8 The Eighth Pig
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The question came without the slightest warning.
But this was hardly the time to discuss such things.
Several Crane-Robed Guards came strolling over with broad grins, clearly not taking Li Zhenzhen, a woman, seriously.
The scar-faced leader folded his arms, his expression fairly solemn. “No one on this island has ever dared oppose the Crane-Robed Guards. Why involve yourself in this mess, miss?”
“I just think killing two people over twenty-five taels of silver is going a little far.”
Li Zhenzhen sighed and stepped in front of the youth. “Everything can be discussed. We can repay the money little by little.”
The guard who had mentioned Immortal Qi Yan spat on the ground. “Wretched vermin. At this rate, they’d need until the Year of the Monkey to repay twenty-five taels. Why waste words on such a lowborn woman, my lord? The verdict has already been sealed. By daring to obstruct the Crane-Robed Guards, she has shown contempt for the Island Master. She deserves to die ten thousand deaths.”
“Is that so?” said Li Zhenzhen.
The guard was instantly enraged. “What kind of tone is that?”
“No particular tone. I simply happened to remember that your Island Master lives to the west.” Li Zhenzhen glanced at him. “If stopping you is disrespectful to the Island Master, then you just spat toward the west. Shouldn’t you be hacked into a thousand pieces?”
“You!”
Unable to bear it any longer, he swung his blade down at Li Zhenzhen.
Li Zhenzhen did not want to reveal to the system that she could copy other people’s abilities, so she had no choice but to endure the attack while injured.
She shrugged off her coat and twisted it around the blade, then kicked the man in the stomach.
Unfortunately, although she was fast, she lacked sufficient strength. The man merely staggered back a few steps before regaining his footing and attacking her again.
This time, Li Zhenzhen took a punch squarely.
Her back slammed hard against the butcher’s chopping block.
At once, she felt someone support her by the waist. The butcher whispered rapidly, “The butcher’s knife is beside your hand.”
“Which one?”
“The one you couldn’t take your eyes off just now.”
Li Zhenzhen fell silent.
Her fingers groped around, and sure enough, they found the handle of the knife that had haunted her dreams.
Her spirits rose at once as she looked at the hideous Crane-Robed Guard before her.
There was no need to think. A hand that had slaughtered ten thousand pigs had a will of its own.
Ten minutes later.
Blood lay everywhere before the butcher shop, its foul stench splattered from the wooden threshold all the way to the shop sign.
Three Crane-Robed Guards lay in a river of blood. One had been decapitated, another disemboweled, and the third had his throat slit with a single stroke.
Only the leader remained, sprawled limply on the ground. When he saw Li Zhenzhen’s gaze sweep toward him, he pushed himself up with both hands and fled blindly forward.
But the muddy ground had been soaked through with blood, making it slick and treacherous. After only a few steps, he trod on a severed hand and pitched forward. He turned back and stared at Li Zhenzhen in panic.
“I was only following orders! What crime have I committed? These people were worthless lives—what was wrong with killing them?”
Tears and mucus streamed down his face. Two of his teeth had been knocked loose in the earlier collision, and a foul liquid trickled from between his legs.
He screamed hysterically, “You killed so many Crane-Robed Guards for the sake of two commoners! How dare you! How could their lives possibly compare with mine?”
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Li Zhenzhen ignored him completely. She walked over, seized him by the hair, and exposed his throat.
Amid his incredulous expression, she drew the knife across his neck.
At almost the exact same moment, a blood-red screen appeared above the mission panel suspended in midair.
This time, several blood-red fireworks bloomed as well.
[Current Progress] 100%.
Congratulations! You have successfully saved the female protagonist!
Li Zhenzhen straightened, only then realizing that everyone in the street had long since fled.
The entire street was empty now, save for her, the butcher, and a cart filled with human livestock.
Li Zhenzhen picked up the register of death-row prisoners that one of the Crane-Robed Guards had dropped into the pool of blood and leafed through it casually.
She discovered that, at least over the past year, none of the commoners they had arrested had committed any serious crime.
