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Most of the troops under General Shuai are camped outside the town. The only ones brought into town are a few trusted soldiers, totaling a few hundred men. Some of them were ordered by Liao Ruxue to guard the grain depot. The Bigmouth Monsters who were standing in front of the cafeteria with the general just now were probably the soldiers guarding the grain depot, already transformed into Bigmouth Monsters by the general.
The rest are patrolling inside the town, numbering about a hundred or so, led by Deputy Tan and his men.
Deputy Tan left about a dozen men to guard General Shuai while conducting the school search. At this point, Mo Qi earned 50 political education points, likely because there were approximately a hundred people inside. He and Second Auntie split the points evenly.
Thus, Mo Qi’s score became 51 points, exactly 1 point more than Second Auntie’s.
It was nearly six o’clock, yet the sky showed no signs of light, still obscured by the continuous rain showers—a scene where daylight seemed absent.
It seems so. Since the second day, the world of the wishing box has been overcast, and in the later stages, it’s completely pitch black outside, with no sight of the sun at all. Many aspects of the scene cards seem to allude to the mission map.
Mo Qi and Liao Ruxue headed towards the Sculpture Academy. On the way, Mo Qi said, “Scene cards… could they be what the world looks like after its transformation?”
If they hadn’t brought the campus back to reality with them, their school would probably have ended up like this, where all the students follow the rules here and can never leave.
“Who knows,” Liao Ruxue said indifferently.
Just as they arrived at the Sculpture Academy, they heard the mechanical broadcast sound: “Good morning, students. It’s now six in the morning. Diligent students should wake up and get active. There will be an exam at eight in the morning, and the most outstanding students will receive rewards. Remember, the exam is at eight o’clock, Classroom 304 in the Study Hall.”
Upon hearing the announcement, Mo and Liao immediately exclaimed in unison, “Exam, wish!”
The hints from the scene card were now clear: the student with the best exam results could fulfill a real wish within the scene.
“The ancient town is an SSR-level mission, and the scene card is also SSR-level. The scene card’s level isn’t higher than the ancient town’s, so wishes like ‘lifting the curse on the town’ definitely can’t be granted,” Mo Qi explained. “But we can wish to find the jade pendant or capture General Shuai, which would make things easier when we return to the ancient town.”
“Lure General Shuai with the porcelain doll, find the jade pendant with a wish,” Liao Ruxue said.
Neither of them seemed afraid of the exam, as if achieving the top score was a straightforward task.
Two hours remained until eight o’clock. General Shuai would surely wait patiently for Deputy Tan’s report. It would take some time before they realized that Deputy Tan and his men had fallen asleep.
Mo Qi and Liao Ruxue limped through the Sculpture Academy, searching for the porcelain doll. These dolls were either student projects or exhibited by teachers, usually housed in dedicated rooms. Some unfinished pieces might also be found in classrooms used for practical lessons by students.
The doors of various classrooms were locked, but opening them posed no difficulty for the two. Liao Ruxue could open doors without even needing to damage the locks; he simply controlled his shadow to enter the room and open the door from the inside.
For doors with primitive locks, Liao Ruxue could also easily open them with a piece of wire.
Mo Qi: “… When did you learn this lockpicking technique?”
Liao Ruxue chuckled, “I’ve lived through a few worlds, so I manage to pick up a few skills along the way.”
They checked the storage room, the exhibition pieces, and even classrooms in the Sculpture and Fine Arts departments, but found nothing.
“Could some students have taken their projects back to their dorms? Should we go check the student dormitories?” Liao Ruxue speculated.
Mo Qi shook his head. “I just have this strange feeling that it’s still here.”
It was a peculiar sensation, almost like a telepathic connection with Mo Xiaohong. His intuition told him that Mo Xiaohong was in this building, but he couldn’t find her.
His phone vibrated a few times. Mo Qi checked it and saw that the game app had updated with information about a new branch skill: “Gaze – Resonance – Manipulation – Fusion.”
[Resonance – Derived Skill: Relationships are not easily severed. For those who have deeply loved and understood each other, even if separated, they may occasionally think of each other, unable to resist the urge to reconcile and find each other’s whereabouts, no matter how far apart they are. For individuals who have used “Resonance” once, players can connect their bond at any time, even without using “Gaze,” activating their connection across time and space. However, reconciliation is not easy, and without the courage to entrust everything to each other, reconciliation may not be possible. This skill has a 100% chance of negative effects. Players are advised to use it cautiously.]
