Chapter 19: Whose Funeral Is It?
Li Mo walked in front of the black coffin. "The first grave incense stick has burned out, and the second one has started to burn… This means that the second day has already begun. Next, I will tell you the rules for the night watch."
"You can also call it spirit guarding. The name isn't important, and the source has no meaning. I'll only talk about the key rules."
"I can't guarantee that all the rules are definitely correct. What I'm saying is at best a reference answer, but these answers must have some reason to have been passed down. You only need to follow them obediently."
Most answers were very restrained. This corresponded to the cautious handling of the process of dealing with anomalies.
No one knew what rules they might trigger if they acted randomly and then die on the spot.
Li Mo reached out and touched the black coffin. Even though there was a constantly burning flame behind him, the black coffin always maintained a very low temperature.
But this also meant that the black coffin was normally suppressing the evil. If warm or even scalding blood was flowing out from the four corners, that would be a dangerous sign, meaning that the black coffin was unable to suppress the anomalies inside and was being gradually eroded.
Li Mo said seriously to everyone, "First, from now until 7 AM tomorrow morning, no one is allowed to leave the area illuminated by the fire. Not even you, Shigure Kira. No matter what happens, you are not allowed to get closer to the entrance of the auditorium. This isn't a discussion. It's an order."
"Second, you are forbidden from touching the black coffin unless the third or last situation occurs."
"Third, if the corpse in the coffin starts to give off a strange odor, deal with it immediately. You are forbidden from saying vulgar words. Otherwise, no matter how you deal with it, the odor will not only not be reduced but will be greatly enhanced. You should know what this means."
"Fourth, no ambiguous or promiscuous acts between men and women are allowed in the spirit hall, which is this auditorium."
Li Mo spoke very slowly. Compared to groping in the dark, the probability of surviving by following these inherited rules step by step was much higher.
Exploring blindly when you didn't know anything would lead to a nine-out-of-ten chance of death when encountering danger. But by following the rules, they could not only understand the behavioral logic and rules of the anomalies, but if they were wrong, they would most likely have a chance to correct their mistake.
"But senior, aren't you the only man here?" A Valkyrie raised her hand high and asked a probing question.
"Pfft..." Shigure Kira couldn't help but laugh.
Earlier, they had been dealing with ghosts the entire time. It was only now that they realized that among the twenty or so people, Li Mo was the only man.
"Lesbians are not allowed either," Li Mo said coldly.
"Ehehe~" Many Valkyries and students from St. Freya stuck out their pink tongues.
Li Mo wasn't surprised by this. In the Honkai world, women who were destined to become Valkyries or had already become Valkyries had physical qualities that weren't easy for ordinary men to withstand.
In addition, with the appearance of the Honkai, the setting where women had a chance to survive and men were almost entirely wiped out led to the imbalance of yin and yang in the Honkai world.
Naturally, the Valkyries had turned their attention to those nearby, and the ones nearby weren't easy to deal with either.
It was like the saying, one is willing to hit, and the other is willing to take the hit.
Li Mo cleared the foreign object in his throat. A liquid similar to ink wanted to surge up from his stomach, but he forcefully suppressed it.
This was the price of dying twice. This phenomenon would only become more obvious as time passed.
He could still smell the stench on his skin, a subtle smell of corpse. Even though his heart was still beating, his blood was flowing through his veins, and all his organs were working normally... he couldn't stop this irrational distortion.
"Fifth, ignore all sounds, phenomena, and people in the darkness."
"Sixth, this point needs to be followed for all five days. You are not allowed to disrupt the current layout of the auditorium. Nothing is allowed."
"We are currently using the second grave incense to get through the first day, so the death trap of the second day may appear tonight. So we need to carry out the funeral rituals for both the first and second days at the same time. Of course, I can't make any guarantees. It's best if it doesn't appear. If it does appear, we just need to deal with it normally."
"Since the owner of this funeral left clues and life-saving items, he must have thought of this possibility. If it was a certain death situation, he wouldn't have put so much effort into it..."
As he said this, Li Mo looked toward the entrance of the auditorium. It was completely dark, but one thing was certain: there was no door.
No door meant that the rule of guaranteed death upon opening a door wouldn't be triggered. Even ordinary people could enter the auditorium to seek refuge.
Based on their current experience, there were rules for ghosts on the doors, which meant that the doors were no longer a protective wall for humans, but a medium for the ghosts to kill, a wedge for the resurgence of anomalies.
The logic was very simple: if there were no ghosts on the doors, the enclosed space would be divided into two parts. The place where the living were would belong to the yang realm, and the ghosts wouldn't be able to enter easily. The ghosts had coldness, belonging to the yin realm, and the two would repel each other.
But if there was a problem with the door, this rule would naturally be broken, and they would lose the ability to divide the space.
There were traces of human destruction on the doors of the auditorium. Together with the various arrangements in the auditorium, Li Mo was even more certain that the owner of the funeral wasn't an ordinary person.
The ability to block the perception of anomalies was a waste to use in such a place. If he had this ability, how many anomalies could he solve?
And there was the grave incense that suppressed the anomalies, the black coffin that suppressed the evil...
And that strange spirit tablet. The spirit tablet might not be a ghost. The unknown ghost seemed to be forcibly trapped inside the spirit tablet. Maybe the ghost inside the spirit tablet was very terrifying, and once it appeared, it would definitely bring an unstoppable supernatural killing phenomenon.
After all, the putrid stench of the black blood from before had spread and filled the auditorium, ignoring the suppression of the grave incense, which could faintly hint at how fierce the ghost inside was.
It could be said that every detail of the funeral was prepared to allow the living to survive.
If one didn't understand this, then a piece of trash would probably not be qualified to carry out the last rites for the owner of the funeral.
Therefore, Li Mo immediately determined that the fifth rule was correct. After all, if a knocking sound came from outside the auditorium now, they could directly determine that the person knocking wasn't a human but a ghost.
And there was another situation. What they knocked on was also a door, but it was a ghost door.
The doors of the living had been violently destroyed. How could there be a normal knocking sound?
"Finally, and this is also the worst case scenario. If a truly unrecoverable situation occurs... then throw out the headless male corpse in the coffin. Let as many people as possible squeeze into the black coffin to hide. See how many can survive." Li Mo originally wasn't planning to tell them this.
But thinking that if he couldn't solve it even after the reset, he had to find a way to escape.
At that time, this group of newbies who were just beginning to encounter supernatural events would probably all be buried here.
Therefore, Li Mo said the last insurance.
This method was very evil. The coffin wasn't too big or too small, but there were a total of twenty-some of them. At that time, they would probably kill each other to get into the black coffin, fighting for it until their heads were broken, which was something that Li Mo didn't want to see.
Shigure Kira asked in confusion, "Huh, but isn't that contradictory to the second rule you said? We can't touch the black coffin, can we?"
Li Mo nodded and replied in a low voice, "So that's the last resort. The black coffin has already been activated and has a strong suppressing ability."
"But once you go inside, you probably won't be able to come out. It would be fine if someone outside helped to open the coffin lid. If no one helped, then you can only wait for death."
"It's better to starve to death than to be eaten by a ghost. At least, that way, you won't cause trouble for those who come later."
Li Mo opened the coffin lid, revealing the headless male corpse inside.
For some reason, he had an urge to lie down and replace the headless male corpse.
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The "Yin" and "Yang" Realm: Doors, in this case, is seen as a way to divide the living "yang" and the dead "yin" where they belong, if a door can't divide those, it means that the area is no longer belong to the living, it's either haunted or on the road of being haunted.