The group sneakily infiltrated the Village Party Secretary’s house.

 

The group walked along the road with difficulty; they had to avoid the villagers, guard against their wills weakening and being taken over, and also keep track of the time.

“Empathy” originally lasted ten minutes; after Xing Ye redrew it, it only lasted five. Walking from Yang Xiaomao’s house to the village party secretary’s house took at least twenty minutes on foot.

Cao Qian could actually get there in ten minutes with her speed, but she couldn’t split from the group, so they could only move slowly together.

Xing Ye was the most exhausted one: not only did he have to take care to coordinate with the little mirror so as not to be counter-controlled, he also had to manage the timing of every pair linked by “Empathy,” topping up a fresh QR code right before the five-minute mark.

What should have been a twenty-minute walk took them a full half hour. Fortunately, the guard squad was also afraid of the sunlight and dared not go out, and the sacrificial team players were being watched tightly by Aunt Tian—no one came to stop them, and the group arrived at the village party secretary’s house without incident.

The front gate of the party secretary’s house was firmly shut, but that couldn’t stop several people with special abilities. Cao Qian lightly leapt and, shouldering Qian Daniu like a sack, was the first to jump over the high wall into the courtyard.

Qian Daniu, carried like a sack on someone’s shoulder: “Urgh…”

‘Cao Heihei, you’re a real iron-blooded man!’

After setting Qian Daniu down, Cao Qian was about to jump back out to pull the other two in when Yan Hebi produced a key and started opening the front gate. He said to Xing Ye, “You remember this master key, right? I used it in the hospital world. After the hospital world it still had three uses left, but I never got a chance—this time it finally pays off. Cao Qian moved so fast I didn’t even have time to say I could open the door before she brought Qian Daniu in.”

Qian Daniu, retching in the yard: “…”

Hearing the noise outside, the party secretary opened a window and asked, “Who is it? What are you doing?”

Ignoring the party secretary’s objections, they rushed in. Yan Hebi charged into the secretary’s room, grabbed him by the collar and demanded, “Where is my spine?”

The party secretary’s face went white. He waved his hands and said to Yan Hebi, “Listen to me—let me explain!”

“Before you explain, bring us some food.” Qian Daniu clutched her stomach and said, “I’m going to starve to death. If I don’t eat soon I’ll start eating people.”

Cao Qian noticed two iron-walnut exercise balls on the kang. Iron walnuts are objects the elders roll in their hands to prevent strokes; they aren’t literally iron but are very hard. She pinched one lightly, gripped both in her hands, and the two iron walnuts crumbled into pieces. She flicked her hands expressionlessly.

The party secretary’s wife trembled and said, “I-I’ll go make food right now.”

Xing Ye said, “Cao Heihei, Qian Daniu, one of you guard the front door, the other the back—don’t let those two run off.”

Before long the party secretary’s wife brought up a full table of food. Qian Daniu, the hungriest of them, was about to dig in when Xing Ye said, “After Li Datou drank your tea earlier, he passed out. It’s just about noon—let’s sit and eat together.”

Qian Daniu immediately put down her chopsticks. Cao Qian grabbed the party secretary and his wife—one in each hand—and forced them into their seats at the table, saying coldly, “Eat!”

The group looked like ferocious tigers, staring down the two completely unarmed middle-aged people.

The secretary’s wife, trembling at the sight of the dishes, reached out with shaky hands to pick up a corn bun and ate it carefully. Xing Ye nodded, and Qian Daniu also took a corn bun and began to eat.

“Not the three of us yet,” Xing Ye said. “If Daniu faints later, we’ll take bones from them and give them back to Li Datou.”

As the only actual adult among the three, Yan Hebi put on a ferocious look.

Unfortunately his acting was poor— the party secretary didn’t even look at him. Instead he said to Xing Ye, “Yang Xiaomao, we’re all from the same village—how can you be so cruel?”

Xing Ye said calmly, “I’m about to be made a sacrifice for the mountain god. What does it matter if I’m cruel? When has Mountain God Village ever treated my mother and me well? Now my mother was killed by that bastard Yang Dazhuang; I have nothing left to hold on to. If I want to kill someone, why can’t I?”

Cao Heihei chimed in, “We’re people going to die anyway—before we die we don’t mind pulling a couple of people down with us.”

“Mm!” Qian Daniu mouthed around her corn bun and nodded wildly.

She was about to starve—she never imagined she’d live to find coarse corn buns delicious in this life!

Yan Hebi gave her a worried look and whispered, “Don’t choke. We can’t even drink the soup on the table.”

