C53 – Cai Sheng (XV)
by UntamedSHis thoughts steeply became clear. The two beside him had not yet kept up with the speed of his thoughts, frowning, “What?”
Kou Dong took a slight breath.
“I am Xiao Shuanzi.”
This sentence was said word for word, so clearly that Song Hong could not think that he had misheard.
He was a little incredulous.
“But doesn’t that mean—”
“Yes,” Kou Dong calmly said, “it’s been screwing us over from start to finish.”
Dog system!
“Now that I think about it, it’s been a setup from the beginning,” Kou Dong pointed at Song Hong. “It only told you the mission: within seven days, bring Xiao Shuanzi out.”
“Now it’s already the sixth day.”
“But what if there was a specific player who would come to play Xiao Shuanzi from the very beginning? What if we don’t have to find any NPCs at all?”
From start to finish, the teenager had never acknowledged the identity of Xiao Shuanzi.
He should have thought of it a long time ago. A name like Xiao Shuanzi, which sounded quite rustic, didn’t go well with the NPC’s style of behavior. He thought the system wanted to give its NPC a name that sounded cute to neutralize his aura; the result was that it actually used him!
Song Hong: “Didn’t they say that he was in the circus?”
“That depends on what is in the circus.” Kou Dong’s mind was now clear; he replied, “The original Xiao Shuanzi indeed may have been buried here.”
But he would never be with the kid-nappers; otherwise, the boy would still be used as a handle in their hands. Now that the circus members could take action, it meant that the only obstacle had been broken.
Xiao Shuanzi didn’t become an obstacle, so he could only be within the territory of the circus itself.
When the NPCs in the house were describing Xiao Shuanzi to them, they didn’t talk about him either, but rather the person he was inseparable from that they would think of when he was mentioned.
Throughout the copy, the system played a lot of language games with them, leading them to think in the wrong direction, both explicitly and implicitly.
In fact, there was only one person who really needed to escape.
It was himself.
Kou Dong sensed the bad taste from the system. It purposely set up the last blocked room to make Kou Dong think that this room was related to Xiao Shuanzi. But in reality, it was a Pandora’s Box, from which Kou Dong had personally released the demon that was salivating over him.
Song Hong’s scalp went numb. He gulped, “So, our mission should be to bring you out of Taoyuan Town within seven days.”
Kou Dong nodded.
Song Hong︰”……”
Song Hong silently dropped his gaze on the tightly shut wooden door, and his throat rolled again.
“So,” he said with difficulty, “we are now in…”
Kou Dong nodded quietly.
“We’ve been shut in.”
“……”
“……”
The three of them were silent for a moment, all feeling an uncontrollable pang of heartache at this fact.
It was obvious that they could have easily gotten out, so how come they had locked themselves in instead?
Kou Dong lowered his head. “My fault.”
Speaking of which, it was all because he single-handedly led the charge and released the final boss…
Now, he was also considered to have tasted the taste of moving a stone to stone his own feet.
It hurt.
“But you can’t hit me.” Kou Dong looked at the two and quickly added, “I’m precious now; I can’t be beaten!”
If he was crippled, how could they get him out?
Kou Dong was very self-conscious of being a key person and shrank back, trying to avoid his wronged teammates.
Song Hong’s face was cloudy, looking like he impulsively wanted to strike him. Ye Yanzhi stood up warily from Kou Dong’s shoulder, his eyes staring without blinking, but Song Hong eventually exhaled and shook his head.
“Forget it,” he said heartily, “it’s all those pits.”
One pit after another!
Kou Dong nodded repeatedly, obviously extremely agreeable to this.
Big Headed Doll was still guarding the door, and when he heard the commotion inside, he put his thin hand on the door and knocked with a bang. The three people inside lowered their voices, discussing what to do next.
Now that the goal was clear, they just needed to bring Kou Dong out.
But the question was, how to take the person out under the NPC’s noses?
They began to fret and didn’t dare to just rush through the door. After looking at each other, it was Song Hong who said in a deep voice, “Let’s search the room first and see if there is anything else.”
They began to search.
This room was very large and had all the essentials; there was even a bathtub and a bucket of water next to it. Living here, one didn’t need to step out of the room.
He was the first to sit on the large four-cornered bed and reached out to rummage through the soft bedding. Feeling around, he didn’t find anything else but did fish out a thin gold chain.
Pure gold, long, emitting a faint light. There was a white jade ring at the end, but the material was a bit strange; it looked like it was made of sand. There was a soft layer of fur inside, and Kou Dong touched it, his fingers sinking in like high-quality rabbit fur.
