"Little chick, little chick, turn in a circle. Little chick, little chick, hop on one foot. Little chick, little chick, jump side to side. Little chick, little chick, jump front and back. Little chick, little chick, jump up high. Little chick, little chick, touch your comb..."
The two children turning the rope sang continuously, while the child in the middle performed the actions from the rhyme.
After the jumper had done all the actions, the children turning the rope sang loudly, "Little chick, little chick, you jumped so well. Little chick, little chick, now you may go."
That child jumped out, and a second one jumped in, beginning to skip to the song.
Everyone looked at each other.
"It looks like this is the game we have to play," said Songg Baige.
"Fangfang, is this game easier or harder than passing the city gate?" Li Qingxian asked with a smile.
Fangfang tilted her head and thought for a moment before saying, "It’s easy at first, then it gets hard. Easy for one person, hard for more than one."
Everyone quietly pondered this, not knowing what exactly would make it difficult.
"Let’s practice for a bit, then we’ll have Fangfang lead us home," Li Qingxian said, pulling a large hemp rope from his Qiankun Bracelet.
"Unbelievable." Everyone was torn between laughter and tears, never having expected Li Qingxian to be prepared for even this.
They took turns turning and jumping the rope. Relying on their basic abilities as Cultivators, they quickly got the hang of it.
"Alright, let’s get ready to start," Li Qingxian said.
"The children are turning the rope a little faster now than at the beginning. It would be hard to notice if you weren’t observing carefully," said Wang Buku.
"Better to play now than later," said Songg Baige.
Li Qingxian picked up Fangfang. "Little sis, we’ll take the path you normally walk. You show us the way."
"This way!" Fangfang pointed to a road branching off the main path. Children were also jumping a large rope there.
After some brief preparations, they walked over, each person joining the child next to them to jump.
The entire process went exceptionally smoothly, no different from a normal game of jump rope.
Puzzled, they held the children’s hands and continued forward.
As they continued walking, the fog steadily dissipated, and the path ahead grew clearer.
Just as the city gate was about to disappear from view, they glanced back and saw the silhouettes of some unfamiliar candidates had appeared there.
"Keep going." Like a little compass, Fangfang led them onward, and they put the city gate completely out of their minds.
They had only taken a few steps when all the children suddenly began to sing in unison, "Little chick, little chick, cheeping nonstop, clamoring to jump the rope!"
Everyone’s hearts tightened, and they frantically looked around.
This was a very ordinary street, paved with flagstones and only about twenty feet wide. Shops lined both sides, all of them empty. No one was jumping rope.
Then, some looked south and others looked north, their eyes widening in disbelief.
At the southern and northern ends of the city, they saw them: two unimaginably enormous children.
They were far larger than the two children who had locked the city gate, like twin hillocks, crowned with clouds and cloaked in wind.
The giant children were dressed in white clothes patterned with a hundred blessings and wore Tiger Head Hats. They were fair and chubby, and they grinned down at the city below.
Li Qingxian suddenly pictured two children squatting under a tree, using the tip of a branch to scratch a ditch in the dirt and trap ants.
’And I’m one of those ants.’
In their fair, soft hands, each of the two children held a thick rope.
Before anyone could react, the two children swung their arms, and a translucent rope soared into the sky above the city.
It stretched from south to north, spanning the entire city like a trans-urban bridge.
The two giant children began to sing in unison.
"Little chick, little chick, please come in! Little chick, little chick, give a little skip!"
The voices of the giant children were startlingly childish, clear, and loud.
WHOOSH...
The massive rope descended from the sky, passing over countless buildings as if they weren’t there. It kicked up a gale-force wind as it swept toward the group.
A single giant rope, sweeping across the entire city.
"Hold on to the children, activate your Spirit Talismans, and get ready to jump!" Li Qingxian yelled.
Everyone grabbed the child nearest to them, activated their Spirit Talismans, and fixed their eyes on the rope flying in from the west.
From a distance, the rope looked to be dozens of yards thick, like a Celestial Pillar.
