Volume 10: Days of Cultivating in the Republic of China
Where’s Golden Retriever?
Folk Custom Activity1
Sisi looked a little older than her, with her hair in a single braided pigtail2 and a pink silk scarf tied around her waist. The oil-paper umbrella in her hand was bright red, its surface painted with several yellow flowers of a type she couldn’t name, but they were quite pretty.
She looked up and carefully examined her own umbrella, discovering that its color scheme was the exact opposite of the one in Sisi’s hand; it was yellow with red flowers.
Was this a coincidence? Or did it have some special meaning?
She would probably have to wait until everyone was gathered to make a judgment.
Sisi didn’t seem to have much intention of talking to her. After introducing herself, she stood beside Shen Maomao, and together they gazed into the distance, waiting for the remaining players to arrive.
Before long, another small boat indeed sailed over. A man in a black, standing-collar uniform sat on the boat, holding an umbrella identical to Shen Maomao’s, so neither of them could get a clear look at his face.
The boat quickly stopped in front of them. The man stood up, leaped off the boat, and as soon as he looked up, he saw the two of them by the river. He immediately broke into a wide smile. “You two got here so fast?”
Shen Maomao propped the umbrella’s handle on her shoulder and looked the man over.
He was very young, with a bit of a baby face and a neat short haircut. He also wore a black-brimmed cap, making it impossible to tell his exact age. But from the school emblem on his clothes, he should be with them.
Sisi was not in high spirits and gave him a faint nod.
The man wasn’t annoyed, saying to the two of them, “Would you like to take shelter under the eaves? I can wait here for the others.”
Sisi was just starting to feel a bit cold, so she didn’t stand on ceremony. She called to Shen Maomao, “Rabbit, want to go over together?”
Shen Maomao hesitated for a second, then agreed. “Okay. Sorry to trouble you, I still don’t know your name…”
The man said, “My name is Kang Yuanhuai3. And you are?”
The two women each stated their online usernames.
Kang Yuanhuai, with great elegance, made a “please” gesture toward them and said, “Then, if you two students would please move under the eaves and wait for a moment. We will all go in together shortly.”
Shen Maomao and Sisi walked toward the eaves together. After closing her umbrella, she turned back to glance at Kang Yuanhuai and asked, “Don’t you think… there’s something a little strange about that Kang Yuanhuai?”
Sisi said sharply, “He doesn’t seem to be a player.”
Shen Maomao felt the same way.
The players she had seen were either terrified, numb, or bewildered, but she had never seen one smiling so brightly, as if he were here for a spring outing rather than a life-or-death game where his life was hanging by a single thread.
Of course, the possibility that he was just a blockhead couldn’t be ruled out.
After waiting a while longer, small boats stopped at the bank one by one before slowly departing again. Men and women in the same school uniform stood in a row on the bank. Including Kang Yuanhuai, there were nine people in total. Shen Maomao scanned the group but didn’t recognize anyone as Golden Retriever.
Damn it, where was the man, Golden Retriever?
This group was all very young, four men and five women. Everyone, regardless of gender, held an oil-paper umbrella. The umbrellas only came in two colors, red and yellow, with no distinction for gender. This could be an important clue, or it could just mean they were all bought wholesale from the same place.
The oldest in the group was probably Sisi, though she only looked to be about twenty-five or twenty-six. The youngest was a pretty girl with two braided pigtails, who looked to be about seventeen or eighteen.
Shen Maomao and Sisi walked out from under the eaves to join them. She craned her neck to look toward the end of the river, wanting to see when Golden Retriever might arrive, only to hear Kang Yuanhuai say, “Alright, everyone’s here. Let’s go.”
Shen Maomao: “???” Where’s Golden Retriever?? What’s going on?
Kang Yuanhuai led the way at the front. The group walked along a bluestone slate path, their leather shoes kicking up one splash after another.
Since everyone was already here, that meant Golden Retriever had to be among the crowd.
Shen Maomao pretended to adjust her skirt, deliberately falling two steps behind to observe their backs from the rear of the group.
Excluding Kang Yuanhuai, Sisi, and herself, there were three men and three women left among the players. Everyone’s hair was black, shattering her idea of recognizing Golden Retriever by his hair.
The three men were all young. One was slightly chubby, one wore a pair of black-framed glasses, and the last one had a buzz cut and a scar over his eye, looking like he wasn’t someone to be trifled with.
Among the three women, one had stylish curly hair, another with shoulder-length straight hair wore a blue hair clip, and the last one was the youngest girl with the twin braids Shen Maomao had seen earlier.
So where was Golden Retriever???
Holding onto this doubt, she followed the main group through streets and alleys. The path grew more and more remote, and the river channel widened, until they finally stopped beside a small, two-story house by the riverbank.
The house was enclosed by a wall and faced the great river. The walls were hung with red and yellow silk cloths, their colors looking quite new, forming a sharp contrast with the dusty, yellowed surrounding wall. They must have been hung up recently.
Kang Yuanhuai turned to the group and said, “Alright, we’ve arrived. I’ve already rented this house, so you students can rest assured. The house may be a bit dilapidated and will require everyone’s effort to repair. Any problems?”
All the players shook their heads.
Seeing this, Kang Yuanhuai took out a brass key to unlock the gate, then raised a hand to push open the dust-covered main doors. Waving away the floating dust in front of him, he was the first to step inside.
