There were countless mannequins, dressed in exquisite dresses and headdresses. some even had faces, painted in make up. He stopped in front of one that looked unfortunately familiar. A woman, who looked just like the one that was contaminated by the doll's leg juice. It seemed it hadn't been a doll, but a mannequin.
Ah'Ming shrugged, not feeling particularly guilty. The woman had made her choice, blinded by the arrogance of being at a higher broadcasting level than him. She hadn't wanted any input at all, only grumbled at his "incompetence".
On a old banner, there lay what seemed to be the next phrase of the song.
As he read it, he could almost hear the ensemble in the background, a bright clashing of gongs, drums, pipas and erhus.
Sift the gong, strike the gong,
A bushel of wheat won't grind along.
Big brother won't eat at home today,
Only river duck eggs, far away.
Eat them raw or eat them cooked,
Niuniu's angry, just look, you looked!
Huffing, puffing, what tricks she'll play,
Throwing a fit in her own small way.
It seemed slightly different to what he remembered, making Ah'Ming pause. Suspicious. The lyrics were... a little bit darker? He couldn't truly be sure, since these were nursery rhymes. Even though he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, he still didn't listen to baby stuff in his free time.
What could the next step possibly be? Eating duck eggs? Fighting a monster duck?
The little girl though... Niuniu.
That was a nostalgic name.
He used to have a little neighbor called NiuNiu. She was small, nicknamed that because of the actress HuNiu. Was the lady an actress? Her mother had thought it was a nice name, especially since Niuniu was born in the year of the tiger. Her mother had been very sweet, allowing him to use the spare apartment when he was trying to get an ID.
It was surprisingly hard to get legal documents if you weren't born in that country.
Or that world.
Shaking his head, Ah'Ming stepped back out of the stage's back rooms. He turned to the banquet tables instead. There was no food anywhere, not even any grains of rice, only the cups were half-filled with muddy water.
Even the side corridors that led to the kitchens were dust covered, old and grey. The kitchens themselves were messy, overturned. It was clear someone, or some people, had tried desperately to find something here. All empty.
The rest of the mansion led to the same results.
Some rooms were mussed up and lived in, yet others were abandoned and untouched. He'd even found a study with ledgers of food costs. It had been filled with normal imports of food, before the costs skyrocketed.
The strange thing though, was that the dates included no years. He also couldn't tell if the ledgers months were in lunar months or solar. It wouldn't affect it much, though.
He left the study, walking back to the banquet hall. Nothing had changed in the meantime. It was clear that this instance most likely had a pretty long plot, but Ah'Ming couldn't for the life of him figure it out.
Something about food, but that didn't make much sense considering the lullabys and children's poems thus far. They were all playful. This instance's supposed plot... was not. Perhaps it was the dead souls of the children not being able to comprehend the indignities they'd suffered, resorting to playful times? He didn't know, he'd never been a child.
He walked to the massive doors, and threw them open. what greeted him was a wide expanse of wheat field. The problem was, all of the wheat was grey. He touched it, and watched as it crumpled to dust in his hands. Well, at least that was what the "A bushel of wheat won't grind along." meant.
A disease, or a curse.
Further along, past the wheat fields, there was a village, lined with houses, all abandoned. Seriously? No NPCs?
This was a rather hard instance, if it only had these very limited prompts without any guidance.
He turned back to look at the mansion he'd stepped out of. Perhaps it had belonged to the mayor, or a rich merchant family. Either way, it seemed as though even the richest person in town didn't have much to eat.
Ah'Ming stepped into the first house. He couldn't see anything interesting, except for the fact that everything leather had been stripped, most likely boiled and eaten. There were bones in the kitchen, belonging most likely to a dog or a cat.
It seemed that even in famine, the pets were the first to be abandoned.
He visited the next house, and the one after that.
All had no signs of food. Some had locked wardrobes, some that smelled suspiciously like blood.
In the tenth house, he finally found a wardrobe that would open. Inside lay a skeleton, with the legs chopped off. It was small, a teenager at best. Based on the hips, most likely female.
Ah'Ming sighed softly.
He recalled a poem he'd once been forced to read by the old man he'd worked odd jobs for. The man had called himself a literary critic, but mostly just paraded old poems about without knowing the meaning.
"Corpses lie scattered along the roads. The starving, still alive, have lost all human color.
People eat flesh together and die together. Parents eat their children. Husbands and wives face each other as food. Inside the city walls,tigers and wolves still live yet humans fare worse than beasts."
The famed poet might not be able to suffer the effects of famine himself, but he really encapsulated it well. It was all but certain what had happened to the girl in the wardrobe.
Next to what used to be her, lay countless scratches in the wood. Some even had blood stains on them. Looked at all together, they spelt a sentence.
Ah'Ming read it aloud.
"养女以备荒年"
Raise daughters in preparation for famine.
All of a sudden,
He blacked out.