Chapter 3: Sudden Change
That night, when Lu Yunxi went out for some fresh air, she passed by the Li family’s home and greeted them out of habit.
“Grandma Li, Daya, good evening!”
Even though she knew there wouldn’t be any real response, greeting the villagers had simply become a reflex for her.
However—
“Good evening, Xiaoxi!”
“Oh, good evening! Xiaoxi really is such a good kid!”
Yunxi froze mid-step, stopping dead in her tracks.
“What did you say?!” Her eyes went wide as she stared at the elderly woman and her granddaughter.
Could Grandma Li and Daya have been kidnapped and replaced?!
The two of them looked back at her with strange expressions.
“We just said good evening! Xiaoxi, you’re acting so weird. Can’t your ears… can’t you hear us talking?” Daya looked at her in shock, raising her voice to a loud shout.
Yunxi was completely stunned.
Five years!
Daya and Grandma Li, who had behaved exactly like rigid machines for five whole years, had suddenly become normal! What on earth was going on?
She nodded subconsciously, completely ignoring the bewildered stares from the Li family, and walked straight ahead in a daze.
It wasn’t until she reached the center of the village that she finally snapped out of it.
“Good evening, Auntie!” she tested.
“Good evening, Xiaoxi. Out for a walk?” the old lady replied, smiling happily.
“Uncle, have you had dinner yet? You look so cheerful, did you have something special tonight?”
“Yeah, I ate. Ha! What ‘delicious food’ could there be? Just cabbage as usual. There’s not even a drop of oil or broth in it!” The uncle shook his head with a sigh.
…
By the time she walked through the entire village, Yunxi’s heart was pounding wildly against her ribs.
At first, she had suspected that the Li family had been replaced by impostors, but the fact that the whole village was acting like this…
Has the entire village been infiltrated?!
Though she had absolutely no idea why the villagers had suddenly turned into normal people overnight, she felt like flying with joy at the thought that everyone around her would be normal from now on.
“Dad, I’ve been training for so many days now. When can I finally go hunting?” Yunxi asked tentatively the next day.
Since the rest of the villagers were acting like rational human beings, there was no reason for her parents to still be malfunctioning.
“It’s still far too early!” Her father chuckled and shook his head. “It took me five years of training before I ever dared to set foot up the mountain!”
“Five years?!” Yunxi’s eyes widened. “No… five years is way too long! I don’t actually need to go all the way up the mountain. Can’t I just take a walk right outside the village?”
“Well, that’s easy enough. As long as you can kill a field mouse entirely on your own, you can go outside the village. But you can only look around the fields, you still can’t go up the mountain!” Her father patted her head gently. “And remember, you have to kill the mouse yourself. No using poison or traps!”
She stood there, dumbfounded.
A field mouse?!
She hadn’t seen a single rodent in this entire village since she was born!
But after thinking it over, Yunxi suddenly realized that the mouse wasn’t the important part at all. The truly important thing was that her father was actually having a fluid, spontaneous conversation with her! Yes! The whole village had finally come to life!
Logically speaking, Yunxi should have been ecstatic.
However, her happiness lasted for barely two days before she stumbled upon a brand-new set of problems.
“Xiaoxi! Let’s go play together! Come on, we’re best friends!” Li Daya pleaded, blinking her large, expressive eyes.
“The best cook in our village is definitely the Lu family’s matron. If you want to learn, you should ask her if she’s willing to teach you!” Wait, hardly anyone in the village has ever eaten my mother’s cooking. How do they all magically know she’s a master chef?
“I wouldn’t hang out with Zhuzi! You all know he and I have the worst relationship!” Huh? Didn’t you and Zhuzi spend every single day standing together under the tree at the village entrance? Since when did you hate each other?
“Why did you ever choose a guy like him? Hurry up and cancel the wedding! That man looks decent on the outside, but he actually beats people!” That man used to spend all day counting ants under a tree. When did he ever find the time to beat anyone?
…The anomalies kept piling up.
Gradually, Yunxi realized that something was deeply wrong with this new reality.
While the villagers had become normal human beings who no longer acted like robots, they suddenly possessed a cascade of strange memories and inexplicable assumptions. Some of them had even undergone drastic personality shifts.
For instance, the entire village now took it as absolute fact that Daya was her childhood best friend, and that they had played together since they were toddlers.
Yunxi was completely baffled. Before this, Daya had done nothing but stand frozen by her own front door, and they had barely interacted. How had she suddenly become her “best friend”? Yet, the entire village spoke of their close bond with absolute certainty.
Furthermore, the village children used to be forced to learn trades from their fathers the moment they turned five, vanishing from public view. But now, the children only spent a tiny fraction of their day studying and spent the rest of their time running around playing outside.
…
That was the reality of the situation.
Because everyone in the village had suddenly adopted these bizarre, unprompted shared consensus and background settings, Yunxi had to adapt.
To prevent anyone from noticing that there was something wrong with her, she had to subtly fish for information to figure out her own designated personality, preferences, and relationships. Otherwise, she might end up violating some random setting she didn’t even know she had!
In the afternoon, the sky was clear and bright.
“Xiaoxi! Xiaoxi—” An excited voice called out from the distance.
Yunxi snapped out of her thoughts and looked up to see Li Daya—her newly designated next-door best friend—sprinting toward her.
Daya rushed over like a wild horse, casting furtive glances in every direction. Once she was sure no one was paying attention to them, she cupped her hands over her mouth and whispered, “Xiaoxi, do you know where Brother Zhuzi went?”
“Where did he go?”
“He went to the fields!” Daya’s face flushed with a mix of excitement and anticipation. “He’s incredible! You know the adults never let us leave the village, right?”
“Everyone has always been so curious about what’s out there. Brother Zhuzi thought about it for two whole days and finally came up with a plan!” Daya lowered her voice even further, scanning her surroundings. “The other kids went to distract the adults, and then Brother Zhuzi sneaked out through the alley! He’s amazing! The adults don’t have a clue that he’s gone!”
As Yunxi watched Daya beam with admiration, she began to ponder.
Maybe she could also find a way to sneak out to the fields and take a look around. She had always felt that those fields hid a massive secret; otherwise, why were the adults so strictly adamant about forbidding the children from going there?
Zhuzi was already nine years old, yet he had never once seen a farmland in his life. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he was the pampered child of some wealthy city official!
In her previous life, kids could help glean fallen ears of corn in the fields by the age of four or five, and by nine, they were fully capable of helping with the harvest.
Mushroom Village was just too bizarre. They were explicitly a community of farming families, yet the children had never laid eyes on a single field. How could that possibly make sense?
Yunxi walked around the village a bit longer, scouting the layout before finally heading home.
However, the moment she stepped through her front door, a piercing, heart-wrenching shriek echoed from the center of the village.
“Ahhhhh—”
Yunxi flinched, her instincts instantly kicking in. Something went wrong!
Without a second thought, she grabbed her bow and arrows and bolted back out, running at full speed toward the source of the scream.
Before disappearing around the corner, she shouted back to her stunned mother, “Mom, stay inside the house! I’m going to see what happened!”
