Chapter 110 – The Cycle of Karma, What Goes Around Comes Around (24)
Upon hearing this, Chi Xiaochi really wanted to recommend Yuan Benshan, who was currently in the infirmary taking care of Qin Ling with Gan Yu, to these children:
Quickly come and take a look at this Yuan-laoshi, thin skinned with lots of stuffing and eighteen folds, perfect for eating.
Regardless of what he was thinking, as Liu Chengyin was stunned, he took the initiative to stride over.
The roomful of bear children turned their gazes to him. Upon noticing it was him, they all unexpectedly obediently shut their mouths.
The one who had kicked up the most fuss just now was a little fatty who often followed behind Liu Chengyin saying he was hungry.
Of course, right now in Chi Xiaochi’s eyes, he was a Pooh bear.
Chi Xiaochi singled in on him, directly calling him by name. “Ma Qing.”
Pooh bear started. He turned his fleshy b.u.t.t around on the chair and replied a little blankly, “Ah?”
“When talking to teachers, you need to stand up.”
Pooh bear obediently stood up.
Chi Xiaochi knelt down on one knee in front of Pooh bear, meeting his eye level.
He asked, “Why did you kick up a fuss?”
Pooh bear rubbed the bridge of his nose, a little stressed.
He softened his tone slightly and made his question more precise. “Why did you want to eat your teacher?”
“Because a teacher once said that I’m so fat yet I’m always yelling about being hungry, so there must be something wrong with me, there’s a monster eating my intestines.” When the little fatty spoke, the flesh on his face trembled, but his logic could still be considered clear. “Why do monsters have to eat me? It must be because I’m delicious. Laoshi, what do humans taste like?”
Chi Xiaochi, “……Which son of a b.i.t.c.h said that?”
He “ah”-ed, c.o.c.king his head to the side and said, a little confused, “I don’t remember.”
Children had hearts like blank paper. They wouldn’t remember who it was that wantonly splashed ink and scribbles all over their bodies, but that ink would stay with them.
Over time, the ink would spread, and the originally blank paper would turn a different colour.
Pooh bear licked his lips. “Liu-laoshi smells nice and fragrant. She’d definitely taste delicious when cooked.”
Liu Chengyin’s cheeks trembled.
Fortunately, she’d already cleared her mind and was able to resist the urge to run. She didn’t expose her fear, only shaking her head helplessly.
Chi Xiaochi stood up. “Is there anyone else who would like to try?”
The children who had just been noisy became a lot more quiet. Only a few hands were raised, their eyes filled with the urge to know, making a chill run down one’s spine.
“Stand up.”
At that, two children silently put their hands back down. The remaining three or four looked at each other, then slowly rose to their feet, twisting the corners of their clothes uneasily.
Chi Xiaochi crossed his hands and said, “Don’t you guys want to try human meat? Each of you bite yourselves and try it out.”
The children, “……” Yingyingying.
Chi Xiaochi looked at Pooh and the other bears. “What are you all just standing there for, take a bite.”
Little kid Ma Qing’s eyes began to fill with tears. “Laoshi, I know my wrongs now.”
Chi Xiaochi pointed at each one of them in turn. “You, you, and you, all of you stop eating. Go stand in the corner.”
The ghost children who had just been using all their strength to kick up a fuss stood in a row, all their previous arrogance gone as they sniffled and wiped away tears. This scene looked just like one from a kindergarten in the real world.
After a few children had been picked out and made into examples, the rest temporarily became as quiet as chickens, chewing noises rising in the canteen as they started to eat.
Chi Xiaochi walked over to Liu Chengyin, glanced at the sobbing bear children out of the corner of his eye, and lowered his voice as he said, “In a bit, after I leave, give them something to eat.”
Liu Chengyin came to a sudden realisation, her gaze towards Chi Xiaochi filling with complete trust and reliance.
“Remember, don’t give them too much or anything that’s too good. Just one baozi is OK. The other children are still watching. If a student does something wrong and gets punished but is still able to eat good food, think about what they’ll do in the future.”
Changing the topic, Chi Xiaochi comforted her, “……Don’t worry, don’t be afraid of them. If you give them food behind my back, they’ll all like you.”
