Chapter 8: Human Nature
“Do not cross this river. Do not cross this river. Do not cross this river.”
Countless needle-like voices crowded around Yu Qimiao’s ears. They overlapped in endless layers, building and building until his head felt ready to split open.
Only when he spotted the blood-red stone monument on the opposite bank did he realize they had successfully made it across.
What was this river truly called? Sun-Moon River? Gangan River? Yang-Yin River? Over here, it went by only one name: Yin-Yang River.
As Su Qiong’s bamboo raft bumped gently against the shore, the little marshmallow noticed a beautiful young woman standing deep within the sea of red spider lilies. She was playing with a little girl who looked no older than four or five. The child’s smile was innocent and carefree, as if she were enjoying the happiest childhood imaginable.
Yet, Su Qiong knew the grim truth: anyone living on the banks of the Yin-Yang River was already dead.
The little girl noticed Su Qiong. Her bright, watery eyes blinked as she studied him with pure curiosity. Hearing the splash of the water, the woman beside her looked up. A weary, familiar smile graced her face.
“Ah, another younger sister has come ashore,” she said gently.
She stood up, holding the little girl’s hand with her right hand, and used her left to steady Yu Qimiao’s oar so he could step safely onto the bank.
“Poor girls. Come with me,” the woman told the two strangers. “I’ll take you to meet the other sisters.”
Su Qiong immediately floated after her. Yu Qimiao followed close behind, wading through the clusters of fiery red spider lilies until they reached the houses they had seen on their very first day in the game.
Unlike the empty, desolate shacks they had explored during the day, the houses were now brightly lit. Because Su Qiong didn’t have a physical body, he felt completely fine as they stepped inside. But poor Yu Qimiao, who hadn’t even fully recovered from his terrifying boat ride, began shivering uncontrollably. A sinister, bone-deep chill filled the room.
They looked up. The walls of the house were completely covered in square wooden tablets. A woman’s name was carved into each one.
When Su Qiong drifted closer, he could see a woman’s spirit tethered to every single tablet. Each one represented a vengeful ghost—a woman who had died an unjust, agonizing death in Gangan Village.
There were far too many. At a glance, there had to be two or three thousand.
Yu Qimiao was so horrified that his jaw dropped, stripping away his ability to speak.
Su Qiong craned his marshmallow neck, examining the room for a moment before casually pointing upward. “There are more inside.”
“M-more?” Yu Qimiao stammered.
He stared carefully and finally realized that the wooden tablets weren’t just covering the walls; they were hanging from the ceiling in overlapping layers. Su Qiong quickly deduced what had happened. The earliest tablets had been hung near the top of the ceiling. As the years passed and space ran out, the ropes were lengthened so new tablets could hang just below the old ones.
Day after day, year after year, the tablets had multiplied. Now, they hung in thick, suffocating layers that nearly brushed the tops of their heads.
From the outside, the house looked about three meters tall. Yu Qimiao stood at a very standard 180 centimeters. Su Qiong extended a squishy white hand to do some mental math. Each tablet was about fifteen centimeters tall. Hanging in layers from a three-meter ceiling, there had to be at least seven levels of tablets swinging in the air.
The room was massive, and every single level could easily hold two thousand tablets.
Wave after wave of freezing air washed over Yu Qimiao. Trapped in a chill that seemed to seep directly into his marrow, he nearly lost the ability to think.
“There are at least ten thousand wooden tablets here,” Su Qiong stated calmly.
At least ten thousand tablets. At least ten thousand women who died miserable deaths in Gangan Village.
Yu Qimiao clutched his chest. The air seemed to vanish from his lungs, and he dropped painfully to his knees. The sheer spiritual pressure radiating through the room was crushing his consciousness.
The ghost woman who had brought them inside didn’t seem to notice anything was wrong. She just smiled. “You must have suffered so many grievances before coming here. It doesn’t matter now. From now on, we’ll protect each other.”
Her voice was soft, and a sacred, tragic compassion lingered in her eyes. “Everyone should live together in harmony, joy, and peace.” She tilted her head, looking a little confused. “Strange. Why haven’t the other sisters come out to say hello?”
She took a few steps forward and reached out to touch the hanging wooden tablets, calling for her friends.
The sisters didn’t come out. Instead, a terrified, shrieking voice echoed through the room.
“Don’t call me!”
“Huh?” The woman looked bewildered.
Suddenly, the other wooden tablets began screaming, one after another. “He’s a man! Keep him away from us!” “Why is a filthy man on our riverbank?!” “Leave! Get out of our world!”
Countless furious, despairing voices filled the room, begging the strangers to leave. Beneath the rage, Yu Qimiao could hear agonizing sobs. Sensing a man’s presence had dragged the vengeful spirits back into their darkest nightmares—back to the freezing river water and the snow-covered barren mountains.
“We need to go. We can’t stay here,” Su Qiong decided instantly.
The women were intensely terrified of men. Even if Su Qiong shamelessly refused to leave, they wouldn’t get any useful clues out of them. More importantly, Su Qiong could tell that his and Yu Qimiao’s presence was actively hurting the ghosts.
“Mm,” Yu Qimiao agreed dizzily.
A mysterious force guarded this side of the river, acting as a crushing weight against any man who trespassed. In just a few minutes, Yu Qimiao was gasping for air, his internal organs throbbing in agony.
“We must have missed a step,” Su Qiong noted. According to the system, this hidden quest was rated E—Peaceful. Players weren’t supposed to get hurt. But Yu Qimiao was in severe pain, meaning they hadn’t met the right conditions to safely complete the quest.
The two quickly retreated through the sea of red spider lilies and boarded the bamboo raft. As they floated away, Yu Qimiao’s color slowly returned, though he still looked like a man who had barely survived a disaster.
