These children—who seemed so obedient and docile, who longed for the city—their minds had long since been thoroughly assimilated by this closed, backward village.
In their understanding, women being harassed, teased, or even forcibly taken was a natural law as normal as eating and drinking.
They were not bystanders. They were new sprouts growing from soil of sin.
“Hear that? Even the kids understand, and you’re the one being prudish about it.”
The scar-faced man called Laizi laughed even more brazenly. He reached out, about to grab “Zhang Xinci’s” shoulder.
Fu Songcheng felt a violent wave of nausea.
Zhang Xinci’s physiological disgust and fear had reached their peak. Tears poured uncontrollably from her eyes.
This can’t go on!
Fu Songcheng’s consciousness struggled madly.
Yesterday at the dinner he’d been able to fight back against Li Guoping’s harassment—yet now he couldn’t recover his own strength to resist these villagers. If he kept enduring and retreating, he would be gradually replaced by “Zhang Xinci’s” fear.
He had to find a breakthrough!
“Don’t touch me!”
At the critical moment, Fu Songcheng mustered all his strength, riding on Zhang Xinci’s extreme terror, and burst out in a shrill scream:
“Principal Li told me to go to his house after class to sort the student records! He’ll be back any minute! If he finds out I’m not there—if he finds out you’re here causing trouble—you know the consequences!”
The instant those words were shouted out, Fu Songcheng felt a tearing pain in his throat.
He had leveraged the villagers’ fear of the “principal,” turning that fear into a weapon against the thugs.
Hunters, when enjoying their prey, still had an order of precedence.
The air suddenly fell silent for a second.
Laizi’s outstretched hand froze mid-air.
The lecherous grins on the other two men’s faces also stiffened.
The three words “Li Guoping” clearly carried absolute deterrent power in this village.
They didn’t dare gamble on whether he had really assigned a task. Laizi’s expression shifted, and the wariness in his eyes ultimately outweighed his desire.
“Motherfucker, using the village chief to pressure me.”
Laizi spat a thick wad of phlegm hard onto the ground. “You stinking bitch, what are you so smug about? When he gets tired of you, watch how I deal with you! Let’s go!”
The three men cursed and turned to leave the classroom. Passing through the courtyard, they didn’t forget to shout at the children watching the spectacle: “What are you looking at! You little brats, get home!”
The children scattered.
The classroom returned to a deathly silence.
Huff… huff…
Fu Songcheng leaned against the blackboard, his legs giving way, and he collapsed directly onto the chalk-dusted podium.
Gulp after gulp of air was drawn into his lungs, but the suffocating feeling lingered for a long time.
He lowered his head and looked at his own hands—”Zhang Xinci’s” hands—still trembling uncontrollably.
Tears were plopping onto the backs of his hands.
These were Zhang Xinci’s tears, but Fu Songcheng’s despair.
He not only had to fight the monsters and eerie villagers in the instance—he also had to fight this gradually out-of-control body, fight the cowardice and fear deep in this character’s heart.
He lifted his head and looked at the empty courtyard. The afterglow of the setting sun cast long shadows from the school’s dilapidated walls, like a massive cage.
The NPCs here were a complete, closed-loop ecosystem of sin.
If he couldn’t take back control of his body—
“Zhang Xinci” had escaped disaster today.
But “Fu Songcheng” absolutely wouldn’t survive to the fifteenth.
The nauseating physiological fear receded somewhat as the three thugs left.
“No,” Fu Songcheng analyzed silently, his gaze gradually sharpening, “it’s not that this body is too weak—I was wrong.”
To survive in the instance, he had been deliberately imitating—even actively catering to—”Zhang Xinci”: playing the delicate, timid role.
He’d thought it was disguise. Little did he know that under the rules, this sustained self-suggestion was eroding his consciousness in reverse.
He was playing the victim, so he had truly become the victim.
Blindly avoiding, crying, waiting for rescue—the result would be being devoured completely.
There seemed to be a soundless whimper in his mind—the original owner’s mournful cry.
As his will forcibly intervened, that drowning-like suffocation miraculously receded a little.
Fu Songcheng braced himself against the podium and stood up. He quickly gathered the scattered lesson plans and books on the desk. He had just stepped out the back door of the classroom and crossed the courtyard when a familiar figure blocked his path.
The setting sun stretched Li Guoping’s shadow long, like a black snake coiled on the ground.
The principal wore that bone-chillingly gentle smile, his small eyes behind his glasses squinted into slits.
“Teacher Zhang,” Li Guoping’s voice was greasy, carrying an indescribable implication, “I heard a few blind young punks scared you just now? Don’t be afraid. I’m here.”
