought to herself, Wen Yuanzheng seems to be a fool. This old man's intentions are so obvious, yet he can still be fooled.

“That’s not good,” Lin Wen said. “Let’s wait for him to finish the hidden quest first.”

The old man thought to himself, "What does this hidden quest have to do with me?" Unsure whether Lin Wen had discovered his purpose or not, he could only probe, "Are you regretting it?"

"Regret?" Lin Wen asked, puzzled. "What would I regret?"

"Heh, you know perfectly well what I mean," the old man thought, but he couldn't afford to openly break ties with Lin Wen, so he could only vaguely reply, "It's a promise. Once the hidden mission is complete, you'll help me get revenge."

'Give me your body for now.'

Lin Wen didn't answer his question directly, but said, "Look there."

She said to the old man, "I feel like there's something strange about Xie Qingdu."

"He knew he was killed by us..."

"Why is he still so calm?"

Even if Yan Xun wasn't involved in the murder, the culprit was right behind him, so Xie Qingdu shouldn't have remained indifferent.

"And why can he have two consciousnesses?"

Lin Wen was referring to Xie Qingdu, the NPC standing there, and the head that Yan Xun was holding in his hands.

The old man only knew that this was a dungeon dominated by the consciousness of a dungeon boss. Seeing this, he assumed that Xie Qingdu, as the dungeon boss, was too powerful—so an NPC as an avatar appeared alongside his past self.

'Remember our promise,' the old man said.

He sensed that Lin Wen wanted to back out and had other plans in mind.

Of the people present, the crew-cut guy was too stupid, Du Yun was a lackey, Fang Shuo was unreliable, and Shu Fan and the other two were too wary... After looking around, there wasn't a single person they could cooperate with.

And for some reason, he always had a bad feeling when he saw Lou Yanchuan sitting in a wheelchair.

Especially when he and Lin Wen were whispering to each other, Lou Yanchuan's gaze would occasionally drift in their direction—which made the old man even more terrified.

"Why are you stepping on his arm?" Fang Shuo was puzzled when he saw Lin Wen stepping on Xie Qingdu's arm, which was slowly moving forward.

"Isn't it said that this is a spell to suppress evil spirits?" Lin Wen said.

"What if these parts of him reunite and really become evil spirits that we can't suppress?"

“But…” Fang Shuo wanted to say, wasn’t Xie Qingdu a good person?

He was simply tricked by that master and died tragically in the villa. Even if he wanted revenge, he wouldn't cause trouble for ordinary people like them, right?

But the thought that he was one of the "murderers" made him unable to say it. He could only silently put one of his feet on the grass and his arm to prevent Xie Qingdu's arm from slipping away.

Although Du Yun didn't understand why Fang Shuo and Lin Wen did this, he could still follow suit, so he did it as well.

Seeing this, Shu Fan and the other two simply followed suit. Only Lou Yanchuan didn't move. Du Yun leaned over and said, "If it's inconvenient for you, can I help you?"

He thought Lou Yanchuan was inconvenient to move around because he was in a wheelchair.

Lou Yanchuan looked up at Du Yun, a fake smile on his face, "Okay, thank you."

Of course, he didn't say that he wasn't moving because he disliked it.

Du Yun felt quite pleased with himself, thinking that his older brother would definitely praise him if he saw this.

"Just say so if you need help," Du Yun said, patting his chest. "We're brothers."

"I'm not your brother," Lou Yanchuan said with a smile.

"Huh?" Du Yun thought to himself, "Why are you being so formal?"

“I’m old enough to be your grandfather,” Lou Yanchuan said. “If you don’t mind, you can call me grandfather.”