Chapter 196: Heredity
Everyone had no intention of introducing themselves to each other at all, and it seemed they only planned to form alliances and communicate inside their own platform.
Lu Jinzhao had no opinion on this. After simple observation, she had already memorized the appearances of the remaining 14 people.
And at this moment, the “persona” assigned to her by the train this time also surfaced in her mind.
Before entering, Lu Jinzhao had thought of many possibilities. After all, this platform was called [Heredity], but at this moment, she was somewhat surprised to discover that the train had not assigned them as members of the village.
However, their backgrounds were also a very classic type in horror films and novels: teams coming for tourism and scientific research.
Who knows what there was to tourism in such a mountain village, or what the meaning of scientific research was, but anyway, that was how it was arranged.
Lu Jinzhao’s persona was [student], and Tian Lei next to her was too. Probably the train had considered that there were passengers over 30 years old this time, so it also arranged for a scientific research teacher to lead the team.
The good news was that such a persona wouldn’t impose too many restrictions on their activities in the village. The bad news was that they were not members of the village, making this [Heredity] matter even more bizarre.
Could heredity itself have nothing to do with the passengers?
Lu Jinzhao had no real clues about this for the time being.
“Shall we go in?” She looked at Tian Lei and suggested.
She had already observed the surroundings, and there was really nothing worth staying for. Tian Lei was gazing deeply at the village not far away, and upon hearing this, she just nodded.
She also didn’t think staying in place was a good idea.
It was just purely wasting time.
Those who realized this were clearly not in the minority. Lu Jinzhao and Tian Lei were not the first to head into the village. The 16 people came from four different stations, and the first to enter was the station with the most people.
Their station had 6 people entering.
While Lu Jinzhao and Tian Lei were from the station with the fewest people. Not only the fewest, but both of them were only first-class passengers.
No matter how you looked at it, they seemed to be in a “disadvantageous” position.
No one from the other stations was willing to proactively come ally with them. Perhaps after entering the village for a while, the “camps” currently divided by stations would undergo some changes, but the combination of Lu Jinzhao and Tian Lei was absolutely the least attractive to others.
However, few people also had the advantages of few people.
The muddy country road was not easy to walk on, but fortunately Lu Jinzhao was wearing combat boots. Even if soil piled up on the soles, it could be easily cleaned off.
Passing through the rain curtain, they gradually approached this village built among the mountains.
The village buildings were not densely packed, scattered sparsely across the open ground. The houses were basically built with soil walls made of a mixture of clay and straw, with roofs paved with sloping black tiles. Most consisted of a few rooms forming a small courtyard, with the courtyard paved with a bit of blue brick. Apart from that, the courtyard open space was still made of soil.
Every room was like this, and the tone of this village was composed of the yellow of the soil and the black of the bricks.
Monotonous, empty, with an indescribable dullness on a rainy day.
The commotion of the 16 people entering the village did not attract the villagers’ attention, perhaps because of the rain, there weren’t many people walking outside.
Lu Jinzhao stepped into the village and didn’t see a single local.
They were all hiding from the rain at home.
The locations of the courtyards assigned in her mind appeared. The 16 people were arranged in adjacent positions, and Lu Jinzhao and Tian Lei shared a room.
As they went deeper into the village, slowly, the yellow soft mud on the ground under their feet changed to a deeper color, almost like congealed blood.
One side of the road was fields planted with crops, the other side soil houses. Lu Jinzhao could see the marks left by rainwater hitting the bricks, tiles, and soil walls. The wall surfaces were not clean, with patches of black attached, like they had been burned by fire, or like aged bloodstains.
There was a small pile of firewood in the corners, many of which were now soaked by the rain. The weather was very overcast, and houses like this that didn’t let in light should have been pitch black inside, but almost no passing houses had lights on.
Only a very few households seemed to be making fire for cooking. The smell of burning firewood came along with the chimney smoke and wind and rain, giving this dead silent village a bit of the breath of living people.
By the time they reached their residence, Lu Jinzhao’s clothes were completely soaked, and so were Tian Lei’s next to her.
But neither cared about such a small matter, and first checked the room.
This was a very ordinary room, even one that could be called clean. Apart from poor light transmission, excessive simplicity, and the peculiar smell unique to rural soil houses, there were no other shortcomings.
This place housed not only Lu Jinzhao and Tian Lei. This small courtyard had a total of five rooms: kitchen, main hall, bedroom, warehouse, and pigsty. Lu Jinzhao and Tian Lei occupied the bedroom, while the adjacent warehouse had been converted into another bedroom, because it was larger, housing four people from the city.
At this moment, Lu Jinzhao heard someone outside say: “There’s only one restroom here, and it’s a pit latrine, in the pigsty.”
The voice clearly carried displeasure. After hearing it, Lu Jinzhao subtly felt fortunate that her current human physiological needs were extremely rare.
After thoroughly checking the room, even though she had a spare set of clothes in her backpack, Lu Jinzhao had no intention of changing.
The current time was “dusk,” and night was about to fall, but she didn’t think the death platform’s next arrangement for them was a threat-free sleep.
And her constitution was very good; wearing soaked clothes after getting rained on wouldn’t make her catch a cold, so there was no need to waste it.
Sure enough, as time passed bit by bit, the already overcast sky grew even darker. Shortly after nightfall, the passengers all received the first [mission] after entering the death platform.
The way the mission appeared was exactly the same as receiving hints in reality.
Lu Jinzhao only felt a sudden agony on her forearm, like someone was using a branding iron to carve characters on it. Then, her arm seemed to be cut by an invisible carving knife, and a line of small text slowly emerged.
[Tonight at 12:20, go out to the ancestral hall, take a blank tablet with you.]
And Tian Lei next to her was also looking at her arm. The text on her was:
[Tonight at 01:10, go out to the ancestral hall, take a blank tablet with you.]
“The times… are different.”
This meant that the mission required them to go to the ancestral hall alone.
“Besides that, the blank tablet is also worth noting, and ‘with you’—does it mean to keep it on you the whole time? The mission doesn’t specify a time limit.”
Lu Jinzhao looked at the watch on her wrist. The current time was 11:39.
“This mission… is strange.”
“Blank tablet—why would the ancestral hall in this village have blank tablets?”
Tian Lei’s tone carried some unease: “Perhaps we’ll have to use life-buying money right away to modify the mission content.”