This time, the game didn’t even inform Mo Qi about what the negative effects were, only giving a 100% probability.
This meant Mo Qi would be taking a significant risk to find Mo Xiaohong. Mo Qi hesitated as he looked at the skill.
It required him to fully trust Mo Xiaohong in order to use this skill, but he found it difficult to trust her completely.
Mo Xiaohong, like Liao Ruxue, really wanted to burn him to ashes and refine him into a porcelain doll. What’s even more terrifying than Liao Ruxue is that Mo Xiaohong is a child with intellectual disabilities. He has innocence and an unworldly cruelty. Sometimes, emotions that Liao Ruxue can control, Mo Xiaohong cannot.
“What kind of negative effects could there possibly be?” Mo Qi furrowed his brow.
“What’s wrong? You’ve found a way to deal with them but you’re afraid to use it?” Liao Ruxue asked.
“I’ve never dared to gamble,” Mo Qi replied.
“You have nothing to lose, all alone, what can’t you afford to lose? Why are you so afraid of gambling?” Liao Ruxue questioned.
“Because of what happened before. You should know about my father’s situation,” Mo Qi said.
“No, it’s not gambling you fear, but owing something. That’s quite different from gambling itself,” Liao Ruxue shook his head. “You’ve staked your life as a commitment, acting alongside me. That in itself is a gamble, wagering that my reason can conquer emotions. In the Wish Box mission, can you guarantee that every decision you make is correct? No, but you still make them. You have a strong gambling instinct; you’re just afraid of owing debts. So, tell me, will what you’re about to do leave you indebted?”
Mo Qi pondered Liao Ruxue’s words for a moment, then chuckled softly. “I guess I’m afraid of owing you. After all, my life is already in your hands. If I were to die like this, wouldn’t I still owe you a life?”
“Well, in that case, you don’t need to worry,” Liao Ruxue replied calmly. “My ‘one-hit kill’ can actually be used one more time, for a payment of 100 minutes. But I don’t have 100 minutes left to pay now, so using it again would certainly mean certain death.”
Mo Qi looked at Liao Ruxue, already understanding what he was about to say.
Sure enough, Liao Ruxue said, “This skill is left to you. No matter how you change due to the negative effects, I can kill you, take you with me, and we won’t owe each other.”
“From your mouth, I probably won’t hear anything nice,” Mo Qi chuckled.
He closed his eyes and activated the skill “Entangled Lotus Threads.”
In an instant, Mo Qi suddenly sensed Mo Xiaohong’s whereabouts. He only managed to point towards the sculpture studio classroom and said, “Inside there…,” before he plunged into darkness, unable to move.
Nearby, there was a faint sound of crying, “Xiaohong, how much longer? When will your dad come to find us?”
It’s Xiang Zhuo, his voice faint and not seeming to come from his mouth but transmitted to Mo Qi’s mind through some magical connection.
Mo Qi tried to speak but found that his mouth couldn’t move at all. He could only think in his mind, “I’m not Mo Xiaohong, I’m Mo Qi.”
“What? Mo Qi? How did you come here? Where’s Xiaohong? Are you here to rescue us?” Xiang Zhuo’s crying stopped abruptly as he asked in surprise.
“I used a skill and… exchanged bodies with Mo Xiaohong,” Mo Qi chuckled bitterly.
So, the phrase “entrusting everything to each other” meant this. He and Mo Xiaohong not only swapped bodies but also transferred all player identities and skills to Mo Xiaohong. If Mo Xiaohong didn’t want to save him, he could just leave him here.
The hundred percent triggered negative effect was truly too devastating.
Before the swap, he had pointed out the direction to Liao Ruxue. With Liao Ruxue’s intelligence, he should be able to find his hiding place, but whether he would be willing to swap back depended entirely on Mo Xiaohong’s mood.
Mo Qi could only return to his own body if Mo Xiaohong willingly activated “Entangled Lotus Threads” again.
“Swap bodies? Mo Qi, can you still return to your original body? If you can go back, can I go back too? Ohhh, why is my world so miserable?” Xiang Zhuo burst into tears again.
