Song Juyao woke up in the midst of struggling cries. Intense and dark emotions such as desperation, anger and devastation enveloped her, leaving her in a flood of tears whilst opening her eyes.
Before she had time to think, she was stunned by the scene in front of her. She was lying on the ground in an old country house with a headache. A man on the bed in front of her was pulling a woman's clothes and the woman was weakly struggling while wailing and crying. The sound of the women’s weeping seemed to stimulate the man's bestiality even more.
Time seemed to freeze for a moment and all the voices went still for a short time. She slowly raised her hand and saw a small, dark and thin hand similar to a chicken claw. She was reborn, and returned to... her first trial.
‘Judgement Day Trial’ has at least eight episodes a season with a live episode lasting up to half a month, and each episode is a brand new trial.
Each episode is a life, and for the judged, one life is one hell.
In this first episode’s life of the trial, the program team arranged a rural background for her. In this life, she was set to be born in the countryside of an eighteenth tier city. Her father was a carpenter while her mother was set to be beautiful, weak and incompetent, a woman incapable to stand on her own and protect her children. When she was ten years old, her father died in an accident, and because he was the one at fault, he lost all the family's money, leaving the mother and daughter destitute and dependent on each other.
Now it was the time when the father had just died and a village scoundrel broke into their house with the evil intentions towards her mother. What did she do in a previous life in this situation? At that time, she woke up shortly after being pushed into a blackout, saw the scene and rushed forward to save her mother. How could a skinny ten-year-old resist a strong man?
So she was heavily pushed and fell on the chair in the corner. The nails on the chair slashed a long wound on her face and her bloodied visage scared away the scoundrel. And this deep scar followed her throughout her life, thus she was mocked and had poor self-esteem that she did not dare to look up at others.
Song Juyao cast a chilly gaze over the situation in front of her. She ignored it and got up from the floor to leave the room.
She entered the kitchen and took one of the sharpest kitchen knives from the wall-mounted knife rack. Then she stood at the door and shouted, "Someone is trying to rape my mother! Help! Somebody, please hep!!!"
The scoundrel sprang out of bed as soon as he heard the child's loud and piercing voice, "Little brat, you come here for this laozi......"
His voice suddenly stuck in his throat, his heart shook, and his entire body tensed up as he looked at the young girl clutching a knife in her hands.
Song Juyao was very thin, and there was not much flesh on her face, and her big eyes on that skinny face looked somewhat scary. Those eyes, as dark as thick ink and devoid of light, were quietly staring at him at this time. Strangely, unlike the normal children of her age, there was no trace of fear on her face.
The scoundrel only felt his blood freeze instantly and a strong sense of horror like hitting a ghost struck his heart. The beauty underneath and the silence of the late night were all covered by a veil of terror.
Child looked spooky and more terrifying than the adults. No matter how excited the scoundrel was, he was scared witless at this time, and fled in a panic.
A quivering feminine voice timidly screamed out, "...yao, Yaoyao." Liu Yan looked uncomfortably at Song Juyao as she sat up in tears while clutching her collar.
Song Juyao turned her head and looked at her expressionlessly.
Liu Yan was born gorgeous and did not have the appearance of a rural person. She appeared to be a pampered, delicate affluent girl from a major city, with pale complexion, devoid of even the tiniest callus wearing jade bracelets on her thin wrists. The bracelets were not particularly beautiful, but they were enough to make the women in the village envious and jealous. A necklace was also worn on the long and slender neckline, with small round jade beads elegantly dangling between her collarbones.
She had a charming demeanor of a youthful girl, with a hint of naivety. She didn’t look like a married woman who had given birth.
Liu Yan flinched when Song Juyao looked at her, and called her again: "Yaoyao, don't scare mom..."
Song Juyao emerged from her thoughts to discover that Liu Yan looked like a retard.
"Get up and clean up the house." Song Juyao ordered in an uncompromising tone.
Liu Yan hadn't done any housework since she got married. At this time, she looked stunned by being ordered by Song Juyao. But she didn't dare to refute, and uncomfortably nodded to her.
Song Juyao went out with the kitchen knife.
She entered the bathroom.
In the bathroom mirror, a seven or eight year old child was reflected. She was malnourished and her long yellow hair was tied up behind her head in a mess, looking like a child from a poverty-stricken area.
The ‘Judgement Day Trial’ program crew wouldn't let her live an easy life and her biological family was also a group of ultimate jerks who existed just to torment her.
Her father loved Liu Yan crazily and held her like a treasure. While his own daughter was treated like a slave, who had been doing household chores since she could remember. Despite their family's good financial status in the village, she looked skinny, dark and malnourished like the child of the poorest family.
