Taoyuan Village (Part 4)

After two whacks from Ding Shi's stick, A Cai's tongue loosened up. "Chief, he—he knows sorcery." A wave of laughter rolled through the crowd. A Cai turned red in the face with anxiety. "It's true! A Wang and I saw it with our own eyes. He was holding my family's chopping knife in his left hand, and then the knife just vanished out of thin air. When we caught up with him, he made it appear out of thin air again." The players knew this was an item card, a skill exclusive to players, but in A Cai's eyes it was sorcery. The village chief said, "Impossible. Since Liberation, there are no ghosts or demons." Ding Shi reminded him, "Chief, we're in Yita World, not on Earth. The local currency is the dao, not the yuan." The chief decided this made sense and looked warily at Li Si. "Do you have anything to say for yourself?" Li Si gave a laugh of pure exasperation. "It's just a chopping knife, isn't it?" The chief said, "What we're discussing right now is sorcery." Li Si said, "Doesn't the system block your perception? You're just NPCs. This is a skill we players have." He looked at Ding Shi. "He can do it too. All of us players can. It's not sorcery." Ding Shi protested, "I can't. I'm just a college student." Damn it. So he wanted to divert the disaster onto someone else and drag everyone down with him. It was like a very powerful alien arriving on Earth and pulling a bar of gold out of thin air—would Earthlings automatically censor the sudden appearance of the gold bar? Of course not. But Yita had never once mentioned the words "game" or "player." The villagers and the chief could accept talk of ghosts and spirits, but they had no concept of players, so naturally they believed Ding Shi. After all, no normal person would believe a story like Li Si's. The chief said, "Put the knife down first." Li Si asked, "And then?" If returning the knife would settle the matter, he was willing to return it. The chief hesitated a moment, then said, "You did take A Cai's chopping knife, after all. It would be better if you left our village." Someone chimed in from the side, "Taoyuan Village doesn't welcome thieves." He didn't believe in the sorcery, but the chopping knife was in Li Si's hands, and it was a fact that Li Si had taken A Cai's knife. "Right, right." Some people took the attitude that it was better to believe in sorcery than to risk being wrong. Since there was a reason now, it would be best to see the man off. Li Si looked left and right. The villagers' attitude toward him was none too friendly, so he gritted his teeth... On Ding Shi's side, a system message arrived: Li Si has transferred two dao to you. Click to accept. Not bad—he'd gotten his hands on some money. In all likelihood it was stolen goods. The villagers couldn't see personal system interfaces, and players couldn't see other players' interfaces either. Ding Shi accepted the money without a shred of compunction, then said, "Chief, I don't think he used sorcery." The chief asked doubtfully, "Then what was it?" "Magic tricks." Ding Shi rubbed his hands together, blew a breath at his left hand, and a clump of earthworms appeared on it, giving everyone a fright. Several young wives and young girls did not care for soft-bodied creatures and screamed. Ding Shi raised his right hand to draw their eyes, blew on his left hand, and only one earthworm was left. Then a child exposed his trick: "There are earthworms on the ground! He secretly threw the earthworms away." Ding Shi said cheerfully, "That's what a magic trick is. It's not sorcery." The chief half believed him—after all, that satisfaction score of ten was sitting right there in plain view. Still, the chief hesitated. "But the chopping knife..." Ding Shi leaned close to the chief's ear. "Chief, we're short-handed for the night watch. Everyone will be watching him now, so he can't steal anything. Rather than let a thief go, why not make the thief do some work? And if you really don't trust him, we can just search him once before he leaves Taoyuan Village. The sacrifice is what matters most, Chief." The chief found this very reasonable and nodded. "Li Si, return the chopping knife to A Cai, and I'll believe you this once. But I'll say this plainly up front: if your hands still aren't clean, we'll break your hands and feet." The chief was not joking. In those days, when a thief was caught, beating him to death or crippling him was very common; some were thrown into the river or a manure pit to drown. The yamen never caught anyone, because thieves mostly turned up on market days, and the whole market crowd would hem a thief in so tightly—a punch here, a kick there—that no one could tell who had killed him. The reason the villagers had only blocked Li Si's way instead of beating him, and the reason the chief had still been speaking so pleasantly, was simply worry over the so-called sorcery, not any fear of a thief. Li Si was a clever man, and he returned the knife and apologized on the spot. Ding Shi, ever the chief's errand boy, waved his hand. "All right, break it up." The chief watched the crowd disperse and nodded in satisfaction. "Little Ding, come to my house for lunch at noon. Don't forget." Village chief's satisfaction: 13. Dispute quest complete. Rating: A. Earned 0.9 dao. Ding Shi still had his mind on On Ghosts at the library. He climbed the steps and was heading for the library when the chief, not yet far off, shouted, "Little Ding!" Ding Shi hurried over to the chief. "Chief, here I am." A married woman stood beside the chief. The chief said crossly, "Go keep Aunt Wang company for a while." Ding Shi was startled. One look at pockmarked Aunt Wang startled him even more, and he lowered his voice at once. "Chief, isn't that a bit much? That's indecent." The chief sighed and also lowered his voice. "Aunt Wang just has a taste for this sort of thing. She's hopelessly addicted. It's fine. At noon I'll have my daughter-in-law bring you food." Ding Shi's pupils dilated. It wasn't even past nine yet—lunch? Just how long was this "keeping company" supposed to last? And the daughter-in-law bringing food—what was that supposed to mean? Ding Shi said quickly, "Chief, whether I have any morals is one thing. The key point is that I have taste." If it were Haitang, it wouldn't be out of the question; after all, she had no boyfriend and he had no girlfriend, so there'd be no moral pressure. The chief thought for a moment, dug a five-dao note out of his pocket, and slapped it into Ding Shi's hand. "I'll cover it." Five rolls of toilet paper. Was that really all I was worth? While Ding Shi and the chief were haggling, Aunt Wang said impatiently, "Stop dawdling. My two friends are tired of waiting. Are you up for it or not?" A cold sweat ran down from his temple. Ding Shi suddenly understood why Li Si had stolen a chopping knife. This was definitely not something he could do. He began considering whether he could use a stone card to knock Aunt Wang unconscious and make a run for it out of the village. The chief patted Ding Shi helplessly. "I'll cover your losses. You keep your winnings." "Huh?" The chief was counting on him to win? Where did that confidence come from? Had he never heard of an ox worked to death? By the time Ding Shi understood, he was already sitting at a mahjong table, cursing inwardly: Damn it, couldn't you just say so? You needed a fourth player, fine—you scared the hell out of me. ... Aunt Wang introduced Aunt Li and Aunt Zhang and explained the mahjong rules. They used the Japanese scoring system: riichi, one-suit double sequence, three-color straight, half flush, full flush, and so on. Ding Shi actually knew it. Back when he was a small-time hoodlum, he had managed arcade parlors for a gang, and the arcade machines included mahjong—Japanese-style mahjong battles. But in player-versus-machine, it wasn't enough to have skill and luck; the owner could adjust the payout rate, usually somewhere between sixty and seventy-five percent. At sixty percent, for example, you fed in a hundred tokens and the machine returned sixty. Play long enough and you were bound to lose, yet it drew plenty of people who thought they were the chosen ones. (Not that I'm talking about the stock market. Absolutely not the stock market. Don't take it personally.) Once Ding Shi confirmed it was an ordinary mahjong table and not an automatic-shuffling one, the three aunties turned into three fat sheep in his eyes. He had managed gambling dens for the gang and caught plenty of cheaters. To wreck rival gambling operations, he had learned a great many cheating techniques, and he practiced them in his spare time for fun.