Ch43 - Four survivors.

Wei Fuyuan: “???”

Wei Fuyuan was bewildered and wanted to ask Bei Quan why he was called a dumbass? But he was prideful and refused to admit defeat so easily. He scanned all the buildings in Xuanmen village one by one, and suddenly tapped on his thigh.

“Ah!”

He shouted. 

“I know where they live!”

He had a sudden realization and pointed towards the hillside, “They are staying in those two rooms, aren’t they?”

After a careful observation of his surroundings, Wei Fuyuan found the clue.

Although he didn’t know how different this ‘Xuanmen village’ in the fragmented space was from the Xuanmen village in their time and space, he observed that the arrangement of houses in the village was virtually identical to the abandoned village that they stayed at.

Wei Fuyuan instantly realized why Bei Quan laughed at him and called him dumb. After aligning the hints provided by Ayun on the hotline, the missing teachers and students should, of course, rest in the two rooms they used to stay in!

Bei Quan smiled and nodded.

Somehow, Wei Fuyuan was stunned to see the elderly kindness in the eyes of his boss, as though a father was relieved to see that his silly son had finally gained some enlightenment.

Wei Fuyuan somehow felt a little upset. 

He found himself unwilling to be looked down upon by Bei Quan.

——Clearly, the age gap between us is no more than a meagre five or six years. Why does he still continue to gaze at me with the expression of looking at a naive small child?

The settlement of Xuanmen was not large. The trek from the river to the two connected courtyards on the hillside at the village’s forefront took only a few minutes.

Young Master Wei’s hazy disorientation had not yet dissipated completely. They made their way to the two small courtyards. 

Bei Quan went towards the one on the left.

The yard’s fence door was closed, but it was not locked. It was secured loosely from the inside with a little wooden spike and could be easily unlocked as soon as it was pulled out.

“Hmm, the simple folk here do not close the house at night.”

Bei Quan commented with a smile. 

Then without bothering to knock on the door, he pulled out the small wooden stake that was being used to bolt the door, opened the door, and went straight into the yard.

The yard was quiet as the people living inside seemed to have not got up yet.

Bei Quan and Wei Fuyuan crossed the threshold, entered the courtyard and went straight to the wing room on the western side.

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

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The lighting in the room was very poor, so even in the morning, the room was pitch dark. They could smell a stale odor, not unlike the one from an old house. A slightly low Tukang stood against the wall, and the bed was covered with old-fashioned bedding in red, green and blue colors.

He wasn’t sure if the Tukang’s position was deliberate or if it was just a minor coincidence. But as soon as Wei Fuyuan walked through the door, he noticed two pairs of large feet positioned to be facing the door.

Young Master Wei frowned uneasily. 

He couldn’t tell whether it was some kind of intuition. Anyway, he just felt that there was something seriously wrong with the layout of the room.

“Well, that’s interesting.”

The next moment, Bei Quan, who was beside him, softly spoke up.

Wei Fuyuan turned to look at him. 

Bei Quan seemed to sense his doubts and smiled as he explained,

“There is a custom in many places, especially in the rural areas, that is, never sleep with your feet facing the door.”

Wei Fuyuan pointed to the room, “Like this?”

Bei Quan nodded, “Feet facing the door is the way of the dead lying down.” 

Wei Fuyuan, “Fuck!!”

He was so terrified that he dashed into the room like an arrow, lifted the thin blanket, and proceeded to check whether the two people lying on the Tukang’s were dead or alive.

On the Tukang lay two young men, and both were among the missing people they were looking for.

They didn’t wear the villagers’ hand-sewn, homespun clothes. Rather, they were dressed in a loose printed T-shirt worth 30 or 40 yuan and baggy trousers. They were completely clothed in the standard dress code of the male’s at the university. 

“Hey, are you two still alive?”

Wei Fuyuan grabbed their shoulders and shook them with one hand.

The two boys were, in fact, alive and awoke in an instant as Wei Fuyuan shook them violently.

They opened their eyes, their gazes filled with fear and panic, but when the two of them saw the tall and handsome man standing in front of them clearly, they first froze, then looked at each other, and the next second, they rushed over and grabbed Wei Fuyuan’s arms. 

“Here you are!

“Great, finally waiting for you for so long!”

“You’re here to save us, aren’t you?”

“Are you a search and rescue team?” 

“We can leave, can’t we?!!”

“Oh thank goodness, take us away!”

The two young men didn’t mind that Wei Fuyuan was drenched from head to toe. It was as though a drowning man finally grasped a life-saving straw when they came into contact with Wei Fuyuan. They each grasped Wei Fuyuan’s sleeve and begged him to help them escape.

“Don’t make noise, keep it down!!” 

