【Congratulations to the player for completing the dating journey with the second character.
Points gained from this date: 47 points.]
[The following is the mission settlement.]
[The number of participants in the team: 5 people.]
[The first player gets 23 points, the second player gets 4 points, and the third player gets …… points.]
Kou Dong heard his own points. The number of people in the Nuo Mask copy was already small, and there were not many left until the end, so he gained 174 achievement points.
The feeling was like a penniless person buying a lottery ticket and winning a billion dollars, it didn’t seem real.
The beeps sounded for a while, and when they finally stopped, the value changed to 221.
Cr-ap, money ……
Kou Dong wanted to cry with joy.
The feeling of being empty-handed and penniless was really not a good feeling.
He said excitedly to Ye Yanzhi: “Little boy, dad has money! Dad will buy you a car, a house, and save up some money for you to marry a wife …….”
Ye Yanzhi didn’t even raise his eyes as he poured cold water on him, “This little value is only enough for you to draw cards twice.”
Thinking of buying a car or a house was a dream.
Kou Dong: “……”
Right.
He suddenly woke up to the fact that his income could not keep up with the speed of inflation …… This was really a desperate reality.
A brand new icon on the left kept pulsing and emitting bright light, Kou Dong clicked on it and realized that it was a group invitation from Song Hong. The next copy he was going to enter was still a team copy, and the name of the copy was just two simple words: Cai Sheng.
Kou Dong also had a good feeling about him, in the mermaid’s copy, the other opened the door, he could have left him and led his own companions to escape directly, but ultimately chose to turn back.
It was only when one had been through a close call that you realized how valuable these favors could be.
It was something that could emit light in the dark game.
Kou Dong replied, “Yes. When?”
Song Hong seemed like he was in the game, but in just two seconds, he immediately replied: “Two days later.”
Two days ……
Kou Dong pondered.
There was only a maximum of seven days of rest between copies, this was the rule that the system had told him. Otherwise, after seven days, his consciousness would be wiped out.
Since Song Hong had said two days, he knew it hadn’t been long since he had come out of the last copy.
He replied, “Okay.”
Song Hong’s reply came immediately.
“That’s good, I’ll send you an invitation in two days. The title of this copy is something you should ponder over first.”
Kou Dong always randomly selected a copy to enter before, and the foresight card directly bound him to the Nuo Mask copy, this was the first time he learnt the title of the copy before entering the formal plot.
He looked at the two words Cai Sheng over and over again and asked Ye Yanzhi: “These two words, what could they mean?”
Ye Yanzhi’s brows were knitting as he said, “Can’t be sure.”
He simply explained, “There are three meanings of this word. One, it is to pick life to cure disease, which is said to have originated from the Tang and Song dynasties, where living body parts were collected and given to people suffering from the same part of the disease as a way of curing the disease.”
“Two, it is the harvesting of life for loss. A living person needs to be hollowed out, and the remaining skin and face are painted with oil and color, and the ghosts are used to drive people away. It is prevalent in the land of South Vietnam.”
Neither of these two were considered good guesses, Kou Dong thought about it and vaguely felt a little nauseous.
“And the third?”
“The third one is the most gentle,” Ye Yanzhi paused and said, “It is to bring a person to a newborn baby so that he can be the first thing the newborn baby sees, and in the future he will grow to resemble this person.”
“It’s just that, according to the copy attributes, the possibility of the third one is very small.”
Kou Dong nodded and agreed with this statement. He had heard of this custom, and it was more like a kind of beautiful wish, not very close to the game’s gloomy and radical style.
So it seemed more likely to be the first two instead.
“I don’t know, is the third kind of life picking accurate?”
Ye Yanzhi: “It’s just folklore.”
Just after the words fell, he realized that the youth’s gaze was secretly fixed on his face, and he was still muttering in a low voice: “It doesn’t look like ah ……”.
Ye Yanzhi: “……”
If it was really like that, then something was wrong.
