Chapter 41

With that it gave a loud meow, and covered its face with a paw, as if in belated fright.

"Ugh… I go along with you far too much. It never crossed my mind at the time — I just let you do it. Thank god… thank god nothing went wrong."

Hearing this, Liu Zhiyi felt she'd taken a real risk too, but then a thought struck her.

"You shouldn't have told me about it. If I hadn't known, maybe I wouldn't have realized…"

"Collective thinking isn't something you can dodge just by not knowing."

The cat shook its head.

"It binds every player, even a clueless newcomer."

Liu Zhiyi: "That's true — otherwise a prop like the Tang Monk Meat wouldn't exist."

Cat: "By the way, keep a closer eye on your grandma these days. I have a feeling she may go into the next dungeon soon."

Though she'd had some presentiment, Liu Zhiyi still found it hard to accept.

"That soon…"

Cat: "Hard to say. Get ready in advance. I'll be away from you for a while after this…"

Liu Zhiyi: "Huh? Why can't you stay with me?"

The words came out too fast, without thought, and only once they were out did Liu Zhiyi realize they weren't very polite — too much taking it for granted.

"…I don't mean it like that. I'm just concerned for you."

Cat: "It's fine. I have to get back to the bureau — I've been off work a while, and there's business to see to first."

Liu Zhiyi: "Oh, oh — sorry. I'll be all right here."

The cat sighed, looking rather uneasy.

"Are you and your grandma going back to your old home?"

Liu Zhiyi turned to look at her grandmother, torn.

"The way things are now, who knows if stepping out won't mean another dungeon… but my mom's still at home, she can't be left like that forever."

And besides, everyone at the old home had already been arranged; explaining it all would be a bother.

Cat: "Are there many people at your old home?"

Liu Zhiyi hadn't been back in years; she dimly remembered that the last time, there'd been only a few old folk.

Liu Zhiyi: "Not many, probably. A lot of young people go work in the big cities now."

Cat: "Then I'd suggest you go back to the old home."

Liu Zhiyi's mind raced, and she caught its meaning at once.

"The fewer people, the lower a dungeon's difficulty?"

Cat: "Right. You felt the difficulty of a multiplayer dungeon yourself. Honestly, if Teacher Yang hadn't been so strong-willed, you'd have had real trouble killing her to clear it — and that was only a multiplayer dungeon just budding."

Liu Zhiyi nodded.

"My grandma's safe room doesn't seem to have shown up yet."

Cat: "Good. I'd suggest going back to the old home — at least you can pin the dungeon to home ground you know. That way you won't be like this time, going into a dungeon on someone else's turf, in a hospital you didn't know."

Liu Zhiyi thought it over carefully and found it made a lot of sense.

A dungeon was coming sooner or later anyway; better a place she knew, where she could bring the danger down too.

Liu Zhiyi: "All right, I'll stick with the original plan."

Her mother had been kept at home three days now; from here she only had to wait for her grandmother to wake and be a little better before going back to the village.

And her grandmother had picked up noticeably since coming out of the dungeon.

Even her snoring in her sleep was a good deal softer.

Liu Zhiyi: "A dungeon really does make a person's body better…"

Cat: "Or how would a dungeon keep anyone?"

"You still haven't told me how you turned into a cat." A rare, easy moment to chat, and Liu Zhiyi ruffled the cat's head.

The cat's head swayed left and right under her hand, but its speech came out haltingly.

"Ah… that…"

It usually launched into a whole speech the moment it opened its mouth; the sudden hemming and hawing made Liu Zhiyi curious.

"What is it?"

—Swish.

The curtain was yanked open.

Shen Songyue: "Because it's too awful. It's afraid you'll be upset if it tells you."

Liu Zhiyi: "Huh?"

The cat huffed. "You just had to add that, didn't you?"

"Oh-ho, quite a temper on you now." Shen Songyue smiled. "Little Liu's not a child. Hide it now and you'll have to tell her eventually — help me carry my sunglasses over in your mouth."

The cat turned, rump toward Shen Songyue.

"Get them yourself."

Shen Songyue: "Suffering for the sake of pride."

Liu Zhiyi slipped off her shoes, stepped onto the bedside cabinet, and took the sunglasses hooked on the curtain.

"Can you tell me?"

Shen Songyue took the sunglasses and glanced at the cat.

"Thanks."

Shen Songyue: "In short, this cat by your side — it wasn't always like this. Our bureau may look harmonious, but the whole game world is full of factions and disagreements. It clashed with some people over ideas, and got 'dismembered' inside a dungeon. If not for a special prop, it'd have died in there long ago."

Liu Zhiyi said, shocked, "Didn't you say you can't hurt or kill people inside a dungeon?"

Shen Songyue: "For most people, that's so. But haven't you done something similar yourself?"

"You gave Big Sister Ma the phone and didn't feel it was wrong." Shen Songyue pointed at the cat. "The people who killed it didn't feel it was wrong either."

Liu Zhiyi: "How can you kill someone just over a difference in ideas?"

Shen Songyue smiled.

"Because everyone wants to save this world, so of course they'll clear the stumbling blocks from the road. Honestly, if it weren't for our different standpoints, I could understand them too."

Cat: "Hey!"

Shen Songyue waved a hand.

"You can't keep shielding her. I think she'd better recognize the cruelty of this game sooner rather than later."

Liu Zhiyi: "What's your idea — your side's?"

The cat turned its head and traded a look with Shen Songyue.

Shen Songyue: "It's—"

"You haven't been through enough dungeons yet." The cat cut Shen Songyue off. "Some things, if I tell you, might affect your later dungeons."

Cat: "I want your ideas about dungeons, and how you feel them, to be your own insight — not something we led you to."

