Translator-Rhapsodite
Editor-CherryApple, Proofreader-Woojoo
When they got back to the swamp, Inger was trying to arrange the fluff on her wings with her beak, attempting to make herself look less bare.
“It would be better if you players came less often.”
Looking at the trio, she raised her small voice in dissatisfaction, “Every time, I have to lose a feather, and this time, I had to lose twice as much. How many more feathers do I have to lose?”
Nan Zhou voiced an alternative solution, “Can’t we use something else, like leaves, as a substitute?”
Inger explained, “No. Players have to open the third timeline with the feathers that fall into the swamp, that’s the rule.”
Nan Zhou thought for a while.
If he had to lose a handful of hair for every player that came to [Eternal Day], he would be very sad too.
But thankfully, he didn’t.
Looking back, he realized that apart from being restricted to a certain range, as well as the full moon appearing at a faster rate, he had hardly been forced to do anything by the game system.
The game was able to restrict his environment, but not him.
——It seems that [Forces of Temptation] had given Nan Zhou a lot of freedom.
It can even be said that [Forces of Temptation] did not “create” the character “Nan Zhou”.
On the contrary, it should be said that they “invaded” Nan Zhou’s paper world.
Nan Zhou stopped thinking about the past.
Right now, they had more important things to do.
After completing this instance, he needs to have a good talk with Jiang Fang and Li Yinhang about his origins, relationship, and the future.
They climbed back onto the bird-winged flying carpet and broke through the vortex of the cascading timelines just like before.
Only this time, what they saw was very different from before.
Upon passing to the fourth timeline from the third, the group rushed out of the swamp.
It was already late.
The swamp and the candy house were pretty close to each other and the meaty aroma that made people drool was emerging from the direction of the candy house.
Inger carried them, gliding all the way, deep into the forest.
Nan Zhou looked back curiously, and Jiang Fang pressed his head down twice, reminding him to avoid the oncoming branches.
They flew all the way to the timeline vortex in the forest and entered the second timeline.
As they broke through the timeline vortex, Li Yinhang took a deep breath in preparation of the oncoming hellish scene.
However, the scene of a bloody mutilated carcass or the sight of the two devils with a bloody mouth who might’ve woken up and continued to devour their father’s corpse like vultures did not appear.
The hellish scene had been replaced by a warm and spacious cottage, cleaner than any they had seen before in the previous timelines.
“The food on the table that hadn’t been finished was protected by a mesh cover.”
Beside the stove with the charcoal burning underneath, there was a round cashmere rug.
The two children held each other and napped on the carpet.
A blanket with a gray duck design covered them from the waist-down.
A small plate of cookies lay on the tea table beside the carpet.
The cookies were not as appealing or tempting as those made at the candy house. The sides of the cookies were scorched, and many of them had burnt edges.
Yet it shouldn’t taste that bad.
The corner of the sister’s mouth was still smeared with cookie crumbs.
The brother and sister weren’t dressed in the exquisite and high-end velvet that they wore when they were prosperous, nor were they wearing the decent and exquisite little noble dress after becoming a slave of the candy house.
They were simple solid color dresses, one red and one blue, homely clothes that looked warm and cozy.
The man who had his stomach slashed and had died in the previous timeline was feeding the chickens outside the window in front of the house.
The finely ground chicken food sifted in his winnowing basket, making a soothing, tranquil sound.
The little yellow dog outside the window that was circling around the man’s trouser leg seemed to have caught a whiff of a stranger’s scent and barked at the window.
The man picked up the dog in a hurry and coaxed it for fear of waking up his children who had just fallen asleep in the house.
For such a weak person who could be pushed around by anyone, if there wasn’t any external force controlling him, he would do his due duties in his own clumsy ways.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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The fire in the fireplace trembled in the chilling wind.
The brother was awoken by the chilly wind that invaded the hut, and when he glanced up, a little woolen blanket was carefully wrapped around his sleeping sister’s shoulders.
He stared at the wide-open door.
There was no one outside.
But he was certain that he had just seen the remnants of a small bird.
He walked up to the open door.
The moonlight fell over his shoulders like grains of salt, reflecting the path leading deeper into the forest in a snowy white.
He murmured, “…… Is that you.”
Was it the little bird that had guided them when they were “lost”?
……
Riding on Inger’s wings as they traveled among the dense forest, Nan Zhou looked down and asked, “If we didn’t get the bread in the last timeline what would’ve happened to us?”
“Then you would’ve been trapped here.”
Inger spoke in a very calm tone, “Every timeline advances synchronously. When they wake up, they will cry for their father’s death, but they will still be hungry.”
“At that point, they will have eaten their father’s stomach.”
This sentence could be described as “mind refreshing”.
Li Yinhang, who was still immersed in the warm, homely atmosphere, woke up in seconds.
The door handle grew on the father’s stomach.
Once the stomach was gone, then the player would be trapped in that timeline forever.
