Chapter 24: Audacity
If Lu Yunxi still bought their pathetic excuses, she would have to be completely out of her mind!
Every single time one of them swore they knew they were wrong, a new one would just trespass the very next day. During the first few break-ins, she had compassionately let them off the hook with a simple warning. After that initial grace period, however, every thief who dared breach her walls was treated to a severe, hands-on lesson.
Having sparred against so many intruders lately, her muscle memory had sharpened to a razor edge. She could now effortlessly dismantle a thief while entirely preoccupied with her own thoughts.
[Ding! Congratulations on creating your own original combat style: “Fire Poker Mastery”! You have been awarded 1,000 experience points!]
“Big sister! Auntie! Please, what do I have to do for you to let me go?!”
The sudden mechanical chime of the system caused Yunxi’s hand to pause mid-swing. Fire Poker Mastery?! Her eyelid twitched violently. Couldn’t the system have generated a slightly more intimidating or dignified name?
The thief, entirely oblivious to the reason behind her sudden stillness, wept with pure, unadulterated joy. Not daring to utter another syllable, he scrambled over the wall and bolted down the lane, clutching his bruised rear end.
Yunxi cast a dismissive glance toward his retreating figure, too lazy to bother giving chase. After all, she had been exercising all morning; it was officially time for lunch.
Later that afternoon, Yunxi decided to step out for a rare stroll through the neighborhood. As she passed the perimeter of the village chief’s residence, she discovered a dense crowd of neighbors surrounding the property three layers deep. The entire square was buzzing with noise.
Curious, she drifted closer and peered over their shoulders, but she could only see a sea of agitated faces. Was there some sort of town hall meeting taking place?
“Village Chief, the sheer number of strangers drifting through our borders lately is getting completely out of hand!” a woman cried out from the center. “They’re loitering around our homes every single day. One of them actually stole a basket of fresh fruit I had specifically harvested for my daughter! The poor girl is so traumatized she refuses to step foot outside!”
“Exactly! They keep scaling our stone walls and trespassing right into our private living quarters,” a man chimed in aggressively. “I’m forced to barricade myself inside my house every single day just to guard our property. I can’t even go out to tend to my chores!”
The complaints began piling up as the crowd’s anger mounted. Soon, the neighbors were chanting in unison, “Kick them out! Drive them away!”
Having been entirely consumed by her daily bouts with backyard intruders, Yunxi hadn’t spent much time keeping up with local gossip. Only now did she realize that this bizarre plague of unhinged trespassers was happening to families all across Mushroom Village.
The village chief massaged his throbbing temples, an expression of sheer exhaustion on his face as he boomed, “Quiet down! Everyone, listen to me!”
Once the furious shouting gradually simmered into a restless silence, the chief cleared his throat to explain. “In truth, these strange travelers are a class of independent adventurers. They have migrated here explicitly to offer us their assistance! The only reason they are sprinting around and hoarding resources so erratically is because they are profoundly unrefined and uninformed. That is why they are so easily excited! If you simply communicate your boundaries to them calmly and give them direction, they will comply.”
Lu Yunxi: …
Assistance?! Since when did she or anyone else in this village require this brand of “assistance”? Furthermore, the word “adventurer” didn’t exactly sound like a term that belonged in a traditional, historical timeline.
And as for calling them “uninformed”… that was a spectacularly weak excuse! No matter how unrefined a traveler was, basic human instinct dictates that you don’t aggressively chew on a random lawn leaf, right?
To her utter amazement, the neighbors actually swallowed the village chief’s thoroughly nonsensical explanation. They immediately began dispersing into smaller groups, happily chatting as they walked away.
“Oh, those poor, dear adventurers! To think they’ve lived such starved lives that they’ve never even tasted a common wild fruit before. I’m going to recruit a few of them to help me with my household chores later and reward them with a bundle of berries!”
“Wait, can we really just do that? My storage shed is desperately in need of structural repairs. I’ll order them to fix the roof this evening and pay them with some firewood!”
“…”
Back at the Lu residence, Yunxi stood in the center of her courtyard, her arms crossed as she watched the “adventurers” laboring across her property. She fell into a deep, philosophical silence.
One individual was chopping firewood with terrifying intensity, swinging the axe with everything he had even though splinters and chunks of timber were flying dangerously in every direction. Inside the kitchen, another was attempting to kindle a hearth fire to cook her a meal, though the final product of his labor was nothing but a charred, smoking mass of black sludge. Out in the garden, a third was diligently watering the vegetation, though he was focusing his efforts entirely on a cluster of common weeds.
Staring at the sheer, intense gravity with which these travelers tried to assist her, she finally accepted the village chief’s verdict.
Yes, they were explicitly here to help—even if their clumsiness meant they consistently caused significantly more property damage than actual good. The chief had been entirely accurate; these people were profoundly, beautifully ignorant.
Taking a deep breath to steady her nerves, she planted both hands on her hips and barked, “Stop what you’re doing! Line up over here!”
The adventurers immediately dropped their tools and scrambled over, forming a perfectly straight, rigid row in front of her. Though they were completely caked in soot and dirt, their eyes shone with manic excitement as they locked their gazes onto her.
Yunxi’s lips twitched slightly. Forcing herself to sound encouraging, she delivered a few mandatory compliments. “You all performed excellently. You have successfully completed today’s automated requests. Here is your designated compensation. Take it and run along.”
