Chapter 26: The Child Is Too Pitiful

At night, inside the inn, Soaring Dragon in the Sky stared in disbelief.

"So, you ended up scavenging nothing, spent hours running around to find someone, and then gave away all the money and food you had on you to her?"

Dobby Always Happy was watching his hunger bar nearing zero and couldn't even explain himself properly. Like a starving dog lunging at scraps, he dove toward the dining table.

"The kid was just so pitiful! Don't even get me started, I'm starving! Let me eat first! My hunger bar is about to hit empty!" If he kept talking, he’d be a dead man.

The others found it amusing, but they still ordered a table full of food for him. Though their expressions were a bit strange, as if they were suppressing laughter.

"Thanks!" Dobby Always Happy didn't notice the teasing looks from the other players and took a massive bite.

He immediately spat it out.

"What the hell? Why is this so disgusting? This doesn't make sense!" He was on the verge of tears. "I’ve never seen anything this bad in my life! I’ve lived long enough to see everything!"

The food had a bitter, twisted taste, like chewing on sand; it was absolutely crushing. The ingredients themselves were actually quite good, so being able to turn such quality items into such a soul-destroying flavor was a form of genius in its own right.

As he complained and furiously tried to rinse his mouth out, he caught the others snickering out of the corner of his eye. "Wait a second, so you guys knew it tasted bad and didn't tell me?"

"Hey, we're players, we have to get our kicks somewhere. It’s been a boring few hours, we had to find some entertainment!"

Dobby Always Happy: "??? So I’m the entertainment? Hey, we’re friends, aren't we?"

Soaring Dragon in the Sky shrugged. "Bro, how could I let you miss out on the suffering I went through?"

Dobby Always Happy: "...Thanks a lot!" He resignedly pulled out a flatbread he had bought on the road to eat. "It’s so weird. These flatbreads and meat buns are so good, so why is the inn's food so awful?"

"Have You Eaten Today" thought for a moment. "We discussed this, actually. In ancient China, salt remained quite coarse and simple right up until the Republican era. It was bitter, gritty, and had low purity. It can't compare to the refined salt used in modern times. It’s likely a matter of processing and productivity."

"This world has both cultivators and mortals. Mortals pay two sets of taxes and have no time to fuss with food; cultivators reach a state of fasting and don't bother with seasonings."

"Therefore, seasonings are extremely scarce. As for the ones at the street stalls tasting better, it’s simply because they use so little seasoning that it lets the natural flavor of the ingredients shine. Naturally, it’s fresh and delicious."

The group was speechless. To think there are seasonings that make food taste worse than if you didn't use them at all! Truly, you see something new every day! I'm defeated! I mean, is that seasoning absolutely necessary? It’s worse than having no seasoning at all!

Dobby Always Happy looked at "Have You Eaten Today": "Boss, why don't you cook something for us? Your culinary skills are like those of a God of Cooking; it’s a rare delicacy that one rarely gets to taste in this lifetime!"

Just mentioning it, his mouth watered at the memory of the delicious meat soup from last night.

"Have You Eaten Today" sighed. "Do you think I don't want to? But the night market is about to start. I checked, and this town only has its peak foot traffic at this time."

"All the mercenaries and nearby hunters return from the mountains to sell their goods, and the small vendors set up shop. We’re leaving first thing tomorrow morning. If we want to sell the items we've prepared, this is our only window. There’s absolutely no time to cook."

Fine, business had to come first.

The Su family ancestral grounds had been abandoned for a long time, and the players were going to be allocated vast amounts of land for farming and building homes. Where would they get materials? Tools and seeds? Furniture? Everything had to be traded for in nearby towns. In this world, cultivators used spirit stones, while mortals used silver. The more currency they had, the better. They might as well take the opportunity to make money, which would make building their homes easier later.

"By the way, you still haven't said—didn't you go out to scavenge? How did you end up gone for so long and end up giving away so much stuff?"

The others chuckled. To come back with nothing and even lose items? That was a disgrace to professional players!

Dobby Always Happy paused, looking a bit dejected. "You didn't see the look in that child’s eyes. It was too pitiful!"

"I’m a player, not a monster. Her whole family was killed, leaving only an eighty-year-old grandmother and a five-year-old child. How could I tell an old woman and a child that I was going to steal their last remaining supplies for survival?"

He sighed and spread his hands. "Forget it. For us players, getting food is easy, but I don't know how an old woman and a child are supposed to survive. I think they need those things more than I do."

A five-year-old child—that was too young! The other players didn't say anything, but a few who had more supplies walked over, saying somberly:

"Before we leave tomorrow, we'll go with you and give them some more things!"

"Right. In this game, all the NPCs don't respawn once they die, and it seems they really do consume food for three meals a day. Anyway, like you said, it’s easy for us to get food. We might as well give it to the elderly and the child so they can live a little longer."

Lan Ling said without hesitation, "If we make money at the night market, let's keep what we need and give them some too!"

How could an eighty-year-old grandmother and a five-year-old child make money? They would just be exhausting their savings. With some money, maybe they could live a bit longer. They wouldn't have cared if they hadn't seen it, but having seen it, they couldn't just watch an old woman and a child starve to death.

Dobby Always Happy nodded. "Sigh, it’s too tragic. The whole family died, leaving only the two of them. Let me tell you, when I went to find the child’s father, the body was horrific. If the game hadn't prompted me that this was my quest target, I never would have recognized him."

In reality, the culprit wasn't some monster or demonic beast, just an ordinary tiger—a common beast that players could easily kill once they gained their skills. But because of just that one tiger, there was a small mountain of corpses outside the cave.

The saddest part was that the man hadn't died when the tiger dragged him away; he had just had his legs bitten off and was kept as "reserve food." But he had no chance of escape. Dobby Always Happy had found a piece of cloth on him with words shakily written in blood.

"When I gave that letter to the grandmother, she cried until she almost fainted! Even then, she forced herself to ask me what reward I wanted and insisted on shoving all her money at me!"

Dobby Always Happy sniffled. It was too moving. When he saw that body and the blood letter in the tiger's cave, he wished he’d never gone. What a damn game, making things so emotional!

The players chosen by Su Qingyue were all upright successors of socialist values; not a single one was truly cold-blooded or purely profit-driven. Hearing Dobby Always Happy’s words, they felt a bit down and couldn't help but sigh.

Life for commoners in the ancient world was just too hard. A child that small would still be in kindergarten in the modern world!

"Let's go see the child together tomorrow!"