They kept falling into the same cycle: turning back, picking up Xiao Mu Ke and Liu Jiayi, carrying them forward, then slowing down again. The children’s speed was obviously no match for adults. Fortunately, Bai Six had started running at half past nine, giving them a small head start. The teachers behind them wouldn’t be able to catch up immediately.
The main gate was already in sight.
Ecstatic joy flashed across Xiao Miao Feichi and Xiao Miao Gaojiang’s faces.
But in the next second, that expression froze on Xiao Miao Feichi’s face like wax hardening in cold water.
He stopped dead at the edge of the open doorway, refusing to step outside.
He even took two steps back.
Outside the gate /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ stood countless “Slender Man”-like investors, their heads covered in hats, their faces wrapped in bandages.
Their rotting mouths had split through the bandages meant to restrain them, exposing rows of sharp teeth. They seemed to be smiling, their mouths stretching all the way to their ears. Their noses tilted upward, sniffing constantly at the air for the fresh scent of approaching child prey, thick saliva dripping from their open mouths.
Their bodies were entirely black, almost impossible to distinguish from the night.
It wasn’t until Miao Feichi ran right up to the gate that he realized the white patches flickering like shadows outside hadn’t been moonlight.
They were bandaged faces.
The investors were blocked outside by the half-open iron gate. They forced their long, thin hands through the bars, clawing toward the children inside. Their sharp teeth clicked open and shut with kacha kacha sounds, mimicking the act of chewing as saliva dripped endlessly down.
All the children went still.
Xiao Miao Feichi and Xiao Miao Gaojiang, still carrying Xiao Mu Ke and Liu Jiayi, sank exhausted to the ground, dazed despair spreading across their faces.
Bai Six also sat down.
He adjusted his breathing and calmly scanned the area beyond the gate.
“...A failure,” he said. “As expected, escaping wasn’t going to be that simple.”
These monsters were most likely the investors who had died miserably from severe illness after failing to obtain suitable child blood. They lingered outside Love Welfare Home late at night, waiting.
Any child who managed to escape would probably be torn apart by them.
The teachers caught up from behind.
Cursing at the children who had dared to run away, one of them slapped Bai Six so hard he sprawled across the ground.
He was pinned down and struck several more times with a broom, but his face showed no expression at all.
He seemed to have expected this outcome.
The Dean arrived soon after. She locked the gate, then turned around, her dark, looming gaze sweeping over the disobedient children.
Her expression was so gloomy it seemed almost ready to drip.
She looked at them and spoke in a chilling voice.
“Now, tell me. Whose idea was this escape?”
“The child who confesses may be spared the harshest punishment.”
“If you don’t...”
Before the Dean could finish her threat, the breathless Xiao Miao Feichi and Xiao Miao Gaojiang both turned resentfully toward Bai Six and pointed at him without hesitation.
“It was him!”
The Dean’s gaze shifted to Bai Six, who had just been beaten and was slowly pushing himself up from the ground.
She paused. Her tone became unreadable.
“It seems today’s baptism failed to wash away your sins, Bai Six.”
“You need to be cleansed more thoroughly.”
The Dean smiled amiably, but there was no warmth in her eyes.
“Tonight, before you are sent to the hospital on Wednesday to be matched with the other investors, I will wash the sin from your body completely.”
“The other children will be locked together and made to fast for one day. I will personally take Bai Six to the church for solitary confinement.”
Bai Six had only just stood up when the Dean grabbed him by the back of his collar.
She dragged him roughly toward the church.
He had been running all night and had no strength left. Unable to resist, he let the Dean drag him along, stumbling and breathing raggedly until he was thrown into the church.
Fortunately, the Dean was only repeating her usual punishment.
She shoved his head into the baptismal font again and again, forcing him to suffocate repeatedly.
This seemed to be the only method she knew for tormenting children.
But because Bai Six had led the others in an escape, he had completely crossed her bottom line. She pushed his head into the water of the font tirelessly, rambling and cursing him in a voice Bai Six could no longer hear clearly.
“Disgusting little beast.”
“You only survive because of the investors’ kindness and charity. How dare you do something like this?!”
Bai Six half-opened his eyes weakly.
Water droplets clung heavily to his lashes.
Again and again, he struggled up from the drowning sensation, only to be forced back down.
Water flooded his nasal cavity, making him want to choke and cough, but before he could even manage that, the enraged Dean shoved him beneath the surface again.
“Do you know how much trouble you would have caused us if you escaped?!”
She shrieked hysterically, gripping Bai Six by the hair and shaking him in the water.
“A heartless little monster like you—your parents dumping you here only caused us more trouble! You should have been drowned the moment you were born, for the good of society...”
