"Dazhu… I failed to wipe it clean!" Li Dazhu said with a mournful face, holding up his pants as he watched the houses in the village being engulfed by a raging fire and the villagers being slaughtered. He was on the verge of tears.
"We're about to die and you're still thinking about taking a dump."
"Dump… what's that?" Li Dazhu seemed not quite to understand.
Wang Hao suddenly didn't know how to explain.
The word "翔" is actually internet slang and didn't mean feces in ancient times.
He quickly changed the subject, "Let me ask you, what is the Elder's identity? Who is he? Where does he come from?"
Smashing into a cavalryman, he rode on a tall horse, seized from the enemy, and galloped wildly through the village.
Li Dazhu clutched tightly at the waist of his older cousin, "The Elder… he was a wildling that my grandfather picked up from outside decades ago."
"He was holding a very large red ginseng, claiming that eating it could extend one's life. After that, the villagers divided it up and ate it… I wasn't born yet…"
Li Dazhu seemed to think of something and his eyes widened, "What are those officials here for? The red ginseng has been eaten; it's gone."
Red Ginseng?!
Hearing this term, Wang Hao was startled. The clues truly connected, and the plot was getting interesting.
"Can it really prolong life?!"
"Of course, that's why most people in Li Family Village live long lives. My grandfather lived to be over a hundred years old… it's just that when he was buried, it was kind of horrifying."
"What was horrifying…"
Trembling, Li Dazhu shuddered, "I saw something like ginseng tendrils crawling out of the coffin… then the whole coffin was burned to ashes, sending up red smoke."
Wang Hao swallowed, ancient people were supposed to bury their dead, but in Li Family Village, it seemed that the deceased were mostly cremated.
He asked again, "The Elder… how old is he?"
"I'm not sure, maybe over a hundred? It's not very clear, but it's said that when grandfather picked him up, he already looked neither human nor ghost."
"Is there any of that ginseng left?"
"No, there isn't any left. I hadn't been born yet, so I didn't get any, but I've heard that the descendants can all benefit from the effects of the ginseng."
Hearing this, Wang Hao's eyebrows furrowed, he was a bit puzzled: in the beginner scenario, using the Blood Ginseng seemed to require paying a price. Li Qingshan was willing to sacrifice himself to destroy it completely.
Li Qingshan also has a "ginseng bloodline," he wanted to scoff upon seeing this term.
But in the current scenario, consuming the Blood Ginseng seemed to prolong life?
Isn't that a very good treasure…
Could they not be the same thing?
He really couldn't understand.
After fending off several waves of pursuers, they arrived near a large river, battered and bruised. The river roared, the deepest part possibly over two meters deep. Depending on the high-bred horse seized earlier, forcing their way across the river was barely feasible.
"Let's go, we'll cross the river."
"What about everyone else?"
"We can't worry about so much; escaping with our lives is what's important…"
Halfway through the river crossing, a game notification came: [Mission completed: Save Li Qingshan's ancestor, Li Dazhu, and free him from a high probability of death.]
[Current game completion rate is 39%. Would you like to continue playing? Remaining time to continue playing is 1 hour, 22 minutes, and 14 seconds.]
Was it really a success?
A thought struck Wang Hao, it seemed that this game scenario wasn't too complex.
But a completion rate of only 39% was quite unsatisfactory.
There must be a large number of hidden clues that remained undiscovered.
Although Wang Hao wasn't exactly an achievement perfectionist, a completion rate of less than half did not meet the standards of a hardcore player.
He clicked "Yes."
The game continued!
Li Dazhu was feeling very down, shedding tears the whole time while crossing the river. The village was gone, their home burnt down, who knew how many relatives could survive...
Where to go from here?
In this era, clan atmosphere was thick, fighting over water and land, huddling together with the clan for warmth was an instinctual survival strategy. Without the power of the clan, an individual was nothing.
His parents had passed away early, and he grew up on food provided by the entire village.
These relatives couldn't exactly be said to have been kind to him, but they didn't let him starve to death either. He even learned a few big characters in the village's private school.
But now he had nothing, everything depended on himself, becoming a disaster victim, where having enough food and clothing was life's greatest pursuit.
With this thought, a sense of confusion and grief brewed at the bottom of his heart.
Li Dazhu had no idea what to do next.
Fortunately, there was his cousin who was still alive to offer some comfort...
Wang Hao had been pondering what clues he might have missed that led to a completion rate of only 39%.
The two stood silently on the opposite bank of the river, watching the flames burn in the village.
Wang Hao suddenly felt how hard-earned modern life was. In an era of chaos and war, life and death were always so quiet, just being alive was already a good thing.
Even knowing it was only a game, he still felt the need to comfort the young man beside him.
Dawn was breaking, the sky was the color of fish bellies, and the mist was thick.
There was only half an hour left in the game time.
He finally made up his mind, "Li Dazhu, shall we... go back to the village to take a look?"
"Okay!"
Crossing the great river, they returned to Li Family Village, where all that remained were the ruins left after the fire.
House after house had collapsed, and the once Li Family Village had become a desolate village. Or perhaps, after some time, displaced people would discover this place and settle down again.
Carefully moving forward following the smell of blood, Wang Hao's eyes widened: corpses... all corpses, densely piled up at the entrance of the village!
"Uncle Li Er, Little Six... they're all dead, all dead!"
Li Dazhu, who was following behind, trembled and cried out in grief.
The condition of these bodies was obviously not normal, as if they had been drained of essence and blood, withered faces, shriveled muscles, turned into a pile of zombies.
"Could it be... the doing of that Elder?" Wang Hao pondered.
Besides, they saw a large number of bandit corpses, but these bandits showed no signs of being drained of essence and blood, which was quite strange.
If that Elder fed on essence and blood, why hadn't the blood been sucked from these people?
It was as if they had died for no reason, with no wounds to be found on their bodies...
It seemed something had happened here...
Just as he wanted to continue investigating, a line of text popped up before his eyes and the scene darkened: [Game duration has ended.]
[Main quest completed: Rescued Li Qingshan's ancestor 'Li Dazhu' from a high probability of death.]
[Current game completion rate: 56%]
[Evaluation: 1090 (Rescuing Li Dazhu 500) (Game completion rate 560)]
[Would you like to upload this result as the final evaluation for this scene? (Note: Final evaluation can only calculate rewards once.)]
"How did it suddenly rise to 56% completion? I remember it was 39% just before..."
It surged by 17 percentage points.
Did returning to the village increase the completion rate a bit?
Why?