With a flick of her wrist, she retrieved a handful of common wild greens stored inside her system inventory and distributed them among the group.
That was the reality of her current situation. A few days prior, she had finally deciphered the true, restricted mechanics of her bugged system backpack. Any resource deposited into that specific digital grid could only be used as a quest reward to be handed over to adventurers; she was completely barred from extracting the items for her own personal consumption. Fortunately, she had only used the digital trash can to store worthless weeds and low-tier foraging drops, otherwise her hoarder’s heart would have bled.
The moment the ecstatic adventurers clutched their weeds and vanished through the front gate, Yunxi turned toward her bedroom, fully intending to catch a peaceful afternoon nap. Before her foot could even cross the threshold, a piercing shriek ripped through the village air.
“Catch that thief! Stop him!”
Almost purely by reflex, Yunxi’s hand shot out to snatch her trusty iron poker, and she bolted back out into the lane.
The moment she cleared her gates, she spotted a village auntie sprinting down the dirt road, a heavy kitchen knife raised in her hand as she madly pursued a running adventurer.
Yunxi let out a soft, inward sigh. Why does someone always have to disrupt the peaceful ecosystem between adventurers and villagers that the chief just stabilized?
Yawning casually, she tracked the running thief. With a seemingly effortless, fluid flick of her wrist, she brought the heavy iron fire poker down directly in front of his path, stopping his momentum dead.
“Who the hell do you think you are?! Mind your own business!” The thief was a exceptionally tall, muscular man. He roared in a rough, grating voice, aggressively swinging his arm to shove her out of his way.
However, Yunxi remained entirely rooted to the spot, her frame unyielding as the iron poker didn’t budge a single millimeter against his force.
The man blinked in utter bewilderment. ??
Flexing his massive bicep, he growled and lunged forward to tackle her. Yunxi merely raised an eyebrow. Shifting her weight with elegant grace, she executed a flawless counter-step, catching his extended wrist with her off-hand and violently twisting it back behind his spine.
The man let out a pathetic shriek of pure agony as she pinned him face-first into the dirt. Like a clumsy tortoise flipped onto its shell, he thrashed wildly but found himself completely unable to break her lock.
“What exactly did you steal? Hand it over right now!”
The breathless auntie finally caught up to the scene, panting heavily. Looking at the pinned thief, a sudden wave of deep hesitation crossed her features. “Xiaoxi… um, could we perhaps find a more private location to handle this?”
Intrigued by the woman’s intensely secretive, flushing expression, Yunxi nodded and hauled the criminal back to her own courtyard.
Inside the Lu courtyard, the auntie carefully retrieved the stolen property from the thief’s pockets, her cheeks turning a bright shade of crimson. “Thank you so much, child! Truly, I… I don’t even know what to say…”
Yunxi suppressed the sudden surge of irritation bubbling in her chest, maintaining a polite, serene smile. “Think nothing of it, Auntie. This wretched thief had the audacity to steal a vital kitchen tool from your home, and he even managed to snatch a piece of delicate embroidery my late mother left behind from my own windowsill. I’m just glad I caught him in time to recover our belongings.”
The woman let out a massive, trembling sigh of relief, a brilliant smile breaking across her face. “You are an absolute lifesaver, Xiaoxi! If you ever find yourself facing a difficult chore or need an extra hand in the future, just come find me immediately!”
The moment she safely escorted the grateful woman out her gates, the polite smile vanished from Yunxi’s face, replaced by an ice-cold glare as she turned back to the pinned criminal.
The village had finally achieved a comfortable baseline of harmony—the adventurers performed manual labor, and the grateful neighbors routinely gifted her fresh resources. She hadn’t been forced to raise a hand against anyone in weeks.
But this particular piece of trash—
He had officially crossed the line.
“You really think you’re something special, don’t you? Sprinting around our community to rob innocent women!” She brought her palm down, delivering a sharp, resounding slap across his face.
This vile degenerate hadn’t stolen some valuable heirloom or expensive tool from the auntie. He had literally stolen her handmade menstrual belt!
A menstrual belt!
Thank goodness Yunxi had intercepted him before he could escape. In this deeply traditional, conservative era, if word had gotten out that a strange man was parading around with a woman’s intimate sanitary item, the poor auntie’s social reputation would have been completely destroyed, rendering her life a living hell!
“You actually dare to strike me?!” The man’s eyes went wide with shock and fury at her sudden outburst.
“What’s wrong with hitting a degenerate like you?!” Yunxi sneered, her voice dripping with pure disgust.
If he possessed the disgusting audacity to plunder a woman’s intimate garments, he should have fully anticipated the brutal consequences of being intercepted! What was he doing playing the victim now?
After delivering a thoroughly agonizing, bone-shattering beating to ensure he wouldn’t forget the lesson, Yunxi dragged the thrashing criminal straight to the village chief’s residence.
“Village Chief,” she announced loudly as she threw the bruised thief onto the floorboards, her face a mask of righteous indignation. “This wretched criminal had the absolute audacity to sneak onto my property and steal the final piece of embroidery my late mother left behind for me! His actions are monstrously disrespectful to the deceased. Tell me, how should our community punish a crime of this caliber?”
Like this novel? Read Advance Chapters (PDF & EPUB Format)
