DSMC Chapter 79.1

The newly released mission felt disconnected from all the tasks he had done so far.

The previous task had been “Uncle Man’s Anger,” whose content was practically sending the player to their death, and now this task was actually to catch a human trafficker.

Yan Jiyun couldn’t believe there would really be a task about catching human traffickers. Wasn’t the biggest human trafficker in the game the system itself? Locking everyone together to raise them like gu¹蛊; the character itself can mean insanity or poison. A Chinese… myth? Folklore? About raising venomous insects (well, not strictly insects, as milipedes, spiders, and snakes are counted as well) by putting them in a closed container and let them battle to death. The “winner” is gu. Though in many xuanhuan stories, gu is not only for typical poisoning. I’m sure you’ve heard of a “love gu” and other mind-control uses for gu.?

Peh peh peh— he wasn’t gu!

Still, human traffickers were indeed despicable. If the human trafficker were regarded as the system, then it would feel even more despicable.

Yan Jiyun saw the other party holding the child and pushing into the crowd, clearly keeping a low profile. If he hadn’t bumped into him and noticed that the little girl was in a sleeping state, he wouldn’t have become suspicious of this man. In fact, this kind of outfit wasn’t uncommon in the zoo. The summer sunlight was strong, and many people were fully covered up, wearing hats and sunglasses. Of course, some did it just to look cool.

This side mission didn’t isolate a special space. Yan Jiyun shouted, “Catch the thief!”

“Catch the thief, catch the thief!” Xixi immediately learned the phrase.

The tourists weren’t in a hurry. They were strolling while admiring the animals and plants in the zoo, and some even stopped to take photos when they saw beautiful scenery.

Hearing someone shout “catch the thief” all of a sudden, the first reaction was: where’s the thief?

Yan Jiyun pointed in the direction of the “human trafficker,” but he didn’t clearly point to any specific person.

He let Xixi fly and shouted, “Someone tried to steal birds from the zoo! Luckily the bird was smart and came back by itself!”

Xixi needed time to practice long sentences, so it simplified Yan Jiyun’s short sentence: “Steal birds, steal birds!”

When the tourists heard this, they thought: ‘Coming to the zoo to steal birds, wasn’t that just asking for a beating?’

They immediately focused all their attention on Yan Jiyun, crowding around to watch. Whoever was acting suspiciously at this moment had to be the thief.

Yan Jiyun pointed at the person ahead and said, “Thief, stop right there!”

The surrounding tourists all stopped to watch what was happening, but only the “human trafficker” was afraid of being stared at. Only he was squeezing through the crowd and moving quickly.

Someone noticed something was off.

“Why is that guy holding a kid running?”

Yan Jiyun whispered to Xixi, “Don’t run, don’t run, bad person.”

Xixi learned another new sentence and shouted smugly, “Don’t run! Don’t run! Bad person!”

All the passersby understood. Whoever was running was the one with a problem.

Most tourists were normal people, and there were also righteous ones. The man kept his head down and hurried along while holding the little girl. How could anyone not notice that?

He was still stopped.

A big guy wearing a gold chain blocked him. “Sir, is that your daughter?”

The man who wanted to run said fiercely, “Of course she’s my daughter. Don’t block my way.”

Yan Jiyun shouted from the crowd, “Is your daughter sick? Why hasn’t she woken up even with all this noise?”

Quite a few people started to realize something was wrong.

“Yeah, are you a human trafficker?”

“That little girl definitely isn’t your daughter. Call the police and arrest him. He must be a human trafficker.”

“I also think something’s really off.”

Someone stepped forward and deliberately touched the little girl. She had no reaction at all. The man holding her looked full of impatience.

The man said angrily, “What does it have to do with you? My daughter just has a fever. I’m taking her to the hospital. Get out of the way.”

Yan Jiyun said from the crowd, “There’s an infirmary in the zoo, and it’s close. If the child is sick, she can come to ours for a check first.”

He was wearing a uniform similar to a zookeeper’s, with a parrot standing on his shoulder. What he said was very convincing.

A group of onlookers echoed him.

“Yeah, yeah. What if it’s heatstroke? Better let a doctor take a look early. The weather’s been so hot lately, and your kid is wearing such thick clothes. Don’t let her get a heatstroke.”

“I suspect the little girl isn’t his child at all. Who would put such thick clothes on their daughter in the middle of summer? Something’s clearly fishy!”

“Go to the hospital first, then call the police. Don’t let him run away.”

Yan Jiyun realized that the NPCs in the game also had a full sense of justice. He didn’t over-participate. From the moment the task was issued, he had felt this might be a trap.

The “human trafficker” couldn’t leave at all now.

A group of tourists gathered together and called over the zoo’s security. Before long, the gold-chain big brother, his friends, and several enthusiastic tourists escorted the man and the still-unconscious little girl to the zoo’s infirmary.

The human trafficker shouted in fury, “This is my daughter! What does it have to do with you? Are you all crazy?!”

The angrier the human trafficker got, the more everyone refused to let him leave. When the security guards who heard the commotion came over to maintain order, they pulled everyone to the infirmary.

The on-duty medical staff checked the girl and discovered that she really was sick with a fever. Her face was flushed red—symptoms of heatstroke.

From this, it was clear that the human trafficker had not been lying.

Yan Jiyun only followed far behind the crowd. He and Xixi did not squeeze forward to watch the excitement, because he wasn’t sure whether the task released by the system had a trap or not, so he could only use this method to verify it. Besides, what he had said earlier was that someone was stealing birds — he never said there was a human trafficker. It was because someone noticed that the human trafficker’s condition was off that everyone surrounded him. What did that have to do with him, a zookeeper?

