Nanwan Village was relatively unknown within North Island’s territory. It was located in a remote area, and its development had long been disconnected from the outside world.
The prosperous areas of North Island were situated on the central plains and the southwestern river delta, especially the southwestern estuary. There, harbor cranes stood in forests, vehicles and ships came and went in an endless stream, forming a mature port-side industrial cluster that was constantly expanding and upgrading.
Meanwhile, a mountain range running northeast-southwest within the island acted as a natural barrier, isolating Nanwan Village from other parts of North Island.
Nanwan Village backed onto green mountains and faced the sea. Lacking economic ties with other parts of the island, it had always been self-sufficient through farming and fishing. Additionally, the clans living together in Nanwan Village were severely xenophobic. Businessmen who came hoping to invest arrived in high spirits, but ultimately left dejected and crestfallen. Therefore, Nanwan Village still hadn’t developed to this day, retaining a relatively primitive and distinctive fishing village culture.
[You are a freshman in the Literature Department of North Island University. During the summer vacation after the college entrance exam, you learned from a fashion magazine at a newsstand that J-country’s student uniforms were very popular in domestic niche circles, sparking a trend. The moment you saw the picture next to the text, the special desire hidden in your heart flared up like a flame.]
[You heard the atmosphere at North Island University is very open… so even cross-dressing should be acceptable, right? A boy wearing a skirt probably wouldn’t face campus bullying, right?
Anyway, after leaving home and starting university boarding life, your spirit was completely set free.]
[Even though occasionally someone would add your contact info to verbally abuse you, critiquing your unorthodox clothing taste, surprisingly, overall, this still not very talkative you became more popular than during junior and senior high school (across both male and female groups).]
[Furthermore, you got recommended by the senior you have a crush on and joined Professor Zhang’s project group. Not only are there extra credits, but also a free trip. Although this place called Nanwan Village is very remote, the school covers all expenses. A free trip, isn’t that great?]
[Please listen to the fifteenth question: How do you get to the only road connecting Nanwan Village to the outside world? (0/5 points)]
Xin Hexue remembered the last multiple-choice question he didn’t have time to answer was number eight. Now the question number had jumped directly to fifteen.
He didn’t expect this nasty AI to have a skip-the-question bug.
Since it was lunchtime, he put away his identity card and went with the other two players to choose a fast-food restaurant by the street.
North Island University was in the city center. Taking the bus from the city center station to here, the terminal was set at the town’s market. Villagers from nearby villages would come here to buy and sell farm goods at the market or when going out to the city.
This street was about a hundred meters long, with shops lining both sides: fruit shops, restaurants, barbershops, general supermarkets…
There were also small vendors who just spread a plastic sheet on the ground to set up their stalls.
The fast-food shop owner brought their ordered meals and said, “Nanwan Village is the farthest from here. It takes an hour and a half even by motorcycle. We rarely see villagers from there coming to the market. After all, there are many mountain roads here that a round trip takes from dawn till dusk.”
“What are you young folks going there for?”
Xin Hexue lowered his head, using chopsticks to put some bok choy into his mouth. His eating movements were very refined, giving an unhurried feeling, but the rice in his bowl was being consumed rapidly.
The young man sitting at the same table answered, “We are doing folk culture research.”
After swallowing a mouthful of rice, the young man continued, “The professor is taking us for a field investigation.”
“Which university are you from?”
“North Island University.”
“Wow, that’s so impressive! If my daughter could get in too, our ancestral graves would be smoking with joy!”
The young man wasn’t good at dealing with elders and just chuckled awkwardly.
The two players Xin Hexue met on the street were also students of North Island University. The young man was called Luo Liangming, and the girl Zhu Jiyue. Both were also invited guests. They were new actors like Xin Hexue, and were currently hyped up CP pairing due to their recent drama.
This just happened to correspond to the identities they received: university students that were a couple.
“Are you really a boy?” Zhu Jiyue leaned forward, staring at Xin Hexue without blinking. Finally remembering herself, she waved her hands in panic and apologized, “Don’t misunderstand! I didn’t mean to offend. I just mean you look so good it’s almost androgynous.”
When she first saw his back, because Xin Hexue was wearing a white shirt and a dark blue pleated skirt, she thought he was a tall, slender girl.