Some had been seized for failing to repay a few taels of silver. Some had been arrested after arguing and shoving with their neighbors. And some had been taken away for… spitting toward the west.
Li Zhenzhen fell silent.
She tossed the register aside, scooped up the system, which was trembling in a corner, and walked to the prison cart. With her knife, she hacked through the chains.
“Run,” she said. “And don’t ever come back to the town.”
A few moments after she left, several muffled sobs rose behind her.
The human livestock knelt and bowed three times in the direction she had gone, then helped one another away.
—
Li Zhenzhen brought the system and the youth back to the little wooden cabin.
Snowmelt slowly thawed in the pot. Li Zhenzhen lit the fire, opened the vents, sat beside the pot, and dropped a pound of pork into it.
She had taken a butcher’s knife capable of slicing through iron without paying for it. Naturally, before leaving, she had to thank the person who had given it to her.
Unexpectedly, the butcher said nothing. He merely glanced at her in silence, then turned and took down a side of pork hanging from a roof beam.
With a swift stroke, he cut off a piece, weighed it carefully, wrapped it in a withered lotus leaf, and handed it to her.
Two pounds of tenderloin!
In an age when people ate one another, anyone able to run a butcher shop counted as a wealthy household. As expected, the man was remarkably generous.
The system had just lived through a massacre and had yet to recover.
The new “female protagonist” personally selected by the main system, however, was pale but relatively composed. Without sparing anything else a glance, she came over to help Li Zhenzhen tend the fire.
Li Zhenzhen asked, “Are you male or female, exactly?”
The “female protagonist” was silent for a moment. Then he stood and began taking off his trousers.
Before Li Zhenzhen could stop him, the youth had already pulled them off.
Li Zhenzhen raised an eyebrow.
The system had only just recovered from its emotional turmoil when it looked up and saw the “female protagonist’s”—
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“The main system is insane! Ah! It’s insane! Can’t it tell men from women? If it can’t do the job, it should get down here and let me be the main system!”
The system was so furious that it became incoherent. “What is this supposed to be? The female protagonist has something bigger than the male protagonist?”
…It was not particularly large, to be fair. Perhaps the youth simply looked too thin, making it seem astonishing by comparison.
Li Zhenzhen did not actually believe that the main system had deliberately chosen this “female protagonist.”
She had already confirmed while using the navigation function that, after losing its signal, the main system could no longer update the new data from the mission world in real time.
The notification that the story had reached thirty percent had not appeared until after the youth clashed with the Crane-Robed Guards.
It was more likely that the youth had merely happened to appear at the relevant plot point.
He had also happened to clash with the Crane-Robed Guards, and everything had unfolded exactly as it did in the female protagonist’s storyline.
In its foolproof mode, the main system had quite reasonably mistaken the youth for the “female protagonist.”
The youth could not hear the system’s voice.
In his eyes, apart from one strikingly handsome unconscious man, there were only two people in the ramshackle cabin: himself and Li Zhenzhen.
It was the first time anyone had looked at his body so openly—and that person was a woman.
He bit his lower lip, his delicate profile seeming flushed enough to bleed.
Li Zhenzhen stirred the unburned ashes in the fire. “Put them back on.”
He immediately turned his back to her and fastened his waistband tightly.
Li Zhenzhen judged him to be no more than fourteen or fifteen by appearance and found the situation somewhat troublesome.
After a long while, she pressed the bridge of her nose and decided to confirm it anyway.
“How old are you this year?”
The youth knelt obediently at her feet. “In answer to you, my lady, I am eighteen.”
Li Zhenzhen fell silent.
She gained a far more tangible understanding of the malnutrition of this era.
Still, this made things easier to handle. “For the next six months, under no circumstances are you to reveal your true identity to anyone. Are you willing?”
“You saved me, my lady.”
The flush had not yet faded from the youth’s cheeks, but his voice was as resolute as an immovable rock. “Whatever you wish, my lady, I will do.”
“Very well.”
Li Zhenzhen recalled the female protagonist’s name from the original novel and looked down at the youth kneeling by her feet.
“From now on, you will use the name Ning Songluo in public.”
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