Chapter 205: Heredity
She ignored these people’s wary gazes. She had done what needed to be done, and staying here longer would just be a waste of time, so Lu Jinzhao turned and left.
As for that woman who had snapped the tablet, she thought, perhaps she should go find the next tablet.
She was curious whether having a new tablet could offset the consequences that snapping a tablet might bring.
In the mission, the tablet could not leave one’s side. If the woman obtained another tablet, she would know by tomorrow morning, so Lu Jinzhao had no intention of following her to watch the show.
She headed to other places in the village, beginning to look for local people living here.
Actually, Lu Jinzhao was somewhat curious about what exactly the “people” inside the platform were made of. They appeared to be just normal humans, with thinking logic and bodies no different from humans, but the world inside the platform was clearly not the normal world, and it even had plots from movies.
At times, the “people” here would also reveal some “ghostly” qualities, making it hard for her to equate them with people from the real world.
But they were exceptionally real, so treating them simply as “NPCs” was not appropriate either.
However, thinking of movies, Lu Jinzhao had once wondered if there was a passenger who had experienced the platform and whose identity was a movie screenwriter.
Actors definitely couldn’t do it, but screenwriters would have no problem.
These strange questions always appeared in Lu Jinzhao’s mind, becoming part of her attempt to deconstruct the train’s existence.
Lu Jinzhao passed by some buildings in the village along the way. She saw villagers working, not only old men but also young people and children, though the numbers were quite sparse.
She thought of the gazes she had seen when heading to the ancestral hall. Although somewhat odd, they contained no malice, so perhaps she could communicate with the villagers.
Thus, Lu Jinzhao approached a little girl squatting by the roadside playing.
She deliberately made her footsteps heavier so the little girl would notice someone approaching. She walked to the little girl’s side, slightly lowered her head, and asked, “What are you playing here?”
The little girl looked up at her, her gaze carrying unfamiliarity but not shyness. Her voice was soft as she replied, “Making a whistle.”
Lu Jinzhao lowered her gaze and saw the wild pea pod in the little girl’s hand. She had a memory of this; it was from kindergarten days when sisters still attending elementary school in town would make them on their way home from school.
However, with the passage of time and city changes, she hadn’t seen a wild pea pod in a long time.
“No school today?”
Lu Jinzhao chose an ordinary and common question to continue the topic. Though ordinary, it was not asked casually; the growth of the wild pea pod indicated it was now May or June, still school time.
The little girl naturally showed no rejection to such a “routine” question. While digging out the beans from the pod, she answered, “The private school is on holiday today.”
Private school?
Whether clothing, the style of the electric lights, or other things inside the room, all indicated it was modern society. Yet in this clearly not wealthy village, instead of sending children to free public schools, they attended a private school?
“How long is the holiday?” she followed up.
Perhaps she couldn’t chat with adults this way, but since it was a little girl in front of her, she could ask questions more directly.
“I don’t know. Grandpa village chief didn’t say.” The girl showed a bit of troubled expression. “I asked Mom, and Mom said she didn’t know either.”
She seemed to really like going to school.
From the girl’s words, Lu Jinzhao judged that this “private school” was probably the school within the village, and perhaps the educational intensity wasn’t high either.
Lu Jinzhao squatted down beside her and casually picked a wild pea pod. The little girl was trying to blow it, but only managed a very short sound. She looked puzzled at the whistle in her hand, frowned as if annoyed at the failure, but soon observed the roadside grass, picking another fairly plump pod.
Lu Jinzhao began asking her about the method, which sparked the little girl’s enthusiasm. The two went from strangers to newly met friends.
Afterward, Lu Jinzhao intermittently gathered some information from the child.
The people in this village never went far away and didn’t send children to schools outside the mountains. Instead, they taught in the private school in the village. They didn’t learn foreign languages; for physics and math, they only learned the most basic, practical common knowledge needed in life.
The other courses were the same.
The little girl in front of her knew characters and numbers but could only do simple addition and subtraction. As for multiplication and division, she said those were things learned after growing up a bit.
The village population wasn’t large, but people from surrounding villages were willing to intermarry with them. After marriage, households all migrated to this village, regardless of gender.
The village had many surnames, enough to show that this custom had existed for a very long time, but surnames weren’t important here—what mattered was “blood relation.”
Therefore, girls in the village were relatively important, because a woman’s children could be guaranteed to carry the village’s bloodline.
These were the pieces of information Lu Jinzhao extracted from the little girl’s childish words.
When the little girl left, she stood up, pocketed the pea pod in her hand casually, and sorted out the useful parts from the conversation.
It could be confirmed that this village avoided excessive contact with the outside world, even giving up sending children out for schooling and forgoing the important economic source of working away.
But they didn’t hinder outsiders from entering the village; they even welcomed outsiders to integrate into the village and become part of it.
Even so, the village population wasn’t large.
Blood relation was considered quite important, though why, the still young girl didn’t know.
Lu Jinzhao decided to visit the “private school.”
The location of the private school was the village chief’s house. Lu Jinzhao wasn’t sure if the adults there would be willing to share the village’s secrets with her, but it didn’t matter—this trip was mainly to observe the villagers’ attitudes.
They had entered the ancestral hall and taken the tablet—would the villagers know nothing about it?
Those muddy footprints were all left in the ancestral hall, and it was clear from the ancestral hall here that it was frequently cleaned.
But today, up to now, no villagers had come to them asking about it.
The people here had tacitly accepted the event and hadn’t warned children not to communicate too much with them, these “outsiders.”
“Their attitude toward the outside world is to sever contact as much as possible, but they welcome those coming from outside who want to integrate into the village.”
The villagers’ gazes at her, the little girl’s lack of vigilance toward her
“So, we are also outsiders who are to integrate into the village.”
Clearly, the identities assigned to them by the train were not for coming to intermarry, just for tourism and scientific research, and they would eventually leave here.
“It’s because of the tablet.”
Lu Jinzhao reached a not-difficult conclusion, and at the same time, learned one of the crises of not having a tablet’s existence: complete outsider status.
