Lu Yun walked up the stairs inside his room and quickly found the injured Grey Hakimi in a storage room upstairs.
The Hakimi was extremely weak at the moment, with a deep gash on its hind leg that exposed the bone.
After a moment's thought, Lu Yun fed it an analgesic tablet, sprinkled penicillin onto its wound, and fetched a roll of bandage to wrap it up.
Fortunately, it was his own pet Hakimi. If it had been a stray Hakimi from outside, it probably would have already triggered a stress response, unlocked its Spinosaurus form, and started hissing at him.
By this time, the Grey Hakimi was completely spent and lay there without any desire to move.
It was currently midday, and Lu Yun still had some time to go check on the family living directly behind his house to see if anyone was still inside.
No sooner said than done.
Ghost Mother was still in the kitchen at that moment, puttering around with something unknown.
Lu Yun followed the exterior of his house counterclockwise and wound his way into the pigpen of the family behind him.
As soon as he stepped inside, a wave of stench hit his nose.
"This smell is pretty foul." Looking at the pigs in each pen, he saw that they were all dead, and the pork had begun to rot some time ago.
Just then, a Jerry dropped down from the ceiling, scampering off on all fours so fast it couldn't be caught the moment it saw someone approaching.
Lu Yun followed it to a cave.
The cave was very deep, its destination unknown, and it was narrow—barely wide enough for a single Hakimi to squeeze through.
"Wait... could the Hakimi at home be meant precisely for..." Lu Yun seemed to understand something.
If the Hakimi would be injured in the battle against the Pig-headed Man today, and if the candidate failed to treat it, the Hakimi would die.
In other words, exploring this cave required the Hakimi to survive the first day!
And if the Hakimi died, there would be nothing to help you resist the Pig-headed Man, and you might be hunted down into your room and chopped to pieces by the Pig-headed Man!
At this thought, a lingering wave of fear washed over Lu Yun.
Fortunately, he had made a trip to the pig farm's infirmary, brought back some supplies, and cured the Hakimi.
Besides, players who discovered the Hakimi was injured would likely only do so close to evening, and trying to find medicine in the infirmary at that hour would mean running around in pitch darkness.
Heaven only knew what terrifying creatures might be lurking in the pigpen.
Fortunately, however, quite a few people had the foresight to bring some medicine back from the infirmary.
Nothing much was found in this family's pigpen besides pools of rotting pork and mouse droppings on the ground.
Passing through the pigpen led straight into the family's house.
The family didn't seem to be home.
Lu Yun called out softly, "Is anyone home?"
However, there was only the sound of the wind blowing from the surrounding fields and whistling through the gaps in the dilapidated door.
Lu Yun didn't find anything useful searching through the house, though he did dig out a few packs of instant noodles and a photo frame from a bedside table.
The photo frame showed a middle-aged man, a middle-aged woman, and a cute little girl who appeared to be about Lu Yun's age.
He also found a damp diary.
Flipping open the damp diary, Lu Yun leafed through it.
On the first day of a certain month, the Hui Cat family from the branch line had debt collectors show up at their door due to Hui Cat's gambling, and nobody knew where they had been dragged off to.
On the second day of a certain month, Hui Cat said he was going with the family opposite to buy breeding pigs, but I watched their car head to the pig farm belonging to the family further up the hill.
On the third day of a certain month, Yang Chuandong, the male host of the family up the hill, brought the breeding pigs back, but he said Hui Cat had gone out with that family.
On the fourth day of a certain month, Hui Cat's phone wouldn't go through...
...
On the seventh day of a certain month, I can't take it anymore. I'm taking my daughter back to her maternal home, and I don't care whether he comes back or not.
The diary ended right there.
Lu Yun didn't know what month this diary was from, nor what day today was, or how long had passed since the woman's last diary entry.
Even so, he took out the family photo of Hui Cat and noticed a string of numbers written on the back: 0103.
He didn't know what use this string of numbers had, but he still tucked the photo away on his person.
It was getting dark fast, and since Lu Yun didn't know what terrifying horrors might happen in this Secret Realm at night, he ran all the way back.
As soon as he returned, he found Ghost Mother sitting at the entrance waiting for him, giving Lu Yun the unsettling illusion that she genuinely was his mother.
"Wait, when did this kind of thought start forming?" Lu Yun couldn't help sounding the alarm bells in his mind.
"You're back? Time to eat."
Lu Yun ate his meal, and once again, nothing happened.
When night fell, the black fog outside rolled in once more, plunging both the interior and exterior of the house into utter darkness.
At that moment, eight giant light bulbs appeared outside the window, followed by the scuttling sound of something crawling along the wall, going patter-patter-patter.
Lu Yun couldn't help moving closer to the window. The clouds in the sky parted at that instant, revealing a crimson moon.
Lu Yun couldn't help thinking to himself, "Every Secret Realm related to ghosts features a Blood Moon, doesn't it? Talk about a total lack of originality."
As the dark clouds parted completely, Lu Yun got a clear look at what was outside—it was shockingly a spider over a meter in diameter, legs included!
And that huge abdomen was unmistakably the same kind of round-bellied spider that Lu Yun had seen in the pigpen!
"Could it be that because I tore open its egg sac this morning, it mutated and came looking for me tonight?" Lu Yun muttered.
The spider outside didn't seem capable of breaking the window.
Even if it did break the window, there were still burglar bars installed on it.
Even if it had mutated, wasn't it still within the category of carbon-based life forms?
How could it possibly shake iron and steel?
Just then, the cry of a Hakimi echoed from upstairs.
Startled out of its wits, the spider scrambled away in a clumsy panic.
Unable to sleep now, Lu Yun simply went upstairs, pulled back the upstairs curtain, and looked out.
He noticed that many Pig-headed Men—or strictly speaking, not Pig-headed Men, but Pigmen—had appeared on the roadside outside the pigpen.
Their bodies were entirely those of pigs.
Lu Yun shifted his gaze to the right, toward the bamboo grove, and saw that Pig-headed Man appearing with a butchering knife in hand!
With a single thrust, he stabbed his own "kind," spilling various pig organs all over the ground.
Yet the surrounding Pigmen didn't react in the slightest, continuing to mindlessly graze on the lush wild grass by the roadside.
"So that's how the family's own pigs manage to stay alive. But then why did the pigs belonging to the family behind the house starve to death? Couldn't they turn into Pigmen and come out to forage?"
Lu Yun needed to find a way to go out tomorrow and check what was inside that mouse hole.
For now, though, it was time to get some sleep.
Lu Yun had brought his phone and smart bracelet in with him, but not the charger.
The battery on his bracelet should last him until the end of the seventh day.
With that thought, he set an alarm and slowly drifted off to sleep.
He had only discovered one rule—or rather, instead of a rule, it was more like a small hint.
The meaning reflected within it was that as long as the family's breeding pig, Ghost Mother, and the Hakimi were all alive, that Pig-headed Man wouldn't dare cross the bamboo grove to come into his "home" and kill him!