Xin Hexue calmly accepted Zhu Jiyue’s comment. “Thank you. I also think I look good.”
The fast-food shop wasn’t large. The early summer weather here was already hot enough. The wall fan whirred loudly, blowing stuffy cool air over.
Shoulder-length hair plus wind easily interfered with eating.
Fortunately, Zhu Jiyue had brought a spare hair tie.
Xin Hexue smoothed his hair back behind his neck and tied it into a small bun.
Before Xin Hexue could speak, Zhu Jiyue said, “It’s fine, no need to return it. We might be staying for two weeks, so I brought several hair ties…”
She propped her chin with her hands and looked at Xin Hexue’s face with envy. “Your skin is really good. Are you wearing a ‘no-makeup’ makeup look that is very popular on the internet?”
The sultry weather had steamed out a faint blush at the corners of the young man’s eyes and on his cheeks, and his skin was like peeled lychee flesh.
Whether viewed in real life or on the big screen, it was a breathtakingly beautiful face.
Before switching careers to acting, Zhu Jiyue was a makeup artist. At first glance, she always habitually assessed people’s skin characteristics and how to maximize their strengths with targeted makeup.
For the first time, she felt completely at a loss, suddenly experiencing a scholar’s helplessness of not knowing where to start when writing. It was truly a face that heaven itself had chased after like a dog.
Born without the need of excessive adornment.
“How did you do it…” She murmured.
“Perhaps it’s because I usually go to sleep at 10 PM.”
Xin Hexue put down his chopsticks, pulled out a tissue, and wiped his lips as he smiled at Zhu Jiyue.
Luo Liangming came back from the neighboring supermarket, carrying a large bag of snacks, drinks, and instant food. “It’s almost 1:30. The professor should have found a driver. Let’s go wait at the bus stop across the street.”
……
The group consisted of the lead Professor Zhang plus eight students, making nine people total in the folk culture investigation project group.
Professor Zhang found a driver who often transported passengers to and from various villages for market days. He drove an illegally modified vehicle. The two rows behind the driver’s seat were originally five seats, but he had forcibly modified them into eight seats. Actually, on real village market days, the back compartment could squeeze in over ten people, filling the entire minivan.
The driver exhaled a mouthful of smoke, glanced at these students from the city center and the bookish university professor, and said, “Seeing you’re all students, flat rate, three hundred. Are you going or not?”
“You’re robbing us?!” a young man with permed curly hair exclaimed. “I heard from the uncle at the restaurant you charge only ten per person.”
Casually tossing the cigarette butt on the ground, the driver stamped it out twice and said disdainfully, “One trip to Nanwan Village is enough for me to make a loop around five nearby villages picking up passengers. Tell your professor to ask others. See who else besides me is willing to take passengers to that cursed village.”
“Three hundred, that’s the price. Are you going or not?”
Professor Zhang was an amiable man in his early forties. Seeing the situation, he compromised. “Students, get in the car.”
……
Professor Zhang sat in the passenger seat. Of the remaining eight students, the three girls got in first and sat in the front row of the compartment for more space. The five boys, feeling embarrassed to squeeze in, all consciously sat in the back row.
Xin Hexue, who got on first, was squeezed against the compartment wall. The good thing was he was next to the window. The car’s interior had a musty smell and the residual sweat odor from many passengers. It was unpleasant and hot. The driver didn’t turn on the AC, so he had no choice but to face the open window.
As the vehicle moved forward, the clustered white clouds in the sky and the poplar trees by the street rapidly retreated together, and the wind rolled in waves.
A round of bumping signaled they had moved from the main road onto a country road.
Xin Hexue was jostled a bit, and a male voice came from beside him. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine.”
He replied.
The other person, however, shifted outward, clearly leaving him some extra space.
Xin Hexue therefore glanced at him. The young man had brown hair and blue eyes, but his facial features held a traditional Eastern charm, with smooth bone structure. A pair of black-framed glasses rested on his high nose bridge, and his temperament was gentle and refined.
He wore a Saxon blue pinstripe shirt and beige suede pants. Judging from the expensive watch on his wrist, his family background was probably good.