He tried to tug on it, but it didn’t budge—the gold chain was attached to the bed.
Kou Dong was a little confused.
As far as he knew, this was the bed the NPC had prepared for him.
Where did the chain come from on that bed?
He stared and thought, then suddenly gulped and slowly gestured the jade ring towards his hand. The white jade ring was quite small; at a glance, he knew that it wasn’t the size of an adult, but just enough to be able to snap onto his wrist.
Kou Dong: “……”
He didn’t think so.
Could ……
Maybe ……
Could it be that…
The NPC’s original intention was to lock him up here.
Seriously, if it wasn’t for the fact that this body of Kou Dong’s was too young nowadays, and the NPC also looked like an underage person, he would have suspected that the teenager was a per-vert.
What kind of logic was it to think of locking someone up after they’d been abducted and sold?
He was fuming when he heard the little girl’s quiet voice ring out, “Found it.”
She opened a small hidden compartment from under the table; inside was a thin booklet, and when she flipped it open, the names of people were densely written on it.
Most of them were nicknames, with Er Zi, Hei Zi, Chun Chun… it covered most of the book. Followed by a number, like their age.
Further back, there was only a short line.
On the twelfth day of the twelfth lunar month, I took him from Sanlizhuang and brought it with my second son and third daughter. He was useless and was used for harvesting and cutting. He passed away on the twenty-seventh day.
“Ab-ducted from Shanhe Village on the 7th of March, led by Heizi and Ningning, as a beggar.”
“Ab-ducted from Shanhe Village on the 23rd of April…”
Song Hong frowned, noting the unusual wording here, “What do they mean by led?”
He pointed at the words, “What follows in front of this is the child’s name, right? What does this mean? He was brought by two children.”
The little girl calmly said, “That means that they were both led out by the child here.”
This statement sent a chill down one’s spine. Kou Dong’s brows also furrowed as he stared at the page.
“Are you saying that…”
“Think about it,” Ah Xue said quietly, “they have ab-ducted so many children; if they approach with their own looks, how low is the probability?”
When a person had bloo-d on their hands and head, their face always exuded a fierce intent that couldn’t be concealed. Although there were irresponsible parents in this world, there were also more who treated their children as their own destiny, teaching and personally supervising them from a young age. How could they deceive so many?
Song Hong’s palms began to tremble. He clenched his fists and said in a low voice, “So, they let those children go.”
How easy was it?
Children who looked innocent and unaware of the world only needed to be given a change of clothes and one or two playthings in their hands to easily lure away the unsuspecting other children. At this time was still a rural society; the village children went from house to house, then groups of children went to play; this was a common thing.
It didn’t take much effort for the abdu-ctor to lure them all away with two candies and a lure. The new one could still be a lure and continue to lure other children… In this way, naturally, they could guarantee that they wouldn’t worry about food and clothing.
Song Hong gritted his teeth; his voice was also fierce: “Bastard!”
“It should be more than that.” The little girl faintly said, “They voluntarily did it.”
Song Hong was shocked: “How could that be?”
He was a little speechless, and only after a long time did he mumble, “They are still young. How could they be willing to do such a thing?”
“What if it could keep them from becoming of those creatures?”
Ah, Xue’s thin white finger pointed to the name of one of the lures that was written on it; it was clearly for begging. Looking at the others, they were all for Beg as well, and not in the circus.
“What if this is a pardon for them? For instance, the more people they abduct, the better the food, and the more they are kept safe.”
The room fell silent for a moment, and all remembered the first day of their arrival.
That day, the child with the least amount of money was pushed out, and the rest merely watched numbly.
They would make little gestures and rejoice in the sufferings of others. Human selfishness and indifference seemed to manifest themselves in this group of children, unveiling and showing all the ugliness.
Kou Dong more or less understood the meaning of the teenager’s words.
“Underneath the skin of man, who says it’s all human?”
When he said this sentence, what kind of mood did he have in mind to say it?
Only after a long time did the young girl say, “Look further down.”
Kou Dong turned down the pages, and when he reached the middle, he finally saw the words “Xiao Shuanzi.”.
Immediately after Xiao Shuanzi, the child who was abducted in the same village as him was called Ye Yan. Twelve years old.
Kou Dong’s hand covered the half sheet of paper. His mind buzzed for a long time before he gently moved his hand away.
Those two lines of ink-black characters also finally broke into their eyes.
“December 12, abducted from Ye Jia Village, Ying Zi and Er Zi led the way. At first he was a beggar and tried to escape, but he was hit and burned after he lost consciousness.”
