Being the Wife of a Fluffy Creature [Quick Transmigration] - Chapter 32

Chapter 32: The Second World (2)

Something was moving in the yard, and there were quite a few of them.

Wu Yao held his breath and listened carefully. The movement was strange; it didn’t sound like footsteps as much as it did the sound of animals crawling.

The two large yellow guard dogs were very fierce and would bark wildly at the scent of a fox. For them to be this quiet, it was either a large predator or…

Recalling the strange statue enshrined in Laicai’s house, Wu Yao’s heart sank.

Whatever was outside, it wasn’t something a five-year-old could handle. They had a clear goal and were heading straight for the backyard, obviously having heard his previous voice.

The front yard was dangerous, and the wooden door leading to the chicken and duck rearing area in the back, as well as the short door to the dry latrine, were too old; they would creak at the slightest touch. Wu Yao was trapped in this small patch of open ground, with very limited places to hide.

There was a plastic bucket and a few ragged sacks in the back of the tricycle—it could hide a small boy. Wu Yao tentatively reached out, but ultimately shook his head helplessly. He was too short and small now to nimbly flip into the back of the cart, and the movement would surely create a significant disturbance.

The system rubbed its hands nervously. “What do we do! Think of something, that thing is coming!”

What to do? Wu Yao wanted to know too!

No wonder there was a chamber pot in the temporary dad’s room. The people in Laicai’s house knew the yard wasn’t peaceful at night, so they settled everything indoors after dark. If so, why didn’t they lock Laicai’s room? Why let him sleep in a bedroom alone? There was only one “ancestor-bearer” in the family; how did a son-favoring father dare to take such a huge risk, betting that a five-year-old wouldn’t run out in the middle of the night?

His gaze swept everywhere. Wu Yao bit his teeth and decided to take a gamble. He hugged the little fox tightly and squeezed into the gap between the tricycle and the wall.

The system looked around. “No, no! Anything coming through the door can see right here if they just look down. Why don’t you hide behind the door?”

“Where I hide isn’t important; it’s just going through the motions.” Wu Yao thought for a moment. “Close your eyes.”

“Who? Me?”

“Yes, close them and don’t look out.”

While instructing the system, Wu Yao fumbled to cover the little fox’s eyes, only to realize when he touched its face that it already had them shut tight.

“I’m not like you, I don’t need to—”

The iron gate suddenly emitted a series of creaks.

Wu Yao immediately shouted: “Quick!”

The system shuddered in fear and reflexively covered its eyes.

“Don’t open them no matter what, and for safety’s sake, don’t talk to me.”

Wu Yao crouched on the ground against the wall, covering his ears with his eyes shut tight. Wu Boyi, who had been struggling constantly just moments ago, was now lying quietly in his arms, its warm, soft little body trembling as if it were terrified.

“Thump—thump—”

“Shasha—”

“Click! Click-click!”

As the iron gate opened, all sorts of weird noises emerged near Wu Yao’s ears. A cold wind blew against the back of Wu Yao’s hand. Something had found him; it circled the tricycle and stood beside him, inspecting him closely.

The thumping sound began to approach. It walked across the cement, stepped onto the cart bed, and finally landed beside Wu Yao with a “thump.”

Gradually, all the sounds vanished. Only the intermittent chirping of insects could be heard in the silent yard. The system, eyes covered and unable to see, wanted to ask if the monsters were gone but didn’t dare speak for fear of ruining things.

A drop of cold sweat slid down Wu Yao’s forehead. The monsters hadn’t left; they were right beside him, staring intensely. Why? Had he guessed wrong? Was not looking and not listening not the way to save his life?

But when a little boy encounters danger, what else can he do besides cover his head and play ostrich? How can a five-year-old control himself? Moreover, he had mentioned during dinner that he wanted to play in the yard. If this was a dead end where Laicai was certain to die if he went out at night, why hadn’t the man added more protective measures? Why didn’t Laicai’s bedroom even have a single lock?

Before Wu Yao could think further, he suddenly felt a cold hand slip into his shirt, lightly scratching at his chest. Then, his arms felt lighter; the little fox had been snatched away.

Wu Yao’s expression darkened. What was the difference between stealing Wu Boyi and stealing his wallet! If he couldn’t make money from this job, he might as well be killed directly!

Relying on his senses, Wu Yao yanked back fiercely, grabbing the little fox’s hind legs and refusing to let go. That thing hadn’t expected the boy to resist; it lost its grip for a moment, and he actually snatched it back. Wu Yao hugged the little fox tightly, changing his posture to shield it beneath him.

The fox, which had been shivering, gradually stopped. It pressed close to the boy’s chest, its wet nose nuzzling his palm.

