“Cough cough cough…”
Wrapped in a blanket, Su Deng coughed up a large mouthful of water before she recovered. She was cold all over, pale, and weakly said, "I'm fine."
Qin Xian's face turned ugly. "You really scared me to death just now!"
Su Deng turned her head to look at him, "Are you that scared?"
Qin Xian kept his mouth shut.
Su Deng raised an eyebrow. "Then you'll go next time?"
Qin Xian: "..."
He turned his head and went to the side.
Su Deng smiled and patted Su Muye's head, "I'm fine!"
There was a moment of silence.
Seeing that she had almost recovered, Liu Sangua finally asked, "What did you see?"
“There’s a child underwater!” Qiao Zhi said, her face pale.
She hadn't gone very deep, but out of the corner of her eye she saw the two floating babies at Su Deng's feet, a sight that sent chills down her spine.
When she saw what was happening inside, she realized why the other players had been so scared.
Su Deng pursed her lips and succinctly explained the situation below.
Upon hearing that the underwater area was filled with baby ghosts, Qin Xian's hair stood on end, let alone his hair. "They won't come up, will they...?"
Looking at the now calm water, Liu Sangua said, "It shouldn't be."
Su Muyue used the edge of a huge blanket to wipe the water off Su Deng. When she saw her feet, she frowned and said, "Mom, why are your feet wrapped with rope?"
"It's water..."
The character for "grass" in "waterweed" paused as Su Deng lowered her gaze to her ankles.
She couldn't see very clearly underwater, so she assumed it was just seaweed.
From the shore, under the bright firelight, it was clear that what was not waterweed at all was a hemp rope soaked in water!
Could it be that... those floating things underwater aren't actually seaweed at all?
...All of them are hemp rope?!
Baby, stone, hemp rope...
A guess popped into Su Deng's mind, and she instantly felt a chill run down her spine.
Seeing her expression change, Liu Sangua asked softly, "What are you thinking about?"
Su Deng's expression was not good. "Do you remember the strange phenomenon we discovered when we first entered the village?"
Qiao Zhiwei paused, "You mean the village is all men and there are no women?"
Su Deng nodded, her gaze falling on the calm river surface in the reeds beside her, and said in a deep voice, "If I'm not mistaken, all the women in this village have been drowned in the river."
From infants to adults, no one was spared.
“…This village is insane!” Qin Xian exclaimed in horror.
Qiao Zhi also felt a chill run down her spine. "Why would they do this?"
Liu Sangua twirled the Bagua jade in his hand, his thoughts racing, "Perhaps the way to get the key really is underwater..."
But how to obtain that kind of scene is also a problem.
The other players, frightened by what they saw underwater, dared not go down, but seeing that Liu Sangua and his group were still there, they stayed and waited to see what they would do.
“But…” Su Muye suddenly remembered the little ghost and interrupted, “The little ghost I just met was a girl. She said her parents didn’t like her, and she had never eaten a lotus seedpod, so I gave her one.”
The group of people were taken aback.
When all the clues were put together, the group instantly understood what was going on.
There was silence for a long time.
Qiao Zhi began, "Actually, my parents don't like me either, because I'm a girl, and they wanted a boy."
Some people say that the preference for sons over daughters only exists in backward rural areas.
But no.
Her family lives in the city. Her father owns a small company that, while not extremely wealthy, can earn at least a million a year.
So the family is not short of money.
But her parents believed that only boys could inherit the family business, and girls were meant to get married and be born to other people. They thought that sooner or later they would go to someone else's family, so being good to them was useless.
“I am the eldest child in my family. I was unpopular from birth. My parents scolded me, saying I was a money-loser.”
When she was two years old, her mother became pregnant again. She paid to go to a private clinic for a checkup, and after finding out it was a girl, she immediately had an abortion.
She got pregnant again in less than a year.
Upon investigation, it turned out to be a girl.
As expected, they played again.
"Because the time was too short and the damage was too great, the doctor said that my mother's body had problems and she could not have any more children. My father said that we must leave an heir for the Qiao family and have a boy to inherit the family business. My mother can no longer have children, so he wants to divorce my mother."
Her mother, of course, disagreed.
So her father started seeing other women.
Even though her mother was unwilling, there was nothing she could do. She could only endure it while searching for various folk remedies and doctors, hoping to get pregnant again.
Several years have passed, but to no avail.
“When I was seven years old, my dad brought home a woman and a two-year-old boy, saying that he was his son and the heir to the Qiao Group. My mother went crazy and tried to harm them, but my dad caught her every time. My dad took his woman and son to another place to raise them.”
She and her mother became someone he couldn't be seen in public, while that woman and child became his legitimate wife, something he could boast about.
“My mother started hitting me, saying why I wasn’t a boy, that I was useless, that I couldn’t keep my father…”
Her mother is unemployed. Since she is still his wife, her father sends them a small amount of money for living expenses each month.
The father said that all his property and money were to be left to his son, and the reason he was still supporting her was because she could be used for a business marriage.
They were born with a golden key, only to find that the golden key was made of mud.
Her childhood was actually quite tragic.
"Later, my mother went crazy, and my father wanted to marry me off to an old man to attract investment for the company, so I secretly ran away."
Her father said she stole company secrets and called the police to arrest her.
"When he found me, I thought my life was over and I was contemplating suicide when Divine Court Technology arrived..."
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