But as it got closer, it was only as thick as a person’s arm.
WHOOSH...
The rope rushed toward them with a deafening roar of displaced air.
"Jump!" Everyone leaped at once. The Martial Cultivator Wang Buku and his peers jumped especially high, clearing more than twenty feet.
WHOOSH...
The rope passed beneath their feet, the powerful gust of wind whipping their hair and clothes, and then it was gone.
They waited nervously for the giant rope’s return.
The two giant children turning the rope were still there, their hands still gripping the rope’s ends, but the rope itself had vanished from the sky.
They waited for a long time, but the rope didn’t reappear.
"Looks like they won’t make us jump continuously. Thank goodness, or I’d go insane. Getting hit by that rope would have been certain death. Ye Han, send some more Spirit Talismans my way," said Songg Baige.
Everyone looked expectantly at Li Qingxian.
There were other Daoist Cultivators among the twenty-four of them, but Li Qingxian was the only one skilled in Talisman Making.
Li Qingxian nodded. With a flick of his hand, bundles of Spirit Talismans flew to the others—a hundred for each person.
"I will repay you for this life-saving grace!" Wang Buku declared as he accepted the Spirit Talismans.
Everyone thanked Li Qingxian profusely. ’It’s a good thing we didn’t leave,’ they thought. ’Even if we’d joined Meng Huaichuan’s team, we’d never have gotten this many Spirit Talismans.’
Li Qingxian said, "Do you all remember what Fangfang said? That it’s easy at first, then gets harder? That there are few at first, and more later?"
Looks of resignation appeared on their faces.
"In other words, this city-spanning rope will only get faster. And besides this colossal rope, there will undoubtedly be other games targeting us. Perhaps many ropes. We’ll see one giant child after another, playing games with us like we’re ants. If I’m not mistaken, from now on, it will be endless," said Li Qingxian.
"I’m afraid you’re right," said Songg Baige.
Li Qingxian spoke slowly. "Do you remember that old wolf? And do you remember what time it is?"
Everyone’s hearts sank.
Li Qingxian’s meaning was perfectly clear: this was only the beginning. These were merely the simplest of the Guii Youxi.
"So, do whatever it takes to survive! Let’s move."
They walked for a quarter of an hour before the fog ahead dispersed, revealing a group of children clapping and singing merrily.
"Hit the bad guys, hit the Demon Race! Hit the bad guys, hit the Demons! Strike down the Demon Fiends and save the kids! Hit the bad guys, hit the monsters..."
They looked up and saw four children standing in the middle of the street, with one child standing on either side of the group.
One of the children on the side gripped a beanbag and hurled it at the four in the middle.
The four children scrambled to dodge it.
The beanbag landed on the ground. The child on the other side picked it up and took aim at the four children in the middle again.
"It’s dodgeball. You’ve all played it, right? No need to practice this one; we can all dodge. But be careful of the giant beanbags that are likely to appear next," said Li Qingxian.
They took their turns playing the dodgeball game. After lasting for a short while, they were considered victorious and escorted to the other side by the children.
They passed with ease.
After walking for a while, the children beside them suddenly began to sing.
"Little chick, little chick, cheeping nonstop, clamoring to jump the rope!"
"Hit the bad guys, hit the Demon Race! Hit the bad guys, hit the Demons! Strike down the Demon Fiends and save the kids!"
Half of them were singing the jump rope song, the other half the dodgeball song.
An unspeakable panic flashed in everyone’s eyes.
It was just jumping rope. It was just dodgeball. They were confident they could evade both. And yet, as the nursery rhymes began, it felt as though an invisible stone was pressing down on their chests, making it hard to breathe.
They looked around to see that on the eastern and western edges of the city, two more children in white had appeared, each as tall as a hill.
The giant dodgeball children and the giant rope-turning children stood like titans, grinning down at them.
All they could feel were four smiling faces, each one seeming to fill half the sky, pressing down from above and closing in from all sides.