Little Alpaca – Chapter 134

Volume 3: Old Tales of Kunlun

I Can Tell You My Secret.

Yi Qiu gave up. She had finally come to understand: her intelligence had always been pinned to the ground and repeatedly rubbed by You Yan.¹

She was no match for this bird woman.

Looking back now, her act had indeed been full of holes.

But she was still very curious. Curious about what specific flaws You Yan had spotted in her.

Hearing the little alpaca’s persistent questions, You Yan just let out a soft chuckle. She forced her injured and weary body up, led the clumsy little alpaca all the way to an abandoned, ruined temple, and started a bonfire.

The little alpaca immediately flopped down by the warm fire, lifting its grimy head to ask, with a mix of curiosity and worry, “You’ve clearly regained your consciousness. Why are we still in the dreamscape?”

You Yan pondered for a moment before replying faintly, “It is because I am unwilling to wake.”

Yi Qiu was taken aback. “Why?”

“The power of the Floating Dream Pearl draws the dreamer’s soul into it. The injuries I sustain in the dream will all be transferred to my three hun and seven po².” You Yan sat by the fire, not a trace of anxiety in her expression, clearly with bamboo already in her chest³. “Right now, my soul is damaged. Even if I had the strength to break through this illusion and leave the Floating Dream Pearl, I would have none left to deal with the Yi Bird.⁴“

She said she needed to recuperate for a while before attempting to break through the illusion.

Hearing this, Yi Qiu let out a great sigh of relief.

As expected, You Yan had her own reasons for doing things. It was not up to a little alpaca whose intelligence could not keep up to worry for her.

When one topic ended, a fresh round of silence began.

Yi Qiu’s gaze drifted uncontrollably, stealing glances again and again at You Yan, who sat to the side resting with her eyes closed. Her mind was filled with question marks, but she was afraid of disturbing her and did not dare to speak.

The little alpaca hesitated for a good while before it failed to hold back and let out a tiny, soft whimper.

“If you have something to say, say it,” You Yan’s voice immediately followed.

Yi Qiu pouted and blurted out, “Um, I… how long until I can turn back into a human?”

Without even opening her eyes, You Yan replied, “In a few days.”

“Oh…” Yi Qiu nodded, then began to hesitate over whether she should follow up on the questions she had not managed to ask clearly before.

“Is that all you wanted to say?”

It seemed she really could not hide anything from the bird woman.

The little alpaca could not help but let out a heavy sigh. “I just want to know… what was it that made you realize something was off about me? And in your eyes, what kind of existence am I?”

Hearing this, You Yan fell into a brief silence.

After that short pause, she said in a low voice, “The clumsy sheep I raised does not understand human speech, much less would it deliberately run out of the house to find me.”

“…” Yi Qiu pouted.

The System had led her there. She had not wanted to get close, but who could resist when the System was flashing its five-mao special effects?⁵

“It prefers to eat grass and radishes. While it might occasionally eat cooked food, it lacks your deep-seated obsession. It would not mess up the entire room just to peel fruit, nor would it ever climb onto the bed to sleep by itself.”

“…” Yi Qiu took a deep breath.

There was truly no helping it. Even if she could do it all over again, she could not possibly fake that part.

She was a human, after all; she really could not stomach all that grass. As for radishes… if they were raw, she did not like eating them either.

If she really could have a do-over, the only changes she could make would probably be not touching that basket of fruit and not jumping onto that soft bed.

“Also, when I was transferring spiritual energy to you, I heard you, in your heart, call me ‘the villain’.” As You Yan spoke, she could not help but open her eyes. Her gaze, as it fell upon Yi Qiu, was filled with amusement.

“I… um, I…” Yi Qiu was suddenly mortified.

When did that happen? She could not remember at all!

How utterly embarrassing! So she had been exposed so early, and so completely!

“Then, then…”

“I have said so much. Are you not going to say something?”

The sudden question left the already mortified Yi Qiu at a complete loss for words.

She remained silent for a long time, hesitating on the verge of speaking several times, before finally mustering up her courage under You Yan’s steady gaze.

“I, I can tell you my secret. But I have to make it clear first. This secret, to you, might be… might be a kind of… um…” Yi Qiu thought hard about how to describe it. The two phrases little You Yan had once said suddenly popped into her head, and she looked up and recited them. “Baseless nonsense, utterly preposterous!”

Yes, those were the words.

In this world, everyone likes to think of themselves as the protagonist. This was especially true for someone like You Yan—a Demon Lord who was intelligent, beautiful, powerful, of high status, and who particularly enjoyed playing people like puppets in the palm of her hand.

For You Yan, who thought she was the protagonist but was actually just a villain, this truth would indeed be the most preposterous thing imaginable.

“Speak. I would like to see just how preposterous it can be.”

“Um…” Yi Qiu pouted and began, “I am a human. I was not originally from this world, but I was inexplicably sent into this alpaca’s body by some force…”

“Twenty-eight years old?”

“How did you know?” Yi Qiu froze.