Liu Chengyin looked at her. She returned her gaze with a small, warm smile, then tossed back her long hair, her gaze filled with a quiet reliability that read “you always have me”.
Liu Chengyin thought about how last night, when she’d stayed with Gan Yu, she’d voiced her concerns about Song Chunyang’s safety.
Gan Yu’s att.i.tude was very calm. “Don’t worry. My meimei is there. He’ll be safe.”
Thinking about this, Liu Chengyin’s heart was finally able to settle completely.
Meanwhile, Chi Xiaochi beckoned Tian Guangbing to follow him with his eyes.
Tian Guangbing worriedly glanced over at Liu Chengyin. Finding that she seemed alright, and that she had Gan Tang accompanying her, he gained some peace of mind. He then followed Chi Xiaochi out.
Chi Xiaochi went up to the third floor and entered the storeroom.
Other than a few piles of miscellaneous items, the storeroom also had seven or eight refrigerators, which stored large quant.i.ties of meat, eggs, vegetables and milk. Every kind of ingredient one could think of was there, and in endless supply, so they didn’t need to go out to stock up on groceries.
Chi Xiaochi rummaged through the storeroom, looking for something.
Tian Guangbing sincerely praised, “Bro, you’re amazing.”
Chi Xiaochi didn’t try to act humble. “Don’t talk about useless things like that. Come help me look for something.”
Tian Guangbing, “What is it?”
Just as Chi Xiaochi was opening his mouth to reply, he found what he was looking for.
He pulled out a stack of little cardboard boxes from the corner and dusted them off. “We can’t just let them keep leading us around by the nose. We need to find something for these bear children to do.”
In the morning, Chi Xiaochi took the initiative to stop two of their periods of cla.s.s and brought all the children out to the playground for a cla.s.s on planting, taught by him.
The soil was freshly dug, and the seeds were bought from his all-purpose system storehouse using Yuan Benshan’s goodwill points.
Each child got a small shovel, half a box of dark mud, and five cabbage seeds.
Chi Xiaochi held up the seeds in his hand. “Look, what is this? Yes, these are plant seeds…… Who said melon seeds?! Stand up and I’ll pelt your head with crab roe flavoured melon seeds.”
The children giggled.
He taught the children how to recognise cabbage seeds, loofah seeds, pumpkin seeds, and spinach seeds, then taught them how to plant their five cabbage seeds one by one in the box and water them.
Bobcut stared unwaveringly at where the seeds had been planted, her little fingers rubbing at the surface of the soil, her movements incredibly cautious.
Full of hope, she asked Chi Xiaochi, “Laoshi, when will the seeds sprout?”
Chi Xiaochi said, “If you take good care of them, they’ll sprout in 1 or 2 days. When the vegetables are fully grown, you can dig them out and make stir-fried cabbage for yourselves to eat.”
When Pigtails, sitting next to them, heard this, she immediately cupped her little hands over her box, protecting her freshly-planted seeds.
Boy A protested, “We won’t eat the vegetables! It’ll keep growing, growing taller and taller, as tall as a tree!”
Boy B next to him said, “We’ll grow up together with them, growing and growing, and in the future we’ll definitely be even taller than the trees.”
A’s compet.i.tive spirit instantly rose. “My cabbage will definitely be taller than yours.”
B, “I’m taller.”
A, “My cabbages are taller.”
B, “They haven’t even sprouted.”
A vowed to protect the cabbages he’d planted even at the cost of his life. “They’re taller, taller than you.”
Children had tiny hearts. As long as their hearts stumbled onto something, they would become extraordinarily focused on it.
They no longer continued to emanate that stifling threatening odor, afraid of harming their plants. They squatted down next to their boxes, staring straight at them with unwavering eyes, accompanied by little murmurs of “why haven’t they sprouted yet”.
Chi Xiaochi retreated off to one side to stand next to Gan Tang, and carefully took a look at the Tian Guangbing and Liu Chengyin couple.
They were standing far away, seemingly still haunted by their friend’s serious injury.
b.u.mping into teammates like Liao Wu and Tan Yue in the last world was a coincidence. Who would have thought the same would happen in this world.
