Chapter 256 One More

There were seven people left, but eight tree branches.

One extra.

"How could this happen?" You Qi asked, his face a mask of despair. He stretched out his hand, as if hoping someone would claim the extra branch. He trembled as he asked, "Who... who does this extra one belong to?"

Of course, no one would claim it. Everyone stared at him with pity.

Chen Qiang subconsciously glanced at the painting. This action seemed to trigger a chain reaction, and the remaining people also looked at the painting.

If there was one more "person" in this room, it would be the woman in the painting.

Could this tree branch... be hers?

Seeing this, You Qi's face turned as white as if he'd been drained of blood.

Although he was terrified, he didn't dare to casually discard the branch given by the NPC. Moreover, he didn't know which of the two branches to discard. His whole face was twisted together.

Just as everyone suspected, there was still a show to be performed tonight.

"Did you notice," An Xuan said, "that just now she said the Master asked her to inform us?"

Before this, she had always referred to the Young Master.

Nodding, Xia Meng narrowed her eyes and said, "It seems they already know that we've seen through Young Master Huang's true identity, so they're no longer trying to hide it."

...

Night fell quickly. After dinner, everyone gathered in Jiang Cheng's room to await the start of the task.

An Xuan once again led everyone in reviewing the details of the task and the important points. "According to the rules this time, the ghost is very likely to disguise itself as one of us during the process, and then lure others into speaking."

He looked at everyone one by one. When he saw Jiang Cheng, he noticed that the other person was also staring at him. An Xuan naturally looked away. "So I suggest, no matter what you see or hear, don't speak."

"And this tree branch." He opened his hand, and a short piece of tree branch lay quietly in his palm. "After holding it in your mouth, do not take it out until the task is completed."

Mentioning the tree branch, everyone glanced at You Qi, who was shrinking in the corner. His complexion seemed even worse.

*Dong!*

*Dong!*

*Dong!*

The drum sound was very dull.

Everyone's pupils shrank. The task... had finally arrived.

Arriving at the shore, the lake was still shrouded in fog, and what was even stranger was that this time the fog was denser than before, floating on the lake surface, everything in front of them was white and hazy, and the visibility was very poor.

A small boat cut through the thick fog and docked at the shore.

Everyone was not surprised by this. The rule was that they needed to use the boat to disperse everyone.

But what surprised everyone was that the boat was not empty like before, but had a paper doll head and a... bright red opera costume.

The opera costume was propped up by a wooden frame, standing at the bow of the boat. The paper doll head was placed on top of the opera costume, at first glance, it looked like a person standing on the boat with their arms outstretched, which was very eerie in the current environment.

The rules stated that speaking was not allowed only after arriving at the designated location and holding the tree branch in their mouths. So at this moment, You Qi couldn't help but ask, "Is this... are we supposed to put this on? The rules didn't say..."

Halfway through his words, You Qi stopped speaking, as if a duck had been stepped on its neck, because he saw many more boats sailing out of the fog.

Silently, each boat had a bright red opera costume standing on it. The sleeves and hem of the opera costumes fluttered in the night breeze, as if people were dancing.

Xia Meng counted. There were seven boats in total.

An Xuan took a deep breath and was the first to jump on the boat. The situation was already very clear. They needed to change into the red opera costumes and put on the paper doll heads.

But everyone was cautious and did not take off the opera costumes they were originally wearing, but put the red opera costumes on top of them, making them look rather bloated.

At the moment when they changed into the opera costumes and put on the paper doll heads, the seven boats started at the same time and sailed in different directions, quickly disappearing into the fog.

His throat bobbed, and Fatty looked around. The surroundings were foggy, and he couldn't see the other boats at all. The sound of the water under the boat was also very strange. Fatty wanted to lean out his head to take a look several times, but he was stopped by his own rationality.

He was worried about seeing something he couldn't handle, such as a rotten dead face, or... a corpse waving pale arms.

His imagination was always very strong. In just a few seconds, he had already imagined dozens of possible ways for the ghost to kill people, and the final result was that he squatted in the middle of the boat, his huge body shrinking into a small ball, his neck rotating 360 degrees without any blind spots, like a sturdy human radar.

This situation continued until he landed on the shore.

According to the rules of the game, he only needed to wait here. Later, someone would come to him, hand over the bride to him, and then he would take the bride to find the next person.

The process was not complicated. In the doctor's words, it was a disguised version of the pat-on-the-shoulder game.

The pat-on-the-shoulder game refers to needing four people, in a rectangular, empty room at midnight, turning off all the lights, and then arranging one person in each of the four corners of the room.

Facing the corner of the wall, you cannot look back.

When the game starts, one of the people in the corner walks to the person in the adjacent corner, gently pats the shoulder of the person in front, and then the person who is patted repeats the above steps in the same way.

The premise is that everyone is walking in the same direction, either clockwise or counterclockwise.

When someone walks to an empty corner, they must first cough, then cross the corner of the wall of this person and continue forward until they meet the next person.

After a period of time, you will find that there will be times when no one coughs, which means that there is someone in every corner, but according to the rules, there is always one person walking.

The extra person... is the new participant in this game.

But what is different about this wedding procession is that the venue is larger, and they are circling this ghostly lake.

The seven people are scattered far away, so the sound of coughing cannot be heard at all, and the rules of the game do not allow them to do so.

Changing into the same paper doll heads and bright red opera costumes is also to make them unable to recognize each other.

This was too deliberate. It was as if the words "the ghost wants to sneak into our midst to kill people" were written in the rules.

After landing on the shore, Fatty immediately saw a paper doll.

The paper doll was standing under a tree seven or eight meters away from the shore, with extremely exaggerated and eerie makeup painted on its face, wearing a green melon-skin hat, and a large braid hanging beside it.

In the dim moonlight, the paper doll struck a strange pose, slightly hunched over, with one arm outstretched, pointing to the pitch-black left side.

His breathing accelerated uncontrollably, and Fatty gradually turned around, facing the left side according to the paper doll's instructions, waiting silently, without saying a word.

He didn't know how long this torment lasted, but a "swishing" sound rang out behind him, sounding like someone dragging their legs on the ground, rubbing forward little by little.