“None of you are allowed to leave!” Liang Shu’s hair was disheveled, her clothes covered in creases, and her face still bore the red indentation marks of sleep creases.
Blocking the courtyard entrance, she stared at everyone in the yard with bloodshot eyes, veins bulging on her forehead and neck.
“Little girl,” Jiang Zhongxu sighed, offering words of persuasion, “we all know you’re anxious because your things were stolen, but we have our own tasks too. None of us are holding anything of yours; wouldn’t it be better if you went and searched our rooms after we leave?”
Liang Shu shrieked: “No way!”
“It definitely got stolen by someone! None of you are allowed to leave!”
Xian Chengyue sat motionless in his chair. Chen Wei glanced over at Xian Chengyue, and meeting his gaze, raised his voice: “There’s no harm in it anyway, it’ll take an hour at most. Just let them check.”
The young man standing beside Jiang Zhongxu chimed in hastily: “You guys aren’t in a rush, but we are!”
He looked anxiously around at everyone in the yard: “We can’t just take whatever she says as absolute truth, right? Nobody can leave their rooms at night what if one of their own people ate the mung bean pastries themselves?!”
The boy’s voice was raspy, still cracking in the middle of a voice change. He was even younger than the deceased red-haired boy, with a rounded nose and face that could charitably be called cute. Clinging tightly to Jiang Zhongxu’s side, he could not conceal the tension in his gaze.
Xie Youmin and the other two men rushed toward the boy. Xie Youmin’s voice was hoarse; she hadn’t dared to drink water or rest properly over the past few days, suffering from sleep deprivation every night while being forced to grind away like a donkey during the day. The miller had agreed to give them mung bean pastries only because they took on more labor than a donkey.
Whether pushing by hand or relying on makeshift shoulder straps, grinding for a whole day would rawly abrade the skin until it streamed with fresh blood.
And they had to do it all over again the next day, enduring the agony without a word.
Three days, it took three full days to trade for a single dish of mung bean pastries.
With only two days left, they had no second chance.
“It was you!” Xie Youmin grabbed the boy by the collar. “You stole it!”
The boy’s voice shook as he forced himself to retort: “It wasn’t me! What makes you say it was me?! Jiang-ge, Jiang-ge can vouch for me, I’ve been with Jiang-ge the whole time, I didn’t go anywhere!”
A dozen-plus pairs of eyes in the courtyard turned to fixate on Jiang Zhongxu, who stood right beside the boy.
Jiang Zhongxu sighed with the air of an honest, well-meaning man: “We’ve been walking around the village together these past few days, and I went straight to sleep as soon as we got back. But I don’t think Xiao Zhang is the type to steal things, and besides, what use would he have for stealing your task item?”
“Not necessarily, right?” The man in Chen Wei’s group laughed. “Newbies might not know, but us veterans? Even if it’s someone else’s task item, sometimes it still counts for clearing the trial, especially in lobbies with lots of newbies.”
Chen Wei chimed in: “Mr. Jiang didn’t know about that?”
Jiang Zhongxu glanced at him with a flicker of microscopic pity deep in his eyes, then sighed again: “I knew, but Xiao Zhang didn’t.”
He abruptly drew in a breath, as if just recalling something, and rubbed his chin: “I do seem to recall mentioning it to Xiao Zhang yesterday.”
The boy turned deathly pale, staring at Jiang Zhongxu in disbelief as he took a step back: “Jiang-ge?”
Jiang Zhongxu: “Since Xiao Zhang is under suspicion, go ahead and search him. But being suspected doesn’t mean he actually did it. Sometimes, once you’ve decided he did it, no matter what the actual facts are, you’ll naturally cast him in the role of the culprit.”
“The issue isn’t whether he did it or not, but what you think happened.” Having finished his piece, Jiang Zhongxu gave the boy a meaningful look.
Clenching his fists tightly, the boy felt a surge of reassurance, the pallor fading somewhat from his face.
Besides, even if he had done it, what could these people possibly do to him?
