If We Can't Keep It Hidden, Just Come Clean

The room was so quiet that Su Xian could hear nothing but his own breathing.

It had been well over ten days since Su Xian arrived in "Niulai Village."

The wound on his head had scabbed over, and his body had recovered considerably. Aside from the thick gauze still covering his eyes, he could basically feel his way around for a couple of steps beside the bed.

But as his health improved, Su Xian's logical thinking as a modern university student began spinning wildly. The more he thought about it, the more something seemed wrong.

This "Niulai Village" was strange in ways that defied common sense at every turn.

There were simply too many things to pick apart!

First, the village officials had an absurd amount of free time.

The old village chief, "Uncle Mu En," could spend seven or eight hours a day sitting on a little folding stool beside his bed, listening to him shoot the breeze.

Sometimes, Uncle Mu En even had to come personally to help him use the outhouse.

Were grassroots village officials in Daliang Mountain really this idle?

Didn't they have meetings in town?

Didn't they have to work in the fields and meet poverty alleviation targets?

Second, the infrastructure was unbelievably pathetic.

Even if torrential rain had caused mudslides and cut off the mountain before, more than half a month had passed!

With the terrifying efficiency of China's infrastructure-building juggernaut, the armed police engineering troops would build bridges and lay roads overnight. Failing to reopen traffic within a single day would count as a command failure!

Yet Uncle Mu En told him every day that the road was still blocked.

And the electricity!

Since when had the State Grid become this useless?

They couldn't fix one village's transformer in half a month?

Finally, there was the eerily quiet environment.

Although he couldn't see, his hearing had become exceptionally keen.

Logically, a mountain village ought to have the roar of tractors during the day, right?

There ought to be music playing over the village committee's loudspeakers, right?

At the very least, there ought to be village dogs fighting and roosters crowing, right?

And what did he get?

Aside from occasional faint footsteps outside the door, this village was like one enormous luxury golf course!

"Something's wrong. Something's seriously wrong..."

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Su Xian rubbed his chin, his heart giving an involuntary jolt. Could I not be in Niulai Village at all? Have I been kidnapped by an overseas scam syndicate and taken to northern Myanmar, or dragged into some pyramid scheme deep in the mountains?!

The thought broke Su Xian out in a cold sweat.

But he quickly forced himself to calm down.

He was just a penniless teacher. What would anyone gain from kidnapping him?

Besides, not only had these people never beaten him, they made different varieties of chicken soup for him every day and fed him that "wild boar meat" that made his whole body heat up after a single bite.

What kind of scam syndicate ran a charity like that?

"No, I have to test them today. If I keep lying here like this, I'll go mad sooner or later." Su Xian secretly clenched his fists.

Toward evening, the door creaked open.

Mu En carried in that day's dinner, still speaking in that same rustic accent. "Teacher Su, time to eat. We made some cured pork today."

Su Xian took the bowl and chopsticks without betraying anything and wolfed down his meal. Then he set the bowl down, deliberately drew a deep breath, and delivered an ultimatum in a serious tone. "Uncle Mu En, I've pretty much recovered from my injuries! Tomorrow, I must leave this courtyard and walk around the village. I'll visit the primary school while I'm at it and formally teach a full class for the children!"

Mu En's hands froze as he gathered up the dishes.

Hearing no movement, Su Xian pressed him step by step. "If the village committee can't even free up a classroom, if I can't even hear the village broadcasts, if there isn't a trace of life in this village... then I'll have to suspect that you've all worked together to sell me to some illegal pyramid scheme!"

A pyramid scheme?

Although Mu En didn't understand the term, he sensed danger in Su Xian's serious, guarded tone-this boy was getting suspicious!

If they couldn't meet his demands, the trust they had painstakingly built over the past half month and more would crumble to dust!

"Ahem... Teacher Su, what are you saying?"

Mu En forced himself into a cold sweat, suppressed his wildly pounding heart, and gave a dry laugh. "Before, we were worried about exposing your eyes to the wind. Since you want to go, then... tomorrow morning, I'll take you around the village to teach the little ones!"

"Good. It's a promise." Su Xian nodded.

Carrying the empty bowl out of the wooden cabin, he reached back to shut the door, and at that instant-

Mu En's formerly kindly face became utterly grave.

Whoosh-

The Limit Douluo vanished from the spot in an instant.

Three seconds later.

Inside the secret chamber on the top floor of the Sea God Pavilion, Yan Shaozhe, who was still brooding after Zhang Lexuan had stripped him of half his authority, along with Qian Duoduo, Xian Lin'er, and the other members of the innermost leadership, were forcibly hauled over by Mu En's soul power.

"Pavilion Master, what happened? Has the Deep Sea Demonic Whale King attacked?" Yan Shaozhe was startled by Mu En's exceptionally grim expression.

"We can't keep this hidden much longer!"

Mu En drew a deep breath and said heavily, "He suspects he's been kidnapped into some pyramid scheme. He wants to hear broadcasts from the loudspeakers at the village entrance, and he wants to hear tractors. Worst of all, he's demanding that I take him for a walk around the village tomorrow morning and let him teach a full class of village children!"

At these words, the Shrek powerhouses in the secret chamber exchanged looks.

"If we can't keep it hidden, just come clean!"

Yan Shaozhe, who had seen a large number of his trusted followers purged over the past few days and had a bellyful of pent-up fury with nowhere to vent it, immediately snorted. A glimmer of vindictive satisfaction flashed through his eyes.