It was true that he had begged to be called father, but it didn’t mean that he could really accept Kou Dong as his father. ……
During the two days of preparation, Kou Dong wasn’t idle, and used one hundred and eighty points to cash in two props in the exchange pool. One of them was a rough thread ball, and at a closer look, it was sporadically stained with a bit of red color, like dried blood.
Prop Name: Ariadne’s Thread.
Function: Can accurately lead you to the location of the NPC you are looking for.
Limitations: Need to know the face and name of the NPC, unable to find unfamiliar NPCs.
How to use: Please call out the name of the NPC while throwing the ball of thread.
Time Limit: 3 times.
The other one was an old machine that had long been eliminated by the times, and the top was covered with fine cracks, like it was scratched by a key. The first time he saw it, Kou Dong even doubted that it could really be turned on, he pressed the on button for half a day, and finally saw the screen light up. Just maybe it was because he didn’t enter the copy, now the phone was blank, there wasn’t even a single function.
Prop Name: Universal Address Book.
Function: To help you contact any player in the same copy, with unlimited scope of use.
How to use: Please add a note for the player you want to contact. Afterwards, you can send and receive messages with the player you want to contact through the cell phone function.
Time Limit: Can only be used in one copy].
Kou Dong: “……”
“Wow,” he sighed slyly at his cub, “that’s impressive, still being able to get such an old prop in this day and age.”
It made him wonder if the system was a junk collector.
Ye Yanzhi:”……”
Two days later, Kou Dong was nestled in his bed with his cub when he saw a new prompt pop up from the system.
[Your friend invites you to join his team, do you want to join?A, Yes B, No]
Kou Dong pressed his hand on the yes option. Ye Yanzhi poked his head out of his collar and smoothly tugged on one of the threads on that shirt.
The familiar darkness invaded, and his feet drifted, unable to step on the ground, before landing on solid ground a few minutes later.
The system’s cold electronic voice announced the rules for him.
[During the team mission, the real identity of the players in the real world cannot be disclosed; the word “game” or any game name cannot be mentioned; real software, APP, website and related applications cannot be mentioned; after the copy is finished, points will be distributed according to the contribution value of the players.
Points for this copy: 300; Number of team members: 12].
[Attention please, the copy will be opened soon.]
Suddenly, Kou Dong’s eyes lit up and darkened, and he smelled an indescribable odor, like meat that had gone bad and began to stink.
The indistinguishable color of the floor shook, the dirty ceiling also shook, Kou Dong tried to blink twice before realizing that he was actually in a moving carriage.
The curtains of the carriage were tightly pressed, and the actual space wasn’t very large; Kou Dong thought that it was only three or four square meters at a glance.
But in such a cramped and narrow place, it looked like a lot of things were stuffed in. Because the light was too dark, looking at a gray piece, he couldn’t distinguish the specific appearance.
Kou Dong only thought that these were fabrics and turned his head away.
Until he heard a hoarse, low sigh in these sounds.
“Ugh. ……”
There was a short muffled sound from someone in his ear.
This sudden sound nearly scared Kou Dong out of a cold sweat.
He turned his eyes, only to realize that it wasn’t some pile of fabric beside him, but a person.
It was just that the man was small in stature, and hunched over with his back wrapped in a cotton jacket full of dirt, so he wasn’t very conspicuous. If he hadn’t seen the straightening of his eyes, Kou Dong wouldn’t have been able to believe that this was a person.
He was more like a silent shadow, even his breathing was soft and unheard.
“……”
Kou Dong subconsciously touched toward his shoulder, but touched an empty space. Ye Yanzhi had sat in his arm at some point, tilting his head, his eyes stared at him without blinking, shock written all over his face.
Kou Dong was at a loss by the look in his eyes, and used his lips to ask in a low voice what was wrong.
Before the villain could answer, the carriage had stopped.
A rough hand lifted the curtain and said in a hoarse voice, “Get off.”
Inside the carriage, many short figures stood up one after another from the shadows.
Kou Dong was startled, and it wasn’t until he saw their figures that he realized that such a small car was actually stuffed with quite a number of people-
No, to be precise, it was stuffed with many children!
