He’ll Invited Me to Fall in Love (Infinite) - Chapter 8

Shen Yi couldn’t hold back anymore. With a sharp squeeze of his hand, he crushed the funeral portrait.

He laughed out of sheer frustration.

What is all this? What on earth is happening?!

He had only come out to play a horror escape room today! It was supposed to be a game!

But instead, he had been pulled into this village for no reason, told by some supernatural entity that this was Hell, and forced into a survival game. That was bad enough but not even two minutes into the game, the NPCs were telling him he was already dead?!

It was one thing for a dead NPC to share his name, but how in the name of all that is unholy did the guy look exactly like him?!

Shen Yi couldn’t take it anymore. He tossed the ruined photo aside and whirled around, shouting, “Why does he look just like me?!”

The other Sinners maintained a cautious distance.

The man in the suit was stone-cold. “Keep acting.”

“Acting?! What acting?!” Shen Yi snapped. “I’m really not a ghost! In the real world, I’m a college student! I’m a junior at Liangyi University, Animation and Culture major! My student ID is E121402! I even have the ID card on me… if I were actually a character in some ‘Village Corpse’ script, could I be attending university in the outside world?”

The Sinners looked at one another, then back at him with wary eyes. No one spoke; they simply scrutinized him from head to toe, their expressions a mix of doubt and suspicion.

It was clear they didn’t want to believe him.

Gong Cang walked over. After scanning the various spirit tablets in the ancestral hall, he picked up the one belonging to “Shen Yi.”

“Whoa,” Gong Cang said, reading the inscription. “1962 to 1983. Man, you died young. You were only twenty-one.”

Shen Yi was exactly twenty-one this year.

The sheer bad luck of those words made his scalp tingle. After a string of curses, Shen Yi snatched the tablet from Gong Cang’s hands and grumbled as he shoved it back onto the altar.

“Stop saying such unlucky things!” Shen Yi barked at him. “I’m going to live to be a hundred! A hundred years old!!”

“Enough, stop throwing a tantrum,” the woman with wavy hair spoke up. “Since you’re so sure, take out your student ID and show everyone. If you really have it, then you’re probably not a ghost.”

“True. If he has something that can prove his identity, he’s likely human.”

“Take it out then.” Someone reached a hand toward him.

Shen Yi was more than willing to comply. He reached down to rummage through his bag. After a few seconds, his face went pale.

The Sinners caught the sudden change in his expression. “What’s wrong?”

With a face turned gray, Shen Yi opened his bag and reached deep inside his hand passed straight through the bottom of the bag and out the other side.

For some reason, there was a massive hole in his bag.

Gong Cang was deeply shaken by the sight, a dark suspicion blooming in his mind. “Shen Yi, you don’t think…”

Shen Yi pulled his hand back and frantically patted the inside of the bag. He looked up, his face even paler than before. “All my cards are gone.”

Gong Cang: “…” The Sinners: “…”

Someone sighed. Shen Yi turned to see it was the woman with the wavy hair. She massaged her forehead, looking utterly speechless and complicated.

The man in the suit also looked grim. “Are you saying you can’t produce the ID anymore?”

The atmosphere turned awkward. Shen Yi let out a dry, forced laugh. “I’ve been having a run of bad luck lately; I guess it just…”

“Just fell out of your bag?” The yellow-haired youth sneered. “How is this different from a student telling a teacher they forgot their homework at home?”

Shen Yi had no defense.

“You said you could show us, and now you can’t,” someone said with a hostile tone. “You really are a ghost, aren’t you?”

“I’m really not…”

“Then prove it.”

Gong Cang suddenly remembered something. “The photo gallery, Shen Yi! Just the month before last, didn’t you take a photo of your student ID to send to the Dean for that National Animation Competition?!”

Shen Yi looked like he wanted to cry. “I just got a new phone! My old motherboard fried, so I had to replace it! The data hasn’t been transferred yet!”

“…Then you might as well wait for death.”

Shen Yi covered his face in agony.

