Chapter 143 True Detective Girl Dungeon: Trying to Set Up a Stall
When Yao Xiaoyu was writing the "Destiny Change Record," she struggled for a long time about whether to use Lanruo Temple or Painted Skin for the first mission. In the end, she chose Zhen Ding Nu. Yao Xiaoyu told herself that she chose her as the starting mission because the stimulation needed to be from weak to strong. But she knew in her heart that she was writing this story just because she felt that this girl should not suffer such torment.
In a sense, "The Chronicle of Changing Fate" can be seen as a fan fiction of "Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio," and the greatest function of fan fiction is to give many characters in the original work an alternative ending.
There are nearly five hundred stories in *Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio*, but not every one is a suitable fit for Yao Xiaoyu's writing. After careful consideration, Yao Xiaoyu only assigned nine instances of varying lengths to Shangguan Jieyou. As for how Shangguan Jieyou will stand out from the limited workload...
[Nickname: A Feifei (Shangguan Jieyou)]
[Instance World: True Maiden]
[Time: 57 years, 38 days, 6 hours, and 24 seconds]
[Mission Evaluation: Through years of hard work, you have brought numerous pedophiles to justice; single-handedly, you have delayed the marriage age for women. You are the guardian angel of young girls and the protector of infant spirits...]
[Achievements obtained this time: Judge (Prestige +10), Child's Best Friend (Initial Trust from underage girls +10), Unknown Friendship (Power is reduced when attacked by infant-type monsters)...]
[Notification: The player [一只菲菲] has reached the score cap in the True Dawn Maiden dungeon, triggering a resonance with the True Dawn Maiden. The dungeon is now closed. The player has received an achievement...rewards...the title of Newcomer King...and the Innate Divine Strength skill is now permanently available...]
...
Yao Xiaoyu looked at the summary published after the dungeon ended and nodded in satisfaction.
After finishing her manuscript, she didn't want to continue writing. Instead, she flipped through the "Destiny Changing Record" to admire her masterpiece and take a look at the manuscripts that hadn't been sent yet, wondering where she could make any changes—once they were sent out, there was no going back. This wasn't the internet age anymore; once a manuscript was published, it was considered finalized.
Fortunately, nothing went wrong at the beginning.
As a common beginner dungeon without any non-scientific powers, the True Daughter dungeon can be cleared with just a few minor changes. After learning the story, most people, if they knew that Qi Baozhu's parents were still alive, would send medicine to the two sick people, thus changing Qi Baozhu's fate as an orphan from the source.
The timeline for players to enter the Qi Baozhu instance is random, but it generally revolves around three points: when Qi Baozhu's parents are alive, when the orphan girl has not yet been harmed, and when the true woman is pregnant. Most people make similar choices.
If both parents are alive, send medicine to save them; if neither parent is alive, then see if the orphan girl has become a child bride or not. If not, find another family to adopt her; if she has, then use methods to make her become a child bride in another family.
As for the timeline of pregnancy, most people will choose to give the woman abortion pills. Those who are more careful will ask the doctor to prescribe a less harmful one. Some people will encounter doctors who say that abortion will result in the death of both mother and child. In such cases, after the woman gives birth, the child will be separated from her and she will be allowed to live a good life in another family.
But just like cockroaches that are everywhere, some people, after entering the world of the True Woman and realizing that any change could lead to victory, have done many despicable things. The most common of these is getting the True Woman pregnant a second time. Regardless of whether she or the child in her womb lives or dies, the fact that she's pregnant a second time is already a change…
Regardless of which route they choose, no one will linger too long in the True Dawn Maiden dungeon. Newcomers, out of caution, will try to exit as soon as they complete the quest, while those re-entering, knowing the situation, will not waste time.
A long time ago, a big shot spent a lot of resources to exchange for a second trial ticket for a dungeon. After being randomly assigned to the Zhen Ding Nu dungeon, he spent three years summarizing its barrenness. Since then, people who enter it a second time either get the unlucky random assignment or try to farm the achievement of saving the county's benefactor.
[Savior of the County: You have made contributions to the people of the county, and everyone remembers your efforts (Wearing this achievement increases initial favorability with normal living people by 10)]
The achievement for saving the county's benevolent person can be obtained in many places, but it is the easiest to obtain in the Zhen Ding woman's dungeon. As long as you buy some medicine for patients during the epidemic, and at least ten patients recover under the influence of the medicine contributed by the tasker before the epidemic ends, you can get this achievement. You don't need to risk your life like in other dungeons.
Because of its ease of acquisition and extreme practicality, many people who haven't obtained this title are willing to spend resources to re-enter this instance, but they won't put in much more effort.
Until Shangguan Jieyou entered the instance.
Like all mission takers who enter a timeline where their parents are still alive, she entered a timeline three days before the outbreak of the epidemic—the very epidemic that took away Qi Baozhu's parents and was also the place where the philanthropist who saved the county achieved her goal.
Different beginner dungeons offer different benefits. In the True Woman's dungeon, players will start with a freshly dead adult wild boar as starting capital, as well as a small skill that automatically equips them but can only be used in this world: innate divine power.
