A ghost storyteller can lose his life but cannot lose his job

Chapter 28: The head of the elder is gone~
It has been two whole days since he came to this village, but Zhong Xie has not appeared in front of anyone in this village.

To the village, he was an invisible man, and he would only go out to check what was going on at nightfall and noon.

The reason is simple, someone changed the key settings.

"W to move forward, S to move backward, A to move left, D to move right..."

"Come on, special forces, you have completed all the tutorials, now try to conquer this village!"

In the leaky earthen house, Zhong Xie, wearing tattered clothes, was doing rehabilitation exercises, while making confident remarks about the current predicament.

When he first arrived at the village, his body and brain were completely out of control and he couldn't even walk normally. At this moment, he saw two pig-headed men carrying axes walking towards him from the side of the road. He was so scared that he rolled and crawled to hide from the spotlight.

Although these two pig-headed men look very honest, Zhong Xie is now in human form and he doesn't know what the pig-headed men's attitude towards humans is, so he naturally doesn't want to expose it.

As for Kuster, this kind of puzzle-type weird story event will limit the use of its own weird stories, and the seller also said that if the weird stories are used, they will be "discovered" directly.

I'm not afraid of death, but I'm afraid of wasting the opportunity to play. Even if I can't complete the game in one life, at least I can't die right at the beginning, right?

That would really dampen the enthusiasm for the game, and Zhong Xie would naturally classify it as a "shitty work".

His body was out of coordination, and the whole village was full of orcs like pig-headed people and sheep-headed people, so Zhong Xie did not take the initiative to look for opportunities to collect clues and information in the past two days.

Otherwise it would really be "Detective Chinatown".

Zhong Xie stretched his muscles for a while and finally got rid of the feeling of stagnation where his body could not keep up with his thoughts. He felt relieved.

After two days, he had basically adapted to this body and could finally start playing.

The name of the ghost story is [Crime and Punishment], which means that the people in this village may have committed some kind of "crime", and turning into a pig-headed man or a goat-headed man is their "punishment".

Because he had to hide himself, he did not go out very often in the past two days. He basically wandered around the empty houses in the village, trying his best not to be discovered by the villagers.

Even if he didn't actively collect clues, he could still feel that there was something unusual about this village.

The village has its own rules.

No one can be seen in the village at midnight and noon. It is easier at night because everyone stays at home, but at noon these pig-headed people and sheep-headed people will go to the mountain behind the village together to atone their sins.

There is a temple of the goddess on the mountain. If you want to go up the mountain, you can only take a small path. There is a deep forest on the side of the road. During the day, there are always woodcutters carrying axes working in the woods. Only at night can you have a chance to sneak up the mountain.

Zhong Xie sneaked up to take a look. The temple was very dilapidated, and it seemed that it was converted from an old temple a long time ago. The villagers made a faceless statue of the goddess for worship, and the offerings placed in front of the statue were mostly pork and mutton.

He refrained from eating because he felt that there was something very wrong with the tributes.

The second thing is to respect the Empress.

When villagers meet each other on the road, they often bow and worship for a while towards the direction of the dilapidated temple. No matter how urgent the matter is, once someone worships first, another will follow, as if some kind of switch has been triggered.

What made Zhong Xie feel strange was that it was not the case that breaking the rules would bring disaster.

On the first night, Zhong Xie strolled around in the middle of the night with great anticipation, staggering like a roadblock zombie, wanting to see if there would be any ghost stories coming to kill him for not following the rules, but to his surprise, not to mention ghost stories, there weren't even any pig-headed people or sheep-headed people.

The trick of using himself as bait failed, and the biggest question in Zhong Xie's mind instantly arose.

What about ghost stories?
Apart from the slightly weird village, he did not sense any creature with a strong weird aura, not even one that could arouse his suspicion.

You might say it was some kind of rule, but he didn't follow the village rules and nothing happened.

Whether it's physical or not, if you ask me to solve the strange cases in this village, you have to give me a goal, right?

What else should I do?
Transform into the King of the Great West and kill, kill, kill, kill?
That's fine. If I can't solve the problem, I can solve the people with problems. But the problem is that I can't solve the problem of these people with problems now.

Since he entered the capsule in a conscious state, his physical qualities were taken from the person who solved the strange story.

The good news is that this ghost story user's physical fitness is much higher than that of ordinary people, and he is quite capable in fighting.

The bad news is that his body is still much weaker than Zhong Xie's own, and he can't take on the entire village alone.

If Kuster doesn't release his form to help fight, he really can't do anything to these villagers.

Now Zhong Xie had some guesses in his mind, which were things he didn't want to happen:
The weird stories in this capsule are of the "concept" type.

It does not exist in reality at all. Perhaps it is just a belief, a memory, or even an emotion of the villagers.

Without eradicating this concept, he could not kill this myth.

It's a bit over the top. The capsule with black entries starts to do this kind of "stream of consciousness" weird talk, without even giving a fighting entity.

How to kill conceptual weirdness by physical means?

There seems to be only one answer left. Zhong Xie has made it a backup plan and will not do it unless it is absolutely necessary.