But this had nothing to do with Xin Hexue. He just glanced at him casually before returning his gaze to the scenery outside the window.
The journey from the town to Nanwan Village took an hour and a half. The students started chatting to pass the time. Everyone in this group knew each other, connected through layers of acquaintance. When Professor Zhang was short on people, he directly pulled in friends through recommendations.
“Wasn’t there no land left on the southwest coast? I heard from my dad one of their business partners, a real estate developer, had their eyes on seaside properties and decided to check out the situation around Nanwan Village. It’s remote, but if they set the initial prices low and paint a promising picture, maybe some retiring Northerners would buy them as vacation homes. If that doesn’t work, they could maybe develop some kind of resort.”
“So an inspection team went with the boss, but they didn’t even make it halfway before turning back home.”
“Apparently, they were driving and looking for the road with a map when their compasses malfunctioned. It scared them so much they all got high fevers after returning and had to hire Taoist priests to perform rituals.”
The navigation apps at the time weren’t as advanced as later generations. The road into Nanwan Village could only be found on a paper map. The real estate boss and his employees drove themselves and didn’t hire a local guide from the town. Soon after driving onto the mountain road, they found that their compasses had failed.
“I heard there are rich deposits of magnetite and hematite resources under these mountains. Probably that interfered with the geomagnetic field and caused the compasses to fail. And they were scared off just by that? I thought businessmen would do anything for profit?”
“Who knows? I think it definitely wasn’t that simple. They must have encountered something else. Otherwise, why would they seek out Taoist priests for rituals after returning?”
“What could it be? Savage primitive people? Cannibals?”
Xin Hexue kept one ear on their conversation while pressing the button to light up his phone screen.
He still had three bars of signal.
He clicked on an app with a penguin icon placed in a prominent position.
Scrolling from top to bottom, his brows gradually knitted together.
What were all these messy and ridiculous notes in this contact group?
[Basketball-loving high school boy, no money but vows to drop out and support me (Go back and study!) [Offline]]
[Plumber who saw a lot of money in the safe, doesn’t know what job to do (Can’t give me the security I want, eliminated) [Offline]]
[Doctor who runs a private clinic, has some money, secretly fiddled during the ultrasound pregnancy check, thought I didn’t notice? (I suspect sleep quality will be reduced by water frying after marriage, forget it) [Offline]]
[Honest man I met online, tricked him out of three thousand for an abortion (No education, not considering) [Offline]]
[Used the three thousand to buy a few skirts, and just found a new replacement [Online]]
Identity settings often evolved through AI simulation based on player experience and traits, ultimately generating results. This process was even done meticulously down to the contact software.
Xin Hexue felt this AI might have a prejudice against him.
So what was his persona now?
A cross-dressing, unmarried, pregnant young male student?
The last contact’s avatar blinked, showing a new message notification.
[Used the three thousand to buy a few dresses, and just found a new replacement [Online]: Are you carsick? I have motion sickness medicine in my backpack, but it’s in the trunk. Let me know if you need it.]
The young men and women in the car, bored from the journey, started proposing they play a game.
“Truth or Dare, do you want to play?”
“We can use the wine bottle Luo Liangming bought at the supermarket. Whoever it points to loses a round. How about that?”
Without cards on hand, this game was the simplest, and everyone agreed immediately.
“Senior Matsukawa, are you playing? And you, Xin Hexue? Do you want to join us?”
The curly-haired young man turned his head to ask.
Xin Hexue initially wanted to shake his head, but Curly-hair seemed to sense his refusal and quickly said: “You’re not afraid we’ll ask you who you like or something like that, are you?”
Curly-hair and another young man exchanged meaningful looks. Most of those present laughed, mostly good-naturedly, though there was also a minority of hidden malice. Curly-hair clearly belonged to the latter.
Xin Hexue remembered that his identity card said he could join this group because of a recommendation from the senior he had a crush on?
“He’s carsick, not feeling well.”
Matsukawa Masato’s voice was clear and bright. He was an international student at North Island University, and his speech had a unique soft articulation.
He looked at Xin Hexue again, asking with concern: “Are you okay?”
Xin Hexue glanced at the other person.
Hmm. It was the “replacement” speaking.
