Chapter Sixteen: The Cave Serpent Dungeon

Li Yunfei hesitated, his resolve wavering as he considered turning back. Yet after a moment’s thought, he reassured himself: whatever strange things might be hidden in this village, as long as he didn’t activate the instance, nothing unusual would appear. Every year, people returned to pay respects to their ancestors, wandering through the village, and none had ever encountered anything out of the ordinary. Besides, his fourth great-uncle hadn’t mentioned a thing; if there truly was something amiss, surely he would have warned him.

With these thoughts, Li Yunfei felt a little more at ease. Ignoring the system’s prompt, he made his way toward his family’s old house. He had discovered that the system only prompted him about an instance once upon entering its range; as long as he didn’t leave, he could choose to enter whenever he wished, no matter how much time passed. Only by leaving and re-entering the range would he be prompted a second time. Otherwise, if it nagged him constantly, his head would surely explode from the noise.

Most of the old wooden houses in the village had been built in the 1970s and 80s, all with mortise-and-tenon joints, the timber mostly sturdy, durable elm. Now, after sixty or seventy years, the houses hadn’t yet collapsed but were largely dilapidated, the roof tiles cracked and missing in places. Without the daily smoke of cooking fires, the wood was soon riddled with insects and decayed rapidly. Yet if people lived in them and kept the hearth burning, such houses could stand for a century without falling into ruin.

As he stepped onto the raised street edge before a row of wooden houses, the system’s tone resounded in his mind once more.

“Attention, host: Instance detected—Antlion Nest, Level 6 to 10. Please select instance level.”

Antlion? The term was new to him. He peered down for a closer look and couldn’t help but laugh. Beneath the wooden houses, the once dry, hard-packed earth of the street edge had turned almost to sand, and the sand was pocked with funnel-shaped pits, large and small—the biggest the size of an egg, the smallest no bigger than a thumbprint.

“So that’s what’s called an antlion! Isn’t this the ground beetle?” Li Yunfei chuckled, half amused, half helpless.

He crouched to examine the little sand pits, but his smile faded, eyes growing moist. He remembered, as a child, after his parents brought him home for ancestral rites, they would stroll the village together. Back then, he’d been curious about these tiny craters and asked his father about them.

His father told him they were called ground beetles, the larvae of an insect known as “antlions,” which liked to walk backward—a most fascinating creature.

These little sand pits were their hunting traps. They would bury themselves at the bottom, exposing only their pincers, and the instant a small insect slipped down the slope, it became their meal. In his father's childhood, with few amusements, the children would dig up ground beetles to play with. His father even whispered a secret: no matter how you dug, you’d never find one, but if you tricked it, it would climb out on its own.

Thinking of his father, Li Yunfei’s eyes brimmed with tears. He reached out and placed a finger in one of the tiny pits, stirring the sand as he murmured, “Ground beetle, come out now, I’ll treat you to vegetables and fine wine…”

Sure enough, as he chanted, a pearl-sized ground beetle emerged from the sand. Li Yunfei didn’t catch it, and soon the little creature burrowed back out of sight.

A single tear fell, splashing onto the sand and forming a small hollow. He had thought that, after all these years, the grief would have faded, but the memory of his parents—their voices, their laughter—remained as vivid as ever.

A small fox, sensing its master’s sorrow, gave a soft cry, licked his face gently, and pressed its own furry cheek to Li Yunfei’s, as if trying to comfort him.

Li Yunfei came back to himself, sniffed, and gave a self-deprecating smile. He wiped his tears away, patted the little fox’s head, and said with a soft smile, “Thank you, Honghong. I’m grateful to have you with me.”

The fox chirped softly.

“Come on, now! We’re fed and rested—let’s go hunt some ground beetles.”

These ground beetles were just what Li Yunfei wanted: low combat power, flightless instance monsters. The only challenge was that they burrowed and rarely emerged from the pits—but with the little fox’s help, that shouldn’t be a problem.

He continued on; his family’s old home stood at the edge of the row of wooden houses, laid out like a small courtyard. Of course, it only resembled a courtyard in design—it was no true siheyuan. The east wing housed the kitchen and a storeroom, the west had the pigsty and latrine, the north was the main hall with its door facing south. On either side of the main room were two bedrooms, and before it sprawled a thirty-square-meter yard.

The kitchen roof was still serviceable, but the others had varying degrees of leaks; the interiors were dirty, damp, and in places overgrown with moss. In the past, the kitchen had a great pile of firewood behind it—now, of course, it was long gone.

Li Yunfei unfolded a table in the yard, set out food, and enjoyed a fine meal with his little fox.

Now, though human voices had faded from Qingyuan Village, the air was filled with lively, melodious birdsong—the chattering of sparrows, the “cuckoo, cuckoo” of great cuckoos, the soft cooing of doves. If the village houses were all torn down and the land planted with peach trees, in less than ten years this place would become a true paradise of birds and blossoms. The idea popped into Li Yunfei’s head, and he found it quite appealing. Of course, he didn’t have the means yet, but someday, with money and leisure, he might just do it.

After their meal, Li Yunfei pitched a tent in the yard, inflated the air mattress, and rested inside with the little fox for a while.

At one in the afternoon, fully refreshed, he took the fox and headed for the neighboring street edge.

“Attention, host: Instance detected—Antlion Nest, Level 6 to 10. Please select instance level.”

“I choose... Level 7 antlion instance.”

Li Yunfei reasoned that, now at level eight and nearing level nine, if he chose the level six instance, it would stop dropping equipment after he leveled up. Since only the bosses dropped gear, it made sense to level up first and then return to farm the bosses for loot—it was the most efficient approach.

“Instance level selected. Enter now?”

“Enter.”

“Instance confirmed. Launching instance protocol.”

The world around him expanded rapidly. The tiny sand pits on the ground ballooned from thumb-sized to several meters across, and he found himself standing in the midst of a vast desert.

He’d experienced scenes like this many times and no longer felt any surprise. The street edge, now magnified, was a true desert landscape. The sun-baked sand scorched his feet, sweat pouring down until he donned his powerful ant armor, which finally shielded him from some of the heat.

“Go on, Honghong. Let’s finish this quickly.”