Of course, the reason for not doing so is not because he is kind-hearted. After all, these are just projections, virtual NPCs.

Simply because I'm tired.

There are probably three to four hundred people in this village. Without an efficient method, he would die of exhaustion and not be able to handle all of them.

Moreover, the ghost storyteller who produced this capsule obviously did not do so. What that guy met was not an NPC, but a living person.

If you dare to raise your butcher knife against the people who are plagued by strange stories today, I dare not imagine what you will dare to do tomorrow.

Therefore, the solution to the problem must not be mindless killing, but another more clever method.

Find out how now.

Zhong Xie glanced around. The earthen roof was covered with thatch mixed with mud. Bright sunlight leaked in through the gaps in the thatch, casting mottled spots of light in the house.

The structure of the bed was somewhat similar to the earthen kang in the north. The straw mat on the bed was moldy, and there was something that looked like a quilt stuck in the corner.

The cooking stove is right next to the bed, and the unburned firewood pile can heat the bed at night, which is probably one of the few sources of heat for the owner of the house.

After all, this earthen house is ventilated on all sides and has excellent air quality.

There wasn't much in the room except for a broken ceramic soup bowl with a lid on the stove. Zhong Xie went over to open it and a slightly fishy smell hit him in the face.

The soup bowl contained chunks of meat from an unknown creature mixed with a small amount of wild vegetables, with a few drops of oil floating on the surface of the soup.

Being so poor that people can only eat meat, this is another strange thing about the village.

Anyone with a discerning eye could see that there was something wrong with the meat, and Zhong Xie was no exception. Moreover, he saw with his own eyes a pig-headed man eating a bowl of meat last night, and turned into a sheep-headed man the next day.

Because this guy ate lamb?
Will people become the last animal they ate?
Zhong Xie had read this novel, and he also wanted to go to the mountains to find some Tyrannosaurus Rex to eat, but unfortunately he didn't find any.

He stirred it with a spoon, and the black meat with blood streaks floated in the soup bowl. The fishy smell became more obvious, but he still couldn't see anything, and there were no fingers or toes like Zhong Xie expected.

Zhong Xie walked towards the gate and picked up the hoe behind the door as a weapon.

The hoe had a wooden handle with a rusty hoe blade stuck on the top. There was a small amount of reddish-brown dirt on the metal surface. He leaned in to smell it and confirmed that there was blood in the dirt.

Is this hoe used for both cultivating land and killing people?

The people in the village are still tough.

Farming but having no crops to eat is also a suspicious point, but Zhong Xie knows why.

He walked out of the door and came to the front of the house. The scene he could see from his perspective was the reason -

It was a bright sunny day with a gentle breeze blowing. The long brown grass in the fields bent down, revealing dozens of pig and sheep heads with their eyes closed. It created a scene where "the wind blows the grass down and the cattle and sheep are revealed."

Hidden in the long-haired grass was a more solid dogtail grass, and from its branches hung large pieces of brightly colored pork belly, each half a meter long, alternating between red and white, with a color difference as obvious as if it were painted with pigment. The wind at the entrance of the village blew from nowhere, sometimes to the left, sometimes to the right, causing the pigs and sheep in the fields to sway wildly.

As they swayed, the movements of these pig and sheep heads gradually became coordinated, as if they were listening to the same DJ song and the constantly swaying heads eventually moved in the same direction.

Same shake, same direction.

The heads in the grass in the farmland all turned towards Zhong Xie. They still had their eyes closed, but Zhong Xie knew they could "see".

The village had already noticed that he was a stranger two days ago.

Allowing him to exist does not show any targeted weirdness.

Zhong Xie shrank back silently. He once tried to pick up a pig's head from the field and put it on his head to play some pig rush or something, but he couldn't take it off at all. If he irritated the people in the field, the pig heads and sheep heads would come over to bite and butt him.

Avoiding the fields, he moved quickly through the village using the few shadows between the houses, measuring the area of the entire village with his steps.

It was already afternoon and all the villagers had gone up the mountain to atone their sins, so there was no one else to be seen on the road.

"Keep your voice down, the village chief's house is just ahead."

"What are you afraid of? They are all in the mountains right now. Aren't you greedy for the vegetables grown in the village chief's backyard?"

"I'm so greedy. If I don't eat vegetables, my stomach will be filled with all that meat and fish. I'm so sick of it that I can hardly walk."

"Stop talking nonsense and follow me."

At the other end of the path, two sheep-headed men, one tall and one short, were whispering, but this was just what they thought was whispering; the specific content of the conversation was heard by Zhong Xie at this end of the path.

Just as I said there was no one around at noon, two goat-headed men suddenly appeared, as if it was a task randomly refreshed by the system.

It is not difficult to judge from these conversations that the identities of "livestock" and "vegetables" in this village seem to have been exchanged, or to be more precise, vegetables and other crops.

He was not sure what this meant for the time being. Maybe the ghost story in the village was a cabbage spirit.

I can't stand the fact that meat is more valuable than vegetables, so I force the two to be reversed.

But if you really want to care about vegetables, shouldn't you let them eat people, pigs and sheep?
When it comes to identity exchange, Zhong Xie's mind immediately thinks of an old friend.