“Is the secret hidden there?” Yu Qimiao asked quietly.
“Mm.” Su Qiong nodded. “When I got close to the tablets, I could hear their stories.”
Even though they hadn’t stayed long, it was enough for Su Qiong to catch glimpses of the women’s stolen youth. He could feel how gentle and beautiful they had once been.
“Why?” Su Qiong asked softly.
“Hmm? Why what?”
“How can human nature be so evil on one side of a river, yet so kind on the other?” Su Qiong looked back toward Gangan Village, then turned to stare at the opposite bank.
Yu Qimiao was silent for a long time. Finally, he answered softly, “Because human nature is complicated.”
Su Qiong said nothing. For a logical piece of code, such a vague answer was hard to accept.
Yu Qimiao exhaled a long breath. “It is precisely because darkness exists that the light becomes so precious.”
“Where is the light?”
Yu Qimiao thought for a moment. “To me, right now, you are the light. If you hadn’t guided me, I probably never would have adapted to this game. I might have been killed before I even knew what was going on.”
“But I didn’t choose to help you because I wanted to. It’s my job.”
“Does the reason matter?” Yu Qimiao smiled. He understood better than anyone that human relationships were built on mutual benefit. Even knowing that, he was still incredibly grateful to the little marshmallow.
Su Qiong shook his head. Humans truly are complicated.
When they finally returned to the main bank, Shi Yuntian and Lu Shufan were squatting by the dirt road like two anxious huskies, craning their necks to look for them.
“You’re back! How did the quest go?”
“We failed. They drove us away.”
Lu Shufan patted Yu Qimiao’s shoulder. “Don’t be discouraged! At least we know how to cross the river now. We still have two days left to figure it out. And if all else fails…”
Yu Qimiao finished the sentence, his voice turning deadly cold. “…We destroy Gangan Village.”
“Mm,” Su Qiong agreed immediately.
Shi Yuntian and Lu Shufan stared at them in total disbelief.
Since the game started, Yu Qimiao had been the most stable, rational member of the Orphan Alliance. Shi Yuntian had almost gone on a murderous rampage several times, and every single time, Yu Qimiao had been the one to pull him back.
Now, the calmest man on the team was embracing his dark side.
Even worse, a literal system NPC was happily supporting a plan to destroy the game level! It was completely absurd. Su Qiong got his powers from the system. Destroying a main game instance wasn’t just biting the hand that fed him—it was flipping the table and burning the whole restaurant down!
“Calm down. Both of you, take a deep breath,” Shi Yuntian said, never dreaming he’d see the day where he was the one telling people to chill out.
“If we destroy the village, we’ll never learn the truth,” Lu Shufan reasoned.
Su Qiong tilted his puffy head. “I have a theory about the clue we missed.”
“Tell us!”
“The nursery rhyme we heard has a second verse,” Su Qiong explained. Perhaps the truth—and the missing trigger for the quest—was hidden in the rest of the song.
“That makes sense.” “Should we come back tomorrow night and check the monument again?”
“Mm.” Su Qiong nodded. “But if we still can’t find the clue, then…”
“We destroy Gangan Village,” Yu Qimiao repeated firmly.
He had heard those agonizing cries with his own ears. He had felt the women’s suffocating despair. The pain he experienced on that shore wasn’t even a fraction of what they had endured. Those young women should have lived safe, happy lives. Instead, because they married monsters, they were thrown beneath the freezing river and into the bone-filled mountains while they were still in the prime of their youth.
Gangan Village was the root of it all. What right did such a filthy, rotten, evil place have to exist?
“Exactly!” Su Qiong cheered.
Shi Yuntian and Lu Shufan exchanged a terrified look. Our teammates have lost their minds. What are we supposed to do?!
The next morning, familiar screams of terror echoed through the caves as several more players vanished into thin air.
Hearing the commotion, Su Qiong floated outside to investigate. He quickly discovered that the players they had used as a secret “control group” at dinner perfectly matched their theory.
Players who ate the minced meat and had money left over were robbed completely blind by the system. Players who ate the meat but were broke were instantly eliminated from the game.
Meanwhile, Yu Qimiao and the Orphan Alliance had strictly stuck to plain cornbread. They kept all their money and survived the night.
The food containing the “pork” was absolutely the trigger for the boss’s elimination skill.
Su Qiong floated up behind Those Who Obey Me Win and politely shared this conclusion.
The arrogant player looked shocked. “You came all the way over here just to warn me? You’re actually that kindhearted?”
“Mm. I’m a guide NPC. It’s my job to help all of you clear the instance,” Su Qiong said sweetly. Turning around, he floated away, hiding his true intentions perfectly.
The truth was, it was a strict rule violation for a guide NPC to give players false information. Since Su Qiong had given the man a bad theory yesterday, he was legally obligated to correct it today.
Those Who Obey Me Win stared at the little marshmallow’s retreating back, his feelings incredibly complicated. Look at him. What a kind, adorable, innocent little NPC. Even though Su Qiong had helped cut his head off, the player didn’t resent him at all. In fact, he kind of wanted to offer his head up again so the cute marshmallow could level up and give him more clues.
Humming happily, Su Qiong drifted back toward his cave. Suddenly, he heard an aggressive voice shouting in the distance.
“You miserable old bastard! Pay me back!” “If you don’t pay me today, I’ll have my brothers slaughter your entire village!”
Su Qiong paused, a dark, bubbly joy rising in his nonexistent heart. Wow. Could something this wonderful actually happen?
Do you feel this rewrite perfectly captures the balance between the emotional tragedy of the Yin-Yang River and the dark, chaotic comedy of the Orphan Alliance?