After her father's death, she had to take care of the family and protect her mother, even going so far as to ruin her own face for her in this incident.
But she had no choice, as she had been brainwashed by her father for ten years, and due to a child's natural love for their mother, she couldn't just leave her own mother behind.
Liu Yan could only cry and wouldn't be able to find a solution. So, Song Juyao had been forced to grow up as she assumed the responsibility of caring for her family and protecting her mother from all harm.
She felt tired and angry about this life and could only live this way every day under her mother's tears.
Until a few years later, her mother was taken in by a rich man and became his lover.
Song Juyao didn't care about being the daughter of a mistress, she didn't go to school for many years, no one taught her morality. She only saw that she could finally leave that stifling small town and have access to proper food, warm and beautiful clothes, a comfortable, dry and odorless house, and also the chance to go to school.
However, the show's production team wouldn't allow her to live a happy life. The brief happiness was only a means to make her fall into a deeper pit of suffering.
Song Juyao attended school, but the original wife of the rich man was aware of the mother and daughter's existence, and both of the rich wife’s children were also enrolled in that school.
From then on she suffered daily from school violence and was trapped in a living hell. Her survival instincts drove her to eventually become a flattering, tail-wagging clown, but still unable to escape the fate of being bullied.
In the end, her mother, whom she had protected for many years with her thin hands, chose to abandon her out of fear of being rejected by the wealthy man.
After graduation, Song Juyao became an abnormal lunatic, seeking revenge on those who had once bullied her. The audience shouted that she was born evil, with inherently bad genes. Finally, a twisted murderer was assigned to torment her to death, marking the end of the first trial and bringing cheers from the audience.
Was it her fault? She failed the test, hadn't remained kind in the face of relentless malice, and hadn't smiled in the face of pain that life gave her. When insulted, she dared to hold a grudge instead of forgiving, and when forced to eat feces she didn't thank them with a smile... Did that mean she deserved to end up that way?
Tears streamed down Song Juyao's face as she gripped the knife handle tightly. But there was a blazing, frightening flame in her eyes.
Song Juyao wiped away her tears, washed her face and hands, then went to the kitchen. She took out some eggs and a small piece of lean meat, cooked a bowl of noodles, and ate ravenously.
Their family was now very poor and their savings had almost been depleted. Her mother was overly indulged by her father, spending money carelessly. In the past, Song Juyao was reluctant to eat, leaving most of the food for her beloved, delicate mother. But that's all changed now.
‘Screw the reluctance, and forget about your mother’ she thought. ‘I'm not going to spoil you anymore!’
The warm and satisfied feeling in her stomach felt wonderful. After Song Juyao finished eating, Liu Yan approached, looking at Song Juyao's bowl eagerly and said, "Juyao, Mom has cleaned the house."
Song Juyao simply replied with a soft "Mmm."
"Yaoyao, Mom is hungry too," said Liu Yan.
"You're hungry too? Then go cook. I'm going to sleep, Mom. Goodnight." Song Juyao said. Ignoring Liu Yan as she jumped off the chair and left the room. She still couldn't believe that someone could starve to death just because they couldn't cook. In a dire situation, people would even eat grass to survive.
Song Juyao returned to the master bedroom. Liu Yan's cleaning up was a bit sloppy; the urine Er Liu had leaked was not wiped off, and the objects that had fallen on the floor were randomly placed on the table or piled up in the corner. making it look like no cleaning had been done.
Song Juyao didn't care either, as this room wasn't hers anyway.
She washed her face and took a box of face cream from Liu Yan's dressing table. She scooped a bit and applied it to her face. The rough fingertips spread the cream finely and massaged it carefully to let it absorb.
Liu Yan was very fond of her face and body, spending the money her husband gave her each month on clothes and skin care products. Song Juyao didn't care about using adult face cream at her age as this was a virtual world and the design wasn't detailed enough to include the ingredients of face cream or whether it was suitable for minors or not. Anyway, as long as it's expensive, it was effective.
Liu Yan's skincare products were all from well-known and expensive brands.
She recalled that the first trial started when she grew up to 18 years old here. Though she had only been thrown into the virtual world an hour earlier than the actors, the time flow was adjusted so quickly that the live broadcast only began when she was 18. And the actors who were cast to target her would be put into the virtual world at that time.
With one hour in reality equaling 18 years in the virtual world, the speed was so fast that the outside world couldn't see what was happening with the naked eye, let alone record it. They didn't bother watching her boring first 18 years of life, so Song Juyao was safe before she turned 18.
She had 8 years left to prepare for her battle.