Qian Daniu glared at him and said, “Choking is such a low-probability event—this kind of fate-following player would never run into that. Don’t be a crow's mouth.”

Speaking of which, ever since following Xing Ye and the others to the west end of the village last night, Qian Daniu hadn’t known what being a fate-following player meant anymore. She had been unlucky at every turn; even though she was the only one not controlled by sunlight, she was still the unluckiest of them all.

Xing Ye asked, “Which of the dishes on the table is poisoned? Let Daniu test the food first—if she’s wrong, we’ll take off one of your arms.”

The secretary’s wife couldn’t bear it and, sobbing, took away the dishes and soups that had been drugged. She poured Qian Daniu a cup of water; reassured, Qian Daniu dug in.

The party secretary sighed helplessly and said, “Ask whatever you want.”

“Why did you take Li Datou’s spine?” Xing Ye asked.

The party secretary said, “It was for my son. You seem to know a lot already, so I won’t hide it anymore. Qian Daniu and Wang Sifang are half-paper-people, the mountain god won’t take interest in them. Li Datou’s spine carries the blessing of the mountain god. My son carried that little embroidered pouch on him and the mountain god mistakenly thought he was a paper-person it had blessed, so it wouldn’t touch him. That way the sacrifice would fall on people like you and Cao Heihei instead. I did it for my son.”

Xing Ye asked again, “Why have the sacrifices these past few years all been children from our family?”

The party secretary picked up his dry tobacco pipe and took a puff. “Because your family are among the few remaining living people— the mountain god loves living children most. More and more villagers have been turned into paper-people by the village head; there are hardly any pure living people left in the mountain. If there are no living children among the sacrifices, the mountain god will rage and the ritual won’t be completed—the village will suffer again. Since over ten years ago, only our family, the Cao family and the Yang family have remained as living households. The rest are paper-people made by the village head or mixed paper-people, or families already committed to becoming paper-people—they can’t be touched. Only that fallen Yang family has been kept by the village head as the steady supply of sacrifices.”

Xing Ye had already faintly guessed this much, and he quietly listened to what the village party secretary was saying.

The village party secretary was already over fifty, his face full of wrinkles. Looking as though suffering great bitterness and nursing deep hatred (NT: idiom describing someone burdened with resentment], he said: “I grew up together with the village chief, and I didn’t want to become a paper-person. He didn’t force me, only said that whenever I made up my mind, I could come find him.

“Nine years ago, Cao family’s daughter Heihei had just turned one. Luckily, that year Yang Dazhuang’s eldest son was of age, and we barely managed to get by.

“Six years ago, both my child and the Cao family’s daughter were too young. So the village chief had people collude to cheat at gambling, tricking Yang Dazhuang into losing money, and he mortgaged his second son to another household, making him the sacrifice.

“Three years ago, the village chief used the same old trick, and Yang’s eldest daughter was mortgaged off as well. And now this year, Cao Heihei and my own Xiao’er have both grown up. The village chief told me that either my whole family would become paper-people, or I must send Xiao’er as the sacrifice.

“I had no choice, so I came up with this plan. Datou, you are a paper-person—and paper-people cannot die. Once the mountain god sacrifice ends, the village chief will retrieve the ritual paper-grass, and he can rebuild you a spine. There won’t be any real harm, right?”

He looked pleadingly at Yan Hebi, begging for forgiveness this one time, like a helpless old father.

If it had been someone else, perhaps they would have felt sympathy for the village party secretary. But if Qin Xiao’er did not become the sacrifice, then it would fall to Cao Qian and Xing Ye. Out of the whole world, they were the only two who had no reason to pity him.

Cao Qian slapped the table and said: “You knew the inside story and didn’t become a paper-person, and Yang family was preserved by the village chief. So why didn’t my family get turned into paper-people?”

The village party secretary glanced at her, puffed twice on his long smoking pipe, and finally said: “Because the Cao family was the first household, fifty years ago, to lose a child. Your family must also know some of the inside story, which is why you always refused to become paper-people. If not for your parents suddenly falling ill and dying, you would never have been sent here as a sacrifice. Anyway, there’s Yang Xiaomao.”

Xing Ye sneered: “To ‘suddenly fall ill and die’ just before the mountain god sacrifice? Isn’t that a little too coincidental?”

Now, whenever the village party secretary saw Xing Ye, he grew fearful. At Xing Ye’s words, his shoulders shrank slightly, and he muttered in a low voice: “Then you’ll have to ask the village chief.”

 

Translator : DarNan