For a moment, Li Daoxuan was annoyed by his limited field of vision. Then he suddenly remembered something. Five days ago, he had installed a surveillance camera beside the diorama box to keep an eye on everything happening inside.
The camera recorded continuously, so last night's footage should still be available.
He quickly took out his phone, opened the camera app, and pulled up the recording list. Since he had gone to bed after 2:00 AM, he only needed to check the footage from that time onward.
It did not take long to uncover the truth behind the "water theft."
Under the cover of darkness, a large group of ragged figures crept toward Gaojia Village. Their clothes were tattered, and their bodies were thin. They looked no different from the villagers themselves. Under the pale moonlight, they approached the pond without making a sound. One by one, they lowered wooden buckets into the water, filled them, hoisted them onto shoulder poles, and hurried out of the village as fast as their legs could carry them.
About an hour later, they returned.
Once again, each person filled two buckets before fleeing.
They repeated this cycle three times over the course of three hours. Only when dawn began to break did they finally stop. By then, the water level in the pond had dropped by half a chi.
Li Daoxuan stared at the footage, momentarily speechless.
He put away his phone. Down below, the villagers of Gaojia were still in an uproar.
"Fuck, where did these petty thieves come from?" one villager shouted. "How dare they steal water from our village!"
"Damn it, this is outrageous! This precious water was bestowed upon us by Tianzun. How can we just let them take it?"
"Where's Grandpa Chief? Someone get the Chief out here and ask him what we should do! Should we follow these footprints, hunt down the water thieves, and beat them up?"
"Yeah, bro! We have to beat them and take the water back. Otherwise, Tianzun will blame us for failing to protect the divine water He bestowed upon us."
At that moment, Li Daoxuan spoke.
"Yiye. Tell everyone there is no need to pursue the thieves."
Gao Yiye had been standing among the villagers, filled with righteous indignation as she joined them in denouncing whoever had stolen Tianzun's water. When she suddenly heard His voice echo from the sky, she gasped.
She looked up and saw Tianzun's young, handsome face faintly emerging among the clouds.
"Ti... Tian... Tianzun," she stammered. "Someone stole Your divine gift. Are You not angry?"
At her shout, the villagers turned around. When they saw her speaking to the sky, they realized she was talking to Tianzun. Every one of them immediately covered their mouths, not daring to make the slightest sound.
Li Daoxuan spoke calmly.
"Tell everyone that they are villagers from another settlement. They have no water to drink and cannot survive. That is why they came to steal water from Gaojia Village."
He paused briefly before continuing.
"Besides, the amount they took is insignificant. I will refill the pond. There is no need to chase down a group of people who are on the verge of dying from thirst. Punishing the starving is a greater sin than the theft itself."
Gao Yiye quickly relayed his words to the villagers.
The change was immediate. Their anger vanished, replaced by awe and humility. One after another, they dropped to their knees and kowtowed toward the sky.
"Tianzun is merciful!"
"Divine grace encompasses the world!"
"Great compassion and mercy!"
"Saving the suffering and rescuing the people!"
A chaotic jumble of flattering phrases, some sounding Buddhist and others Daoist, rose into the sky. Even the most hardline critics lowered their heads, ashamed of their earlier anger.
Li Daoxuan let out a deep sigh.
"As expected, saving just forty-two people is far from enough. I need to save more of them next. Let's start with this group of water thieves. I just hope my wallet can hold out."
---
That night, darkness fell once more. The forty-two villagers of Gaojia Village returned to their homes to sleep, and the diorama box grew still.
But Li Daoxuan was in no hurry to sleep. He sat in front of his computer, browsing historical records about the late Ming Dynasty while occasionally glancing toward the northern edge of the diorama box, where the water thieves had come from the night before.
The night grew deeper.
3:00 AM.
Outside his window, Shuangqing City was still wide awake. Cars sped along the highway, while on the street outside the residential complex, groups of people drinking beer and eating barbecue loudly shouted out drinking games.
"Five loss hand! Six six six! Seven fairies..."
Li Daoxuan picked up his phone and ordered some late-night barbecue.
Right at that moment, movement stirred inside the diorama box.
At the northern edge, a little person in tattered clothes poked his head out. He gazed toward Gaojia Village for a moment before gesturing behind him. Immediately, a large group of little people emerged, each carrying a wooden bucket. They hunched over and moved as carefully as possible as they crept toward the village.
Li Daoxuan closed his window, shutting out the noise from outside and letting the room fall completely still. Then he pressed his ear against the diorama box.
Inside, the little people moved so carefully that they did not make the slightest sound.
Before long, they reached the edge of the Lock&Lock container.
The leader peered inside and could not help but let out a confused, "Eh?"
A little person behind him stepped forward and whispered, "Brother Wang, what's wrong?"
The leader, whose surname was Wang, pointed at the container. His voice was filled with disbelief.
"Last night, we drained a good chunk of it. And they've been using water all day. The level should be even lower. So how the hell is it full again?"
Li Daoxuan chuckled to himself.
"Of course. I poured another full cup in. That's why."
The water thieves gathered around the container, completely bewildered. They stared at the brim-full pond, then looked up at the sky.
"It didn't rain at all today. How did the water get refilled?"
"Unfathomable!"
"Where on earth is the water in this pond coming from?"
Brother Wang was just as baffled. But as their leader, he could not simply stand there doing nothing. He waved his hand and cursed under his breath.
"Why bother thinking about it? Hurry up and fill your buckets! Stop wasting time. If we wake up the Gaojia Village folks and get caught red-handed, we'll all die of embarrassment right here!"
That made sense.
The group quickly surrounded the pond, dipped their wooden buckets into the water, and began drawing. Some even plunged their entire heads into the pond and gulped down the water greedily.
Gulu gulu gulu...
Seeing this, Li Daoxuan could not help but feel sorry for them.
Those poor people
His eyes drifted toward his bag of rice, and he briefly considered grabbing a handful to drop into the box.
But after thinking it over carefully, he hesitated.
"Once my rice enters the box, it'll turn into giant grains forty to sixty centimeters long. Their wooden buckets won't even be able to hold them. I can't expect them to roll giant grains of rice across the ground for miles all the way back to their village like the Gaojia villagers did, right?"
"Better not torture them with giant rice in the middle of the night. Scaring them in the dark might actually give them heart attacks."
He shifted his gaze away from the bag of rice and toward the bag of flour beside it.
Modern flour was ground into a powder finer than sand. Even if it expanded two hundred times inside the box, it would still look like coarse powder.
That shouldn't be too terrifying.
This would be much easier for them to carry in their buckets.
Li Daoxuan reached out and pinched a small amount of flour. While the little people were completely absorbed in drawing water, he carefully, without a sound, placed the pinch of flour behind them, piling it into a small mound.