Hands began to stroke Wu Yao’s back, pulling forcefully at his arms. A raspy voice rang out in his ear, so close it felt as if the head were pressed against the ground.

“Deserves to die.”

“The source of calamity deserves to die.”

“Calamity, calamity—”

Wu Boyi began to tremble again.

Wu Yao gently massaged the tips of its ears, frowning in confusion. The things surrounding him should be ghosts—why did ghosts call a fox spirit the “source of calamity”? Was their death related to Wu Boyi?

The ghosts were persistent, muttering incessantly like they were chanting. Although they didn’t seem to intend to harm Wu Yao, he grew colder and colder, and his limbs gradually stiffened.

Just then, a man’s terrified scream rang out in the yard. “Laicai! Laicai!!!”

“You low-born scum dare touch my son! Watch out, tomorrow I’ll call a Master to exorcise you pests!”

Those ghosts didn’t fear the “Master”; instead, like sharks smelling blood, they abandoned Laicai and rushed toward the man. The rustling sounds suddenly grew louder, all sprinting toward the front yard.

Wu Yao scrambled out immediately, clutching the little fox and charging toward the bedroom, his short legs moving at their absolute limit. This time he opened his eyes. Under the moonlight, he saw everything in the yard clearly.

The man stood before the east bedroom door, holding the statue with both hands and chanting something. Below the steps, it was densely packed with monsters. Unlike the monsters in Paradise Island, these were more like the ghosts and ghouls found in folklore and urban legends.

There was a female ghost hanging upside down like a planted onion, a male ghost with six heads crawling on all fours, a child ghost covered in scales slithering along, a composite ghost stacked on shoulders like a human pyramid…

Dozens of ghosts were blocked by the statue, constantly scratching at the steps and letting out shrill, ear-piercing cries. The man, who had been shaking like a sieve, relaxed once he saw the ghosts couldn’t touch him.

He held the statue high. “Scum, aren’t you very powerful! Come up if you have the guts! You bastards dared to touch my son—sooner or later I’ll make it so you can’t even be ghosts!”

The taunting skill was maxed out and highly effective; the vengeful spirits howled in rage.

Wu Yao had already hidden back in the room, standing on his tiptoes to peer out the window. The system patted its chest and sighed. “My goodness, your Transmigration Company really plays for keeps. Ordinary dungeons in the Infinite Flow department only have one or two ghosts, not like you guys where every time… Holy crap! He blew it!”

Wu Yao’s eyes widened.

The stone statue wasn’t light, and the man had drunk a lot before bed. He lost his grip, and the statue slammed onto the ground with a “bang,” the neck snapping and the head rolling away. The invisible barrier blocking the spirits vanished. The man’s laughter stopped abruptly as the tide of ghosts instantly submerged him.

Amidst the screams, flesh and blood splattered. The sound of bones being crunched and chewed made one’s scalp tingle. The spirits departed satisfied after their meal, leaving only a broken statue and a few blood-stained pieces of clothing at the door.

Wu Yao stood frozen on the spot.

Eh?

The system held it in for a long time before saying: “What is all this? It’s a total mess. He died so miserably but so suddenly, I didn’t get any satisfaction out of it at all.”

Wu Yao also wanted to curse. Fortunately, after going to Paradise Island, he had gained some understanding of the difficulty of this new job. No matter how bizarre things were, as long as the pay was enough, he could accept anything.

Wu Yao didn’t have the slightest feeling about the man’s death. What the man cared about wasn’t “Laicai” but his legacy. If Laicai were a girl, the man wouldn’t have blinked even if she died in front of him. If he hadn’t died today, Wu Yao would have finished him off sooner or later, or else the two sisters would have been killed by their own father eventually.

The crisis was resolved, and the scumbag was offline; Wu Yao finally relaxed. He opened the side door and looked; Zhaodi and Pandi were still lying on the floor pretending to sleep, neither wanting to escape nor intending to go out and check on their dead father.

In the end, only Wu Yao—the one who wanted to kill him most—passed through the middle room to the east side, making a special trip to confirm he was truly dead.

The little fox didn’t care at all about what happened outside; it was lying on the bed gnawing on a snack sausage. It growled as it bit, trying to intimidate the wrapper. Wu Yao brought a small stool over to help. The fox, which was almost fainting from hunger, was extremely protective of its food and hissed fiercely at him.

“Don’t worry, it’s all yours.”

The moment Wu Yao opened the wrapper, the fox snatched the bag and hid under the desk. Watching it eat ravenously, Wu Yao felt a bit sentimental. “Boyi” had almost become a fox immortal before; after becoming a fox spirit, it took several monks and Taoists joining forces to beat it into this state. A former big shot now reduced to fighting a child for a snack sausage—it was truly pathetic.