This inevitably made Chi Xiaochi start to become suspicious.
These people still had some basic qualities and common sense. Taking “obedience” to be the clearance condition when the task had first started was reasonable, but their psychological endurance and adaptability were really……
Gan Tang turned to him and whispered in his ear in her soft, soothing Jiangnan accent, “I helped you ask around. The hardest world Liu Chengyin and her team have faced was the last world, where they were chased around by the ghost of a serial killer.”
Chi Xiaochi, “En. The clearance condition?”
Gan Tang said, “The range was one block. The female murderer would keep on chasing them, all they needed to do was avoid her. The task time was one week. That’s it.”
Chi Xiaochi, “……” So hardcore?
Chi Xiaochi then asked, “The ghost’s special ability?”
Gan Tang, “Nothing. She had a physical body and ran as fast as a normal person would. She couldn’t go through walls, nor could she scale buildings. And in the beginning, she even had a restriction set on her, making her unable to automatically locate people. Only on the last day did the female ghost unlock the locating mechanism and kill two people in other teams.”
Seeing that Chi Xiaochi didn’t plan on asking any further, she asked her own question. “Did you ask me to find out about the hardest world they’ve faced, because you suspect something?”
Chi Xiaochi raised a hand and rubbed his eyes. He said in a soft voice, “……No, I was just asking.”
During the eighth world, Chi Xiaochi already had doubts forming in his heart.
Liao Wu’s group thought in a very linear way, that if there was a ghost, they had to kill it. When they faced “Guan Qiaoqiao”, they had been extremely shaken, and were extremely afraid of her. After a member of their team died, they became even more muddled, becoming utterly useless, only a little bit better than an ordinary person.
If they only met people like this once, Chi Xiaochi would have taken it as they’d only gotten to where they did through sheer luck.
However, the group of three university students in the ninth world had incredibly lousy reactions to danger, and were about as strong as weak chickens, turning coincidence into certainty.
Chi Xiaochi was becoming more and more suspicious that the tasks other people did, and the tasks Song Chunyang’s group did, weren’t at all on the same level of difficulty.
Under Chi Xiaochi’s prompting, Xi Lou too had thought of many issues he’d never thought of before. He couldn’t help but be struck silent.
Chi Xiaochi asked him, “How was the difficulty level of the tasks your previous hosts had to face?”
“Before…… I never paid any attention to the difficulty of tasks.” Xi Lou let out a bitter laugh. “Let me put it like this, I’ve guided thirteen people, and their psychological endurance was generally at least three or four times worse than that of Liu Chengyin’s. When they saw a ghost, they wouldn’t even be able to walk. Most of them died in the second or third world. As for the only one that lived to the eighth world, in terms of the quality of his psyche, he was only about the same as Tian Guangbing. The reason why I never paid any particular attention to the difficulty of their tasks was because most of them would be scared to death by their own imaginations, even just pacifying them was already difficult enough.”
Chi Xiaochi then asked, “When all is said and done, you’ve guided a lot of hosts. Is there any difference in the difficulty level of the tasks Song Chunyang has experienced and the tasks they’ve experienced?”
Xi Lou’s heart skipped a beat.
Indeed……
But he’d never noticed before, or even given it any careful thought.
The reason didn’t have anything to do with him. He was now staying with Song Chunyang, and he practically shared his vision with Song Chunyang’s, so everything he saw was what Song Chunyang saw.
Song Chunyang could see ghosts, and had the cheat of having a lot of knowledge about the metaphysical. To him, no matter how terrifying these tasks were, they were more scary than actually dangerous.
Using the ghost in the book in the sixth world as an example, to Song Chunyang, where was the difficulty?
He could see which book the female ghost was hiding in, which was equivalent to holding an undying token, so he didn’t need to be afraid at all.
However, now freed from his limited thinking of the past, when Xi Lou looked back on it, he felt his hair stand on end.
If Song Chunyang hadn’t come forward, it would have clearly been a hopeless situation with a high likelihood of resulting in everyone dying.
Xi Lou asked in a low murmur, “What are you trying to say by asking that?”
