Chapter 20: “It”

Xia Mi had thought that after being out for over a dozen hours, meeting Xiao Liao and Shield, acquiring several weapons, and even learning “Silkworm,” she had undergone a complete transformation. She believed she was ready to face the Auntie from 704 again. She hadn’t expected that Auntie 704 had also undergone a massive change.

In short, while she had leveled up, Auntie had leveled up too.

She couldn’t beat Auntie before, and now it looked like it would still be an uphill battle.

It wasn’t that Xia Mi hadn’t considered playing the game before entering the apartment. However, time was becoming increasingly tight. The building was set to explode in a few hours, and she no longer felt as composed as she had before.

Secondly, her laptop’s battery was running low. She could only play while charging. If she encountered danger, fleeing with a power cord attached would be inconvenient. In a moment of desperation, she might very well end up abandoning the laptop to escape.

Xia Mi was so stingy that the mere thought of losing her laptop made her heart ache more than a knife wound.

If she were absolutely certain her life was at risk, she could bring herself to part with the laptop. But hadn’t she become stronger? She could hover in mid-air and spin seven hundred and twenty degrees now! What was there to fear?

“I’ve let it go to my head,” Xia Mi sighed, thinking to herself.

Thinking back to the first time she faced Auntie, she had been incredibly cautious, minding every step and every detail, not even daring to open the door crack too wide. Now, she had swaggered right into Auntie’s home. It truly was arrogant and conceited of her.

To commit the ideological error of pride and complacency before even officially joining the system, how could she shoulder great responsibilities in the future? She had to keep this lesson firmly in mind.

Of course, it was too early for a post-mortem. The most important thing right now was resolving the crisis.

She couldn’t let go of her weapons.

Because the entryway was quite narrow, Xia Mi had been dragging the axe she carried on her shoulder behind her as she entered, otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to turn around.

After sensing the danger inside, Xia Mi tried to lift the axe into her hands. To her surprise, when she gave it a tug, it didn’t budge.

Xia Mi stole a quick glance down. Her axe was being absorbed by the flesh-colored floor. It was gradually turning into a fluid, the sharp axe head becoming soft and pliable. Even if she picked it up, it would be useless junk.

Noticing Xia Mi’s gaze, Auntie said apologetically, “Xiao Xia, I’m so sorry. I have a child at home, and I’m afraid of him playing with things he shouldn’t. I don’t usually dare leave sharp blades around the house. I keep things like fruit knives and kitchen knives locked up. I was afraid Xiao Pi would insist on playing with your axe and hurt himself, so I put it away for you. You don’t mind, do you?”

Xia Mi said with a face full of sorrow, “That was a housewarming gift from my boyfriend. We’re about to break up, so that might have been the last thing he ever gave me.”

Auntie replied, “Is that so? Then I can rest easy. Why keep things from an ex-boyfriend anyway, right?”

Xia Mi nodded painfully. “You’re right, Auntie.”

As she spoke, she let go of the axe handle and crossed her arms, clutching the machine gun tightly, fearing this weapon would also be destroyed by Auntie.

She could throw away an axe from a boyfriend, but she couldn’t lose equipment issued by her unit! This was public property, and every item was accounted for. Xia Mi had heard that police officers must never lose their guns, every bullet used had to be registered and explained. Losing a gun was a major offense.

She had to protect this gun.

Fortunately, Auntie didn’t seem to care about the gun. Instead, she called out to the empty air in the room, “Xiao Pi, Sister Xiao Xia is here to tutor you. Aren’t you happy?”

Xia Mi didn’t see anyone.

Auntie, however, acted as if she were listening intently to someone, even responding, “Your English grades are already so terrible, you really need the extra help. Since your Sister Xiao Xia has the time, hurry up and say ‘thank you’.”

Xia Mi guessed that Xiao Pi had said “thank you,” so she followed Auntie’s line of sight and said, “No need for thanks, it’s the least I can do.”

Auntie looked at Xia Mi with a strange expression. “Xiao Xia, you have such a good temper. He’s cursing at you.”

It was fine. She hadn’t heard it anyway.

Xiao Pi was even more elusive than before. Previously, she could at least hear his voice, but now she couldn’t sense him at all.

Xia Mi had pressed the detection button on her watch the moment she entered. Exactly one minute had passed.

The watch vibrated twice, indicating there were two life forms with normal vital signs within two meters.

This proved Xiao Pi was indeed in the room, and that the mother and son had not been parasitized by the Zhuo.

Then why on earth had they become so powerful?

The axe that had accompanied Xia Mi all this way and cleaved through hundreds of Zhuo-corrupted humans had completely turned into a puddle of soft mud. It transformed into a glob of something like asphalt, grey and stuck to the floor, growing smaller and smaller as if it were being digested.

There was a desk in the room with a chair and a wooden stool in front of it. Xia Mi gave a dry laugh and spoke to the air. “Xiao Pi, sit down and take out your English book and your exam papers. Let me see how your foundation is.”

An English textbook and a crumpled, then smoothed-out exam paper floated up in front of the desk. Xia Mi picked up the paper and saw a line of crooked handwriting: [If you dare force me to study, I’ll kill you!]

After not seeing him for a dozen hours, Xiao Pi had become even more irritable.

In the game, this mother and son hadn’t been like this.

In the game, “Xiao Mi’s” greatest enemy on the 7th floor was Sister Li. Sister Li had suddenly lost control and abruptly strangled “Xiao Mi” with her hair.

After reloading her save, “Xiao Mi” killed Sister Li before she could lose control.

In the game, Auntie 704’s belly was even larger, so large it could cover her entire body, leaving only her head exposed.

“Xiao Mi” had blown her head off with a single shot, only to be killed inexplicably afterward. It was the invisible Xiao Pi seeking revenge for his mother.