With its current fragile little body, Wu Yao was worried it might get sick from eating human food. He asked the system for a kidney and threw it to Wu Boyi while squatting by the table. The fox looked at him warily.

Wu Yao wiped the bloodstains off his hands. “Eat. I just pulled it out of my dad’s corpse. It’s fresh.”

The fox cub stopped hissing and stared at him blankly with the snack in its mouth. Aren’t foxes supposed to be smart and cunning? Why did his target look so dim-witted?

Wu Yao made a clicking sound. “Just kidding. I’m not an ordinary person; I’m a monster who can conjure organs out of thin air. There’s plenty of kidney for you to eat.”

The fox’s eyes grew rounder, looking even more derpy.

The fox with -10 Sanity was full of nothing but hatred. Wu Yao knew it didn’t trust him, so he didn’t keep staring. He took a piece of kidney to the kitchen to prepare a midnight snack. It didn’t matter that the dad was dead; there was a vegetable garden and he had organs, enough to feed the two children while doing the mission.

The system was organizing data, intending to apply for another raise when they got back. After editing for a long time, it asked Wu Yao what had happened earlier. Wu Yao shook his head; tonight’s events were full of contradictions. There were too many suspicious points, and he had no clear ideas yet.

Doing anything with this body was inconvenient. Wu Yao dragged the small stool around the kitchen for over two hours before finishing the meal. He couldn’t carry the heavy iron ladle, so he called Zhaodi to serve the stir-fried kidney while he brought the smashed cucumbers to the table.

The girls had set the table for two and stood quietly by without moving. Wu Yao signaled for them to come and eat.

Pandi forced a stiff smile. “Brother eat first, we’ll eat in a bit.”

Wu Yao reflexively looked toward the east bedroom. He frowned slightly, swallowed the words at the tip of his tongue, and said instead: “Papa isn’t here right now. I’m the only man in the house, so I have the final say. You all have to listen to me.”

Zhaodi kept her head down, her chin almost touching her neck. “Brother eat first, we’ll eat in a bit.”

“You aren’t listening to me!”

“We’ll eat in a bit.”

The dim yellow light shone on the girls’ faces. Their eyes were as numb and hollow as before, their mouths repeating “brother eat first” over and over. It was as if their dead father were currently sitting at the dining table. Looking at the bowls and chopsticks placed opposite him, Wu Yao felt a chill through his whole body.

He had stayed by the “silly dog’s” side for too long in the last world, facing that harmless face every day, causing Wu Yao to almost forget the most basic survival logic. When a situation is unclear, one must never be blindly kind.

Wu Yao dumped all the food onto the floor. “I have no appetite.”

Before leaving, he saw the two girls kneeling on the floor, licking up the food bit by bit. Wu Yao watched this scene expressionlessly.

So that’s how it was. If he had known there wasn’t a single normal person in this house, he wouldn’t have wasted a good piece of Brother System’s kidney. From now on, he wouldn’t care about anyone except the mission target.

Just as he crossed back through the middle room to the west bedroom, Wu Yao heard scratching at the door. He opened the door warily to find the little fox with a mouth full of blood; it seemed it couldn’t resist eating the kidney after all.

Wu Boyi tilted its head to look him up and down, then looked behind him. “Wuwu-wa?”

Wu Yao sighed. “Don’t understand.”

“Ying-ying?”

“Still don’t understand.”

“Awoo-wang! En-wa… en-en-ah?”

“No need to switch vocalizations. I only understand human speech.”

The fox cub sat upright on the floor and nodded seriously. Wu Yao never thought he’d see such a solemn expression on a fox’s face. He couldn’t help but pet Wu Boyi. “You’re clearly a fox baby, why do you look more like a military dog?”

Wu Boyi ignored his words, bit his sleeve, and pulled him into the room. Its thin little body circled around his legs, its big tail brushing against his skin, looking somewhat charming and cute.

Wu Yao didn’t know what kind of mental struggle Wu Boyi had gone through while he was gone, but it had specifically left him one and a half of the three snack sausages, and half of the raw kidney. Seeing that the boy wasn’t moving, it nudged the kidney and used its blood-stained mouth to scratch on the table: “Friend, eat.”

The writing was crooked but barely legible.

Wu Yao pointed at himself. “I saved you, so we’re friends?”

Wu Boyi jerked its head toward the kidney and wrote two more words: “Monster.”

It tapped its paws back and forth between “Monster” and “Friend.” Wu Yao understood its meaning. He was also a monster, so they were friends.

Blood was hard to wipe off, so Wu Yao found paper and a pen for the fox to hold in its mouth to write. Wu Boyi stuck its butt out and struggled for a long time: “Monster, friend. Human, liar, dangerous, run.”