If you have the assistant installed, it will also tell you that the father of the restaurant owner in Zhen Ding County needs wild boar stomach to cure his illness. According to the principle of scarcity, if you carry the wild boar over and you are good at bargaining, you can get a full eight taels of silver. The minimum total price of the medicines you need to buy to get the achievement is only about five taels of silver.
The prices in the world of Zhen Ding Nv are similar to those in the Tang Dynasty. One tael of silver can be exchanged for one thousand coins. The purchasing power of one coin is equivalent to about four yuan in modern times. It doesn't seem like much, but in the county town, five coins can buy a dou, which is about six kilograms of old rice. And an ordinary person can only earn two or three coins a day.
The epidemic will last for about a week. Including the first three days, even if you need to set aside money for completing achievements, 300 coins a day is enough to squander as long as you don't gamble or visit prostitutes. These are strategies that you can only see after completing the beginner quests. Shangguan Jieyou is completely unaware of them now.
She wasn't sure what the reason or when Qi Baozhu's parents would die. After exchanging money for a house and becoming neighbors with the Qi family, she felt she couldn't just sit around doing nothing. So, while trying to gain favor with the Qi family, she prepared to find a lighter job to earn some income.
Zhen Ding County was quite prosperous, with a considerable number of food stalls selling common items such as noodles, flatbreads, buns, and steamed buns. Shangguan Jieyou did not intend to compete with them for a living using her later-generation skills. After compiling a list of all the food items, she decided to sell mixed rice noodles with clay pot soup, which she had not seen before.
These two dishes are the classic set meal of Yuzhang Ancient County. In Zhending County, the ratio of noodles to rice is about 6:4. Shangguan Jieyou's business may not be very good when she first arrives, but she doesn't plan to stay here for the rest of her life. She only needs to earn enough money to cover her rent, food expenses and daily expenses.
Back then, her dream was to open a small convenience store. She would lie in a rocking chair behind the counter, playing on her phone. When customers came, they would take what they wanted, and she would listen to the calls of "scan the code to pay." Although she can't open such a comprehensive store now, life as a small stall is not bad.
Shangguan Jieyou was quite efficient. After deciding on the small business she wanted to start, she spent a day buying all sorts of things that could be prepared on the spot. She also paid a deposit for items that required time to be made. In this process of spending, she once again proved how durable silver was – even after paying for rent, she still had several strings of copper coins left over from her one tael of silver!
The things she needed could be done in a day or no more than three days. Shangguan Jieyou had a good plan: she would practice her skills for the next few days, not focusing on the taste, but mainly on figuring out how much to put in a dish to make it feel like a good deal, so that she wouldn't lose money.
Unlike later generations who, having solved their basic needs for food and clothing, place greater emphasis on taste, this era's productivity was not particularly high. Compared to the enjoyment of the taste, Yao Xiaoyu's clientele valued portion size more.
Shangguan Jieyou's plan was perfect, but selling wild boar and renting a house took her a day, and researching the market took another day. By the time she had finished preparing the items for setting up her stall, the three-day adjustment period had passed, and the epidemic officially arrived. Qi's parents gloriously became the first victims.
After delivering medicine and hiring people to take care of the Qi family of three, once their condition stabilized, Shangguan Jieyou's attention was unconsciously drawn to other people—
In Zhen Ding County, it wasn't just one family that couldn't afford medicine and had to leave everything to fate. But just like the background description in the game, they huddled in their corners. If Shangguan Jieyou hadn't come here when she was checking the market to buy things, and hadn't decided to come again on a whim, their cries and groans, and even the stench from their unattended deaths, wouldn't have reached Shangguan Jieyou's nose.
On the street corner, people were kowtowing and begging. Children were sticking straw markers on the roadside. Shangguan Jieyou watched as her thin mother, with tears in her eyes, pushed her daughter to the madam and even smiled and thanked the man for giving her daughter a bite to eat. She finally realized that the stability of the peaceful, stable, and seemingly wealthy Zhen Ding County was no different from that of paper. It could not withstand the slightest wind or rain, natural disaster or man-made calamity.
Shangguan Jieyou tried hard to tell herself that none of this was real. After all, the information about the dungeon was clearly right in front of her, and her annoying assistant started chattering incessantly as soon as the mute was lifted, but...
"Sell it to me."
Looking at the girl who didn't even dare to cry loudly, and seeing the small amount of money the madam handed over, Shangguan Jieyou finally spoke up. The madam and the woman stared at her in astonishment, but in the end, the deal was struck.
"If you can't support her, sell her to me; at least she'll have something to eat."
As she was leaving, the madam uttered a single sentence, and Shangguan Jieyou wondered if she had misread it, but the madam's gaze seemed rather complex.
"Sister Hong..."
[After walking for a while with the madam's thugs, he finally hesitated and spoke, only to be glared at by the madam, cutting off his remaining words.]
That woman came from a respectable family; it would be better for the girl to be with her than to wallow in the mud. If only she had met such a kind person back then…
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Author's Note: The entire story won't be described. Any recommendations for Liaozhai stories?
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