DSMC Chapter 79.2

His target was now confirmed. The only question was whether his combat ability was enough. And he still didn’t know how many people the other side had. Judging by the system’s nature, it would definitely not allow players to exploit loopholes. It would only let the police appear after he had dealt with the traffickers.

Flying ahead, Xixi saw that Yan Jiyun’s little scooter still hadn’t appeared, so it flew back, then took off again. The little guy seemed to find it quite fun, flying back and forth without feeling tired at all.

Following the direction it flew, Yan Jiyun finally arrived at his destination. This was still the Aviary Grand View. Most visitors liked to watch animals they recognized. As for animals they didn’t know or didn’t understand well — those that weren’t big enough or distinctive enough — they usually just glanced at them and left, not stopping to watch. Because of this, some parts of the zoo seemed relatively deserted.

“Where is this?” Yan Jiyun parked the scooter to the side. After looking around for a long time, he didn’t see anyone else, but he did see several colorful pheasants enclosed inside. The space inside was large, but it was surrounded by netting to prevent visitors from entering.

Yan Jiyun checked the surroundings and found that there were no other visitors nearby.

Could the traffickers’ target be these blue pheasants?

Yan Jiyun let his thoughts branch out for a moment. The “Despicable Human Traffickers” mission had no details. Human traffickers could kidnap lone children among the visitors, or they could kidnap small animals from the zoo¹just a clarification: human traffickers in Chinese is 人贩子, with 人 = human; 贩子 = peddler/dealer. So, it is specifically referring to “human”.

Whether their target was people or animals, he had to complete this task. The main mission hadn’t been triggered yet. He could first complete this non–time-limited mission. Maybe it would trigger a new mission.

Yan Jiyun didn’t plan to alert the enemy. Right now, he could wander around as a keeper, pretending to prepare feed for the birds and clean up the surrounding environment. Although he wasn’t particularly skilled at it, he could muddle through.

After not doing much for a while, he deliberately slacked off and sat down to “rest” in a spot without surveillance.

He had just heard footsteps, but hadn’t seen any visitors. Obviously, these footsteps weren’t from visitors, but from the human traffickers.

Yan Jiyun remembered that there was a west gate in the Aviary Grand View, but visitors generally wouldn’t enter from here, nor leave from here. The west gate was very quiet.

If he were a human trafficker, after committing the crime he would definitely choose a place with fewer people to leave.

Looking at the entire zoo: the north gate was the entrance and ticketing area, with the largest flow of people; the south gate was near the tiger zone and the leopard zone — human traffickers probably wouldn’t want to court death by going there; the east gate was near the monkey zone and the amusement park, also a relatively busy area; only the west gate was more remote. The birds’ activity range was wide, and there were trees everywhere that could conceal the traffickers’ movements.

They must have scouted the location in advance, and their plan was very thorough.

Someone really came.

Yan Jiyun heard rustling sounds from the grass. His hearing was good, and he quickly identified their positions. There were about three people, quietly discussing when he would wake up.

“Is this zookeeper new? We didn’t see him when we scouted the place before.”

Oh, so they knew he was new.

“There are so many animals in the zoo, and quite a few zookeepers. How could we possibly remember all of them? The most important thing is not to let him discover us. But I just saw him carrying a macaw. He’s probably been here for some time.”

The one speaking was indeed that gold-chain man. He lowered his voice as he spoke, and Yan Jiyun felt uncomfortable just listening.

This time, Xixi was pressed into Yan Jiyun’s arms and not allowed to fly around. It cooperated very well, pretending to sleep together with him. Its acting skills were excellent.

This macaw was way too perceptive. Given time, it might really become sapient²just a… pet-peeve of mine: sentience and sapience are different! The original text said that Xixi might become sentient, but it is already sentient. Sentience refers to a living being’s ability to perceive emotions and sensations (so, a lot of animals qualify), while sapience refers to the ability to have logical/rational thinking and reasoning. So, only humans qualify — why do you think our species is called Homo sapiens? Buuuut maybe one day corvids will be sapient in the far, far future. Who knows?.

The three continued to observe the one person and one bird pretending to sleep, afraid they might suddenly wake up, because Yan Jiyun had deliberately sat right on the path they had to take to reach the west gate. All it would take was lifting his head to see them.

The three of them sneakily poked their heads out of the grass again and again.

“Is he asleep yet?”