Those children were wearing ragged clothes, and they went down from the car one by one with expressionless faces. The person who raised the curtain stood by the door, urging: “Hurry up, hurry up.”
Kou Dong was still a bit stunned, but he saw the man’s eyes lift up and look at him impatiently.
“Why don’t you come down?”
He rasped.
“Looking for death?”
“……”
Unwilling to play hardball with him, Kou Dong finally stood up and headed for the car door as well.
At this stop, he vaguely felt that something was not quite right.
–He was too far away from the top of the carriage.
There was no need to even bend down in the low car.
Kou Dong’s heart was creeped out, and he violently lowered his head, finally realizing that something was wrong – the hands he poked out of those cuffs were extremely small, with young fingers.
Then looking at his figure, it was also low, completely unlike an adult.
Rather like ……
Rather like these children, like a child of five or six years old.
This discovery, made Kou Dong vaguely feel some discomfort. He didn’t say anything, he jumped down from the car, then stood in silence into the pile of children. Those children all lowered their heads and didn’t say a word, their expressions were numb, and they didn’t even glance at him.
Suddenly, a hand forcibly lifted Kou Dong’s chin, it was the man who lifted the curtain.
He had a pair of triangular eyes and a fierce face, he looked at him up and down, like he was satisfied, “This is a good quality.”
Kou Dong felt that the place he touched was cold, and the calluses on his hands caused him pain.
Just then another crowd of people came in, and – it turned out that there was not only one wagon full of children like this. There were about seventy to eighty children standing here, and not a single one of them said a word, and even their breathing was barely audible.
Kou Dong guessed that Song Hong and the others might be among the crowd, but he wasn’t sure of their youthful appearance, so he searched left and right and found nothing.
After a long time, a louder voice finally came. Triangle eye dragged the last child down from the car, the boy was fat, each hand had four meaty rolls, he looked like a child of a rich family.
He firmly grasped the carriage and didn’t let go, crying louder and louder, mixed with intermittent choking, as if he was frightened.
“What are you crying for!” Triangle Eyes scolded him sternly, “Come down quickly, if you don’t come down, you’ll have to eat your fruit!”
This sentence didn’t look like a joke at all.
The only thing that could be heard in the wind was the broken voice of the boy’s crying voice.
“It’s not like that! I, I didn’t know it was like this here ……”
Kou Dong’s heart jumped slightly as he stared at the boy.
Ye Yanzhi also saw the doorway and softly said, “He should be as well.”
He paused, his expression vaguely sarcastic.
“I’m afraid that he was scared out of his wits after coming in.”
It was like a rich second-generation man who tried to pursue excitement in the game, who was used to spending his days in the real world looking for excitement, and even extended his hand into the game.
Kou Dong didn’t take kindly to his tone, “Cub, we can’t think like that.”
He was very understanding, “I thought I was entering a love game, but when I came in, it was actually such a ghost scene, anyone would be scared.”
Sweet little brother suddenly turned into a horror game NPC ……
Ye Yanzhi tugged on his collar and didn’t speak, only letting out a soft snort from his throat.
Kou Dong also vaguely felt odd and whispered, “It’s just that, he wasn’t scared like this from the start, right?”
“……”
Soon, Kou Dong understood the reason why he was scared out of his wits.
After that, from the car where the boy came down, someone brought down a large wooden cage, which was half a man high.
And inside the cage-
His eyes snapped to attention.
Inside the cage, there was a slithering and coiling snake.
If it was an ordinary snake, it wouldn’t be so surprising.
But on that snake, what was born was clearly a human head! He only had a head and a small section of his upper body exposed, and the back of the golden python body was tightly connected, there were neither hands nor feet, only this human head and snake body, as if it was broken by someone and put it back together again in an uncomfortable way.
The image was strange and shocking, leaving Kou Dong speechless for a moment.
He had seen many monsters. In the copy of the mermaid, he had seen many strange experimental bodies.