Wei Fuyuan had a headache and shouted at them to stop talking.

“We did come to rescue you.”

At this time, Bei Quan outside the door raised his hand and knocked on the door panel several times, and then slowly and calmly walked into the room.

“But if you want to leave this place, you can’t simply rely on us.” 

“Now, please tell me how many of you are left and what has happened during these few days.”

————————-

About fifteen minutes later, Bei Quan and Wei Fuyuan, who had changed their wet clothes, returned to the west wing room of the small courtyard.

In addition to the two of them, there were four students, two men and two women, who were all the remaining survivors.

Among the four, one of the boy’s names was Pan Xiaoyun, the monitor of Class 6 of the photography department.

As soon as Bei Quan and Wei Fuyuan heard him speak, they immediately concluded that this person was the male student who had called [Thriller Night Talk] two days ago. 

It was because his voice was extremely distinctive. It was almost like a male duck’s dull voice that hadn’t broken away from the voice maturation period.

However, Pan Xiaoyun didn’t know that he had unconsciously called [Thriller Night Talk] for help, and Bei Quan and Wei Fuyuan also didn’t specifically tell him about it.

The other boy’s name was Luosen.

He was tall and slender, with an unremarkable look. Bei Quan had studied his information and realized that his demeanor was plain and boring, but he had a decent temper. His grades and photographic work were merely average in the class. He was the sort of person who would be lost if thrown into a crowd. 

As for the two girls who were still alive, one was Liu Lingling, and the other was Huang Lan. Both of them were roommates and close friends.

They used to live in the yard next door.

When the girls were suddenly awakened by Bei Quan and Wei Fuyuan, their first reaction was the same as that of the two boys, thinking that they could finally get out of this damned cycle.

But when Liu Lingling and Huang Lan learned that although they were reinforcements, they couldn’t take them away immediately, they collapsed and cried together. After weeping for a good ten minutes, they finally calmed down. 

“Well, let’s talk about your experiences in these past few days.”

Bei Quan had just inquired the numerous village women. There was still more than a half-hour until the so-called festival, which was enough time for them to connect and decipher the clues.

When they heard this question, the four kids couldn’t wait to tell them what they had seen and heard. They were full of chatter for a while, and the environment was quite chaotic.

Bei Quan raised his hand to stop this inefficient method of communication and pointed at Pan Xiaoyun, the monitor. “Little Pan, let’s talk about it.” 

The other three closed their mouths bitterly.

Pan Xiaoyun moistened his throat before sitting up straight and saying, “We’ve been here for four days… No, wait, five days…”

Bei Quan, “Is it four days or five days?”

Pan Xiaoyun thought, “It should be four nights, not counting the night when we slept in that deserted village. Right now, it should be the fifth day.” 

Bei Quan nodded and thought that although the time in this fragmented space kept repeating, the elapsed speed was consistent with reality. Exactly the same.

“At first, I thought we had traversed through time and space.”

Pan Xiaoyun made an opening speech with the spirit of finding joy in sorrow, and then said, “But soon, we found that this was not the case at all.”

According to Pan Xiaoyun, they had intended to spend one night in Xuanmen village before driving down the mountain before daybreak. 

They were jolted awake as a swarm of villagers stormed into the room. They dragged them to the river without saying anything to watch a festival.

“The situation was chaotic and we were all perplexed.”

Pan Xiaoyun said, “I tried to resist, struggling to ask exactly what was going on, but those people simply ignored my questions, and I couldn’t get away from them. I had no choice but to be dragged by them all the way to the river and watch them throw paper-like people into the river…”

“Wait.” 

Bei Quan interrupted him again, “How did you arrange your accommodation that night in the deserted village?”

Pan Xiaoyun answered this question simply and clearly, “The night we first came to the village, four male students occupied this larger room…”

Luosen, who sat next to him, also nodded.

“Old Song… I mean Mr. Song, he lived alone in the smaller room on the opposite side.” 

Then Pan Xiaoyun looked at Huang Lan and Liu Lingling again, “I remember you girls, you live in the same room, right?”

The two girls nodded together:

“We stayed in the yard next door. Because we were afraid, all three of us slept together.”

Bei Quan gave an ‘um’. 

“As a result, a lot of things happened later, and we kept losing one person every day… Everyone was too scared to separate and huddled together at night as much as possible.”

Pan Xiaoyun shivered and his voice trembled slightly, “But it’s no use, because no matter where we sleep at night or try every means to stay awake by using any means, we will lose consciousness as soon as it’s past midnight.”

“Wait until the next day and then open your eyes. We will be back in our original room and will be woken up by a group of villagers rushing in again…”

He glanced timidly at Bei Quan, his eyes full of hope shining with expectation, “Today, is the only exception.”