Chapter 1 Wan Jia Xiong Meng

“With the Hiri Island backdrop and folklore, I can already foresee the style of this scenario mission...”

Wang Congshan rubbed her temples, troubled. “But Ogasawara Masayuki isn't necessarily the father. He could be Tetsuya and Ayaka's uncle, elder uncle, or grandfather—at least, someone they were very close to and valued. By the way, what's on the other newspaper clipping?”

“Let me see.”

Li Ang looked at the second clipping.

The headline of the clipping was: Sudden Geological Disaster in a Mountain Village in Okamori Prefecture.

[A magnitude 7.0 earthquake suddenly struck Enokura Village, located in the eastern part of Okamori Prefecture. The earthquake, coupled with six consecutive days of heavy rain, triggered a landslide on the adjacent Mount En, destroying local surface buildings and causing all the villagers to go missing.]

This newspaper was even more faded and worn. The edges had a lot of fuzz from the paper softening, and the layout of the text was also older.

“The date is July Showa 54,”

Wang Congshan calculated mentally and said, “That should be the late 1970s in the real world, exactly 40 years from 2019, and 30 years from Ogasawara Masayuki's disappearance.

A magnitude 7 earthquake that can cooperate with a mudslide to destroy an entire village…

Could that be what we just felt?”

“Possibly.”

Li Ang carefully examined the clipping itself, finding no hidden layers or text.

The backs of both clippings were incomplete reports. One was about the death of a Hiri Island comedic film actor, and the other was about a nuclear power plant accident in America, which should be unrelated to the current situation.

Li Ang thought for a moment and took out the tear-off notepad from his upper jacket pocket.

Many of the pages in the notepad had already been torn off. The remaining pages had some drawings on them:

A samurai wearing armor, holding a katana, and wearing a Hannya mask;

A stone well beneath a twisted, withered tree;

A torii gate erected on the mountainside;

In addition, there were a few more drawings, but the lines were too hasty to identify what they depicted.

“Samurai, stone well, torii gate.”

Wang Congshan carefully observed the three drawings and frowned. “These should be the potential hints the system is giving us, but I don't know what they each represent.”

“Mm.”

Li Ang nodded. He could only gather clues up to this point.

He looked around. After the earthquake subsided, the nearby forest fell silent once more.

A thin layer of mist once again permeated the ground. No insects or birds could be heard at night. It was eerily quiet.

While observing his surroundings, Li Ang said, “This scenario mission only allows us to choose one item and one skill. Have you decided?”

“I have.”

Wang Congshan said, “Anyway, I only have the Planeswalker ability and the Cardinal Cube item.

I chose these two.

However, because attribute enhancement is restricted, my spiritual power limit has also been lowered to less than 500 points.

I can't take out all the equipment from the Cardinal Cube. I can only take one or two items.”

As she spoke, she tested it. Electronic devices in the cube, such as drones, night vision goggles, and even flashlights, were all unusable.

Currently, the only things she could call upon at a relatively low cost were a semi-automatic pistol and a bulletproof vest.

The assault rifle with enchanted bullets, assimilated by the Cardinal Cube, perhaps because of its higher quality, would consume the entire spiritual power quota for just the rifle alone.

Li Ang said, “You should equip the bulletproof vest and pistol first. The Planeswalker ability won't be of much use here.”

Wang Congshan nodded. “What about you?”

“I chose this staff as my equipment,”

Li Ang waved the Xin Yuan in his hand. “As for skills, I chose psionics.”

There were six schools of psychic abilities, each with its own specialization, and the source of psionic power was mental strength, which was less constrained by spiritual power.

Although he couldn't use high-level psychic powers due to the current attribute restrictions,

Zero-level and first-level psychic powers were enough to cover many special situations.

The ability to deal with paranormal phenomena was also stronger than the severely weakened Swamp God power system.

“The first stage of the mission is to have us go to Enokura Village, which should have been destroyed by the earthquake disaster in Showa 54.”

Li Ang looked at the road ahead and said, “There's no time limit set for the mission, so we can't infer the approximate distance from the time limit.

Hmm… let's see if there are any shortcuts besides this muddy path.”

The two explored their surroundings and found a wooden signpost, weathered and nearly rotten, fifty meters behind them, indicating that Enokura Village was ahead.

Behind the wooden signpost, there was a deep ravine, possibly created by the earthquake.

The abyss below the ravine was unfathomable, and thick fog filled it. If you threw a rock down, it would take more than ten seconds to hear a faint sound.

The road on the other side of the ravine was also shrouded in thick fog.

“In horror games, this would be the map boundary that you can't pass through.”

Li Ang looked at the ravine and tore off a section of vine from a nearby tree. He tied one end of the vine to a rock and the other end to the Xin Yuan staff.

He injected spiritual power into the Xin Yuan to slightly increase the length of the staff.

Like casting a fishing line, he threw the vine with the rock attached.

He tested the depth and width of the abyss.

The conclusion he reached was that even if he injected all his current spiritual power into the Xin Yuan staff,

The Xin Yuan's length would not be enough.

He couldn't use a pole vault to jump to the other side of the ravine.

“Okay, this is definitely designed to block the retreat.”

Li Ang sighed and released the vine.

Wang Congshan glanced at the fog-filled ravine. Falling down there would definitely result in being smashed to pieces. “Then we can only follow the signpost and walk along the path.”

The two returned to the narrow path and walked forward in the moonlight, seeing a stone Jizo statue placed in a stone shrine by the roadside.

Hiri Island has a tradition of worshiping Jizo, and Jizo statues can be seen everywhere by the roadside.

However, the Jizo statues on Hiri Island are the product of the fusion of Hiri Island Shinto beliefs and Tang Dynasty Buddhism.

They may be the traditional Jizo Bodhisattva,

Or they may be an incarnation of the Jizo Bodhisattva—Dōsojin, the Hiri Island version of the land god, guardian deity, and road god, responsible for protecting villages, preventing plague demons and evil spirits, and protecting children and pedestrians.

Dōsojin is a broad divine office, not referring to a single deity,

So the shapes and forms of Dōsojin statues are not uniform, and there are even “mother and child Jizo” statues holding children.

The statue in front of Li Ang and Wang Congshan had its legs crossed, a gentle expression, and closed eyes reciting scriptures.

On the low stone platform in front of the shrine, there were two short white candles on the left and right sides.

“The surface of the stone platform has obvious signs of being cleaned. There is less moss than at the bottom. I don't know the specific time of cleaning.

And these two candles should have burned halfway before being extinguished. The wax dripped down the candle itself, sticking it to the platform, so it wasn't blown over by the wind and rain.

Hmm… since there is a Dōsojin, the village should be ahead.”

Li Ang used psionic power to check the shrine and found nothing unusual.

Since the candles were relatively thin, he didn't take them as a light source—the moonlight was still relatively bright at the moment, and the spiritual power list also had [Elven Vision], which could see things in the dark.

“There's light over there.”

Wang Congshan said in a low voice. Li Ang turned around and saw flickering points of light in the distance through the overlapping shadows of the trees.

It was the lights of the village.