Chapter 175: [Transplantation] I Have a Decorative Lantern
“Hee-hee-hee…”
“Sister, you stepped on my clothes…”
“Sister, you smell so nice…”
“Waaah, Sister, play with me…”
One voice after another suddenly began to echo.
From beneath her feet.
The moment Bai Cha lowered her head to look, a tiny hand abruptly reached out from the ground, grabbing her by the ankle.
This was merely the beginning.
More hands thrust themselves upward from the soil.
Beneath the patches of wood sorrel, pale, ash-gray young children clad in white robes crawled out one after another.
Every single one of them had their head shaved bald, wearing oversized white garments. Some could only crawl along the ground, while others could manage a step or two.
They moved at blistering speed, surrounding Bai Cha in a dense, suffocating throng almost in an instant.
Bai Cha instinctively lashed out with her dodder vines.
The vines whipped right through the children’s bodies, yet failed to siphon a single shred of energy.
Bai Cha froze briefly, quickly switching her weapon to a knife.
The blade proved effective, but it inflicted pain on the children.
Pouting their mouths, they burst into racking wails.
The ear-splitting demonic noise pierced through their vocal cords, instantly causing a throbbing, searing pain to churn inside one’s brain.
“Bad person!”
“Bad person!”
“Bad person!”
Those capable of speech unleashed sharp, grating shrieks.
Their voices gradually coalesced into unison, intermingling with the pitiful crying of infants among them.
Bai Cha realized just how thorny this instance was.
From the very beginning, this instance had laid everything out on the table with stark openness.
It didn’t bother setting up a spooky atmosphere; it simply laid out the horror of the situation straight to your face.
This, paradoxically, left one with nowhere to strike.
And now, facing a situation like this, though entirely within expectations, dealing with these children proved far more difficult than imagined.
Bai Cha felt a splitting headache racking her mind.
These piercing wails functioned as their primary mode of attack to begin with.
Bai Cha suddenly slashed her blade toward the adjacent patch of grass.
Stems and petals instantly exploded everywhere, leaving a massive empty crater in the ground.
“AAAH—!”
An even sharper, shriller cry tore from the children’s mouths.
Bai Cha let out a muffled groan as blood began oozing outward from her nostrils, the corners of her eyes, and her ears.
Amidst the piercing shrieks, several children tangled together, twisting into a grotesque, contorted monstrosity.
More and more children merged into the fray.
They transformed into a towering, colossal monster, their twisted bodies entwined like flower stems, making it impossible to distinguish where one ended and another began.
Dropping to one knee on the ground, Bai Cha forced her head up with great difficulty.
A massive foot slammed down toward her.
Gritting her teeth, Bai Cha rolled to the side, narrowly dodging the blow.
Simultaneously, dodder vines shot skyward, coiling tightly around the monster’s leg before yanking downward with brutal force.
The beast composed of countless children crashed heavily to the ground.
Yet the instant they hit the earth, they fragmented back into innumerable children. Some had yet to untwist their bodies, their torsos wrung like wet towels, crawling over at terrifying speeds regardless.
Controlling her power, Bai Cha wove the dodder vines into a dense protective net around herself to block the children.
At the same time, she reached out her hand, making direct physical contact with one of the children.
[Parasitize host: Female Infant · Residual Thought?]
It was merely a residual thought.
Bai Cha tentatively thrust her other hand down into the wood sorrel covering the ground.
[Parasitize host: Xiaoguang Village · Grudge?]
Bai Cha froze.
She stared down at her feet in startling uncertainty.
Confirm parasitism.
A seed plunged directly into the earth.
Unlike previous parasitisms, the instant this seed entered the soil, Bai Cha felt it sprout roots and burst forth into growth almost instantaneously, expanding at an extraordinary pace.
She wove the dodder vines into a sealed cage, including the area beneath her feet, rendering it completely airtight. The vines anchored firmly into the ground, binding the surrounding wood sorrel to prevent her from being pushed or rolled away.
