Chapter 23: The Strange Little Thief
Lu Yunxi arrived at the foot of the mountain and slipped into her usual stakeout spot. It was a very clever hiding place, anchored by a massive boulder in front and a sprawling tree behind, which completely concealed her small frame. In fact, she had spent a great deal of time scouting and shifting positions before finally settling on this perfect vantage point.
Under normal circumstances, whenever she dispatched a rabbit here, she only had to wait thirty seconds before a brand-new one would materialize in its place.
In the past, she had processed her entire harvest into uniform strips of jerky. Eating it every single day had tasted wonderful at first, but now she was thoroughly sick of it. She fully intended to catch a fresh batch of rabbits today to experiment with different recipes.
At the thought of a culinary change, she quickly clapped a hand over her mouth, forcing the eager corners of her lips down as she crouched lower into the brush.
However, one minute passed, then two… a quarter of an hour slipped away, and the clearing remained completely empty.
Yunxi poked her head out from behind the boulder, utterly bewildered. Why aren’t there any rabbits spawning today? Did they finally realize I’ve been camping right behind them?
Seeing the sun climbing higher and baking the slopes, she realized she couldn’t afford to waste the day waiting. Left with no other choice, she began her trek further up the mountain.
It wasn’t until she reached the mid-mountain ridges that she finally spotted a hare darting through the undergrowth. Her eyes flared, and in a single fluid motion, she drew and loosed an arrow.
An hour later.
Yunxi crossed her threshold, completely exhausted. Instead of immediately processing her single catch, she carefully cleaned a raw scrape on her arm, dusted it with the medicinal powder her mother had formulated, and collapsed face-first onto her bed.
Miserable, hyperactive pest! she grumbled into her pillow.
When she had first launched her hunting career, she had admittedly been a little clumsy. But once she found her rhythm, even a colossal wild boar hadn’t been able to land a scratch on her, let alone a mere rabbit! Yet, for some bizarre reason, the hare she faced today was entirely different. It was vastly more agile than any animal she had hunted before. It was precisely because she had misjudged its erratic evasion path that her first shot missed, allowing the creature to lunge and scratch her during the scramble.
She had spent a grueling, non-stop hour locked in a fierce battle of wits and reflexes against a single rodent.
Yunxi closed her heavy eyelids, letting out a tired sigh as she settled in for a nap. At this point, she simply brushed it off as a statistical anomaly—a fluke of nature—and didn’t let it weigh on her mind.
A month flew by.
Yunxi stood at the perimeter of the village farmlands, staring at the rapidly dwindling population of field mice. Her expression was profoundly solemn.
“Xiaoxi, what’s wrong?” Li Daya asked, bouncing on her heels with excitement. “The field mice are almost entirely wiped out! Aren’t you happy?” But when Daya turned and caught her friend’s stern, dark face, her smile faltered into a worried look.
“No, I’m thrilled,” Yunxi replied, offering a reassuring smile to melt Daya’s sudden caution. “I was just spacing out, thinking about something else.”
Once she successfully coaxed Daya back into good spirits, her own heart sank further. She finally understood the true gravity of the old proverb: Misfortune may be a blessing in disguise, and blessings may mask misfortune.
The fabric of the world was fundamentally shifting.
The villagers had broken out of their robotic programming, transforming into normal human beings capable of genuine communication—but the local wildlife had also evolved into real, instinct-driven animals.
In the past, she could hunt the forest creatures relentlessly without ever worrying about population collapse. Every beast had followed a rigid, predictable pathing script. Once she memorized their patterns, predicting their next move was child’s play. Hunting had been an effortless grind back then.
But now, if she didn’t carefully regulate her hunting patterns, she risked driving entire local species into permanent extinction. Furthermore, the baseline difficulty of tracking game had skyrocketed. Every animal had become incredibly perceptive and swift, making their real-time movements nearly impossible to predict.
Yunxi fell into a deep, meditative silence. Should I consider a career change? Being a hunter is getting way too hazardous.
Of course, she was only joking. While the wilderness had grown treacherous, maintaining a high combat spec was an invaluable asset for an independent girl navigating an ancient world.
That day, Yunxi threw herself into the ridges, matching wits against the newly intelligent wildlife and having a thoroughly stimulating time. By the time she made her descent, her spatial dimension was stacked high with various fresh kills, though she made sure to carry a single wild rabbit openly in her hand. After all, she still had to maintain appearances. If she constantly returned from multi-day trips completely empty-handed, the neighbors would undoubtedly suspect something was profoundly wrong with her.