Unless, like Nan Zhou, they tried to fix the tragedy of “Candy House” to alter the timeline.
“There are indeed players who do that.”
Inger saw through Li Yinhang’s mind.
“However, by the time those players realize that their escape route has been cut off, it’s already too late. There won’t be many choices left for them.”
Nan Zhou nodded, “In the third timeline, the two siblings who escaped from the candy house have already been cursed by the candy house’s cannibalistic curse.”
Inger said, “Yes. That’s why some players would throw their lives away and kill the brother and sister, so they could stop the father from being killed.”
Nan Zhou, “Did it work?”
Inger said, “No.”
Nan Zhou thought so.
If the time when Nan Zhou and others entered the candy house was considered the “normal timeline,” then the four overlapping and progressive timelines of “killing father,” “escaping from the candy house,” “being abandoned by father,” and “the past of sweet family” are the two siblings’ fantasy garden.
The pillar of the “fantasy” was the existence of the two siblings.
If they are erased, the fantasy crumples in on itself.
The player who killed the brother and sister will be permanently trapped in that fragment of time, unable to escape ever again.
Right before they went through the final vortex, Jiang Fang looked back at the cabin by the forest that was no longer visible.
While Nan Zhou and Inger were talking about the world line issue, he made another observation.
The stepmother of the two siblings wasn’t there. The grave wasn’t either.
However, it was an insignificant detail.
At the sight of Nan Zhou dropping off the gold for the siblings under the tree, he could guess what had happened with the greedy woman.
Inger carried them, tore through the boundaries of time, and broke open the last door.
The brother and sister who should have been imprisoned in the candy house had disappeared.
The décor in the candy house was not much different from what Nan Zhou saw in their second timeline.
Except here, it still belongs to the witch.
But most of the candy house had melted and rotted.
Decayed cream, rotting fruit, and cakes that had softened after being wet gave these undesirable foods a revolting stench.
Curled up in an obscure corner of the candy house was a withered corpse.
Upon closer inspection, you will be creeped out to find that the “corpse” was still breathing, the chest moving slightly up and down.
It had probably been a long time since she deceived a new player, and hence the witch had turned into a skinny skeleton due to starvation.
Scattered around her hands were some bones that had been sucked to translucency.
Among them were the relatively fresh-looking bones of a hand that belonged to an adult female.
Probably because she caught the scent of a stranger, she suddenly opened her thickly clouded eyes, salivating, and issued an invitation in a hoarse voice like a rag, “Guest, do you want to have a bite of my candy——”
Inger flew past her, her huge wings slapping the witch’s face hard, then let out a somewhat prideful shriek, and flew straight into the sky.
The two siblings, who had grown up a bit, were going about their daily work in the forest at this time.
It was already quite late, and they were planning to go back.
Father had repeatedly warned them not to go too deep, and not to stay out too late.
After all, that was how their stepmother disappeared.
The brother found a nice mushroom in the mushroom pit and leaned down to pick it.
The sister was carrying the basket, but her eyes caught a white light shimmering light through the forest about a hundred meters away, among the green forest shadows.
She opened her mouth slightly, and after a long time, she carefully pulled the corner of her brother’s clothes.
“Brother, I think I saw that little bird with the lantern again.”
The sister was not mistaken.
When she looked at Nan Zhou, Nan Zhou was also turning on the light of his mobile phone, looking back at the two small figures standing in the forest.
The soft silver moonlight shrouded him, together with the fragrance of vegetation and the misty night fog, weaving a thin net softly, capturing the world and them together in the net.
They were not free.
But people in the same net could also give each other a light.
Nan Zhou and others crossed the great swamp and soon arrived at the end of their journey.
It was a door that stood in the deep black and green swamp, too far from the shore.
A very familiar door and doorknob.
Without Inger’s help, it would’ve been impossible for any player to come here on their own.
When it was time to part, Li Yinhang endured the hunger that had almost reached its limit, and said, “We were afraid that there might be some unforeseen circumstances on the road and saved a loaf of bread. I will give it all to you.”
Out of caution, until the end, they still did not eat a bite from the copy.
“I only make deals of equal value.” Inger refused, “I have experience. If you get paid beyond what you deserve, heaven will always ask you to pay it back.”
Seeing it insist like this, Li Yinhang silently withdrew the bread.
Nan Zhou, “I have one more question.”
Inger, “What?”
“You talk a lot.” Nan Zhou said, “Not like in fairy tales.”
Inger, “……”
On this question, Inger thought carefully and replied, “Because I like you a lot.”
Inger’s silence stemmed from the pride that she could not erase from her bones from when she was still a human being.
She didn’t care to talk to people she didn’t like.
However, what Nan Zhou did made her like him.
The vast majority of players she had met could only go as far as going to the fifth timeline’s cellar to get the bread and make a deal with her.
No one would care about the fate of the two children who were still in the original timeline and had tried to eat them.