Jiang-ge told him that in a place like this, talking about morality and bottom lines meant handing your fate over to others.
Even if he got caught, would these people really beat him to death?
They were all educated people; he had merely stolen something without causing anyone’s death these people wouldn’t resort to such heavy-handed violence.
Xian Chengyue listened attentively, prompting Su Yan to ask in a low voice: “Xian-ge, do you think he stole it?”
Xian Chengyue: “Yes.”
Su Yan clicked his tongue: “And Jiang Zhongxu can still say those things?”
Xian Chengyue rubbed his chin with his fingers: “Why wouldn’t he? It was very well said.”
Su Yan froze, unsure of how to respond. Instead, Chen Wei smoothly picked up the thread: “In a place like this, you can’t talk about morality.”
Su Yan: “???”
What happened to playing the innocent, lily-white saint persona?
Chen Wei smiled as he asked Xian Chengyue: “How does Xian-ge think this matter will end?”
Xian Chengyue: “Either driven out, or locked up.”
In short, murder was off the table.
Xian Chengyue had seen too many incidents of this sort to find any novelty in them.
Naturally, Liang Shu and her group wouldn’t listen to Jiang Zhongxu. The men proceeded to search Zhang’s body, even pulling open his underwear to inspect finding nothing at all.
Then, grabbing Zhang, they dragged him off to search their room.
Su Yan glanced at Zhao Feng, who was standing alone off to the side. Zhao Feng had his arms crossed and his face pitch-black, yet he remained completely inactive and silent throughout.
Where had Zhao Feng gone earlier? Wasn’t he supposed to have come out with Jiang Zhongxu and the others?
Sharing the same group and the same room, it was impossible for Zhao Feng not to have been involved.
He might even have colluded with Jiang Zhongxu to trick the sole remaining newbie in their room into taking risks.
Zhang had already been dragged into the room. The space lacked any proper hiding spots there wasn’t even a wardrobe, just a bed and a table. Since they intended to hand the mung bean pastries over to clear their task, it was impossible for them to have buried them in the dirt.
Liang Shu climbed onto the bed, flipping back the quilt to search.
“How could…” Liang Shu slumped backward onto the mattress.
She turned her head with a blank, dazed expression.
Zhang wore an equally blank expression.
Jiang Zhongxu’s expression shifted slightly, but he quickly smoothed it over with a gentle tone: “I said just now, Xiao Zhang isn’t that kind of person. Since we couldn’t find it here, you might as well look in the other rooms.”
In the end, Liang Shu and her companions searched every single room from top to bottom, coming away completely empty-handed.
Only two days remained.
Liang Shu collapsed onto the floor, sobbing in utter despair.
The rest of her group fared no better.
Zhao Feng spoke up abruptly: “Since nothing’s here, I’m heading out.”
This time, no one stopped him, and Zhao Feng walked straight out of the courtyard.
Suddenly remembering something, Liang Shu snapped her head up. Scrambling to her feet using both hands and feet, she lunged toward Xian Chengyue as if grasping at the final straw of salvation.
“Xian-ge!” Liang Shu forced out a smile that looked infinitely worse than crying. “Xian-ge, please save us, save us…”
She collapsed at Xian Chengyue’s feet, looking practically no different from kneeling.
Xian Chengyue gazed down at Liang Shu’s face.
A young girl, lacking in courage, yet barely managing to hold on until now.
“Go take another trip to the mill,” Xian Chengyue said, leaning back against the chair with his habitual expressionlessness. No matter how miserable others were, not even a shred of pity would ever surface in his eyes; nevertheless, he didn’t mind offering a word of guidance, “There are no truly impossible tasks.”
Liang Shu muttered under her breath: “The miller said… he only gives us one plate.”
Xian Chengyue replied with cold detachment: “If you’re unwilling to try, then sit here and wait to die.”