Everyone’s attention was focused on the human trafficker, and the police responded quickly as well. Two officers soon drove over in a patrol car to check the situation.

In front of the police, the human trafficker still insisted that he was the little girl’s father, but he explained nothing and didn’t even have an ID on him.

The little girl indeed hadn’t woken up from heatstroke, so the police asked him to call the little girl’s mother. The human trafficker hemmed and hawed and refused to make the call no matter what. At that moment, Dr. Peng from the neighboring animal medical room happened to come in through the back door, and he saw the little girl lying on the bed.

“I know the little girl’s mother. She’s the Deputy Director’s daughter.”

With Dr. Peng helping to identify her, the little girl’s mother appeared very quickly.

The human trafficker really was the little girl’s biological father, but he hadn’t taken his daughter away openly — he had taken her by stealing her away. So when the police questioned him, he didn’t want to say anything at all, only emphasizing that he was the child’s father.

Yan Jiyun watched the whole process and found it both absurd and reasonable.

It turned out that the deputy director and her husband were in the middle of a divorce. The deputy director wanted custody of the daughter, and her husband wanted it too. To prevent her husband from taking the daughter away, the deputy director kept the child by her side. After learning that the daughter was at the zoo, the husband disguised himself and came in to take away his sick daughter. The absurd part was that even though the daughter was already sick with a fever, the father still took her away in order to obtain custody.

Yan Jiyun glanced at the task panel. Strange… wasn’t the task completed?

Why was there no movement at all, not even the slightest response?

The matter was already resolved. This was the deputy director’s family affair. There was no need for players to get involved, right?

Wait, something was wrong.

The man who had bumped into him wasn’t a human trafficker at all; he was just a smokescreen used by the system to mislead him. The real “human trafficker” had to be someone else!

The system definitely knew that players would use the advantage of crowd numbers to resolve events. If a player mistook the deputy director’s husband for a human trafficker, and then the visitors discovered the deputy director coming forward to explain the situation, it would turn into a false alarm. After that, when the player restarted the search for the human trafficker and later encountered the real one and called for visitor help again, the visitors would feel it was a “boy who cried wolf” situation. They would instinctively think they were being tricked again — how could there be human traffickers everywhere? — and no one would help the player complete the task anymore. The player would lose a large amount of support and have to complete the task alone.

Losing that support was equivalent to the player’s task being upgraded, indirectly increasing the difficulty.

The fake human trafficker was deliberately created by the system, with the purpose of increasing the game’s difficulty.

Yan Jiyun had no way to deal with the system and could only choose to complete the side quest.

He hadn’t stood out during the earlier “human trafficker capture” process, so he wouldn’t attract too much attention. Even if he really sought help, visitors probably wouldn’t instinctively judge it as “the boy who cried wolf.”

Yan Jiyun suddenly remembered that the burly man with the gold chain and his friends were very suspicious. When he said there was a thief, that man had directly asked whether the deputy director’s husband was holding his daughter.

It was very strange for the gold-chain man to ask that question. He was shouting to catch a thief, and he said someone was stealing birds. A normal person’s first reaction would definitely be to ask where the thief was, not to immediately ask whether the person holding someone was his daughter. There was no reasonable logical connection before and after that!

He swept his gaze around and found that the burly man who had made the biggest fuss and all his brothers were nowhere to be seen among the onlookers. Where had they gone?

They were the real human traffickers! Where were the traffickers now? Where were they planning to commit the crime? Did they already have a target, or had the target already been taken and was about to be moved out of the zoo?

The zoo was so big. Where was he supposed to look?

Yan Jiyun found another electric scooter at the entrance of the animal medical room. He put Xixi on the front of the scooter. “Let’s go, Xixi. We’re going to catch the human traffickers!”

From his earlier communication with Xixi, he discovered that it had a very strong learning ability. As long as something was said once, it could remember it; after being said a few times, it could speak it very fluently. It could indeed be used — ah no, not used, but rather, let Xixi cooperate with him to catch the human traffickers.

For Xixi to be able to learn so many strange phrases, it definitely wouldn’t usually stay obediently in its enclosure. It was probably the keeper’s most troublesome parrot. It was smart, unruly, and full of its own ideas.

However, smart as Xixi was, Yan Jiyun knew it wasn’t a player.

Yan Jiyun mounted the electric scooter again. This time, the battery was fully charged. He didn’t take the main road that visitors habitually used, deliberately detouring to another path with fewer people. If the traffickers wanted to act, they probably wouldn’t go where there were lots of people.

Yan Jiyun guessed that the gold-chain trafficker was covering for his companions. While the visitors’ attention was focused on the deputy director’s family affair, they quietly transferred a target they had already made a move on, or were preparing to make a move on a target.

He said to Xixi, “Xixi, fly. I’ll chase you.”

As soon as Xixi heard that, it understood. The zookeepers trained them like this all the time. As soon as Yan Jiyun said “fly,” it took off on its own, and Yan Jiyun chased after it in the direction it flew.

Since Xixi could hear the traffickers’ conversations, it must be a place it often went. Otherwise, how could their conversations have been learned by a bird?

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  蛊; the character itself can mean insanity or poison. A Chinese… myth? Folklore? About raising venomous insects (well, not strictly insects, as milipedes, spiders, and snakes are counted as well) by putting them in a closed container and let them battle to death. The “winner” is gu. Though in many xuanhuan stories, gu is not only for typical poisoning. I’m sure you’ve heard of a “love gu” and other mind-control uses for gu.