Chapter 176: [Transplantation] Stoking the Rage
“What about Daddy?”
“Can’t see him either!”
As the child spoke, its mouth turned downward.
Seeing that it was about to cry, Bai Cha spoke up decisively.
“Do you want to see him then?”
The child hesitated, tilting its head slightly.
“No. I want to see Mommy.”
Bai Cha pondered for a moment. “Why don’t you want to see Daddy? Do you know that your illness was caused by Daddy?”
The child froze, its hollow black eyes pressing closer to Bai Cha, its face filled with confusion.
“My illness was caused by Daddy?”
“You didn’t know? Whether a baby is born a boy or a girl is determined by the father. You turning into a girl was because of your father too…”
Bai Cha’s face wore a look of utter surprise, as if to say, How could you possibly not know this?
The child stood in a complete daze for a long while.
Then, the voices of surrounding children began echoing all around Bai Cha.
“Daddy made me turn into a girl?”
“Was it Daddy?”
“It wasn’t because Mommy couldn’t give birth to boys?”
“So Daddy was the one who killed me! It was clearly his fault, yet he claimed I was inauspicious because I was a girl! He wouldn’t let me go out for the Lantern Festival, and he wouldn’t feed me!”
“Waaah, I’m a boy, not a girl! I’m not inauspicious!”
A good number of children were capable of speech now, intermingled with a large proportion of crying infants.
The entire world instantly descended into clamorous noise once more.
Bai Cha had no choice but to block her ears for the time being.
“What proof do you have?”
The child who had been conversing with Bai Cha was clearly somewhat higher in intelligence compared to the others—or rather, she might simply be older in age.
Her entire ghostly form pressed against the dodder vines. Perhaps because she was overly agitated in this moment, dense, blackened blood vessels surfaced across her pale, ash-gray cheeks, making her appear exceptionally terrifying.
“I am a college student,” Bai Cha said with absolute seriousness. “You understand what a college student is, right? Anyone who has gone to school knows that your illness was caused by your father.”
When Old Qin spoke earlier, he always loved to emphasize “college students.”
And it wasn’t just Old Qin; the other villagers shared this habit as well.
In essence, it stemmed from the fact that education levels around here were generally quite low.
Consequently, regarding college students, they viewed them as undeniably impressive on one hand, yet felt reluctant to admit it on the other, believing themselves to be not half bad in comparison—which was why they constantly kept “college students” on their lips.
This detail alone revealed the general state of this village.
Which was why Bai Cha emphasized the three words “college student.” The child tilted her head once more.
“Is that so…? Mommy said so too—that I have to get into a good university in the future, and that getting into university is the only way out… But after I got sick, she wouldn’t let me take the college entrance exams anymore.”
As she spoke, the blood vessels across her face that had briefly calmed down flared back up to the surface.
Her expression turned vicious as well.
“You are a girl—are you allowed to go to university too?”
Bai Cha looked at her with another gaze filled with pity.
A look like that would only serve to infuriate the child, but her fury was precisely what Bai Cha sought.
“Where I live, whether you’re a boy or a girl, everyone gets to live a healthy, happy life, and everyone can take the college entrance exams.”
She uttered words that sounded agonizingly cruel to the child’s ears.
And she continued to pour fuel onto the fire.
“My mommy and daddy love me very much. In fact, they like me even more because I’m a girl, believing that girls are blessed with the greatest fortune. They buy me lots of delicious food, pretty clothes, send me to school, and take me to amusement parks. Oh, and the decorative lantern in your hand—as long as I want these things, they will give them all to me!”
The eyes of the children outside began streaming with tears born of burning envy—tears of crimson blood.
The dark, sinister aura thickened to such a degree in an instant that the surroundings turned pitch-black, obscuring everything from sight.
“Why?! Why don’t my mommy and daddy love me?!”
“Why?!”
“Aren’t girls forbidden from having these things?!”
“Aren’t girls inauspicious?!”
Their sharp, piercing voices grew louder with every passing second.
Under this assault, Bai Cha endured the throbbing, ringing pain inside her mind while speaking up: “Your fathers lied to you! They couldn’t produce male children, so they pushed the blame onto you, claiming you were inauspicious and saying you didn’t deserve to have decorative lanterns!”
The ghost children outside unleashed a collective, blood-curdling scream.
Bai Cha immediately contracted her dodder vines, curling into a tight, protective ball.
A bone-chilling cold enveloped her frame. Even with dodder vines sealing her ears, it was nearly impossible to fully shut out the ear-splitting demonic noise unleashed by these children in their state of pure, unbridled rage.
These sounds carried a fatal malice that infected one’s emotions in an instant, causing one to harbor subconscious hatred alongside them.
[I can’t take it anymore, this sound is way too piercing, my ears are about to go deaf!]
[Fuck, when is the game gonna upgrade and let us mute the stream? I can’t do this, I’m dipping first!]
[I’m leaving too, bye. What on earth is the streamer doing? Is she out of her mind?]
[I can still hold out, I wanna see if the streamer ends up courting death and crashing!]
[Bro, you’re beastly! You watch, tell me what happens when I get back!]
Even the viewers in the bullet chat found these sharp sounds unbearable.
The human ear could only tolerate a limited decibel level to begin with, not to mention these sounds weren’t purely physical audio.
Though filtered through a screen, the impact on viewers was somewhat limited and wouldn’t inflict direct physical harm, yet listening to it for too long would still make one want to vomit, drawing their emotions into the fray as well.
In truth, many people who frequently watched streams grew increasingly unstable in their emotional states, turning increasingly gloomy for this exact reason.
At this moment, Bai Cha remained curled into a tight ball.
She wasn’t incapable of attacking to interrupt them, but making them explode with rage was precisely her objective.
This surge of rage should be enough to drag her back out of this realm.
The daytime and nighttime in Xiaoguang Village represented two distinct worlds.
Or rather, it wasn’t a divide between day and night, but rather one normal world versus a world composed entirely of wronged, departed spirits who could neither cross over nor find release.
In this world, there was no sun, nor was there light.
Much like how they were born without blessings, incapable of possessing a decorative lantern of their own, unloved and unlotted.
Thus, after death, they held no means of heading toward the true Xiaoguang Village either.
Perhaps because they themselves harbored self-loathing toward their own existence.
They believed themselves to be truly inauspicious, believing the sun god protected only boys, and that females were forbidden from touching the light of the sun.
So they never attempted to integrate into that world.
Because they remained fearful, believing themselves to be unprotected, destined to be banished by the sun.
They desperately yearned for a decorative lantern of their own, desperately hungered for the sunlight.
Vast patches of wood sorrel sprouted across their bodies—four-leaf wood sorrel that perhaps represented the beautiful wishes once held deep in their hearts.
If a four-leaf clover could truly grant a wish, all they wanted was a single, tiny lantern.
Yet the stark reality was that this wood sorrel could still be harvested by the villagers to sell for money.
Much like how, even if they hadn’t died young and had managed to grow up safely and live on, they would still end up being sold for money regardless.
That was their sole value to the people of this village—their value to their own parents.
So why should they accept this?
It hardly felt right to let only the players suffer the brunt of this malice, did it?
For those NPCs to live comfortably under the bright sunlight was honestly far too much.
“AAAH—!”
A man’s sharp scream echoed faintly from a distance.
Bai Cha managed to distinguish the sound with great effort. She raised her head, blood streaming from her nose and running all over her face.
It worked.