Trying again, “Xiao Mi” used the angle of her previous death to find the invisible person’s position and harvested his life with an axe.

Because she had killed the two corrupted beings in the game, Xia Mi hadn’t played it again. She believed she already had their weaknesses fully grasped.

But she had made a major mistake: game time synchronized with reality. When she played the game, it was between five and seven in the morning. Now, another six or seven hours had passed.

The game showed the strength of the 704 pair from this morning, not their current strength.

The game had even given Xia Mi a hint, it told her that Auntie 704’s belly was growing larger, but Xia Mi had failed to notice the significance of that detail.

Xia Mi maintained her composure, looking at Xiao Pi’s 27-point exam paper and lying through her teeth. “Auntie, Xiao Pi’s grades are actually okay. He has a lot of room for improvement.”

At the mention of grades, the woman secretly wiped away a tear. “You don’t have to lie to me,” she said. “Xiao Pi went to a rural primary school until the fifth grade. His grades were actually quite good back then. But after he transferred to the city school in fifth grade, we realized that all the city kids were taking extra tutoring. Even in fifth grade, they were already studying middle school material. Xiao Pi’s ranking plummeted to the bottom of the class instantly. Ever since then, his grades have only gotten worse.”

“After he started middle school, his teachers called me many times. They told me that if Xiao Pi kept going like this, he definitely wouldn’t get into high school. They told me that as a parent, I had to take his education seriously. I… how much more serious can I be? I scraped together the money to sign him up for tutoring classes, but he just won’t learn!”

“Why are you so disappointing? Waaaah…”

The woman began to cry hysterically.

As she wept, the entire room began to convulse, twitching like a stomach spasming from a crying fit.

Xia Mi felt a stickiness beneath her feet. Looking down, she saw that the shoe covers of her Protective Suit were melting away like wax.

She quickly stepped onto the small bundle she was using as an ammo pouch, using it as a platform to protect her Protective Suit.

Just as she finished doing this, Xia Mi felt something hard brush against the waist of her suit. She dodged instinctively just as a sharp dagger appeared out of thin air, piercing through the sturdy material of her Protective Suit.

If the suit hadn’t deflected it slightly, allowing Xia Mi to dodge in time, that strike would have likely plunged straight into her right kidney.

The invisible hand tried to pull the dagger out for another thrust, but Xia Mi wasn’t about to let that happen. With a quick eye and a steady hand, she snatched the dagger away.

As she grabbed the blade, Xia Mi felt the touch of a hand.

At the same moment, Xiao Pi’s eerie voice drifted into her ear: “My mom is crying. You’re not allowed to bully my mom!”

All her life, Xia Mi had hated classmates who played the snitch, but in this moment, she had no choice but to become one. She immediately shouted, “Auntie, your Xiao Pi is playing with a knife!”

The woman stopped crying and looked at the dagger in Xia Mi’s hand.

Xia Mi quickly added, “I’m confiscating this knife. I’ll give it back to him after the tutoring session is over.”

With that, she hurriedly shoved the dagger into her coat. This was a weapon she had fought hard to seize, she couldn’t let anyone take it back.

The woman suddenly began punching the air, shouting as she swung, “Why are you playing with knives again? Tell me! Where did you get this? Your father is working in Africa, and you’re being so disappointing! Waaaah…”

She beat the air as she cried, and cried as she beat the air.

Xia Mi felt a twinge of pity for Xiao Pi as she watched. She couldn’t help but advise, “Auntie, hitting him like this won’t work.”

The woman stopped her hands and looked at Xia Mi with expectation. “Then how should I hit him?”

Xia Mi guessed that Xiao Pi must be glaring at her with pure hatred right now.

She offered her advice: “Let’s get one thing straight, I’m not an education major. In my opinion, hitting a child should only be used as a deterrent, it shouldn’t be a regular occurrence. If you’re constantly hysterical and screaming, the child’s threshold will keep rising over time, and these methods will become useless.”

“Educating a child should be based on encouragement, with pressure as a secondary tool. But again, I’m not an expert. If I’m wrong, don’t hold it against me.”

“Then what should I do?” the woman asked.

Xia Mi said, “First, you need to open the door. Step out of this closed-off world, make more friends, and build good relationships with people your own age, then…”

Before she could finish, the woman let out a scream and hugged the invisible figure. “No, we can’t go out! Everyone is bullying us, just a mother and her son! His father isn’t in the country, and he’s a country kid¹. It’s full of bad people out there, bad people!”

The woman turned a vicious gaze toward Xia Mi. “Xiao Xia, why don’t you just stay here? Stay until Xiao Pi’s grades in every subject reach 100, then you can leave, okay?”

The wall behind Xia Mi suddenly expanded and contracted. Although she was still a meter away from it, the wall moved through thin air to appear behind her, pinning her against its surface.

Caught off guard, Xia Mi was bound by the wall. Her body sank into something incredibly soft, leaving her unable to exert any strength.

Once Xia Mi was trapped, the woman tilted her head, listening intently as if someone were speaking to her.

The woman nodded, then said to Xia Mi, “Xiao Xia, I’m sorry to put you through this. ‘It’ told me that ‘It’ only wants your life. Once you’re dead, ‘It’ will pour all the knowledge in your brain into Xiao Pi’s head. When that happens, Xiao Pi will suddenly have the knowledge of a university student. No one will ever bully him again, and his teachers will love him. When his dad calls, I’ll finally have some good news to tell him.”

“It”!

Xia Mi had assumed the woman was listening to Xiao Pi, but clearly, she wasn’t!

Who was “It”?

Could it be the “Zhuo” that had been hiding behind the scenes all along?

Was it possible that it had been hiding on the 7th floor this entire time?

Translator’s Notes