Chapter 5: This Is Impossible
“A Field Mouse King?”
Do field mice actually have kings? Well, most animal species have a hierarchical leader, so it wouldn’t be completely out of the ordinary for field mice to have their own sovereign.
Lu Yunxi observed the area for a moment and noticed that the field mice scurrying around were basically identical in size and shared the same frantic agility.
Seeing no alternative, she raised her bow, notched an arrow, and aimed carefully at the one closest to her. However, the creatures were constantly on the move, darting back and forth so rapidly that pinning one down in her sights proved incredibly difficult.
She had no choice but to be patient.
One minute passed, then two… Soon, a quarter of an hour had slipped by. The sun climbed higher into the sky, and beads of sweat began to roll down her forehead.
Just as her focus threatened to wander, her patience paid off. An opportunity finally presented itself!
Her eyes locked onto her target. She released the string, and the arrow tore through the air, streaking straight toward the field mouse.
Swish!
The arrow grazed the rodent’s leg, drawing a few drops of blood that splattered into the soil.
What a pity! It actually managed to dodge the lethal blow!
But as Yunxi reached into her quiver to draw a fresh arrow, she realized the injured field mouse was sprinting straight toward her. It looked completely enraged.
Yunxi flinched in surprise. What caught her off guard wasn’t the fact that the creature was charging at her, but rather something hovering right above its head!
A bright red bar had suddenly materialized over the injured mouse.
“Dad, did you see that?” she asked, choosing to dodge the charging rodent instead of shooting, trying to get a clearer look at the strange red stripe.
“Of course I saw it!” Lu Dahu laughed boisterously. “You’re being chased all over the place by a common field mouse, scrambling to hide. How could I possibly miss that? Do you need your old man to step in? Just keep in mind, if I help you, it counts as a failure!”
Yunxi paused. She tested her theory by shifting her position and realized that her father wasn’t reacting to any floating bar. Only she could see the red stripe above the field mouse’s head!
Declining her father’s assistance, she experimentally raised her bow and fired another shot at the incoming rodent.
To her absolute astonishment, every single time her arrow struck the creature, the red bar would noticeably deplete, accompanied by floating text that read -1 and -2.
Her final arrow went clean through the field mouse’s body. The moment a floating -10 appeared in the air, the red bar completely emptied. The creature collapsed and fell lifeless to the ground.
Yunxi stared at the corpse, her mind racing. Why does this look exactly like a health bar from an online video game?! Once the monster’s health hit zero, it died.
An online game?!
Wait a minute!
She suddenly recalled the novels she had heard the company interns gossiping about back in her previous life. The protagonists who traveled to alternate worlds always ended up with systems, cheat codes, or golden fingers.
Could this be her golden finger? Being able to see a creature’s health bar during combat?
Yunxi fell into deep thought. If she was destined to inherit her father’s trade and become a hunter, having this kind of visual interface would be an incredible advantage.
After weighing her options, she decided to target another field mouse just to be sure. What if the first time had simply been a heat-induced hallucination?
Standing beside her, Lu Dahu was completely dumbfounded.
He vividly remembered his own first trip out to the farmlands. He had been paralyzed with fear, taking ages to defeat a single mouse, and had walked away with a fair share of nasty scratches. His daughter, however, had succeeded seamlessly on her very first try.
Before he could even process his shock, he watched Yunxi effortlessly engage a second field mouse.
While she had wasted quite a few arrows during her first bout, she only needed four clean shots to put the second rodent down.
Staring at his daughter’s calm, unbothered expression, a sudden wave of intense excitement washed over Lu Dahu. My daughter isn’t just a prodigy—she’s a genius among geniuses! At this rate, she might actually be capable of entering that legendary world!
After killing a few more field mice, Yunxi definitively confirmed that she had indeed awakened a golden finger. From now on, whenever she went hunting, she would have absolute knowledge of her target’s remaining health.
While Yunxi was busy clearing the farmlands, a crowd had gathered back at the village entrance, taking shelter under the sprawling shade of a large tree near the village plaque.
Aside from the adults who had to tend to their chores, most of the elderly folk and children had brought out small benches, sitting down to wait for Yunxi’s return.
One old man couldn’t help but chuckle when he saw the children staring intently down the dirt road. “You kids should go run along and play. Catching a field mouse isn’t an easy task. We’ll be lucky if Dahu brings her back before nightfall!”
“Hmph! What utter nonsense are you spouting now, old man?” another elder, who always loved a good argument, immediately snorted. “I bet they’ll be back any minute now! It’s her first time out there, so they’re probably just taking a quick look. Who would actually dare to linger?”