He smiled and beckoned, his gaze roaming brazenly over Fu Songcheng as if appraising a piece of goods about to be his. “Come, come to my office. I’ll pour you some hot water to calm your nerves. There are some things we need to discuss—just the two of us.”
Fu Songcheng lowered his eyelids, concealing the cold gleam in his eyes, and nodded obediently, gathering his books and following.
Li Guoping led him into a storage room in the corner of the school building. The room was cramped and crammed with old, discarded desks and chairs.
The moment the door shut, the hypocrisy on Li Guoping’s face tore away instantly.
“Still pretending?”
Li Guoping snatched the books from Fu Songcheng’s arms and tossed them to the floor with a dull smack.
He advanced step by step, his rough hand reaching straight for Fu Songcheng’s shoulder. “In this village, no woman escapes my grasp. Hmph—in the end, they all come crawling to me.”
The instant Li Guoping’s fingers touched his shoulder, the two forces inside Fu Songcheng clashed violently once more.
Zhang Xinci’s instincts screamed: Beg! Kneel! He’ll kill you!
That instinct drove the body to retreat, the knees to bend.
But Fu Songcheng’s consciousness stood like an towering iron pagoda, crushing every impulse to flinch.
No retreat! No kneeling! No begging!
The body that should have cringed and backed away, under his control, instead froze rigidly in place.
Li Guoping’s hand fell half-short, catching only his sleeve.
“Yo, still feisty?”
Li Guoping leered. His other hand slid upward, reaching with ill intent toward Fu Songcheng’s neck and chest. “I like them with a bit of temper—makes it more fun.”
Zhang Xinci’s physiological disgust hit its peak. The body trembled violently beyond control, tears spilling from his eyes again.
Cry. Cry all you want.
Fu Songcheng watched it all coldly. But my hand will not stop.
He was using Zhang Xinci’s fear as cover, lulling Li Guoping’s vigilance, while frantically summoning his inventory in his sea of consciousness.
“Stop struggling, little darling.”
Seeing that “she” only wept and trembled without any major resistance, Li Guoping assumed his prey had resigned herself and grew bolder still. He pressed his whole body closer, his filthy breath spraying across Fu Songcheng’s face.
Now!
The tears in Fu Songcheng’s eyes hadn’t dried, but the corner of his mouth curled into an eerie arc.
The current “Zhang Xinci” was half cowering in fear, half defiant and unyielding.
“You think you deserve to touch me?”
Those were not words Zhang Xinci could have said. The tone was cold and sinister, thick with killing intent.
Li Guoping froze, and before he could react, he saw “Zhang Xinci’s” right hand—which had been trembling all along—suddenly reach into thin air with incredible speed and steadiness!
[System Notification: Successfully summoned item “Dagger” (Intermediate).]
A cold gleam flashed.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Fu Songcheng gripped the dagger and, seizing the opening as Li Guoping pressed close, slashed viciously at the greasy hand reaching for him!
Riiip—!
The sound of tearing fabric and parting flesh rang out at once.
Blood sprayed instantly, staining Li Guoping’s cuff and the front of Fu Songcheng’s clothes.
“Ah—!!”
Li Guoping clutched his gushing hand and staggered back, his expression twisting from lecherous to hideous fury in an instant. “You stinking bitch! You dare wound me?!”
The pain thoroughly awakened the NPC’s ferocity.
As a minor instance boss, he ignored the wound on his hand entirely, roaring like an enraged wild boar as he lunged forward.
“I’ll tear you apart! I’ll make you know the price of offending me!”
The two instantly grappled together.
In just a few exchanges, Fu Songcheng was roughly slammed against a pile of old desks.
The corner of the desk dug painfully into his spine. Li Guoping’s good left hand clamped down hard on Fu Songcheng’s throat, squeezing so hard it nearly crushed his larynx.
Cough… cough cough…
His vision began to darken, the air in his lungs squeezed out bit by bit.
Li Guoping’s other hand frantically tore at Fu Songcheng’s clothes, his eyes full of mad killing intent and lust. “I’m going to play you to death first, then bury you under the school building!”
Click.
A clear metallic sound came from the door.
Someone had locked it from the outside.
Li Guoping was stunned for a moment, then burst into wild laughter. “Ha! Even heaven is helping me! No one can save you now!”
Outside help cut off, strength suppressed—a certain-death situation.
If this were Zhang Xinci, she would probably have given up struggling by now, waiting for fate’s judgment.
But Fu Songcheng was different.
He had come to break the game—not to die.
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