The courtyard wasn’t large, a far cry from the Qiao Family Grand Courtyard4 Shen Maomao had seen. The front yard was overgrown with weeds and the ground was littered with broken paving stones, table and chair legs, and tattered clothing. There was only a simple two-story building in the yard. From the ground floor, one could see the second floor’s circular marble terrace and a few overturned chairs on it.
Kang Yuanhuai hadn’t expected it to be so run-down inside either. He gave two slightly embarrassed dry coughs and said to the group, “Funds are limited, I hope everyone can understand…”
It was now certain that Kang Yuanhuai was the guide NPC. Sisi smiled and said to him, “It’s fine. If we all pitch in, we should be able to clean it up quickly.”
The man with glasses also said, “Should we divide up the work and start cleaning now?”
Kang Yuanhuai said, “Then let’s tidy up the dining room first. I’ll go to the restaurant in a bit to order a table of food and have it delivered. We need to eat our fill to have the strength to work.”
The group ascended the steps, passed the two stone pillars in front of the door, and entered the house. The first thing that met their eyes was a large round table that could accommodate at least fifteen people. The dining area was located right at the entrance.
On either side of the round table were two corridors, with no telling where they led.
If they were just eating, they didn’t need to clean up too much space. They only needed to wipe down the table and chairs in the dining room as Kang Yuanhuai had said.
Kang Yuanhuai produced a rag from somewhere and went off in search of water, telling the others to find a place to rest first.
However, the dust in the house was simply too thick. None of the players sat down; they each found a corner to stand in and sized one another up.
The man with glasses was the first to speak. “By the way, I forgot to ask you all, what date did you arrive on?”
The people around him were stunned for a few seconds.
Sisi let out a “pfft” of laughter, though the smile quickly vanished. “No need to pretend. You haven’t time-traveled.”
The glasses-wearing man’s little scheme was exposed on the spot, and his face immediately flushed. “Huh? Then what’s going on?”
The chubby man who had been standing next to him the whole time said, “Seeing how calm you were on the way here, I thought there were no newcomers in this game.”
The man with glasses was even more bewildered. “What game?”
Sisi said, “You can think of it as being captured to participate in a horror survival game. There’s no reward for winning, but you’ll die if you lose.”
“But–!” the man with glasses said. “No one considered my opinion at all!”
One of the women, the one with curly hair, frowned. “Keep your voice down. Don’t attract the NPC’s attention.”
Sisi, however, said, “Silly child, the game doesn’t need your consent. From the moment you secretly did something bad, your fate no longer belonged to you.”
The man with glasses was choked for words. After a long moment, he finally came up with a reason to refute them. “You all must be teaming up to mess with me, right? We must have time-traveled, otherwise how could I have gotten younger…”
Hearing this, Shen Maomao glanced up at him.
The chubby man said, “What’s so strange about that? They just adjust the players’ ages to make their identities more plausible.”
The others’ attitudes were so matter-of-fact that the man with glasses gradually began to panic. “Can anyone tell me what exactly is happening? Where is this? How do I get home?”
The chubby man thought for a moment, but instead of answering his questions first, he looked at the women and asked, “Are there any other newcomers among you ladies? I can just explain it to all of you at once.”
The women all shook their heads.
The man with glasses cast a hopeful and grateful look his way.
“Let’s wait until the NPC leaves,” the chubby man said. “The game should give us time to communicate.”
Just as his voice fell, Kang Yuanhuai returned carrying a bronze basin.
He soaked the rag, rolled up his sleeves, and got to work.
Shen Maomao wanted to go up and help but was refused, the reason being that he couldn’t let a female student do manual labor.
The moment the chubby man heard this reason, he hurried forward to help and, as expected, was not refused. The man with glasses was at a point where his six gods had no master5, so seeing this, he also asked for a rag and started working.
In the end, he, the chubby man, and the man with glasses cleaned up the immediate area together. As for the buzz-cut man—he sat on a wiped-clean chair with his eyes closed, resting, showing no intention of participating in the labor.
After they finished, everyone sat down around the round table. Kang Yuanhuai was the first to stand up and speak, introducing himself. “Hello, fellow students. My name is Kang Yuanhuai. I am the general coordinator for this folk custom activity and a native of Huai Town6. I’m very happy to meet you here and grateful that you chose the task of investigating folk customs. I hope we can get along well during these seven days.”
He sat down after speaking, then looked at the others with an encouraging gaze, signaling for them to also state their names.
Sisi was the first to speak. “My name is Sisi, the ‘si’ from ‘sinian’ (to miss).7 Please take care of me.”
Shen Maomao immediately followed suit.
After one round, she had pretty much learned who everyone was.
The chubby man said his name was Dahai8. The buzz-cut man called himself A’nan9. The one with wavy hair who hadn’t spoken was named Anjing10, and the one with long, straight black hair who had spoken was named Mingyue11.
The man with glasses noticed that the names they gave seemed to be aliases, so he was cautious and said his name was Gauss12.
The most peculiar one among them was the youngest little sister with the braided pigtails. She stared at everyone with wide eyes and gestured wildly, her mouth shut tight as if she couldn’t speak.
Shen Maomao’s gaze locked onto her.
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