“He should be asleep. Want to throw a stone to test it?”

“Are you trying to get us killed? What if the stone wakes him up? He’s slacking off during work hours.”

“Stop arguing. Since he’s slacking off, he probably won’t notice us. Let’s hurry and go. If he sees us, Da Jin³CN：大金, you two drag him into the grass and deal with him. Come back at night and throw him into the tiger zone. It’ll have nothing to do with us.”

“That’s a good move.”

“I think it works.”

Yan Jiyun: “…”

Plotting something like this right in front of him was really crossing the line.

There were surveillance cameras around, but in the game, the cameras didn’t have much effect. Whenever they were needed, they were basically malfunctioning.

These three were all desperadoes. If he rashly made a move, there was a very high probability that it would end in death.

He had props, but they were limited. If he could solve it using methods already available in the game, he would not use up his few remaining items for now.

The three people behind him actually couldn’t tell whether Yan Jiyun was asleep or not. All they could see was him sitting under a canopy meant for small animals to rest, dozing off.

Yan Jiyun shifted his gaze to Xixi and prepared to put the idea onto it as well.

With his back to the three people behind him, he whispered to Xixi, “Go call your little buddies out to play.”

Xixi tilted its head to look at him, its head swaying in a rather cute way. But now wasn’t the time for being cute.

Afraid it wouldn’t understand, Yan Jiyun repeated, “Where are Zhenzhen and Ai’ai?”

Xixi understood. It flew out of Yan Jiyun’s arms, heading toward the parrot area it didn’t like going back to.

As for the three people behind him, they were still doing mental preparation. When they saw Xixi take flight, they cowardly shrank back into the grass again, thinking Yan Jiyun had woken up.

When they saw the keeper lie back down again, the three of them started getting restless once more.

“He probably didn’t wake up, just got startled by that parrot.”

“Then shall we go?”

“This kid is pretty heavy. Da Jin, you carry him?”

“Sure, hurry up. My legs are about to go numb squatting here. I’ve never even squatted this long taking a dump.”

Listening to their conversation really made Yan Jiyun laugh and cry at the same time. If he didn’t have to pretend to be asleep, he probably would have laughed out loud.

The three finally started moving. Yan Jiyun didn’t yet know whether they had weapons on them. As they slowly emerged from the grass, he glanced around the blue pheasant area to see what tools nearby he could use to control these people.

He didn’t need to ask visitors or zoo NPCs for help. He just needed to make a big enough commotion. Xixi’s route was only one method, and it was completely uncertain whether it could actually follow his instructions. He must have been out of his mind to think Xixi could really help him.

There it was. He saw it!

Near the west gate there was a small lake, and he saw a set of cleaning tools left there by the zoo’s janitors.

The zoo had a high daily visitor count, and at any moment there were low-quality people littering everywhere. All kinds of garbage littered the ground, so cleaners used powerful high-pressure water guns to clean it — specifically, a small high-pressure spray gun.

This thing could be put to use, and it happened to be positioned right where the three would pass on their way out of the west gate.

The three were already preparing to leave. From here to the west gate was about a thousand meters. Walking at a normal pace without stopping would take about 11–12 minutes. From their conversation, it could be inferred that they were carrying a child. Three burly men carrying a child would inevitably look suspicious, so leaving via the west gate was their best route.

Yan Jiyun carefully observed the surroundings. Not only was there a high-pressure cleaning vehicle, there was also a dredging vessel operating on the artificial lake nearby. The zoo seemed to be dredging silt from the lake. No matter what they were doing, it was a dredging boat, and Yan Jiyun felt it had great potential, even more destructive than the high-pressure water gun from earlier.

The three sneaked out of the grass. When they passed by Yan Jiyun, he saw out of the corner of his eye that Da Jin was indeed carrying a child. It was clearly visible — a little boy wearing overalls, about four or five years old.

Yan Jiyun deliberately let them pass right in front of him and didn’t intentionally disrupt their pace.

Once the three had passed him, they all breathed a sigh of relief and began to speed up. They didn’t dare walk on the main path, instead weaving through the small woods on either side of the road, probably worried about suddenly running into visitors or zoo staff.

After the three stopped paying attention to him, Yan Jiyun circled around behind them to the lakeside and crept toward the dredging vessel.

He lowered the sound of his footsteps and kept his body hidden in the shade of the trees as much as possible. This was a habit he’d developed after becoming a cat. After turning back into a human, he found that he would still instinctively hide in the shadows.