The children outside had no way to break through her defense, leaving them with no choice but to cry relentlessly.
There was no physical defense against this kind of sound-based mental assault, however.
After a moment’s thought, Bai Cha simply allowed the dodder vines to sprout directly out of her own ears, gradually intertwining together to seal out a massive portion of the external noise.
Very well—she was looking more and more like a host parasitized by dodder vines by the day, able to sprout tendrils from practically anywhere on her body.
The children outside kicked up a clamorous fuss, gradually quieting down once they realized they couldn’t do anything to Bai Cha.
The world slowly returned to silence.
Bai Cha’s physical body began to recover rapidly as well.
This was the key difference between inside and outside the game: after sustaining injuries inside an instance, the power of the dodder vine allowed her to heal at a vastly accelerated rate compared to the real world, provided its energy wasn’t exhausted.
Though when it came to her illness alone, inside and outside remained entirely identical.
Sensing her condition restored, Bai Cha dispersed a small crack in the dodder vine shield before her eyes.
A pair of hollow, pitch-black eyes pressed right against the slit, peering inside.
Bai Cha raised her blade and thrust it straight forward.
The child reacted with lightning speed, jerking to the side in a flash.
Out outside, a fresh wave of shrieks erupted all over again.
Bai Cha had no choice but to seal herself off once more.
Once it quieted down outside, she repeated her old trick.
A child was still crouched there, staring inside.
Instead of thrusting her blade this time, Bai Cha stared back at it expressionlessly.
The scene remained deathly quiet.
“Something up?” Bai Cha spoke up anyway, switching back to a sweet, pleasant smile.
The child continued to glare at her.
Just as Bai Cha was mulling over whether to stab it again, the child actually opened its mouth to speak.
“You’re female.”
Bai Cha: “…”
“Why are you allowed to be alive?”
The child suddenly tilted its head.
Bai Cha fell into a brief, genuine silence this time.
“So are you a girl too?” Bai Cha asked.
“I am a boy. I have a decorative lantern.” The child raised a lantern slightly—a worn, broken decorative lantern.
Bai Cha looked thoughtful.
“Only boys get to have decorative lanterns?”
“Yes! Only when a boy is born will there be a decorative lantern, and only then will people celebrate! I am a boy!”
Bai Cha pondered for a moment. “Then why did you die?”
“Because Mommy said I got sick. She said I was turning into a girl, and they were going to take my decorative lantern away. I didn’t want them to, so I died.”
A thin, chilly wind brushed past alongside the child’s words.
Bai Cha looked at the pair of eyes peering through the crack with a trace of deep sorrow and pity.
That look instantly ignited the child’s fury.
“Why are you looking at me like that?! Stop looking, I’m going to gouge your eyeballs out!”
Saying this, a pair of pale, tiny hands thrust through the crack, attempting to reach inside, only to be promptly intercepted by the dodder vines.
Bai Cha held back no courtesy, slicing off its fingers with a single stroke of her blade.
The child snatched its hand back instantly, bursting into racking, blubbering wails.
Bai Cha sat calmly inside the dodder vine shell, watching it cry.
What “turning into a girl”? It was a girl from the very beginning. Even if a gender-swapping potion ever succeeded, it would merely result in an intersex child possessing characteristics of neither gender properly.
In most cases, gender-swapping potions failed entirely, leaving the newborn exceptionally frail and incapable of surviving long after birth.
“Kid, let me ask you something—stop crying!”
Only this single child remained outside right now. Though its voice sounded grating, it didn’t inflict much actual damage anymore.
Hearing her words, the child glared at her with burning hatred.
“Where is your mommy?”
The child froze.
This question clearly stumped it.
Tilting its head, it thought about it for a long moment.
“Can’t see her anymore…”
Hearing this, Bai Cha narrowed her eyes, forming a whole new assessment regarding this environment.
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