However, the moment her feet hit the base of the mountain, she froze, her eyes narrowing into dangerous slits.
The historically deserted perimeter at the foot of the mountain was suddenly swarming with strangers. They were all clad in identical, generic grey tunics and woven straw sandals. At a casual glance, they looked like ordinary travelers. But a closer look at their behavior painted a very different, highly disturbing picture.
A burly man was crouching on all fours, his eyes shining with maniacal glee as he stared intensely at a clump of common weeds. He reached out, yanked a handful from the dirt, and stuffed them into his mouth, chewing with immense relish. Right next to him, a scrawny youth was pinned to a low branch, his nose practically glued to a leaf as he tracked a caterpillar, murmuring a non-stop string of incoherent gibberish under his breath. Further down the path, another grown man scooped up a fistful of topsoil, shoved it into his mouth, and then violently spat it back out, hacking and coughing.
Yunxi took one look at the bizarre exhibition, tucked her rabbit close, and bolted straight for home.
If she were living in the modern world, she would have immediately assumed a local psychiatric facility had suffered a mass breakout. But this was an ancient timeline! Perhaps they were just eccentric refugees passing through?
Remembering the harsh laws of the village exiles, she wondered if these unfortunates had also been driven from their respective communities. Perhaps surviving in the wild for too long had caused their minds to fracture, leaving them completely unhinged.
At that moment, she was still looking down on them with deep, naive sympathy. She had absolutely no idea how intensely she would want to beat these people to death in the near future.
Back in her courtyard, Yunxi sat perfectly upright, her embroidery needle dancing gracefully through a piece of silk. She looked the absolute picture of quiet, elegant gentility.
In reality, only half her focus was dedicated to her stitches; the other half was locked entirely on the yard outside.
A few minutes later…
Clang! A loud, metallic crash echoed as a body tumbled over the high stone wall, hitting the courtyard floor with a heavy groan.
Here we go again.
Yunxi calmly set her needlework aside, stood up, and glided toward the commotion. Her movements were smooth, deliberate, and perfectly unhurried—radiating an aura of absolute refinement.
“Holy cow! Look at those round things on the branches! Could this be a legendary fruit tree?! I…” The daring little intruder gaped at the orchard trees in the yard, his face twisted with naked greed. He was so consumed by his discovery that he failed to notice Yunxi stepping into the light.
Seeing that the thief not only lacked the basic decency to acknowledge the owner of the property but was actively bracing his foot to scale the trunk, Yunxi raised the heavy iron fire poker she had brought along and swung it down with everything she had.
“AH——!”
The thief clutched his rear end, leaping backward as he threw her a terrified, defensive look. “Who the heck are you?! Why did you hit me out of nowhere?!”
Yunxi offered him an incredibly sweet, hospitable smile. “You break into my home to rob me, yet you have the audacity to ask who I am? Are the criminals of this generation truly this shameless? You don’t even bother to scout your targets anymore.”
“What?! This is your house?! I… Ow, ow, ow! Stop it! Get off me!” The man gasped, attempting to stammer out an excuse, but before the words could clear his throat, the iron poker came down again. He howled in agony, scrambling wildly across the courtyard to dodge her relentless strikes. “I was wrong! I swear I know I messed up! I didn’t know someone actually lived here!”
“Oh really?!” she cooed gently, her serene smile never wavering even as she drove the iron poker into his ribs with vicious force. “Are you implying it’s perfectly acceptable to break into a house as long as it’s vacant?”
The thief initially tried to put up a fight, but he was rapidly subjected to a beating so thorough that he began weeping for his parents, desperately trying to find a way over the wall.
“I messed up! Please, just let me go! Big sister, I swear I’ll never do it again!”
Yunxi merely sneered, her strikes remaining brutal and unyielding. She was completely finished buying into their pathetic lies.
Ever since she had returned from that fateful mountain trek a week ago, her home had been broken into practically every single day.
The first time it happened, she had still been asleep in the early morning when a strange scratching sound woke her. She got up only to find a stranger actively vaulting her wall. At the time, she had brushed it off as an isolated incident. The second time occurred while she was in the middle of preparing lunch; a man had suddenly burst through her kitchen door, screaming, “Wow, something smells amazing!”, nearly causing her a heart attack. There had been countless identical incursions since.
Lately, it didn’t matter if she was embroidering, practicing her forms, or even trying to take a private bath—some unhinged stranger would inevitably try to breach her home.
She was officially pushed past her limit.