“Everyone, if you value your lives, stay away from him.”

Someone said this, and the group of Sinners stood up from the floor in a mass, moving as far away as possible to sit by the entrance.

Shen Yi felt helpless enough to want to jump off a building.

Gong Cang suddenly had a spark of inspiration. He hurried to rummage through his own bag. “Wait! I can prove it! I have my student ID! I’ve lived in the same dorm with him for three years. If I can prove I’m a student, wouldn’t that prove he isn’t a ghost?”

“Not necessarily. It’s highly likely the ghost brainwashed you, and you actually entered this place alone,” the man in the suit said. “Don’t waste your breath; we won’t speak another word to him.”

Gong Cang froze, his lip twitching.

“Changing the subject, Village Chief,” the woman with wavy hair asked from among the group. “If this drowning ghost has been terrorizing the village for three years, did you all just do nothing? You just waited for him to come for you?”

“Of course not,” the Chief said. “We invited a monk to the village.”

At this mention, Shen Yi recalled the villager earlier saying they needed to find a monk named “Yuan Heng.”

“Is it Monk Yuan Heng?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” the Chief nodded. “Auntie Zhao invited him; she said he’s a very spiritually powerful monk from the county… Since he arrived, he gave us some talismans to put up.”

“The ones at the wedding venue?” the man in the suit asked. “But they were useless.”

“Exactly. And you said every bride and groom for the last three years has died. If you’ve been consulting this monk all this time, isn’t that a problem?”

The Chief shook his head. “Master Yuan Heng said that talismans can have issues; sometimes they simply fail to hold.” He sighed again. “We thought that with so many talismans this time, everything would be fine. We never expected… this couple still met with tragedy.”

“Alas, everything is fate.”

The man in the suit frowned. “But—”

“Alright, that’s enough talk.”

A villager waiting at the entrance of the ancestral hall spoke up. A woman stepped inside and said, “You. young people are just back for a visit; eventually, you’ll head back to the big city to work. What’s the use of knowing all these details? Stop asking. The adults will handle it. Don’t worry yourselves over it.”

“If you have that much free time, you’d be better off heading back to the wedding venue to help out. The Zhang family is going to be busy now that the celebration has turned into a funeral.”

The village woman ushered them out.

Just like that, the group was driven out of the ancestral hall. Without even being offered an umbrella, they were forced back toward the wedding house by the woman.

The rain was torrential, leaving them all soaked to the bone.

The courtyard of the wedding house was also completely drenched. For some reason, only the girl who had served the fish earlier remained. She huddled under the eaves, weeping piteously and dabbing her eyes with a white handkerchief.

The bride had not been moved; she still lay splayed across the table. The rain had washed the blood from her face and stripped away her makeup. Bloody water dripped from the table, and the vibrant red of her bridal gown seemed to bleed out into the water—the dress itself had been soaked through with blood.

The untouched wedding feast sat in the yard, ruined by the rain. The red silks hanging throughout the courtyard were battered by the wind and water. The red talismans on the stage were curling at the edges; several blood-red slips of paper took flight in the wind, only to be hammered back to the ground by the rain.

It was an eerie sight.

Shen Yi stood further back in the rain, silently letting himself get soaked. He had no choice; the group of Sinners under the eaves wanted nothing to do with him, and he couldn’t get close.

Even Gong Cang wasn’t standing by him anymore, having scurried off to stick with the main group.

Humans are such a practical species, Shen Yi thought.

He stood lonely five meters away, listening to the others discuss the situation while staring up at the gloomy, rainy sky.

Just as he was silently accepting his isolation, he heard footsteps. Shen Yi turned to see the woman with wavy hair—Yan Pan—had walked over to him. She leaned against the wall beside him, letting the rain fall on her as well.

“What are you doing?” Shen Yi asked resentfully. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll kill you? Don’t come over here; just let me drown in the rain.”

“Don’t throw a fit. You don’t look like a ghost to me,” Yan Pan let out a short laugh. “I’m Yan Pan.”

“What?”

