"What should we do now? Should we go to the village chief's house?" After hearing Erika's description, Zhao Sicheng suddenly felt guilty.

"Of course I want to go. Even if I meet him, I'm sure I can deal with that guy." Ren Yao, who had always been quiet, suddenly spoke at this time.

"Ren Yao is right. The village is so big. Players will meet sooner or later. In addition, there are many people in the village and in order to avoid being suspected, I don't think Zhao Zhengxun will attack us directly. After all, the only way to investigate the truth is to investigate the truth. It is the core of this mission." Ling Yun said.

"Everything happening here is really strange. The other party was in the mountains all day yesterday, so they must not know what happened in the village. We can use this as a bargaining chip to exchange information with them."

Ling Yun's words resonated with everyone. Lin Yuanqi thought for a few seconds and agreed with the other party's view. Although Zhao Zhengxun is aggressive by nature, he is not without strategies.

"Looking at the attitude of these villagers towards us now, it becomes more and more clear that the village chief who is willing to receive outsiders has impure motives. His family lives in the east, probably for the convenience of guarding the ancestral hall." Shen Tinglan speculated.

Combined with the tips given by the headless ghost before, everyone agreed that the breakthrough in this mission must be the village chief.

"Could it be related to some sacrifice?" Tang Yao thought of the water ghost that entangled Ling Yun last night and put forward her own conjecture.

"It makes sense! I see the sneaky eyes of these villagers. There must be something shady happening in the village." Lin Yuanqi slapped his thigh suddenly: "You are so smart, sister Tang Yao!"

"There are many suspicions in this village. In addition to the sacrifices, there must be secrets behind the ancestral hall and the ruined temple on the mountain."

Tang Yao looked serious: "What's strange to me now is why all the disappeared villagers suddenly came back? So what does what we saw and experienced yesterday mean?"

While everyone was discussing, Su Li, who had been silent all this time, suddenly walked out of the team and stopped by the roadside.

She raised her head and looked around, as if she was looking for something. Shen Tinglan even noticed that on the way into the village, Su Li's eyes never left the nearby farmers. Judging from her reaction now, she must have discovered What.

"This is the place where Ren Yao strangled Ying Xiao yesterday."

Su Li pointed to the intact ground in front of him and said, "Not only that, since I entered the village yesterday, I have quietly made marks everywhere in the village, but now, those marks have disappeared."

"This is very strange. Everything we experienced yesterday couldn't be an illusion, right?" Zhao Sicheng took out a gem from his pocket: "The trophies of strangling the curse spirit are still there. Those things are definitely real! "

"That's right."

Su Li looked at the pattern the boys had just drawn on the ground with tree branches, and slowly said: "Since entering the mission, I noticed something very strange, and that is time. Unlike usual, this time the space is not the same. They did not tell us the date of entering the instance, but only informed us that the task period was five days. Not only that, but there was nothing similar to a calendar in every villager’s home.”

Su Li's words inspired everyone. Based on their memories, everyone found the house where they rested yesterday. As expected, even the ghoul's paw prints on the wall disappeared.

"Sister Su, do you mean..."

Tang Yao looked at a big leafy tree in bloom not far away. She had the impression that when they came, all the leaves on this tree had already fallen off. At that time, the farmland around the village was dry, the land was chapped, and the weeds were withered and yellow. , a completely dilapidated and declining scene.

At this time, everyone realized that the village was still the same Guxun Village, but the time they lived in had changed.

"If we really go back in time, then everything can be explained. What we saw yesterday was the effect, and what we experienced today is the cause."

Shen Tinglan immediately analyzed: "It was precisely because of something that happened in the village that all the nearby creatures disappeared overnight, and the curses were rampant."

"If you put it this way... now we are back to the time before the incident. If everyone did not find out the truth of the incident and prevent the tragedy from happening, they would have disappeared along with the villagers by then?!" Reminiscent of the situation in the village and its surroundings yesterday , Tang Yao keenly captured the key points.

"I'm afraid so." After Shen Tinglan finished speaking, the faces of the others also became heavy.

"If you guessed it right, this village has had the bad habit of human sacrifice since ancient times. Now that the villagers are avoiding us so much, they should be preparing for it, or they have already done this bad thing." Su Li said.

"In that case, the culprit who caused the destruction of the village was the victim of the ritual?" Erika asked.

Lin Yuanqi thought of what happened to the mountainside cemetery, and his eyes lit up: "It's very possible. If it weren't for the overwhelming hatred for Guxun Village, how could all living things within a radius of more than ten kilometers be exterminated, even those who had died? People are unwilling to let them go, and they want cursed spirits to eat up their corpses and abandon them in the wilderness?"

"No, no. There are many places that I can't explain."

Zhao Sicheng thought for a while, shook his head and retorted: "If the water ghost is the culprit of this incident, let alone Ling Yun, all of us would not survive last night. In my opinion, since Guxun Village has the bad habit of human sacrifice , there must be a way to deal with it. The shrine on the mountain is used to suppress resentment. Yesterday's water ghost should have been released after the seal was destroyed, and it was not the mysterious force that caused the destruction of the village's population."

"Indeed." Among everyone, Ling Yun had the most say: "Although that ghost is powerful, it has not yet reached the level that can silently destroy the entire village. Erika also said before that she came from the north When we came down from the mountain, we also saw a similar shrine outside the village. I think it was specially set up by the ancestors of Guxun Village to guard the village to prevent water ghosts from approaching."

"besides."

Su Li added: "Guxun Village is surrounded by mountains and is located in a basin. Due to topographic conditions, it suffers heavy rains and floods every summer."

Generally speaking, rainfall is the main cause of flash floods. Although we don't know the specific date of entering the dungeon, it is not difficult to judge that it is now the flood season in the mountainous area.

For mountainous areas, June to August is the main flood season, with frequent flash flood disasters. The water content of the soil on the top of the mountain is saturated, and the pressure of the pressure water in the cracks in the rock below the soil increases sharply. When there is a heavy rain, the original soil balance is affected. The damage instantly poured down from the middle and upper parts of the mountain, causing flash floods and mudslides.

This is a normal natural phenomenon, but for the culturally backward Guxun Village, people regard these phenomena as "punishment from God" due to lack of corresponding scientific knowledge and insufficient defensive measures.

In order to cope with the disaster, it is not difficult to explain that they later performed heinous acts such as human sacrifice.
Chapter completed!