While having his fun, Ding Shi also stuck his head and half his body into the coffin. From the outside, it looked as though the coffin were pinching him in two.
Shining his flashlight upward, he saw two talisman papers pasted in an X shape across the underside of the lid. In the center of the X lay a card of peculiar material, roughly the size of a playing card (hereafter referred to as the card-like object).
Ding Shi reached out his left hand and could just barely reach it. Pressing his fingertips against the card, he pushed upward, but the crossed talismans blocked the way. Pushing sideways, it seemed he was just a hair shy of sliding it free from the X.
He wormed a little further into the coffin and propped the lid up with his waist. He was young and had a good back; he could handle this much weight.
Setting the flashlight upright beside San Niang's knees, Ding Shi used both hands to try coaxing the card out from the X. After trying for a good while, he realized it truly was just a fraction of an inch off. He rotated the card to see if that would reduce its profile, but the answer was no.
Very little of the card was exposed; most of it was covered by the talisman papers. Without his hands touching the talismans, Ding Shi could only press his fingertips against the card to shift it up, down, left, and right.
Now there was only one way—a very risky way—which was to scrape away the paste holding the talisman paper in the card's path and clear a route. However, he had to ensure the talisman paper wouldn't fall off.
His current predicament was like driving down a narrow dirt track. In theory, driving forward would send the wheels into the ditch, but in practice, there was still hope. If he let half of each tire hang off the edge and drove using only the remaining half of the tread, he could squeeze through. Still, the practical risk was astronomical—a miss by an inch was as good as a mile.
Time to witness a miracle.
Ding Shi rubbed his hands together, shook out his fingers, took a deep breath, and pressed both index fingers against the card, nudging it toward the left. It was obvious that the card's top-left and top-right corners were blocked by the talismans. Angling it slightly allowed the top-left corner to slip out, but only that single corner. For now, he could only hope the talismans allowed for some margin of error and weren't pasted down completely rigid.
Greed truly degrades a person's intelligence. Ding Shi hadn't even stopped to consider why the talisman papers stuck to the wood in the first place. Ordinary folk used paste, but a master would surely slap them on directly with spiritual power. And where would a directly slapped talisman leave any margin for error?
It was the height of summer, and sweat dripped from Ding Shi's brow, landing right on the lens of the flashlight and instantly blurring the beam. Ding Shi lowered his head to wipe the lens, which knocked the flashlight over. As he reached out to grab it, his finger accidentally brushed against San Niang's left pinky. San Niang's eyes snapped wide open in an instant.
Ding Shi froze. Even more sweat poured down his face, streaming along his cheeks. He stared fixedly at San Niang, and San Niang, with her pitch-black eyes, stared fixedly right back at him.
If the enemy doesn't move, I move. After waiting a moment and seeing no further reaction from San Niang, Ding Shi picked up the flashlight, used it to scrape her eyelids back down over her eyes, repositioned the flashlight, and went back to work.
Good, it's almost out.
Just as half of the card slipped free of the X, Ding Shi's hand trembled slightly. The edge of the card sliced across one of the talismans, leaving a tear about half a centimeter long. As if someone had hit pause, Ding Shi froze, staying completely still for half a minute before picking up the flashlight to inspect San Niang. Very good—her eyes were still shut.
Ding Shi set the flashlight back down and reached for the card again, only to discover with a start that the tear in the talisman paper had grown slightly. Had it? It had, right? Yes? He wasn't entirely sure.
At a time like this, who cared whether it had grown or not—time was life. Ding Shi continued to slide the card out. With the tear widening the opening, he retrieved the card without further trouble.
Taking a look, it wasn't some mere card-like object—it was an actual playing card: a Seven of Spades with a common blue water-ripple pattern on the back.
What did this mean?
A line of subtitles appeared before Ding Shi's eyes: Truth 1 of Yita: This is a game, and yet not a game; life is like a play.
What did that mean? Were they out of their minds?