"I'd like to see what happens when this brat regains his sight and discovers that I'm Yan Shaozhe, the dean of the Martial Soul Department, and that you're the Sea God Pavilion Master! Will that mouth of his, the one that called me a 'damned scumbag' and you an 'old feudal fossil,' still be as stubborn as it is now?"

Yan Shaozhe ground his teeth. "I have to see him piss his pants in terror with my own eyes!"

Yan Shaozhe felt that once they revealed their identities, even if they didn't kill Su Xian, merely intimidating him with Shrek's overwhelming authority would make all the humiliation he had suffered over the past half month and more vanish like smoke.

"Dean Yan, you're being foolish!"

Before Mu En could speak, Zhang Lexuan cut short Yan Shaozhe's fantasy with an utterly merciless, icy rebuke.

"Dean Yan, you're only chasing a moment's satisfaction. Have you considered the fatal consequences of coming clean?"

By now, Zhang Lexuan had fully stepped into her role as the "Reform Faction Enforcer." She analyzed the situation calmly. "Teacher Su is a mortal without a shred of cultivation! If he learns that he's transmigrated to the Douluo Continent, and that he's pointed straight at the noses of Super Douluos and Limit Douluos like you, who stand at the continent's summit, and cursed you like dogs..."

Zhang Lexuan swept her gaze over everyone. "Do you think a mortal facing godlike beings who could crush him to death at any moment would still tell us the truth, driven by fear and his instinct for self-preservation?"

Yan Shaozhe froze, then retorted, "Would he dare lie? We have plenty of spiritual-type Soul Masters!"

"What damned use is lie detection?!"

Exasperated by his failure to see sense, Zhang Lexuan snapped, "Those industrial assembly lines Teacher Su knows about, those detailed performance appraisal rules, and those critical turning points in the Spirit Pagoda's corruption ten thousand years from now-do we understand any of them?!"

"He doesn't need to lie about everything. All he has to do is deliberately alter a single parameter in a soul tool's core array when he gives us industrial blueprints! When describing future trends, he can bury one hidden danger among nine truths and one lie! We don't even have the ability to verify what's false!"

Zhang Lexuan's voice echoed through the hall, sending chills down their spines. "Once we put lies of that caliber into practice, they could drag all of Shrek into an abyss beyond redemption! Can we afford to lose that gamble?!"

Yan Shaozhe opened his mouth, cold sweat beading on his forehead, but couldn't utter another word.

Zhang Lexuan was absolutely right!

The reason they could now revere Su Xian like a god was precisely that the information he revealed while "speaking without restraint" truly came from an all-seeing perspective!

Once they shattered this disguise called "Niulai Village," the initiative would no longer rest with Shrek, but with Su Xian, the man who held the future in his hands!

"Lexuan is right!" Mu En drew a deep breath, resolve flashing in his eyes. "We cannot expose ourselves! Absolutely not! At least until his eyes recover, we must keep this performance going without a single visible seam!"

"But Pavilion Master, he wants to stroll around the village tomorrow morning. Our back mountain has nothing but the Golden Tree and the Martial Arts Arena. Where are we supposed to find a village?" Qian Duoduo scratched his head, his face full of worry.

"No village?" Mu En considered this, then slammed his cane down and issued the most absurd supreme directive in Shrek's ten-thousand-year history:

"Then tonight, I'll build him a Niulai Village!!!"

"What?!" Everyone paled in shock.

"Shaozhe! Lin'er!"

Giving them no time to react, Mu En immediately began assigning tasks as though deploying troops for battle. "Mobilize every high-ranking earth-, wood-, and water-attribute Soul Master at Soul Douluo level or above from both the inner and outer courts immediately! Head to the back mountain tonight and use your soul skills to raise a village from bare ground! Build several rows of shabby adobe houses and a village primary school!"

"Remember, it must be shabby! Old! Smear real cow dung and yellow mud on the walls! If anyone dares use soul power to build things too neatly, I'll skin them!"

Yan Shaozhe and Xian Lin'er jolted and snapped to attention. "Yes!"

"Lexuan!" Mu En looked at Zhang Lexuan. "Go to the inner court immediately and select one hundred elite disciples with the best acting skills. Have them change into coarse hemp clothing tonight! Tomorrow morning, they'll act as villagers in that fake village! Pick some younger outer court disciples from this year's intake to play left-behind children!"

"Duoduo!" Mu En turned and fixed his eyes on Qian Duoduo.

"Here!" Qian Duoduo hurriedly straightened his back.

Mu En gritted his teeth and ordered, "You're not sleeping tonight. Build me a soul tool overnight that makes the sound of scrap metal grinding together! Tomorrow, when he wants to hear a tractor, you'll play that thing at the village entrance! And get a loudspeaker too. Tomorrow morning, play that... 'Good Days' on repeat throughout the village!"

Qian Duoduo's dark face flushed crimson. A dignified Level 8 Soul Engineer, forced to work overtime through the night to build a speaker that imitated a tractor?!

But he didn't dare show the slightest defiance. "I guarantee I'll complete the mission!"

"And another thing!" Mu En seemed to remember the detail most likely to give them away. "Go to the Agility Attack Department and pick a few with good voices and strong lungs. At dawn tomorrow, have them all hide in the grass on both sides of the village and imitate barking dogs and crowing roosters! They must capture the ferocity of village dogs fighting over territory and the morning vigor of crowing roosters! Do you understand?!"

"Understood!!!"

The assembled few answered in unison, their voices full of tragic resolve.