Wu Yao propped up his chin. “What happened to you? Why do you call humans liars?”

The fox didn’t answer, instead drawing circles around the word “run” with great effort. Wu Yao fell silent for a long while, suddenly remembering that back in the backyard, those ghosts had also scratched something on his chest.

He pulled up his shirt. By the light, he saw words written all over his fair chest.

Run, run, run. It was densely packed with “run.”

The sound of squeaking friction echoed in the quiet room. The draft paper had already been shredded by Wu Boyi, and the word “run” fell off the paper and was pushed in front of Wu Yao by the fox.

Run.

Wu Yao’s brow furrowed. The one in life-threatening danger wasn’t the mission target, but him—the employee. Even though there were no ghosts, only a cute little fox, the system was too scared to make a sound.

Wu Yao wiped away his smile and lowered his voice. “It’s not safe at night. I’ll leave at dawn.”

The fox cub let out a soft whine and bit his wrist. The system was terrified. “Should we leave tonight?”

Wu Yao’s brain was a bit messy. He rubbed his brow forcefully and started packing his bags. Would the fatal crisis descend tonight? No, something wasn’t right.

The fox sat at the door waiting for a long time but didn’t see Wu Yao come to open it. It turned its head. The boy had stopped his movements at some point and was looking at it scrutinizingly.

“Foxes are best at deceiving people. You aren’t lying to me, are you?”

“Ying?”

Wu Yao pondered for a long time, then suddenly let out a helpless laugh. “I saved your life and gave you food. I don’t understand why you’d want to lie to me.”

The lie was seen through. The anxiety on the fox’s face vanished instantly. It stopped pretending and arched its back, growling lowly at him.

The system looked at this scene in confusion. “Lying to you?”

“Yes, lying to me. It doesn’t trust me at all. Whether I’m human or monster, it doubts my motives. Those ghosts won’t hurt me, but there’s definitely more than just them wandering the village at night. It wants to lure me out to kill me.”

Looking at the guarded fox, Wu Yao didn’t feel any anger or sadness. It had been tricked from being a fox immortal into a fox spirit, and then further screwed over and heavily injured, reduced to being unable to even beat a rooster. If the mission target had suffered so much and still didn’t learn its lesson, easily trusting a stranger it had only met once, then Wu Yao would have a real headache.

Changning Xiaoyin Village was full of hidden dangers. Between a fox that could be lured away by a small favor and a fox that knew how to scheme, the latter was more reassuring.

There wasn’t a single normal person in Laicai’s house. There was no point in pretending to be a five-year-old child in front of the fox; it would only make him look more suspicious. Wu Yao put away his innocent child-like gaze, walked up to the fox, and stroked its little head.

“You think I have ulterior motives, believing I knew all along that the ghosts wouldn’t hurt me and that I was just acting like a good person. You suspect my appearance tonight is a carefully planned conspiracy to squeeze every last bit of value from you.”

“You want to live, you want revenge, so you must kill me.”

The fox cub looked at him coldly.

Wu Yao’s fingertip lightly tapped the corner of its eye. “You’re still a bit green. Killing someone with deception isn’t easy; you have to deceive yourself first before you can trick others.”

The silly dog hadn’t retained memories of the cycles; for him, being abandoned by the gambler was his only encounter with betrayal. But the fox remembered everything. Every deception had left a bloody scar in the depths of its soul. No one treated it well; everyone lied to it.

The experiences of Wu Shiyi and Wu Boyi were different. The former could still maintain integrity, while the latter’s sanity was already teetering. Looking at it, Wu Yao felt as if he were seeing his past self. The difference was that he wasn’t a mission target; no transmigrator would suddenly appear to give him a hand.

Wu Yao sighed softly. “You exposed too many problems. Is this your first time lying? You’re too impatient. You should have waited a few more days, let me trust you completely before lying to me. Or were you worried that if you stayed with me for too long, you wouldn’t be able to harden your heart enough to deceive me?”

Wu Boyi didn’t make a sound, its whole body bristling.

Wu Yao sat down in front of the fox. “You’re a clever fox but not a qualified liar, whereas I happen to be very good at deceiving people.”

“I want to escape the village, and you want revenge on the people here. Why don’t we cooperate? I’m too weak and can’t beat anyone; you’re too honest and can’t trick anyone. You help me bite people, and I’ll help you trick them. One provides the teeth and the other provides the brain. What do you think?”

The fox looked at him with a complex gaze. Wu Yao knew it was scared of being lied to and needed someone to pull it along. He hugged Wu Boyi and brought his neck within its strike range.

“If you want to kill me, you can bite down directly. But I hope you consider it carefully—you only get one chance, my little fox.”

“You can’t complete your revenge alone, and I can’t escape the village by myself. You need me, just as I need you.”