Standing up without a shred of extra interest in this farce, he walked straight out of the courtyard. Su Yan hurried to keep pace behind him, leaving only Chen Wei standing in place as he offered Liang Shu a remarkably gentlemanly smile: “It’s not too late to go now. Never give up on yourself first, especially in a place like this.”
Chen Wei smiled as he helped Liang Shu back to her feet, then promptly departed the courtyard as well.
Instead of following Xian Chengyue, he headed off to “stake out” the village chief’s house.
The village chief drank a cup of rice wine every single meal. Though in Chen Wei’s view it was merely ordinary fermented glutinous rice mash, in this place, only the village chief possessed the financial backing to “brew alcohol” using a premium grain like rice.
Pity that the three other members of his group lacked the nerve to go steal wine from the village chief’s house.
Let alone going at night; no matter how Chen Wei tried to reason with them, they remained convinced they had to strictly obey the rules the village chief had laid out from the very beginning.
Chen Wei sighed inwardly, wishing he had been grouped with Xian Chengyue instead.
Xian Chengyue was ruthless and bold, placing nothing above clearing the trial what a shame…
He glanced toward Su Yan’s retreating back.
What remarkably good luck that guy had. He just wondered how well he’d fare clearing this trial easily only to find himself without Xian Chengyue by his side next time.
Back in the courtyard, Liang Shu had managed to compose herself. Straightening her posture, she shot a bitter, gritted-tooth glare at Jiang Zhongxu and Zhang. She didn’t trust the two of them, and remained firmly convinced the mung bean pastries had been stolen by them; yet lacking evidence and even if evidence existed, since Jiang Zhongxu and company refused to hand them over, could they really beat them to death?
“To the mill,” Liang Shu gripped Xie Youmin’s hand tightly.
The two men followed closely behind them toward the mill.
There was only one mill in the village. The family who ran it also owned farmland, but they consumed their own harvested grain; when luck favored them with high yields, they took surplus grain to sell in town to save up a bit of money, though most of the time they earned a living by making and selling tofu to the villagers.
They cultivated soybeans and mung beans in the greatest quantities.
“Why are you back again?” The miller’s wife supported her swollen belly with one hand, using her other hand to hold onto a young boy.
The boy stood no higher than the woman’s hips, wearing a clean, respectable outfit free of patches.
Yet everyone, including Liang Shu, didn’t dare stare directly into the boy’s face.
It was a horribly deformed face.
Devoid of a bridge of the nose, with upturned, flaring nostrils, his eyes were freakishly oversized, set exceptionally far apart. Looking only at the upper half of his face, he resembled a catfish.
The lower half of his face was even more terrifying: he had no lips, leaving his gums and teeth completely exposed, with scarlet gums perpetually smeared in thick drool.
He suffered from severe dermatitis; the skin on his face was mottled in patches of white and red. The white areas were devoid of blood circulation, while the red patches resembled peeled, rotting flesh.
Enduring her terror, Liang Shu forced herself to look only into the female proprietor’s eyes as she trembled: “Boss’s wife, we’d like to trade for another plate of mung bean pastries.”
The proprietor’s wife bellowed at the top of her lungs: “We’ve made enough tofu these past few days! It’ll spoil before we even know how long it sits unsold if we make more.”
Liang Shu: “Boss’s wife, we can do more than just grind soy milk! We can handle anything else too just let us do whatever you want!”
This was their absolute final chance. Liang Shu gripped the hem of her shirt tightly, repeating: “We’ll do anything.”
The proprietor’s wife stroked her belly, her sinister gaze sweeping coldly across their faces.
Then she burst into a sudden laugh, speaking with forced hospitality: “Ever since I got pregnant, I haven’t had the energy to look after Dahua. Dahua was just complaining that nobody’s playing with him. How about this you guys keep Dahua company and play with him for a day. If Dahua has a good time, I’ll give you another plate.”
Dahua stroked his protruding little belly, offering Liang Shu and the others a “shy” smile.
His scarlet mouth split all the way to his earlobes, and his massive eyeballs rolled around in a frenzied, terrifying display.