“You said so yourself.”

“Oh…” Yi Qiu’s pointed little ears twitched. She tried hard to recall when she had exposed that fact, but she could not remember at all.

This bird woman was terrifying, obsessively remembering the little bugs in her words, more clearly than Yi Qiu herself could.

“You are so old,” said the three-thousand-year-old bird woman.

“…” Yi Qiu could not help but gasp.

Endure it. I have to endure it. Although the words were hurtful, they were the absolute truth.

In ancient times, women married very young. For an ancient human, twenty-eight was indeed a bit old.

Whatever. She had to continue her story.

“What I am about to say next might be very difficult for you to accept, but I promise, every word is true.”

“Just say it. I will judge for myself.”

“Okay… it’s like this. In the world I lived in, there is something called the ‘internet.’ Through the internet, people can connect with each other even if they are a thousand li⁶ apart. And online, many authors write novels. They write down the stories in their heads and publish them online for people to read freely from thousands of li away.”

As she listened, You Yan’s brows furrowed slightly. It was not hard to see that for an ancient bird-person like her, this strange information was, to some degree, difficult to digest.

“And then, one time, I came across a novel online called 《Thin, Withered Branch》. The author only wrote one chapter a day. I spent a long time following the serialization, chapter by chapter. And as I was following it, the novel… it BE’d!”⁷

“Speak human words.”⁸

“…Okay.” Yi Qiu did her best to organize her thoughts and tried again. “What I mean is, as I was reading, the male and female leads of the novel both died.”

“Get to the point,” You Yan said again.

“This is the point!” Yi Qiu retorted, feeling a little wronged, before continuing. “In this novel, the male lead is Luo Mingyuan, and the female lead is Jiang Yuyao. The devoted second female lead is Chao Yun, and the vicious third female lead is Yu Su—that Yi Bird… And you, you are the biggest villain in the entire book. The one who played everyone for fools, who quietly watched everyone else fight like the snipe and the clam so the fisherman could benefit.”⁹

Hearing this, a trace of astonishment finally crept into You Yan’s eyes. “Continue.”

Yi Qiu thought for a moment and decided to just recount the general, incredibly dog-blood¹⁰ story of the novel.

After she finished, she pouted and said, “I thought the ending was ridiculous. So many pits¹¹ from earlier were never filled. So I… I cursed out the author. And then, I inexplicably ended up in this world.”

You Yan frowned. “You are saying that this place is merely a world from someone else’s pen? Everything I am familiar with, everything I have experienced, is just something another person casually made up?”

“…You could, you could understand it that way. This world was created by that author.”

“Utterly preposterous!”

“…And there is something even more preposterous,” Yi Qiu said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “Inside my body, there is this thing called a ‘System’. It gives me missions, and I must follow its requirements. If I fail, it says it will erase my existence…”

You Yan’s gaze sharpened for an instant. “It dares?”

The little alpaca did not know whether to laugh or cry. She continued, “And the final goal of all these missions is the same: to change the 《Thin, Withered Branch》 world-line and guide the ending to a logical HE¹²… a great consummation.”

“And so?”

Yi Qiu discovered that You Yan’s ability to accept things seemed much greater than she had imagined.

She had said so many preposterous things, yet she had not managed to drive You Yan mad.

“So, so you have seen it… I, I have always, always wanted to help them…” As she spoke, Yi Qiu lowered her head guiltily. “I know, I know that by doing this, it is tantamount to betraying you. But I swear, I never wanted to hurt you. And now… I do not know how to say it, but I hope you can believe me. Right now, I am on your side.”

“It matters not,” You Yan said in a low voice. “I believe you.”

A warmth spread through Yi Qiu’s heart.

In the next second, however, You Yan said something that nearly made her choke.

“When my injuries have healed a bit, I will drag that ‘thin bucket’¹³ from your body, grind its bones to dust¹⁴, and teach it to never control you again.”

【Ying!¹⁵】

Why did that Baocai¹⁶ suddenly start ying-ing…

【Host should tell the Demon Lord that I am not a physical entity, nor am I a soul. Before the final goal is achieved, you are unable to separate me from your body!】

Yi Qiu: “Er… um, the System says it is not a physical entity or a soul. Before the final goal is achieved, I am unable to get rid of it.”

You Yan: “…”

Yi Qiu: “So, so I must find a way. Only if Luo Mingyuan and Jiang Yuyao successfully overcome this life’s tribulations can I survive…”

You Yan took a deep breath. “And after that? It will leave?”

Yi Qiu paused and asked in her heart, “Yeah, Baocai, when all the missions are done, you are going to leave?”

【I will depart after escorting Host back to her original world.】

Yi Qiu was struck dumb, staring blankly for a long moment, unsure how to deliver such an answer to You Yan.

“Why are you not speaking?”

“It… it said that when the missions are done, it will leave…”

“And what about you?”

“I… I should…”

“You will leave, too?”

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The author has something to say:

You Yan: I have got to smash that “thin bucket.”

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