But there had never been one that gave him such a depressing feeling, as if there were boulders on his chest, weighing him down so much that he couldn’t breathe – he didn’t even want to look at it.
The boy’s sobs got louder as the cage was placed on the floor.
He suddenly seemed to explode, yelling, “My father is the director! My father is the director! You guys hurry up and release me, do you know who he is-”
Kou Dong’s brows furrowed violently, realizing that it wasn’t good.
The system had said that one must never reveal one’s true identity in reality. But looking at his posture, like he could immediately blurt out his father’s name ……
He made a snap decision and violently erupted into a cry of pain, stumbling backward and falling to the ground.
The child next to him stood densely packed, and was accidentally hit by him, causing several of them to sway and almost fall. The movement was not small, and the triangular eye suddenly looked over, taking back a bit of the mental energy that had been staring at the boy. “What’s the matter?”
Kou Dong said nothing, “Suddenly a little dizzy.”
He held his head.
Triangular eyes looked a bit disdainful, then turned back. It was a good thing that after such an interruption, the boy had forgotten to say the words that had just come to his lips, and only froze and huffed a few more times.
“All here?”
Triangle Eyes rushed at the man who escorted the carts.
The escort replied gruffly, “All here.”
“It’s good that they are all here,” Triangle Eyes said in a deep voice, “then let’s go.”
About eleven or twelve young and strong men escorted the group of children toward the other side of the road. There were a few low courtyards there, gray and hidden in the piles of trees, not very conspicuous.
Someone opened the gates of the yards and herded them in like cattle.
“Separate quarters,” he said in a hushed voice, “fifteen per yard.”
Kou Dong mingled with the crowd, his mind still speculating about where Song Hong had gotten to, but he felt someone gently tugging on his sleeve. When he looked over, the boy’s eyebrows were more upright than the others, and he also nodded slightly at him.
Kou Dong had a hunch that this was Song Hong, so he moved closer to him without any trace.
They entered the third courtyard together.
At the back of the courtyard was a low-slung house with a few moldy old cotton wool covers piled up in the corner. Fifteen children entered the room and filled it to the point of overflow, so Kou Dong and Song Hong shrank back as far as they could and struggled to find a cleaner place to sit in the corner.
A man in rags strode in at the door, a jar in his hand, and touched the children one by one. For some children, he silently threw a few coins from their pockets into it, and he turned the jar upside down, looking somewhat satisfied; some were just silent, but he couldn’t get a penny out of them so the man frowned tightly, grimacing and pointing his finger at them, “You, I’ll remember.”
While saying this, his hand was still rummaging through the child’s pockets to make sure they didn’t have a stash.
Song Hong looked vaguely worried as he lowered his voice, “Do you have any money there?”
Kou Dong paid close attention to the coins and found that they were not ones he recognized, nor were they used in any of the dynasties he remembered, but rather seemed to be from a fictional era.
He shook his head and answered in the same whisper, “No.”
“Then what?” Song Hong said, “He’s almost to us ……”
Soon, the man had nearly finished rummaging through a room of a dozen or so children, whirling around and rushing towards the two of them, Kou Dong and Song Hong, shaking the jar in his hand.
“Where’s your money?”
Kou Dong replied, “Uncle, we are on our first day …… today and don’t have any money yet.”
“First day?”
The man’s eyes searched up and down, and finally fixed on Song Hong’s barely passable coat, and without saying anything, stripped it off Song Hong’s body, “If you don’t have any money, then I’ll take this to cover it first, remember, this is the only time!”
He smiled grimly.
“The next time, you guys will go to the woodcutter – got it?”
Kou Dong’s heart lurched, failing to catch the words. He glanced to his right, but noticed that Song Hong’s face was instantly pale, and even the villain’s expression didn’t look too good.
“Wrong,” Ye Yanzhi whispered, “So it seems that Cai Sheng doesn’t mean any of the three we thought it meant, but rather Cai Sheng, cutting.”
Song Hong also sighed deeply.
“If it’s like what I imagined …….”
He stared at the children who seemed numb.
“Then this copy, I’m afraid it’s not too good.”