Liu Zhiyi was taken aback, a little moved, and before she could speak she saw Shen Songyue raise an eyebrow and glance at the cat; her features hardly shifted, yet a trace of scorn came through.

Liu Zhiyi felt the relationship between the cat and Shen Songyue was rather intriguing.

It seemed that on ideas, the cat and Shen Songyue disagreed too.

The cat put an end to the subject. "Let's not talk about my business anymore. The most important thing now is seeing to your mother's affairs."

Shen Songyue gave a small laugh, turned, and left the ward.

By then there was no one in the ward but her grandmother and the cat.

Cat: "If you have a question, go dig through the game center's posts. Once you enter a dungeon the game center won't open — you can use that to tell whether you've gone in."

Liu Zhiyi nodded and nodded.

Cat: "By the way, props you don't want you can also put up for sale in the game center."

Liu Zhiyi thought of the phone.

"I want to sell the phone, but I feel this prop's function hurts people…"

Cat: "There are far stranger props out there; yours is nothing. And that one's easy to get you struck by lightning if you use it badly."

Liu Zhiyi thought that was fair enough, and simply opened the game center and felt her way through how to list a prop for sale.

Cat: "Best not to trade privately — go to an official designated venue. There's a cut taken in fees, but it wins on safety."

Liu Zhiyi: "So what price should I roughly set?"

The cat paused. "Twelve thousand, say."

Liu Zhiyi: "That much?"

Cat: "Props aren't so easy to come by inside a dungeon."

Liu Zhiyi took a few photos of the phone.

Cat: "Screenshot the prop's function description, but don't spell out where it came from — tell the buyer only after the deal goes through."

After that long speech, the cat let out a long sigh.

"I'm uneasy. I won't be by your side — what will you do in your next dungeon…"

Liu Zhiyi picked the cat up. Though she had no real confidence about the coming dungeon either, the cat had done all it could and then some; she couldn't ask for more.

Liu Zhiyi: "It's all right. Even if you stayed with me now, sooner or later there'll come a day I have to face a dungeon alone."

---

"You facing a dungeon alone is still better than dragging along a burden like me."

Her grandmother's voice broke into Liu Zhiyi's memories.

"Don't think like that, Grandma." Liu Zhiyi turned. "Family is meant to hold each other up."

Her grandmother shook her head listlessly, turned on her side to touch her mother's hand where it lay on the bench to the right, and murmured.

"If only it had been me who died."

Liu Zhiyi could only sigh; old people were quick to sink into a dead end of thought, and all she could do was try to shift her attention.

She raised a hand and pointed out the car window.

"Grandma, look — isn't that the Zhuan Temple?"

A few years back her grandmother had rebuilt a little temple with the villagers, not big, red-roofed, like a pavilion.

Liu Zhiyi didn't know what the temple was for; she'd only heard from her mother that it was the "zhuan temple," and she wasn't even sure which zhuan, since it was rural dialect and her mother couldn't say which character it was either.

The moment she saw the temple, her grandmother perked up.

"I donated five hundred in your name too — it's got your name on it."

Liu Zhiyi was taken aback.

The car drove up the winding cement road toward the Zhuan Temple, the weeds by the roadside lush enough to all but swallow the little red-roofed temple.

From a distance, all she could make out was what looked like a black stone tablet inside.

Grandma: "I donated a thousand for your mom too, thinking the Land God might watch over you both."

Seeing the subject about to circle back to her mother, Liu Zhiyi changed it at once.

Liu Zhiyi: "I never even knew the village had a Land God temple. Tell me about it, Grandma — it's been so long since I heard you tell a story."

Grandma: "If I'm to tell one, all I've got are stories of monsters and ghosts. Weren't you the one most scared of them?"

Liu Zhiyi had been a handful as a child, and her grandmother, minding the children then, believed in scaring them into line, so she wouldn't keep running off into the hills.

Come bedtime, her grandmother would tell ghost stories, vivid and full of voice.

Liu Zhiyi couldn't sleep at night to begin with, and hearing these stories, she was too frightened to sleep at all.

Liu Zhiyi: "But I'm grown up now, aren't I? Tell me one."

Her grandmother looked up, smiling, and shook her head.

"Do you believe there are ghosts in the world, then?"

She hadn't believed it before, but after the dungeons —

Liu Zhiyi: "I do."

Grandma: "Ghosts and people aren't the same. People's voices rise and fall as they speak; when a ghost speaks, the voice is flat and straight…"

"Yindi."

A flat, level call came suddenly from the front of the car.

Liu Zhiyi spun around at once, finger pressed to her watch.

Fixing her eyes, she saw the white-haired village chief, both hands on the wheel, laughing out loud.

Grandma: "Aiya, Second Sister, at your age — how do you still love teasing children?"

Liu Zhiyi relaxed, but still not quite easy, she opened the game center for a look.

The game center still opened, which meant she hadn't entered a dungeon.

But that one bit of teasing from the chief brought something back to Liu Zhiyi.

When she'd come back to the countryside as a child, there did seem to have been an older woman who especially loved to scare the village children.

The chief gave a hee-hee laugh, showing a gum missing a front tooth.

"How long's it been since Zhizhi came back?"

"About five years."

Maybe it was love extending to all that's connected, having an old one at home.

Now, seeing a hale, spirited old person, Liu Zhiyi's mood lifted a good deal.

The chief sighed. "Good that you're back. There are no young people left in the village now."

As she spoke, the car turned onto a fork, dropping down a small side path, coming out just behind the Zhuan Temple.

Liu Zhiyi turned her head and looked over.

Behind the Zhuan Temple the weeds were thinner, leaving one corner exposed.