Kneel to Me

2. First Arc: Great Prodigy VS Campus Violence (1)

Song Juyao woke up in a burst of struggling and crying. Fierce, dark emotions such as despair, anger and a sense of mental collapse enveloped her, causing her to open her eyes and burst into tears.

Before she even had the time to think, she was shocked by the scene before her. She was lying on the ground in an old-fashioned, countryside cottage. Her forehead was throbbing with pain, and on the bed in front of her, a man was pulling off a woman’s clothes. The woman was struggling, both of her hands weak and powerless. The sound of her sobbing stimulated the man’s beastliness to an even higher degree.

In an instant, time seemed to freeze and all the sounds disappeared for a brief moment. She lifted up her hand and saw a dark, scrawny hand like a chicken’s claw. She was reborn. She had returned to… her first trial.

One season of “Judgement Day” had at least eight episodes, and each episode would be broadcast live for half a month1 with every episode covering a brand new trial.

Each episode was a whole new life, and for the person being judged, this life was hell.

In this trial, in this life, the program team arranged for her to grow up in a rural area in an 18th tier city. Her father was a carpenter, and her mother was a delicate beauty with no ability who was unable to stand on her own two feet and protect her children. When she was ten years old, her father happened to die in an accident while he was away. On account of the fact that he had been the party at fault, the family lost all their money in order to pay the compensation. The penniless mother-daughter pair were forced to depend on each other for survival.

At this time, her father had already died, and her beautiful mother was attacked by a good-for-nothing deadbeat from the village who had broken into their house in the small hours of the morning.2 And what had she done? Once she regained her consciousness after being knocked aside, she saw this scene and hurried over to save her mother. But how could a scrawny ten year old child beat a strong man?

As a result, she was pushed heavily and thrown onto a chair in the corner. A nail protruding from the chair caught her face, tearing a long gash across it. The blood all over her face finally scared off the deadbeat; he abandoned his assault and ran away. And since then, this scar followed her throughout the remainder of her life. It made her the subject of ridicule, causing her to feel inferior and afraid to lift up her head and look at other people.

Song Juyao looked at the scene in front of her with an icy expression. She got up from the ground, turned her head and walked out of the room.

She walked into the kitchen and took out the sharpest knife from the knife-holder hanging on the wall. Then, she stood at the doorway and screamed, “Someone wants to rape my mother! Help! Come quickly!!”

The child’s voice was very shrill, startling the deadbeat who jumped up from the bed and rushed out. “Little brat, shut up for…”

His voice suddenly got stuck in his throat and he froze. Looking at the little girl who was holding a knife and standing at the doorway, his heart quivered.

Song Juyao was extremely skinny without much flesh on her face, making her eyes appear to be so big that they were somewhat scary. At this moment, those eyes were as dark as thick, black ink without the slightest trace of light. She was looking at him coolly, without so much as a hint of fear. Those eyes were not like the eyes of a normal child, it was very strange.

The deadbeat just felt that his blood froze in an instant and he was struck by a strong sense of terror as if he had bumped into a ghost. With the addition of the beauty beneath him coupled with the silence of the early hours of the morning, everything seemed to be coloured with a layer of horror.

This child was abnormal, even more terrifying than an adult. No matter how high the deadbeat’s interest was, at this moment, he was scared to the point of peeing his pants and ran away.

“Yao, Yaoyao…” The thin, delicate woman called out timidly. Liu Yan grabbed the collar of her shirt and sat up, her face covered with tears as she looked at Song Juyao with eyes filled with fear.

Song Juyao turned her head and looked at her expressionlessly.

Liu Yan was born very beautiful. She did not look like someone from a rural village and looked more like a pampered young lady from the big city. Her skin was fair and tender and she didn’t have any calluses on her hands. She wore a jade bracelet around her slim wrist, and although the quality wasn’t that good, it was enough to make all the women in the village envious of her. She also wore a necklace around her slender neck with small, delicate jade beads that fell at her collarbones. It was extremely exquisite.

There was a bit of naivete in her charming demeanor, more like a young girl rather than a married woman who had already given birth.

Liu Yan timidly shrank back at the sight of Song Juyao and called out stutteringly, “Yaoyao, don’t scare Mom…”

After breaking away from the layer of confusion, Song Juyao found that Liu Yan looked like a person with mental retardation.

“Get up and clean the house.” Song Juyao ordered indifferently in a tone that brooked no disobedience.

Liu Yan hadn’t done any housework since getting married. For a moment, she was dumbfounded after hearing Song Juyao’s command, but she didn’t dare to contradict her and nodded falteringly.

Song Juyao went out with the kitchen knife.

She walked into the bathroom.

The mirror in the bathroom reflected the figure of a child who appeared to be around seven or eight years old. She was dark and stunted with a head full of long, frizzy hair tied messily at the back of her head; she looked like a child from a poverty-stricken area.

The “Judgement Day” program team would not allow her to have an easy time and even her family was a gathering of outrageous people whose existence was a source of torment for her.

The father loved Liu Yan crazily, holding her in the palms of his hands, as though she was a treasured pearl while his own daughter was like a slave. She had been doing all the housework around the house for as long as she could remember. She looked dark and emaciated, her growth stunted. Obviously, their family’s conditions were pretty good in this village, but she looked like a child from the most destitute family.

