There are all kinds of characters in Mingchao, but there is only one character named “Zanni” who suddenly reminded me of a woman in Beigaomi Township who was busy with accounting and herding cattle at night, and the village cadres could not find fault with her. This woman has been looking at the account book in the cooperative at the entrance of the village for more than ten years, quietly sorting out the piles of numbers. Later, something happened in her family, and her son was taken to the police station for beating someone. She did not cry or make a fuss. The next morning, she sat behind the counter on time, her body as straight as a bamboo pole. That was the first time I understood what “silent resistance” meant. Zanni is such a person, but she lives in a fictional doomsday world, while that woman lives in the reality of my memory.
Zanni works in a bank, but she is not a typical urban beauty. She has a stubborn spirit, calm, but she shows her knife at the critical moment. The names of her skills are more literary than each other: “Flame Judgment” and “Sleepless Watch”, which sound like the work of a judge or a security guard, but after reading them for a long time, I feel that they are like the mumbling of a country woman planting crops in the fields, calculating the harvest in her mind, and worrying that Lao Wang next door will come to steal melons, and she has to light a fire to cook for her husband and children at night. That kind of silent labor is the real watch.
Her skill mechanism says that “counterattack can only be triggered when attacked”, which shocked me. Zanni is not a proactive attacker. She is the kind of person who “if you don’t offend me, I won’t offend you”. But if anyone dares to touch her, she will fight back without hesitation. Most women in Beigaomi are like this. They are usually quiet and obedient, like a piece of polished bluestone, but once their family is bullied, they can roll up their sleeves and pick up a shovel. They don’t have fancy language, nor are they good at arguing, but their actions are always sharper than words.
“Sleepless Watch” reminds me of the old lady in the village. At night, when others were asleep, she was still standing at the door, looking at the dark fields, saying that she was afraid of foxes biting the chickens. In fact, the chickens were lost one after another, and what she was watching was her unwillingness to give up. Zanni has this smell. She is not the most dazzling existence among the resonance people, and some even think that she is too ordinary and has no explosive points. But the truly powerful people never rely on shouting.
Let’s talk about her “burning flame form”. The game is complicated: attack enhancement, energy accumulation, and burst judgment. But what I saw was a manifestation of “intolerance”. You can say that she is “transforming form”, I say she is “changing face”. When a country woman changes her face, there is no need for reason or omen. Maybe you scold her daughter and she changes her face; maybe you don’t give way on the ridge of the field, and she also changes her face. This change is not irritability, but principle, a kind of dignity maintained in her own way.
And her weapon, “flame judgment”, also reminds me of the hatchet at my third uncle’s house. Usually it is hung on the door frame and is rusty, but if anyone dares to make trouble, it will be taken down immediately. With a flash of cold light, it can calm the whole village. This knife does not kill people, but it can suppress people. This kind of power is a kind of spiritual power, the backbone of “Don’t think I have no temper”. Zanni’s attack method is very similar to the old cow of my third uncle’s family. She walks slowly, and when she suddenly rushes up, the momentum is enough to knock people over.
She also has a resonance chain skill called “Tomorrow’s Road Marker”. In the game, this represents direction and enhances ability. But in my opinion, this is her inner obsession. Country people don’t live very clearly, but they all have a direction. Some people think about raising money to build a new house, and some people think about their son’s college entrance examination. Direction is not a map, but a dream. If a person loses his dream, he will be useless. Zanni lives calmly and soberly because she knows where she is going.
What touched me most was her line: “The most urgent thing? Get off work!” What a real sentence. Does it sound like a country woman cooking and cursing: “Hurry up and feed the cows, I still have to feed the chickens!” Those seemingly trivial words are full of the weight of life. Going off work is not laziness, but a kind of adherence to order. No matter how powerful a person is, he also wants to rest. No matter how high the output is, he needs to breathe.
Many characters in the game shout “for justice” and “for glory”, but Zanni just wants to “get off work on time”, which makes me feel that she is not a hero, but a person. A person with flesh and blood, dreams and limitations. She is not trying to save the world, she just wants to keep her own rhythm and bottom line.
I often say that no matter how complicated the game is, no matter how many characters there are, there will always be someone who will be like someone you know. Zanni is the cooperative woman I know. She has no expression on her face, but her eyes are bright; she speaks in a low voice, but every word is powerful. She has no earth-shattering deeds, but she is a landscape when she stands there.
Zanni is not the strongest character, but she is most like the women in our lives who silently fight and find a way to survive in the cracks of the system. She represents not glory, but tenacity; not passion, but endurance; not an outburst, but a long-term, silent but firm existence. This is the truest power.