So, in the long solitude, Inger was willing to talk to this passerby a little more.
Nan Zhou seriously replied, “Thank you.”
Jiang Fang gently took Nan Zhou’s shoulder and said the same, “Thank you.”
Nan Zhou, “?”
After saying goodbye to Inger, they pushed open the door.
The faintly twitching passage of brain marrow presented itself to them once more.
They spent a full ten hours in the dual story of “Candy House” and “Inger”.
The corridor still echoed with the sound of chewing mixed with saliva, but it no longer affected them as much.
Li Yinhang sat down on the ground and pulled out what little food she had left in the warehouse and feasted on it.
They could finally eat to their heart’s content.
Nan Zhou was still thinking about what Jiang Fang said when he said goodbye to Inger.
He asked curiously, “She said she liked me, why did you thank her?”
Jiang Fang did not answer directly.
He took out an apple and waved it in front of Nan Zhou.
Nan Zhou took it and bit into it obediently.
Jiang Fang asked him, “Are you very hungry?”
Nan Zhou didn’t say how hungry he was, instead, “If possible, after the instance is cleared, I want to go to the casino in [Paper Gold City].”
There was an all-you-can-eat buffet there for 200 points.
Jiang Fang raised his eyebrows, “If you want to, why not?”
Although he made Boss Qu lose face in public, the casino is a business.
Since it was a business they could naturally patronize it anytime.
Jiang Fang had been mixing with snakes and dragons for years and had long cultivated his smiling face to perfection.
…… He did not hold a grudge.
As long as boss Qu didn’t find fault, Jiang Fang would treat him properly and politely, eat a buffet for 200 points, and leave without giving him trouble.
Nan Zhou gave his reason, “That boss Qu has ‘sexual impulses’ towards you.”
The mouthful of bread that Li Yinhang just swallowed almost went straight to her trachea.
Hearing Nan Zhou’s question, Jiang Fang couldn’t help but chuckle and asked, “You don’t like it?”
Nan Zhou, “Why won’t I like it?
Nan Zhou, “I have it too.”
The first bite had just cleared Li Yinhang’s windpipe when this dialogue sent another one right down again.
Jiang Fang, “……”
Nan Zhou argued without a change in his expression: “It’s normal. Everyone has some reasonable fantasies about beautiful things. For example, I thought that you would look good without clothes.”
In fact, Nan Zhou also thought that Jiang Fang’s proportions were perfect to be a ‘nude’ model.
With his long and supple thighs as a reference, the proportions of that part might be very appealing and beautiful.
But he thought it’s not very appropriate to say it in front of ladies.
He turned to Li Yinhang, “Yinhang, you have also had such a thought, haven’t you?”
Li Yinhang was shocked.
If we talk about the appreciation of beautiful things and the opposite ‘sex’, she had more or less a little bit of appreciation for Nan Zhou.
But to be honest, she still wanted to live.
If she didn’t have any awareness and allowed any feelings to develop, she was afraid the big guy would find her troublesome and toss her out of the group, then she would really be in trouble.
Feelings will only prevent her from living an easy life, her life was like a journey to Taihang Mountain & Wangwu Mountain, a stumbling block in her life.
With tears in her eyes, she tried her best to stuff food into her mouth, making herself look addicted to food and unable to extricate herself. With no distractions, eat and cry while still alive.
But when Nan Zhou lowered his head and focused on the apple in his palm, he ruminated carefully.
He felt he might have a little dislike for Qu Jinsha’s thoughts on Jiang Fang.
Just the thought of it made him feel some subtle and sour weirdness in his heart.
…… Why?
Wouldn’t everyone appreciate beauty?
Why would one not want others to appreciate it?
This was another new topic worthy of research.
Thinking this way, he gently took another bite of the apple.
The sweet and sour fruit of the apple cracked between his teeth.v
👀
Yay! An new chapter! Thank you and welcome back!!!
Omg, this has been gone for quite some time, but now it’s back! Yey! ฅ(๑▽๑)ฅ!!
Thank you very much! I really thought it was gonna be dropped or something T-T
Nan Zhou can sympathize (?) with fictional characters and somehow, this made Inger like him. They’re on the same boat, I guess. (｡•́︿•̀｡)
Also, the last part shocked me. Nan Zhou is very straightforward, it’s kinda hard to read without choking. I say Nan Zhou, the beauty in front of you shall only be yours to appreciate ba. You have the rights to be jealous and selfish~ ≧∇≦
Nan Nan real philosopher!!!!
Thank you for your translation 🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡
🎉🎉🎉
Thank you so much!! 😍 😍 😍
Yaayy welcome back!!! ☆:.｡. o(≧▽≦)o .｡.:☆
thank you for the chapter ☺️
Thank you for the chapter!! Hehe I’m glad Nan Zhou is thinking about it.
Thank you for the translation. Welcome back. 😍❤️
I love his honesty 🤣