He didn’t need to dodge left and right. With a clear target, he moved much faster than the three men, crouching as he ran and getting ahead of them.

At the moment, no one was operating the dredging vessel. Yan Jiyun easily jumped onto it.

Yan Jiyun had never operated a dredging vessel before, but he knew that dredging involved discharging sediment as well. Large offshore operation ships could discharge as far as fifteen kilometers away. As for this small one, he didn’t know how far it could go. Maybe around ten meters?

All the buttons on the boat had text labels and were easy to understand at a glance.

Yan Jiyun adjusted the boat’s direction, aiming the sediment discharge toward the direction those people were likely to pass. Then he quietly started the boat, waiting at the ready for the three human traffickers to arrive.

The sound of the dredging vessel starting up was quite loud. Yan Jiyun crouched on the boat and pulled a straw hat from the deck down over his head. Even if the three saw him, they wouldn’t know who it was.

The three took a winding route and finally reached the spot where Yan Jiyun was crouching.

From this position, the west gate was already visible. The dawn of escaping the zoo was right ahead. Soon they could complete a smuggling job, make a sum of money, and eat and drink to their hearts’ content.

Their minds were full of beautiful thoughts. None of them could have imagined that a wave of foul-smelling sludge would fall from the sky, splattering all over them with loud splats.

Their first reaction, of course, was to curse whichever immoral person was spraying mud around. But their faces were completely plastered with sludge. When they opened their mouths, they swallowed another mouthful of sludge and sand!

What else could they do now? Run!

The three panicked and fled. The sludge Yan Jiyun sprayed was thick, heavy, and stank. In just a few seconds, all three of them were covered head to toe in sludge!

And they were half-crouching under the trees, with no bushes to block it, so the sludge covered them even more thoroughly.

Yan Jiyun continued to increase the power. After all, the three of them could run!

He jumped off the boat, kicked the three big men whose faces were smeared with sludge, and then swung an iron rod he’d grabbed from the boat onto the backs of their knees.

The three were beaten until they screamed, but they still had the ability to flee. They were so big that Yan Jiyun couldn’t handle them alone. He remembered the high-pressure water gun, immediately ran to the cleaning vehicle, twisted it on, turned the pressure to maximum, and sprayed it hard at the fleeing human traffickers!

The traffickers had never expected to be ambushed here, with one move following another. The other party was spraying directly at their faces. Their bodies were almost numb from the force.

At this moment, Yan Jiyun heard a burst of chirping bird calls. Along with the calls came visitors chasing after the birds.

The visitors who caught up saw the leading glass macaw clutching its chest dive down and land on the shoulder of a zookeeper who was holding a high-pressure gun and spraying people.

When Yan Jiyun saw a flock of birds flying in from the air, he could barely keep the calm expression on his face. His original intention had been to have it find more companions to attract visitors over. He hadn’t expected it to call over all the birds in the entire area.

He praised it without holding back: “Well done, Xixi! You’re amazing!”

Xixi learned a new phrase: “Xixi is amazing!”

Hundreds upon thousands of birds circled overhead with Xixi, chirping noisily. A group of birds jumped onto the three men, pecking hard at their heads and faces!

The visitors who had chased over also noticed the three human traffickers and the little boy, who was likewise covered in sludge!

Someone shouted, “Isn’t this the little boy in denim overalls they were looking for in the broadcast just now? So he was taken by human traffickers!”

[Congratulations to the player for completing the side quest: “Despicable Human Traffickers.” Points rewards will be distributed after the instance ends.]

[Congratulations to the player for unlocking Zoo Staff Level.]

[(Public Screen) A player has completed a special side mission. Animal Popularity Value unlocked.]

• 1
  just a clarification: human traffickers in Chinese is 人贩子, with 人 = human; 贩子 = peddler/dealer. So, it is specifically referring to “human”
• 2
  just a… pet-peeve of mine: sentience and sapience are different! The original text said that Xixi might become sentient, but it is already sentient. Sentience refers to a living being’s ability to perceive emotions and sensations (so, a lot of animals qualify), while sapience refers to the ability to have logical/rational thinking and reasoning. So, only humans qualify — why do you think our species is called Homo sapiens? Buuuut maybe one day corvids will be sapient in the far, far future. Who knows?
• 3
  CN：大金