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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 scent of decaying leaves rushed towards them—the sight before them was a chaotic graveyard!
The moonlight cast a ghastly pallor 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 dancing flames illuminated her deeply lined face, giving it an eerie yet sacred appearance in the night.
"Grandma?" Cui Xiaoman called softly, her voice trembling slightly.
The old woman slowly turned her head, her gaze landing 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 slight indentations around the 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 leaned closer to examine it by the firelight; indeed, there were faint bite marks around the ink blot. Suddenly, the system magnified and analyzed: [Bite mark spacing 5.2mm, matching with Mad Old Woman's existing molars at 99.7%].
"Born in Wanli year forty-five..." 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 exceptionally 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 account book overnight..."
Cui Xiaoman suddenly knelt down, her knees hitting the stone heavily: "Was it... was it my father's inspection of the spoiled grain?"
A glimmer of light flashed in the old woman's murky eyes: "Cui Junyi... 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... Zhou Family Old Thief at the post station... intercepted the documents..."
The night wind swirled around Lin Dahe, carrying ashes before him. He finally understood why the Mad Old Woman always burned paper at the village entrance—she was signaling to her daughter towards the abandoned post station. Each wisp of rising smoke was a signal guiding her home.
Suddenly, the system interface flickered with red light: [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 hear faint hoofbeats 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... in one lifetime..." Her gaze crossed over the mountains towards 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 flickered in the corner of his vision: [71:45:22], each second ruthlessly slipping away.
The threshing ground before dawn was illuminated by torches. One-Armed Veteran stood atop a grinding stone, wielding a long pole with a sickle attached to it with one arm, while more than twenty young villagers formed a semicircle around him, their farming tools glinting coldly in the firelight.
"Remember!" The Old Soldier's voice rasped like sandpaper against wood, "Hook sickles against horse legs, flails sweep low, pitchforks aim for throats!" He suddenly flicked his wrist; the sickle sliced through the air in a sharp arc and accurately severed the knee of a straw man hanging three yards away.
Lin Dahe squatted at the threshold of the ancestral hall, filling an earthen jar with saltpeter and iron sand. The system interface hovered before him, constantly updating with the movement speed of the distant torches—at this rate, they would reach their village by noon at the latest tomorrow. 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 we should hide sweet potatoes in the cellar?"
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