“December 12, abducted from Yejia Village, followed another child on his own. Gathering more than twenty children, he tried to escape but was blocked halfway. In order to warn the others, his companion’s legs were cut off, and he was put to death.”
After this, there was a line of small, blo-od-red letters annotating: “This child’s death was very dangerous, so I took his bones and drew a spell to secure them.”
It was a few short lines of words, but Kou Dong was trembling from top to bottom.
As if someone had hit him hard in the sky, the scene in front of his eyes fluttered, and he didn’t know where he was in a trance.
Wind and rain rotated, but the rooster didn’t without crows.
On that day, Yejia Village experienced heavy snowfall.
He saw the two children, who were almost frozen in front of the door.
Their faces were red with cold, but they barely smiled at him. The older boy took his hand and asked him, “Is there any hot water at home? Can you give me a bowl?”
At the end, he added, “Don’t tell the adults.”
The people in the village were simple, and without thinking, he poured half a bowl of boiling water into the coarse porcelain bowl and carefully carried it out. At the age of four, he was already able to help with some simple tasks at home. He brought the bowl to them and whispered, “Drink slowly.”
After they finished drinking, they asked him about the way out of the village.
“This snow is too heavy; I can’t see the path…”.
He asked, “Which family are you from?”
The tall boy pointed to him and said vaguely, “We are from the neighboring village and came here for fun. I didn’t expect we couldn’t leave.”
In Xiao Shuanzi’s house, there was only one grandmother, and they relied on each other for survival. Due to her old age, she was still asleep at this time. As he walked out, he hesitated for a moment, hesitating whether to call out to his neighbor Ye Yan—in this village, Ye Yan loved him even more than his grandmother, and he was always with him at all times. He had a delicate face and looked like a girl, so Ye Yan called him ‘little girl’ very affectionately.
But Ye Yan yesterday helped farm; he seemed very tired.
So he didn’t shout. But since the distance was a hundred meters, he just took them out.
There was a carriage parked in front of the village, which he had never seen before. The tall boy was glad to see it and said that it was his family coming for him.
He also said, “I must thank you; let my parents bring you a piece of sugar!”
Xiao Shuanzi shook his head, said he wanted to go back, and turned his head back. But the boy’s father came out of the carriage, tall and fierce, and covered his mouth at once, and then shoved him into the carriage. It was snowing heavily that day, and there was no one outside in the whiteout. He desperately stomped his legs and urgently looked, but could only see the rubbing cotton like snowflakes, one after another down.
The man who drove the car laughed, said it was a good snow, “No one will know!”
The rut marks and the footprints would all be covered by this heavy snow.
He also thought so; knowing that he had met a bad person, he could only shrink in the carriage and try not to say anything. But a few moments later, someone at the back caught up with the hard-to-move carriage, desperately slapping the carriage with their hands.
“Stop, stop!”
When the curtain lifted, he saw a familiar face.
Ye Yan appeared in front of him.
He chased them out when he had realized it; it was freezing cold at this time, and the people in the village were all asleep; he didn’t have time to call out to anyone. The teenager didn’t have much power to resist in front of this group of adults; he just said something to those ab-ductors, and then, in a whirlwind, he stepped away and sat in as well.
“Shh,” he whispered, “I’ll stay with you.”
He took the boy into his arms. The snow was still drifting outside, and only his chest radiated warmth.
“I’ll accompany you.”
Kou Dong’s forehead hurt as if he were running a high fever, and in his daze, he seemed to hear Song Hong’s voice saying something to him.
He wanted to tell him to speak slower because he couldn’t hear a single word at the moment. When he desperately lifted the curtains of his eyes, there was no Song Hong in front of him, nor was there Ah Xue; there was only a young man sitting on the big four-cornered bed holding him, patting his back again and again.
It was still the circus of the bizarre. Ye Yan’s legs were empty, with only two wobbly trousers. Those trousers were now splattered with bloo-d that smelled fishy.
There was also a dried bloo-d stain on his face, sticking to his cold and white skin like a crimson mole.
Ye Yan hugged Kou Dong, but his expression was extremely gentle.
“Nui Nui is good.”
Kou Dong heard a clattering sound and looked down towards his wrist, only to realize that it was the gold chain.
The jade ring was on his hand. Upon looking again, Kou Dong realized what it was.
The ring made from the ashes of Xiao Shuanzi at that time had been used by the teenager to lock him in the house.
No wonder he had such memories.
“Nui Nui, good boy.”
Ye Yan repeated again, holding him tighter.
“Brother will definitely protect you this time.”
TN:
Eyyy, human nature can be so heartbreaking 😮💨
Thank you for the chapter!!