And after her father’s death, she had to take on the responsibility of supporting their family and protecting her mother, even getting disfigured in this incident for Liu Yan’s sake.

But she had no other choice, because at that time, after ten years of being brainwashed by her father, coupled with a child’s natural feelings towards her mother, she was unable to abandon her biological mother.

If she didn’t support her family, if she didn’t protect her, Liu Yan would only cry without coming up with a solution. She had been forced to grow up.

She was exhausted and full of anger for having to live this kind of life where she could only live day by day under the tears of her mother.

Until a few years later, her mother was kept by a rich man and became his lover.

Song Juyao didn’t care that she became the daughter of a mistress. She had never been to school and nobody had taught her the concept of morality. She only saw that she could finally leave that small, suffocating place and she could finally eat her fill, wear warm, beautiful clothes and live in a comfortable house that wasn’t damp and smelly. Furthermore, she could even go to school. 

But how could the program team allow her to live a good life? The short-term happiness was simply for the sake of making her fall into a deeper abyss and taste even more pain.

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She went to school, but the man’s wife was aware of the existence of the mother-daughter pair, and both of her children also went to the same school.

Since then, she had been subjected to campus violence every day; living in hell, yet unable to escape. Her survival instincts spurred her into becoming a groveling dog who flattered and fawned over others, but she was still unable to escape the fate of being humiliated.

In the end, her mother—whom she had protected for many years with her thin, small hands—actually chose to cast her aside for fear of being abandoned by the rich man.

Consequently, after graduation, she—who had already become abnormal—turned into a dreadful lunatic and began to retaliate against those who had bullied her. Then, the audience began to shout that, as expected, she was inherently evil and had wicked genes! Finally, an even more perverted murderer was arranged to torture her to death, ending the first trial to the cheers of the delighed audience.

Was this right? Was it her fault? She didn’t pass the test, she didn’t maintain a kind heart amidst the incessant malice. She didn’t face the life that gave her countless pains with a smile on her face. When others humiliated her, she had the audacity to bear a grudge instead of forgiving them. When others forced her to eat shit, she had the impertinence not to smile at them and say “thank you”, so she deserved to have such an ending.

Was this right?

Tears rolled down from Song Juyao’s eyes as she squeezed the handle of the knife. However, there was a terrifying flame burning in the depths of her eyes.

Song Juyao wiped her tears and washed her face and hands. She walked into the kitchen and went through the cupboards, finding an egg and a block of lean meat that was only half as big as the palm of her hand. After boiling a bowl of noodles, she ate it in big gulps.

Their family was very poor now and they had almost lost their entire savings. Furthermore, there was still a mother who had been spoiled by her father and did not know how to curb her spending. In the past, she had been reluctant to eat and left most of the food for her beloved and fragile mother to eat, but now, it was different.

Fuck off! What reluctance? This old mother can get lost, Laozi3 doesn’t need you!

The feeling of a full, warm stomach was very comfortable. After Song Juyao finished eating, Liu Yan stumbled over and eagerly looked at Song Juyao’s bowl as she said, “Yaoyao, Mom has finished cleaning the house.”

Song Juyao: “Hmm.”

“Yaoyao, Mom is also hungry.”

“If you’re hungry, then go and cook. I’m going to bed now, goodnight Mom.” After saying this, Song Juyao ignored Liu Yan and got up from the chair and left. She really didn’t believe that someone would starve herself to death because she couldn’t cook, wasn’t it just spoiling her?

If such a time really came and she wasn’t able to cook, she would be forced to gnaw on the grass in order to survive.

Song Juyao returned to the master bedroom. When Liu Yan said she had cleaned up, she had simply casually dragged the broom across the floor. The urine released by the deadbeat scum hadn’t been cleaned at all. The items that had fallen onto the ground had been picked up and randomly placed on top of the table or piled up against the corner of the wall. Cleaning was almost the same as not cleaning.

Song Juyao didn’t care. At any rate, she wasn’t the one sleeping in this room.

She washed her face and took a box of face cream from Liu Yan’s table before digging out a glob of cream and wiping it on her face. Using her rough fingers, she spread it out across her face and carefully massaged it into her skin, allowing it to get absorbed.

Liu Yan took great care of her face and body. She used the money her husband gave her every month on clothes and skin care products. Song Juyao didn’t care whether she could use adult face cream at her age. At any rate, this was a virtual world. Regardless of how carefully it had been designed, it was unlikely for them to make face cream with the consideration of whether it was suitable for minors. Anyway, as long as it was expensive, it would definitely have some effect.

All of Liu Yan’s skincare products were from famous brands and they were very expensive.

She remembered that the first trial hadn’t started until she had grown up and turned 18, when in fact, she had been thrown into the virtual world only an hour earlier than the actors. It was just that the flow of time was adjusted to be very fast. When she turned 18, the actors who existed to target her would enter this world.

One hour in the real world was equivalent to 18 years in the virtual world. The speed was so fast that none of the scenes were visible to the naked eye of the outside world. Furthermore, they disdained to record and watch the mundane first 18 years of her life, so Song Juyao was very safe.

She still had another 8 years to prepare for her battle.