“My name.” Yan Pan looked up at him and smiled. “One good turn deserves another. I know your name, so you should know mine.”

Shen Yi let out a small laugh. “Fine. Miss Yan.”

“Enough small talk. What do you think?” Yan Pan asked. “About this game.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, let’s start with the big picture,” Yan Pan said. “The broadcast gave a hint—the ‘Ghost Groom’ nursery rhyme.”

“Maybe there’s something wrong with the dead groom, ‘Second Brother Zhang.’ We should keep an eye on that. But besides that, this village is very strange.”

“True,” Shen Yi agreed. “Let’s summarize. The plot so far is that we are a group of children who grew up in this village and moved away for work, coming back specifically for the Zhang and Sun family wedding. But before the wedding could start, the bride jumped and the groom died. A celebration turned into a funeral.”

“And this isn’t the first time. For three years, every wedding in this village has ended like this.”

“The Village Chief was suspiciously calm and spoke very dismissively. Even an idiot could tell he’s trying to cover something up.”

Yan Pan added, “And the villagers seem to be in on it—or at least, they’re helping the cover-up.”

“Right. You were about to ask the Chief more, and that woman jumped out to chase us away,” Shen Yi noted. “He didn’t mention whose child the original drowning ghost was, either. We’ll need to investigate that.”

“We should visit the Shen family home as well. Honestly, there are suspicious points everywhere. And we haven’t even received a mission yet. For some reason, only that one girl is left crying in the yard.” Yan Pan sighed and checked the time on her phone. “It’s already 3:00 PM. At this rate, we’ll probably get a mission soon, and then everyone will have to play hide-and-seek.”

“Huh? What hide-and-seek?” Shen Yi asked. “And wait, it’s already 3:00 PM?”

It had been early morning when they entered the village. While a lot had happened, time was moving far too fast. Shen Yi checked his own phone; sure enough, it was 3:00 PM.

“As the plot progresses, if players complete most of the key tasks required for the day, time will jump forward to a certain extent,” Yan Pan explained. “It’s like finishing a dialogue quest in a visual novel; the game will suddenly transition to nighttime.”

“That’s a very fitting analogy.”

“Right?” Yan Pan said. “Given how it’s looking, investigating the Chief or the Shen family will have to wait until tomorrow. No one will have the luxury of wandering the streets to solve mysteries at night. It’ll be dark by around 6:00 PM. Have you thought about where you’re going to hide, rookie?”

Only then did Shen Yi remember the broadcast mentioned a butcher-like character would be roaming around at night. He had completely forgotten about that part.

Shen Yi massaged his head in the pouring rain, a troubled look on his face. He asked tentatively, “Are the Night Watchmen… very hard to deal with?”

“Very,” Yan Pan said. “They’re basically a bunch of butchers.”

“Fair point.” Shen Yi turned to look toward the end of the road. “Tonight, I’ll find a secret spot to hide by myself.”

“Alright. Good luck.”

Shen Yi didn’t say anything, his eyes still fixed on the end of the road.

Ahead were two long rows of houses, some with large trees planted in front. The rain was heavy, blurring the houses in a misty veil, yet Shen Yi remembered exactly which house belonged to whom. He knew how the terrain changed if you turned left or right at the end of the road.

That eerie sense of familiarity still haunted him.

Suddenly, footsteps approached from behind. Shen Yi turned to see a villager running toward them under an umbrella.

“There you are!” the villager panted, stopping before them. “Phew, I’ve been looking for you for ages. Come with me, I need your help with something.”

He signaled for the group to follow and turned to walk in the other direction.

“Wait, hold on!”

Shen Yi called out to the villager. The man stopped.

Shen Yi jogged forward through the rain. As if possessed by a sudden impulse, he blurted out:

“Is there anyone in this village named Wen Mo?”

Follow-up Question:

Since Shen Yi’s student ID is missing and the village layout feels oddly familiar, would you like me to analyze the potential clues linking his “real-world” identity to the game’s lore, or should we move on to translating the next chapter?