Chapter 29: Deprivation of Skills

Liang Dan asked, "Is this skill stronger than the others?"

"Theoretically, yes," Yang Liuqing nodded, "but stripping someone of their innate skill is much harder than stripping them of an ordinary one."

Shen Si asked, "How do you strip an ordinary skill, and how do you strip an innate one?"

Yang Liuqing hesitated for a moment. "As long as someone agrees to give you their skill, you can obtain their ordinary skill."

"But why would anyone agree to give me their skill?"

"That agreement doesn't have to be voluntary. If you hold a knife to someone's throat and ask if they are willing to give you their skill, they will usually say yes."

Liang Dan asked, "Then, what about stripping an innate skill?"

Shen Si said, "I think I've guessed it. Is it that you have to make them willingly agree to give it to you?"

"No," Yang Liuqing said. "The person agreeing to give you the skill must have a favorability rating toward you of over 20%."

Shen Si asked, "Is that hard to achieve?"

"Very hard. This essentially rules out the possibility of using brute force," Yang Liuqing explained. "You can hold a knife to someone's throat, but the moment you do, their favorability toward you will inevitably drop. If you can't keep their favorability above 20%, you can only obtain their ordinary skills."

Liang Dan realized, "So that’s why she used so many clones—she was trying to farm our favorability separately."

Yang Liuqing nodded. "She was exploiting a loophole in the system. She threatened us with her main body, but we had no prior favorability toward her main body, so there was no room for it to drop.

"However, we still had favorability toward her clones. She could use the favorability we felt for the clones as if it were favorability for her main body, in order to strip us of our innate skills."

"It sounds a bit convoluted, but that was her logic."

Shen Si said, "But her main body and her clones are the same person. Can this favorability really be separated?"

"Even though her main body and clones are physically one person, in our eyes, they are two different entities. Therefore, the favorability we give them is separate.

"Suppose our favorability toward the main body is 0%, but our favorability toward a clone is 20%; then she can utilize that 20% favorability from the clone."

As Liang Dan listened, her heart sank deeper and deeper.

She felt dizzy, her heart heavy enough to fall right out of her chest.

It turned out that the person who had abducted Yang Liuqing and Shen Si hadn't intended to kill them at all.

It turned out that stripping someone of a skill didn't require killing them.

In other words, that person might never have intended to harm their lives from the very beginning.

And she, without understanding a single thing, had stripped that person of her life.

The system's prompt echoed in her mind again: "Death in the game means death in the real world."

Liang Dan's brain was screaming, but her tone remained calm as she looked at the sky. "It's getting dark. Let's go to sleep."

Shen Si looked at the vivid red sunset. "It looks like the sun has only just set; it's a long way from dark..."

Before she could finish, Liang Dan had already collapsed onto the ground, closing her eyes tightly.

The woman's face—that stranger's face—flashed before her eyes, appearing extraordinarily clear and bright.

Liang Dan thought groggily: In legal terms, I believe this is called a putative defense.

Shen Si asked, "Are you going to sleep already?"

Yang Liuqing whispered, "Shh. If she wants to sleep, let her. We should sleep too."

Yang Liuqing closed the temple door and lay down quietly beside Liang Dan. "Goodnight."

*

A few holes had been torn in the thin temple door by the wind. In the morning, a beam of sunlight shone through one of the holes.

Liang Dan sat up, her eyes fixed on the hole in the center.

The sun rose as usual; everything was so peaceful.

She had slept for so long that when she stood up, she felt dizzy and lightheaded.

Yang Liuqing and Shen Si were both gone, likely out hunting again.

Liang Dan walked outside. The corpses and bloodstains from the previous day had vanished. The two statues remained in their places. Liang Dan approached the one she had pierced and saw that the broken spot had been patched over with mud.

She strolled slowly toward the village, and seeing the cornfield by the side of the road, a thought suddenly occurred to her.

Liang Dan shouted, "Yang Liuqing! Shen Si!"

"What is it? What's wrong?"

Shen Si emerged from the edge of the cornfield, holding a small hoe head in her right hand and a large bunch of green plants in her left.

Liang Dan asked a question to which she already knew the answer: "Are you two hunting again?"

"Yeah," Shen Si shoved the bunch of greens into Liang Dan's hands. Liang Dan fumbled to take them. "Yang Liuqing said there was a huge patch of bitter herbs near the house, so she went to pick some."

Shen Si leaned in close to Liang Dan. "Why did you call us?"

Liang Dan grabbed a handful of the wild vegetables and shoved them into her mouth, tasting the fresh earth.

Shen Si quickly snatched the rest of the greens back. "I told you to hold them, not eat them! It's not that I don't want you to have any, but they aren't even washed yet!"

Liang Dan laughed. "The soil here actually tastes pretty good. You should try some."

Shen Si shook her head immediately. "No thanks, I don't have that hobby yet."

A head popped out from around the corner; Yang Liuqing appeared. "Who called me?"

Liang Dan said, "I did."

Yang Liuqing turned and walked toward the edge of the village. "Even if the sky were falling, we have to wash the greens and eat first."

Shen Si hurried to pull Liang Dan along after Yang Liuqing. Liang Dan stood behind them, watching as they crouched by the river to wash the vegetables.

Shen Si seemed to think of something and started laughing as she washed.

Yang Liuqing didn't even look up. "What are you losing your mind about? Starved crazy?"

Shen Si said, "I was thinking about those TV shows I watched when I was little. The women would always bring huge piles of laundry to the river and just keep hitting them with a big wooden club."

Yang Liuqing asked, "Is that funny?"

Shen Si said, "The act itself isn't funny. I was thinking of my younger self."

Liang Dan was curious. "What do you mean?"

"When I watched those shows as a kid, I would always say, 'If anyone dares to make me wash that many clothes, I'll smash that big stick over their head.'"

Yang Liuqing laughed at that. "That actually is pretty funny."

Shen Si handed the washed greens to Liang Dan and asked, "Do you think about how this world was formed? We eat wild greens here every day, so why haven't we starved to death yet?"

Liang Dan said, "There are plenty of people in the real world who eat greens every day and don't starve to death. Starving to death doesn't seem like an easy thing to do in the first place."

Shen Si made a "baa" sound and looked at her reflection in the river. "Did you see? Our goat horns are gone."

Liang Dan nodded. "After those villagers died yesterday, our horns disappeared."