The other seniors quickly joined the conversation.
“Exactly! And she’s a little girl, not a boy. Mark my words, when she walks back through those gates, she’s going to be crying her eyes out from fright!”
“Bah! How dare you look down on girls? Xiaoxi has always been sharp; she won’t be scared that easily. If I recall correctly, the first time you went out there, you balled your eyes out for days!”
“…”
The old-timers bickered back and forth, enjoying the distraction.
“Stop shouting, all of you! Look over there—aren’t those two Dahu and Xiaoxi?” an elder who had remained quiet until now suddenly spoke up, pointing down the path.
The bickering ceased instantly as every eye locked onto the horizon.
Sure enough, it was them.
“They really are back! See? I told you they wouldn’t stay out until nightfall!”
“Sigh, returning this early means they definitely didn’t catch anything.”
“Like I said, a girl just doesn’t have what it takes for this kind of work. Hunting field mice is a boy’s job.”
Some of the elders sighed in disappointment, others smirked complacently, and a few simply shook their heads in resignation.
The children, oblivious to the complicated politics of the adults, cheered happily when they saw the first hero of their generation returning.
Li Daya in particular was grinning from ear to ear. Her newly minted best friend was the very first child to brave the path out of the village. As her sister, shouldn’t she share in the glory?
“Xiaoxi, you’re amazing! Tell me, what did the fields look…” Daya squealed excitedly, sprinting forward to meet them. But halfway through her sentence, her eyes dropped to what they were carrying, and she let out a piercing shriek. “Ah——!”
Yunxi blinked in surprise. “What’s wrong?”
“Small… small… small…” Daya pointed one shaking finger at the thing in Lu Yunxi’s hand, using her other hand to cover her mouth as her eyes threatened to pop out of her head.
Following Daya’s line of sight, the other children looked over, and their expressions instantly transformed into masks of pure terror.
“Oh, you mean this? This is just the field mouse I caught!” Noticing their hyper-fixated stares, Yunxi helpfully hoisted the rodent a bit higher. “Do you want to get a closer look?”
The kids looked at her as if she were a certified maniac. Their faces turned completely pale, they took a collective step backward, and then they scattered in every direction, screaming at the top of their lungs.
Lu Yunxi stood in place, completely bewildered. ???
The children’s high-pitched shrieks immediately startled the gossiping elders under the tree.
“Ah?! You… you… you actually managed to kill a field mouse?!” The old man who had been sitting on the far right scrambled to his feet, his jaw dropping.
Yunxi gave a casual nod. “Yes, I killed them. But I only managed to get five of them, so it’s really not that many…”
“Impossible! You’re lying! How could a little girl like you possibly kill a field mouse?! I don’t buy it!” the old man barked, cutting her off, his face twisted in utter disbelief. “Your father must have been the one who actually—”
Before he could finish his accusation, the elder sitting right in the middle abruptly interrupted him.
“Five?!” This elder’s face was literally trembling with sheer excitement. He lunged forward, leaning in so close that he was practically nose-to-nose with her, his eyes wide with shock. “You really brought down five of them?!”
Yunxi gritted her teeth in annoyance. Secretly wishing he would back off, she pushed the old man’s massive face away from hers and wiped a stray splatter of his flying saliva off her cheek. “Yes, it’s definitely five.”
The stubborn old man on the right opened his mouth to protest again, but an old woman sitting directly behind him forcefully shoved him out of the way.
“Move it, you old fool!” she snapped. “We have to offer sacrifices to our ancestors tomorrow. There’s no way Xiaoxi would make up a wild boast right before that!”
The remaining elders froze in their tracks, looks of profound existential dread washing over their faces as they began to question everything they knew about reality.
The old woman turned back to Yunxi, her face beaming like a fresh flower. “Xiaoxi, this was your very first time hunting field mice! You are officially the first person in our village’s history to succeed on their very first attempt! And you didn’t just stumble your way into catching one—you brought back five!”
With that validation, the rest of the elderly folks sitting in the back swarmed forward, their faces radiating pure admiration.
“Xiaoxi truly is a phenomenal young man… uh, young lady! Incredible!”
“You definitely lived up to the hype of being the first to cross the path! Xiaoxi, when you have some spare time, please look after my good-for-nothing grandson…”
In the blink of an eye, Yunxi found herself completely drowned in a sea of overwhelming flattery.
Off to the side, the stubborn old man on the far right remained frozen in his shock, staring blankly ahead as he muttered a robotic refrain under his breath.
“Impossible… This is absolutely impossible…”