Ding Shi tried his hand at reading comprehension. The development of things ultimately came down to process and outcome—could it be understood like that? In Yita, the process was a game, but the outcome was not. For instance, most people played this game because it was fun, while a minority had all sorts of motives: passing the time, picking up girls, hooking rich suckers, grinding accounts for cash, or even playing it as part of their job.
The phrase "life is like a play" needed no explanation; the key was the word "like." The word "like" already proved that life wasn't a play. Boiled down to one sentence: life is not a game.
Comprehensive analysis: The Yita World was using the game to find the kind of people it needed. What kind of people did it need? Ding Shi surmised they were looking for people who could defy human nature. Some said human nature was inherently greedy, lazy, impulsive, selfish, and vain; others spoke of the seven deadly sins. Only those who went against human nature and could rein in their natural instincts could achieve success.
Losing weight, studying, exercising, and so forth—if you wanted to achieve anything, you had to act against human nature.
Ding Shi didn't know whether his analysis was correct, but his intuition told him that his conjecture about Yita searching for people it needed was likely right. It was just that he couldn't be certain what kind of people Yita was looking for.
Opening the system interface, he found a new notepad added to it. Opening the notepad, Truth 1 was recorded within.
After all, this was only the first instance, and a casual instance at that. Ding Shi set the matter aside for now and tried placing the Seven of Spades into his skill card slot. The system prompted: Requirements not met. Without converting it into a card first, Ding Shi tried placing the Seven of Spades into an item card slot. This time it went in, classified as a skill card.
Ding Shi glanced at the tear in the talisman paper and confirmed that the fissure was indeed expanding. It had already split a quarter of the talisman's width. Time to run. Even so, Ding Shi wasn't a completely irresponsible person; since he was the one who had torn the talisman paper, he had an obligation to repair it.
Taking out his Sweet Potato Card, he conjured up a sweet potato, scooped out a small piece, rolled it between his fingers into a ball, and pressed it over the tear in the talisman paper.
Repair complete, Ding Shi gathered his things, propped up the coffin lid with his left hand, and wriggled out of the coffin.
Before climbing out, Ding Shi shone the flashlight on San Niang. Her eyes remained tightly shut, as if nothing had happened at all. Ding Shi tried lifting the coffin lid slightly; San Niang's eyelids obligingly played along in their little game a dozen times, which left Ding Shi quite pleased. This proved Blind Zhao had been telling the truth: taking the great treasure alone wouldn't cause any problems. Blind Zhao just hadn't mentioned that extracting the treasure stood a very high chance of damaging the talismans.
Life was full of traps at every turn; Ding Shi was long used to it.
He lowered the coffin lid and hammered the coffin nails back in. Even though it was still pitch-black outside, and even though a light rain had begun to fall, Ding Shi still dutifully remembered his agreement with Daoist Baiyun and rushed down the mountain at top speed, not even hesitating to use his backside as a brake as he slid straight down the slopes.
How to evaluate what he'd just done?
Li Si was a scumbag, Zhao Liu was a scumbag, and he was a scumbag too. Ding Shi was perfectly willing to admit it. One could tell from the way the tear in the talisman paper slowly widened that damaging it would inevitably trigger negative consequences.
What if he hadn't been greedy? No, there were no 'what-ifs.' Ding Shi only blamed himself for not being careful enough; he didn't blame himself for being too greedy. Seeing an item like this, one naturally had to take it—there was no reason in the world to pass it up.
The plan now was to get down the mountain as quickly as possible.
Should he explain the situation to Daoist Baiyun once he got back to the village?
Of course he shouldn't. Blind Zhao had fought ghosts alongside him, after all; if he confessed the truth, wouldn't he be implicating Blind Zhao, who had given him the intel on the treasure in the first place? As for a real man standing up and taking responsibility for his own actions—well, that would depend on whether Blind Zhao had the spine of a real man.
In any case, Ding Shi didn't. As an undercover operative, the option to take the fall simply wasn't in his vocabulary. No, rather, taking the blame was something that must never exist in his vocabulary.
Chapter 23