Little Wild Grass

"So, what's your name?"

Seeing the little girl's hostility disappear, Li Muyang found it amusing, but he also felt relieved.

The little one wasn't hostile toward him now. That was a good thing.

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

Li Muyang immediately struck while the iron was hot, trying to get closer to the girl. He chatted with her about stories and tried to find out where she came from.

But the little girl shook her head. "My parents said that once I stepped out of that house, I didn't have a name anymore."

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

"Oh? You didn't have a name once you left home?"

It seemed this girl wasn't an ordinary homeless orphan...

The little girl nodded obediently. "Mm. I'm a Soul-Lost One."

"My parents said people like me are born bad luck, monsters, and can't live with them. That's why they sold me to the Human Trafficker."

"The Human Trafficker called me Little Grass."

The little girl obediently explained the gist of her experience, and her account made perfect sense.

Li Muyang nodded in understanding. "So you're a Soul-Lost One..."

This strange illness existed in his world, too. It was an inborn affliction.

They said people with this illness could hear the voices of another world. After nightfall, they would gradually lose their reason and awareness, periodically becoming bloodthirsty and violent.

In the end, they might even go completely mad, turning into beastlike monsters that roamed the wilderness and attacked any living people who crossed their path.

To mortals, this illness was a calamity.

But to demonic cultivators, the afflicted were excellent materials.

After a Soul-Lost One went mad and fell into demonic ways, a special substance would be secreted into their blood. Once enough of it had accumulated, extracting their demonic blood for refining artifacts or cultivation would have tremendous benefits.

At that moment, Li Muyang immediately understood why the stockade had bought three homeless children.

Those three children were probably all Soul-Lost Ones, collected by the Human Trafficker and sold to the stockade.

And Li Muyang was the provider Steward Wu had chosen.

Besides eating three meals a day like ordinary people, Soul-Lost Ones needed a provider with abundant blood energy to stay by their side. They would constantly absorb the other person's yang energy.

No wonder Leng Aqi would rather go work on the mountain than raise Little Wild Grass. For an ordinary person, this was a complete scam!

Li Muyang let out a soft breath, his eyes alight with excitement.

Good. He now understood the game's basic setup.

His next task was to grow closer to this little girl, abandoned by her parents and shrewd beyond her years, and build a bond with her.

The moment he finished raising her would be the moment he cleared the game and claimed his reward.

Li Muyang smiled. "From now on, we'll be living together. You can sleep on the bamboo bed tonight, and I'll sleep on the floor. Tomorrow, I'll get you a new bed."

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

Li Muyang got into character quickly and showed his goodwill outright.

But the little girl looked slightly surprised by what he said.

"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 fluster. "How can I let you sleep on the floor, big brother? I can sleep there."

Li Muyang smiled broadly. "It's fine. I don't mind. You're young, so you can sleep on the bamboo bed."

Besides, it wasn't really him who'd be sleeping there. It was the game character.

Once this scene's dialogue ended, the game would soon jump to the next scene. Li Muyang didn't care in the slightest, so he naturally had to seize every opportunity to raise the girl's affection for him.

Unfortunately, after he firmly insisted on sleeping on the floor, he checked the affection bar in the upper-right corner... It hadn't budged at all.

The little girl looked moved and uneasy on the surface, but her affection for him hadn't increased one bit.

So all that gratitude had been an act... Tsk...

Still, Li Muyang wasn't all that surprised.

With the way this girl was so full of schemes, it would've been strange if Li Muyang had raised her affection easily.

After Li Muyang ended the conversation, time in the game instance suddenly sped up.

In scenes and plot moments that weren't crucial, time flowed very quickly. The people around him spoke and moved as if someone had pressed fast-forward.

For example, earlier, when Li Muyang had accepted a mission from Steward Wu and gone to wait outside the stockade gate, only a few seconds seemed to pass. In reality, the sun had moved from midday to dusk.

Now that Li Muyang and Little Wild Grass had finished talking, the sunset outside the window quickly sank below the horizon.

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

Three choices popped up during the meal, and all three times, Li Muyang picked the friendly option that would raise her affection for him.

But Little Wild Grass's affection still didn't increase.

It seemed he'd have to take his time dealing with this shrewd little brat who was mature beyond her years. The little girl wasn't easy to fool.

After dinner, Li Muyang followed the rules and fastened the chain Steward Wu had given him around Little Wild Grass's neck.

The iron lock, made of refined iron, had a metal ring just big enough to fit around the little girl's neck.

With the little one chained up like this, there was no need to worry about her going mad in the night and attacking Li Muyang.

Only after he'd finished all this did Li Muyang lie down, reassured.

[So sleepy... Time for bed...]

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

Li Muyang thought about the two options that appeared before his eyes, then chose the first.

His vision quickly went dark.

Not long after...

[You died. Game over.]

The sudden blood-red dialogue box left Li Muyang staring blankly.

What happened? How had he died again?

Hadn't he already chained her up?

Li Muyang was speechless. He closed his eyes and entered the game again.

This time, he saved first, then carefully checked the chain and the obedient little girl before going to sleep.

There really didn't seem to be any problem, and he was far enough away. There was no way the little girl could break free and come attack him.

Only then did Li Muyang choose to sleep. His vision went black.

And then...

[You died. Game over.]

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

Looking at the mysterious little stockade nestled among the mountains in the game's main-menu painting, Li Muyang was speechless.

"The game's officially started, so now it's making things harder for me, huh?"

The key was that his death made no sense at all. It was ridiculous.

After loading his save and entering the game again, Li Muyang didn't choose to sleep this time. Instead, he chose the second option.

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

In the little house, its candlelight extinguished, Li Muyang lay wide-eyed and motionless. He actually stayed awake all night.

In the pitch-black room, not a sound stirred.

The little girl, chained by the neck, curled up helplessly on the bamboo bed. She seemed to be having a nightmare, looking utterly pitiful.

In the second half of the night, she suddenly began to struggle, letting out a low, terrifying growl that sounded just like a beast.

But she only growled a few times in a low voice, as if talking in her sleep. Apart from that, she did nothing else, much less break free of the chain and kill anyone.

And this time, Li Muyang didn't die.

The first rays of morning sunlight fell on him through the window. Having safely made it through the night, Li Muyang was a little surprised.

If the little girl hadn't gone mad in the middle of the night... then who had killed him the first two times?

Was there some other danger lurking in the stockade?