When they first met, Xiang Zhuo was a player with enough intelligence to navigate challenges on his own. Now, he had turned into a whimpering mess, likely because his intelligence hadn’t recovered since being affected by the intelligence-lowering skill.
“Let’s not argue for now. Let me think,” Mo Qi said.
His mind was in turmoil, with fragmented scenes flashing through his mind, seemingly images he had glimpsed when he “resonated” with Mo Xiaohong before.
Mo Qi focused his mind, trying hard to piece together these fragmented images.
The fragments in his mind converged, forming the face of a man, exactly like the one in the painting.
The man in the painting held out his hands to Mo Qi, with a silver bullet in his palm. He said, “My abilities coexist with the game, both giving and taking away.”
“What does that mean?” the memory of Mo Qi asked, seeming slightly shorter than his present self, standing at just 175cm tall.
The man in the painting said, “The game can intercept a certain space in reality, dragging this space into the crevice between reality and the game, endowing the people and objects within with transformative energy, thus creating players and an alienated world. This is ‘giving’. Once a player fails to bring the space back to reality successfully, that part of the space will be swallowed by the game. This is ‘taking away’. Initially, this game was probably just a mass of transformative energy, using ‘giving’ to convert the original energy of the world into its transformative energy, continuously growing and expanding with this power. You can understand this game as a process where one world is devouring another.”
“So, that’s the truth of the game,” said Mo Qi at 175cm. “And what about you? Why do you coexist with the game?”
“Well…” the man in the painting chuckled. He leaned closer to Mo Qi and whispered in his ear, “I’m not much different from the game. I’m not a good person. Stop following me, kid.”
His index finger lightly tapped Mo Qi’s forehead, and with that touch, the memories once again shattered into fragments, bringing Mo Qi back to consciousness.
This was the scene Mo Qi saw when he “resonated” with Mo Xiaohong, a memory completely forgotten by Mo Qi himself. However, he could confirm that this memory occurred around the time of his college entrance examination.
This memory was his own, seen from his perspective. Humans cannot see themselves directly, so Mo Qi could only determine his state at the time through environmental clues and sounds. In the memory, he reached out to the man in the painting, whose hand had no sleeve, indicating he was wearing short sleeves, placing the memory in summer.
At 175cm tall, in the summer, comparing height and season, Mo Qi could pinpoint the time to the summer two years ago.
During his senior year in high school, he had been staying at the school dormitory all year. To ensure he could focus on his studies, his mother hadn’t informed him of his father’s passing. It wasn’t until after his college entrance exams, when he returned home, that he discovered his father had passed away. The house had been sold to pay off debts, and his mother had left a letter with relatives before disappearing.
At just turning 18, Mo Qi completed his college entrance exams like a released prisoner, returning home joyfully. However, when he knocked on the door, it was opened by strangers—a couple who had recently bought the house at a low price and were preparing for marriage. Inside was only him, alone.
Mo Qi no longer remembered how he spent those days. In his memory, he didn’t seem to have suffered much. He searched everywhere for people, trying to understand the situation. Learning about his mother’s pain from debt collection and losing his father, he realized how difficult things had been, but he didn’t feel much emotion. Calmly, he returned to the school dormitory and stayed there for a few more days. There was still some money left in his meal card, and staying at the school posed no difficulties.
He came of age and held his own identity card. Soon, he found a temporary job to earn enough for his first year’s tuition before the school year began.
Teachers who knew about what had happened in his family suggested that Mo Qi apply for a student loan, but he refused.
Loans had to be repaid, and he didn’t want to be in debt.
It seems like the events at home didn’t leave any shadows on Mo Qi. He held on resiliently, not giving up on his studies or on himself.
Only now did Mo Qi couldn’t help but ask himself, “Am I really that strong?”
A young person who had just turned 18 after the college entrance exams, could he really remain so composed after such a massive change in his family?
What did he do at that time, and what did he encounter, to become the person he is today?
The apparition in Mo Qi’s mind, where did it come from and what did it give him?
Mo Qi’s mind was in disarray in the darkness. Suddenly, he heard a faint, broken sound, and fragments of light pierced through the darkness.
Liao Ruxue smashed open the plaster, took out the doll inside, and said, “So it was hidden in the sculpture. No wonder we couldn’t find it anywhere.”