Miss Black Goat.

Could this be a derivative story of the Black Goat?

I should have asked the seller where he got the capsule. Maybe it really came from Wangcheng. After all, Wangcheng has been open to the ghost story messengers for several days, and this period is the peak period of their activities.

Unfortunately, Kuster had no recollection of it at all. He was just a stay-at-home gigolo, and it was impossible to expect him to remember a certain strange story under the Black Goat's command.

The entry produced by this strange story is black, which means that the level is not very high, and it is even less memorable.

Zhong Xie hid in the blind spot of the two sheep-headed men and followed them stealthily.

For these two greedy sheep-headed men, now is the best time to steal food, and for Zhong Xie, now is also the best time to explore.

The village chief's house is located in the center of the village. It is not very grand and is similar to the surrounding stone houses, but it is definitely much better than the mud house where Zhong Xie had previously hidden.

The two goat-headed men sneakily jumped over the low wall of the village chief's house and entered the village chief's yard. Their jumps were very light, somewhat similar to those of antelopes, which was definitely an action that no normal person could do.

Can you become a goat-headed man and gain some of the abilities of a sheep?
That would be even more difficult to deal with, as sheep and pigs run faster than ordinary people, especially in the mountains around the village.

Seeing the sheep-headed man enter the yard, Zhong Xie also followed him to the corner outside the dean.

He wanted to check the situation in the yard later, so he prepared two fingers on his right hand to insert the eye.

According to the usual development of horror movies, the two goat-headed men might have discovered him.

So when he poked his head inside, the two sheep-headed men might not have walked into the yard, but were hiding in the inner corner of the wall, waiting for him to poke his head inside to suddenly jump out and scare him with the most common face-jumping kill in horror movies.

At this time, he can retaliate with the long-planned ward kill.

The doctor said this was paranoia, but Zhong Xie felt that one should be cautious when dealing with ghost stories.

Unfortunately it was of no use.

The two sheep-headed men had quietly come to the side of the village chief's stone house. The shorter sheep-headed man wanted to go around the house to the backyard, guessing that the vegetables were in the backyard.

They did not jump directly over the stone wall in the backyard because there was no stone wall in the backyard. There was only a small river there, which served as a natural barrier. If they wanted to enter the backyard, they could only jump in from the location they chose.

The tall sheep-headed man grabbed the impulsive short man, whispered "hush", then walked to the window, poked a hole in the window paper with his finger, and leaned forward to look carefully.

"Ouch!"

In just one second, the tall man screamed in pain, covered his eyes and took two steps back.

"Snapped--"

The window of the stone house was pushed open by an old man, and his voice was full of sternness and disappointment:
"I knew that you two were up to no good when you were wandering around on the road. Go to the temple on the mountain and atone your sins. You will suffer the consequences if I catch you next time."

You actually learned how to kill by placing wards from me?

Seeing this, Zhong Xie naturally understood what had happened, but the village chief did not use much force, and it seemed more like a prank. The sheep-headed man quickly recovered, begged for mercy from the village chief, and then ran away.

Wait a minute, why is this village chief a human head?

And he just said "strolling on the road"?
He could see the goat-headed man on the road from the house, and he could also see me.

"Strangers behind the wall, there's no need to hide anymore. The people in our village may look scary, but they have good hearts. Come in and have a chat."

Sure enough, after the two sheep-headed men walked away, the village chief looked towards the corner where Zhong Xie was hiding and spoke loudly.

Zhong Xie didn't hesitate, walked around to the main door and pushed it open and walked in:

"Can you tell me what's going on in your village?"

The village chief opened the door of the stone house and poured water in the inner room. After a long sigh, he said, "We are all miserable people."

Entering the stone house, the village chief's house was much more spacious and had more wooden furniture than the previous one. It seemed that his living standard was still very good.

"It started a few years ago in our village. This happened," the village chief said. He took out a pipe from under his bed and lit it. "Only meat can be grown in the fields. Vegetables all have legs. They have to be fed pork and mutton in the fields to grow up."

He said quietly, "What's even more bizarre is that eating meat will cause changes. The pig-headed and goat-headed people you see all came from this."

“Huh…” The village chief exhaled a puff of smoke. “As for me, I stopped eating meat more than ten years ago. I only eat vegetables, so now I am the only normal-looking person in the village.”

He laughed and looked at Zhong Xie: "No, now there is one more person, you can come with me to the mountain to atone for your sins later and have a look around. Our village respects people like us very much, and they will welcome you."

"Um……"

Zhong Xie made a prolonged thought sound, then looked towards the village chief.

Suddenly, he understood what had happened, and he suddenly smashed the village chief's shoulder with a hoe.

"No, you're eating vegetables!"

"The last person you ate was a human, that's why you have a human head!"

　I don't know why, but as I write this, my mind is filled with the words "I have long hair~" from the book The Divine Chef Xiao Fugui. Is the title a fraud? Who cares? How many people who write books are mentally normal?

　　Please continue to read and vote for me. Writing a book requires a lot of support. Fortunately, you have been supporting me. Thank you very much!!!

　　
　
(End of this chapter)