Even though he phrased it as a question, he already knew the answer in his heart.
Chi Xiaochi had a thoughtful look on his face.
If he were to talk about the difference between Song Chunyang and ordinary people, there was only that pair of Yin-Yang eyes.
As Xi Lou had said, this world’s systems ran automatically according to all the programs the Lord G.o.d had set in advance.
If he were to compare the tasks to an exam, if everyone was an ordinary, well-behaved, and mediocre student, then the exam paper would naturally be set to not be difficult, to everyone’s delight and satisfaction. Even though some would fail, most, as long as they were lucky, would be able to pa.s.s.
However, Song Chunyang, who had a pair of Yin-Yang eyes, was different.
After judging the examinees, the system would find a person who was an expert at cheating amongst them.
As such, the world would automatically correct the difficulty of the task, taking an average of everyone’s objective ability, and setting an upper limit for the difficulty from that.
In short, there was a high chance that Song Chunyang had single handedly raised the difficulty level of every task he’d experienced.
Chi Xiaochi couldn’t help but think of the hide-and-seek game in Song Chunyang’s first task.
With a newbie amongst them, taking his first task, if the system really was intelligent, why would it make it so difficult?
After all, as Xi Lou had emphasised many times, the Lord G.o.d wanted fear energy, not death energy.
Chi Xiaochi let out a slight sigh, his feelings slightly complicated.
——For those people who hadn’t been willing to stop the sheep, Song Chunyang, from entering the tiger’s lair in that milk tea shop in the beginning, could this be considered karma?
——And for Guan Qiaoqiao, who’d purposely set Song Chunyang up to be pulled into danger, and partnered with him to exploit his abilities, and had hence experienced all kinds of dangers, eventually even dying in the eighth world, could this also be considered a form of karma?
However, in response to Xi Lou’s question, Chi Xiaochi replied in a natural sounding way, “You’re asking me? But I don’t know?”
Xi Lou, “……” ……Eh?
“I was just casually asking, don’t take it seriously,” Chi Xiaochi said, “It might just be that Song Chunyang’s just extraordinarily unlucky compared to other people, after all, he managed to run into his first two sc.u.mmy people like Yuan Benshan and Guan Qiaoqiao at once, this luck, tch.”
Xi Lou, “……!!!”
If you don’t know anything, what are you acting all profound for?!
You’re the unlucky one!
Attracting all the bees and b.u.t.terflies, you don’t even let off the women!
Don’t think that he didn’t see what happened last night! He just didn’t want to talk about it, that’s all!
Chi Xiaochi ignored Xi Lou, who was practically spewing flames of rage, striding over to the children and pointing at the brat’s planting box which was about to overflow with water, saying, “What is this? Making cabbage soup? What are you watering it so much for? If you overwater the seeds and they rot, they won’t be able to grow.”
The moment the brat heard that the consequences were so serious, he hurriedly emptied out the extra water he’d poured in and grumbled, aggrieved, “I wanted it to grow a little faster.”
“It would be strange if it could like that,” Chi Xiaochi said, “Would you be happy if I kept you soaked in water all the time?”
The brat giggled.
Chi Xiaochi nudged his head. “You’re even laughing? Quickly apologise to the cabbage.”
In response to Xi Lou’s utter confusion, Gan Tang, who knew everything, had the corners of her lips rising slightly in a smile.
The reason behind Chi Xiaochi being unwilling to say the reason out loud was very simple.
……Because Song Chunyang was still in this body.
Having Yin-Yang Eyes, as well as being set up and dragged into this world, had both never been Song Chunyang’s fault.
Chi Xiaochi keeping his discovery secret was because he hoped that Song Chunyang wouldn’t have to bear too much pressure on his psyche.
Gan Tang looked up, looking at Chi Xiaochi who was bathed in sunlight as he was hunched over disciplining children, engraving the sight straight into her heart.
These children had once met the worst adults in this world.
But now, they perhaps already knew, that there was still hope in this world.
This hope was hand-delivered to them by Chi Xiaochi, and was sprouting and growing roots in warm, damp soil. In the years to come, it would perhaps grow into a truly towering tree.