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墨書 Inktalez
After crawling for about a quarter of an hour, a beam of moonlight filtered down from above. Lin Dahe looked up and saw a rusty iron gate. The two of them pushed against the heavy gate together, and the night wind, carrying the scent of decaying leaves, rushed toward them—before them lay a chaotic graveyard!
The moonlight cast a pale glow over the graves. As Lin Dahe crawled out of the dark passage, he noticed a faint flicker of light not far away. The Mad Old Woman knelt before a grave without a tombstone, paper money slowly burning in a copper basin. The flickering flames illuminated her deeply lined face, giving her an eerie yet sacred appearance in the night.
“Grandma?” Cui Xiaoman called softly, her voice trembling slightly.
The old woman turned slowly, her gaze falling on the ledger in Lin Dahe's hands. She suddenly began to tremble violently, her bony fingers gripping the cover of the ledger—there was an inconspicuous ink blot there, and upon closer inspection, it turned out to be half a fingerprint, with subtle indentations around its edges.
“The girl’s... the girl’s...” The Mad Old Woman’s tears fell heavily onto the paper, “This is the mark she bit... when that beast broke her teeth...”
Lin Dahe examined it closely in the firelight; indeed, there were faint bite marks around the ink blot. The system suddenly magnified and analyzed: [Bite mark spacing 5.2mm, matching with Mad Old Woman’s existing molars at 99.7%].
“Born in the forty-fifth year of Wanli...” The old woman’s trembling finger traced over the date in the ledger. “As a copyist in the household department... that winter...” Her voice suddenly became extraordinarily clear, as if she had returned to many years ago, “She discovered that the grain in the official granary had been swapped and copied the true ledger overnight...”
Cui Xiaoman suddenly knelt down, her knees hitting the stone heavily: “Was it... was it my father who inspected the spoiled grain?”
A glimmer of light flashed in the old woman’s murky eyes: “Doctor Cui... such courage... after inspecting it, he wrote a report...” She suddenly broke into a violent cough, dark red blood seeping from her lips, “The post station... that old thief Zhou at the post station... intercepted the documents...”
The night wind swirled around Lin Dahe, carrying paper ash that danced before him. He finally understood why the Mad Old Woman always burned paper at the village entrance—there lay the direction of the abandoned post station. Every wisp of rising smoke was a signal guiding her daughter.
The system interface suddenly flashed red: [Emergency Defense Mission Activated]
Requirements: Complete armed defense of the village within 72 hours
Objective: Resist an impending armed attack
Countdown begins: [71:59:59]
Cui Xiaoman suddenly grasped Lin Dahe’s arm tightly: “Look over there!”
On the distant ridge, a line of torches slithered down like venomous snakes. Even from several miles away, they could faintly hear the sound of hooves and clashing metal—this was no ordinary equipment for common refugees!
The Mad Old Woman stood up shakily and pulled a dead stalk of yarrow from a grave to stick into Lin Dahe's collar: “Nine deaths... one life...” Her gaze crossed over the mountains toward deeper darkness, “They’re coming... finally coming...”
Lin Dahe tightened his grip on the ledger; the system map showed those torches approaching the village at an alarming speed. The countdown ticked mercilessly in his peripheral vision: [71:45:22], each second slipping away relentlessly.
The threshing floor before dawn was illuminated by torches. An one-armed veteran stood on a grinding stone, wielding a long pole with a sickle tied to its end with one arm. More than twenty young villagers formed a semicircle around him, their farming tools glinting coldly in the firelight.
“Remember!” The veteran's voice rasped like sandpaper rubbing together, “Hook sickles against horse legs, sweep with flails at their lower bodies, pitchforks aim for throats!” He suddenly flicked his wrist; the sickle cut through the air with a sharp arc, accurately severing the knee of a straw dummy hanging three yards away.
Lin Dahe crouched at the threshold of the ancestral hall, filling a clay pot with saltpeter and iron sand. The system interface hovered before him, continuously updating with the movement speed of the distant torches—at this rate, they would reach the village by noon at the latest. He looked up at the darkening sky; three days of heavy rain predicted by the Mad Old Woman had yet to arrive.
“Brother Lin...” A little girl timidly tugged at his sleeve, “Mother asked me to ask where to hide sweet potatoes in the cellar?”
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