Bai Six’s eyelids gradually drooped.
He was beginning to lose interest in this game of being forced up and down in the water.
He was also running out of strength.
The next time Bai Six surfaced to breathe and was pushed back under, he failed to take in enough air and choked.
Expressionless, the Dean held his head beneath the water.
Bubbles escaped from his nose and mouth.
His face did not twist with the terror of someone drowning. It remained very calm.
Even though he could feel that he was truly about to be drowned, he had somehow grown used to this painful sensation.
Bai Six’s eyes closed completely.
The hands gripping the edge of the baptismal font loosened at last.
His body slid down, floating in the clear, rippling water as though unconscious.
The coin hanging against his chest drifted out from beneath his clothes, glinting faintly through the water.
“Hah!”
The Dean viciously grabbed the coin and yanked it.
“You even dared to steal something from an investor!”
She screamed.
“You sinful child, born of a devil!”
Just as she was about to continue torturing Bai Six—and just as Bai Six truly thought he might be bored to death by drowning—a world-shaking explosion suddenly erupted outside the church.
A bright red system warning popped up in front of Bai Six.
[System Warning: Warning! Warning! Player Bai Liu’s health in this identity line is dropping rapidly! Please leave the dangerous scene immediately!]
[...Player Bai Liu’s health in the main identity line has dropped to 2... dropped to 1... Warning! Player Bai Liu’s identity line is about to die!!!]
The church shook several times from the force of the explosion.
The Dean finally stopped torturing Bai Six.
She turned toward the church entrance, frowning as she muttered, “What happened? What was that noise?”
Bai Six struggled out of the font.
Expressionless, he sat in the pool, breathing weakly as he looked up at the strange, youthful statue beside the baptismal font.
In his eyes, the red, transparent system warning kept flashing.
After a while, the Dean returned, her face dark.
“The private hospital exploded. Tomorrow’s matching ceremony is canceled.”
Her gaze snapped to Bai Six.
“Was it you? Did you do something with the thing you stole from the investor?!”
As she spoke, she violently grabbed Bai Six by the throat and shoved him back into the water.
Bai Six did not struggle.
He truly had no strength left.
He lay at the bottom of the water, eyes half-open, his face deathly pale, his lips tinged purple.
His black pupils, slightly dilated from suffocation and lack of oxygen, contracted faintly.
Reflected in his eyes, overlapping with the red transparent modern data panel, was the face of that strange deity sleeping while bound by thorns to an inverted cross.
The eerie sight made Bai Six’s thoughts drift while he was held underwater.
Does a deity really exist in this world?
Didn’t he say that if he changed his name to Bai Liu, a deity would favor him?
Tonight, he could probably be considered a “good boy,” right?
Then why didn’t the deity protect him?
The deity’s eyelids suddenly twitched.
It opened pure white eyes without pupils and looked down at Bai Six, who was being forced through baptism in the pool.
A soft, clean white light emanated from its body.
The thorns around it began to move strangely, as though trying to bind it even tighter, but that holy glow still made Bai Six fall into a brief daze.
It felt as though something had suddenly sheltered him.
[System Warning: Player Bai Liu’s health continues to drop... Player Bai Liu’s health has stopped dropping. Remaining health is 0.5. Player Bai Liu’s identity line survives.]
[System Warning: NPC Dean attempted to murder a child in the church, triggering a divine taboo.]
[Divine Punishment descends.]
The Dean was blasted backward by something like an invisible wave of air.
With a scream, she slammed hard into one of the church pillars.
But the punishment did not stop there.
The thorns on the inverted cross grew wildly. Countless branches sprouted from the ground and wrapped around the Dean.
She was bound from head to toe in thorny vines, with only her eyes left visible through the dense, interwoven branches.
She stared in terror at Bai Six climbing out of the baptismal font, and at the deity behind him whose eyes were now open.
Trembling with fear, she knelt on the ground and begged for mercy.
“No, God, I didn’t mean to drown him! I was only teaching a sinful child! No, God, please don’t punish me like th—AAAAHHHHH!!!”
In the next second, the thorns tightened.
Blood splattered across the marble floor of the church.
The Dean threw her head back and let out a piercing scream.
Thorns bored into her skin and into her wide-open mouth, churning through her body like a meat grinder.
Soon, her body twitched, and her head slumped forward as she hung bound among the thorns.
Blood dripped from her body just as water dripped from Bai Six.
Pitter-patter.
It fell onto the floor and pooled together.
In an instant, she had become a corpse.
The thorny vines slowly lowered the body to the ground.
The corpse existed for only a few seconds before quickly dissolving into points of data-light and disappearing inside the church.
[System Hint: NPC Dean has been killed by an attack. Data is being recovered...]
