Little Wild Grass

"Then what is your name?"

Seeing the little girl's hostility vanish, Li Muyang felt amused while simultaneously letting out a sigh of relief.

It was a good thing the little girl no longer held any animosity toward him.

It seemed he was one step closer to clearing the game.

Li Muyang immediately struck while the iron was hot, trying to get close to the little girl and chat to find out where she had come from.

However, the little girl shook her head and said, "Father and Mother said that the moment I stepped out of that house, I no longer had a name."

The little girl's answer made Li Muyang raise an eyebrow.

"Oh? You lose your name the moment you leave home?"

It seemed this little girl was no ordinary wandering orphan...

He saw the little girl nod obediently: "Mm, I am a Soul-Lost One."

"Father and Mother said that people like me are born disasters, monsters, and cannot live with them, which is why they sold me to the human trafficker."

"The trafficker just calls me Little Wild Grass."

The little girl explained her background in a well-behaved yet logically sound manner.

Li Muyang nodded in realization: "So you are a Soul-Lost One..."

This strange illness existed in his own world as well; it was a congenital affliction.

It was said that those who suffered from this disease would hear voices from another world, gradually lose their reason and consciousness after nightfall, and periodically become bloodthirsty and cruel.

In the end, they would even go completely mad, wandering the wilderness as beast-like monsters and attacking any living person they encountered.

To ordinary mortals, this disease was a calamity.

But to demonic cultivators, these patients were excellent materials.

Once a Soul-Lost One went mad and entered a demonic state, their blood would secrete a special substance. Once this substance reached a certain amount, extracting the demonic blood for artifact refining or cultivation had immense benefits.

At this moment, Li Muyang immediately understood why the stronghold had bought three wandering children.

These three children were likely all Soul-Lost Ones, collected by the trafficker and sold to the stronghold.

And Li Muyang was the "sustainer" chosen by Steward Wu.

Besides eating three meals a day like a mortal, a Soul-Lost One required a sustainer with abundant vitality by their side, as they would constantly drain the other person's yang energy.

No wonder Leng Aqi would rather go up the mountain to work than raise Little Wild Grass; for an ordinary person, this job was a total trap!

Li Muyang exhaled softly, his eyes bright with determination.

Very well, he now understood the basic settings of this game.

His next task was to build a relationship with this deep-thinking little girl who had been abandoned by her parents.

The moment the nurturing phase ended would be the moment Li Muyang cleared the game and claimed his reward.

Li Muyang said with a smile, "From now on, we will live together. You sleep on the bamboo bed tonight, and I'll sleep on the floor. I'll go get a new bed tomorrow."

"Is there anything you want to eat tonight? I'll go get it for you."

Li Muyang slipped into his role very quickly, directly expressing his goodwill.

But the little girl was slightly surprised by his words.

"Big Brother, you..."

She looked down at the bamboo bed she was sitting on, then at the empty room, and hurriedly stood up in a panic: "How can I let you sleep on the floor? I can just sleep on the floor myself."

Li Muyang smiled brightly: "It's fine, it doesn't bother me. You're young, so you should sleep on the bamboo bed."

After all, it wasn't him sleeping there, but the game character.

Once this dialogue scene ended, he could quickly skip to the next act. Li Muyang didn't care at all; naturally, he had to seize every opportunity to farm the girl's favorability.

It was just a pity that after he firmly insisted on sleeping on the floor, he looked at the favorability bar in the top right corner... it hadn't moved at all.

This brat looked touched and uneasy on the surface, but in reality, her favorability hadn't increased by a single point.

It meant her display of being moved was all an act... tsk...

However, Li Muyang wasn't very surprised.

Given the little girl's persona of being full of tricks, it would have been strange if he could have easily farmed her favorability.

As Li Muyang ended the conversation, the flow of time within the game instance accelerated rapidly.

In non-critical scenes or plot points, the game's time flow was extremely fast; the speech and movements of those around him were like being on fast-forward.

For instance, when Li Muyang had previously received the mission from Steward Wu and went to wait outside the stronghold gate, it had only seemed like a few seconds, but in reality, the sun had shifted from noon to dusk.

Now, after the conversation between Li Muyang and Little Wild Grass concluded, the sunset outside the window quickly dipped below the horizon.

The two people in the room also finished their dinner quickly and went to bed.

During the dinner scene, three options had popped up, and Li Muyang had chosen the friendly options to farm favorability all three times.

Yet, Little Wild Grass's favorability still hadn't increased.

It seemed that dealing with this deep-thinking, precocious brat would require patience; the little girl was not easily fooled.

After finishing their meal, Li Muyang followed protocol and secured the chain Steward Wu had given him around Little Wild Grass's neck.

The iron lock, forged from refined steel, featured a hoop perfectly sized to fit the young girl's neck.

With the little girl locked up this way, he didn't have to worry about her going berserk in the night and attacking him.

Only after completing this task did Li Muyang lie down with peace of mind.

[So sleepy... Time to sleep...]

[I don't want to be a provider... I can't sleep.]

Faced with the two options, Li Muyang pondered for a moment before selecting the first.

His vision rapidly faded to black.

Shortly thereafter...

[You have died. Game over.]

The sudden appearance of the blood-red dialogue box left Li Muyang stunned.

What on earth happened to make him die again?

Hadn't he already locked her up properly?

Li Muyang was speechless, closing his eyes to re-enter the game.

This time, he saved his progress first and carefully inspected the chain and the well-behaved little girl before going to sleep.

Everything was indeed in order, and he was at a sufficient distance; there was no way the little girl could break free from the chain to attack him.

Only then did Li Muyang choose to sleep, and his vision went dark.

Then...

[You have died. Game over.]

Another blood-red dialogue box popped up in his vision, and Li Muyang was forcibly ejected back to the main menu.

Looking at the mysterious little village nestled among the mountains on the game system's main interface, Li Muyang felt a sense of frustration.

"The game has officially started, so you're ramping up the difficulty on me, is that it?"

The worst part was that these deaths were inexplicable; it was simply absurd.

Reloading his save to enter the game again, Li Muyang chose the second option this time instead of going to sleep.

[I don't want to be a provider... I can't sleep.]

And so, after the candlelight was extinguished in the small cabin, Li Muyang kept his eyes wide open, lying perfectly still; he ended up suffering from insomnia.

The dark room was deathly silent.

The little girl, with the iron chain locked around her neck, curled up helplessly on the bamboo bed, seemingly trapped in a nightmare; she looked pitiful enough to stir one's heart.

In the middle of the night, she suddenly began to struggle, emitting low, terrifying growls like a wild beast.

But it was only a few low growls, much like talking in one's sleep; she made no other movements, let alone breaking the chain to kill him.

And this time, Li Muyang did not die.

As the first rays of dawn filtered through the window to land on him, Li Muyang, having safely survived the night, felt a sense of bewilderment.

If it wasn't the little girl going berserk in the middle of the night... then who was it that killed him the first two times?

Could there be some other hidden danger lurking in this village?