Sensing Liu Jiayi’s unease, Liu Huai forced himself to control his tone. He held Liu Jiayi and patted her back, doing his best to sound calm.
“No. Jiajia didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just a game.”
“Yes, it’s just a game.” Liu Huai closed his eyes, as though trying to hypnotize himself as much as Liu Jiayi. When he opened them again, his voice had steadied considerably. “Gege will take you to play a game, Jiajia.”
Held in Liu Huai’s arms, Liu Jiayi clutched at the hem of his clothes and asked in a tiny voice, “What kind of game, Gege?”
Liu Huai opened his mouth.
He thought of Bai Liu, who wanted to control Liu Jiayi’s soul, and of Miao Feichi, who liked eating the flesh of children. In the end, Liu Huai hugged Liu Jiayi tightly and gave a helpless, bitter smile.
“A game where everyone except Gege and Jiajia is a big bad person.” His voice was soft. “Jiajia has to stay close to Gege and not run around, okay?”
“Okay.” Liu Jiayi nodded obediently. “I won’t run around.”
The audience gathered in front of the Multiplayer Game Area also began discussing the scene in hushed voices. This was the first time they had seen a first-time player skip the Single-Player Newcomer Area and be dragged directly into the Multiplayer Game Area.
However, the core mechanism of this game operated on human desire. If this little girl’s desire was to see her Gege, and that desire was intense enough, then it was indeed possible for the system to drag her directly into the game where Liu Huai was.
Logically, this little girl’s small TV should have appeared in the Newcomer Area. But since she had entered a multiplayer game, it should also have appeared in the Multiplayer Area. There had never been a precedent for a small TV appearing in multiple areas at once. Perhaps taking this into account, the system had simply shut down the girl’s small TV altogether.
But entering a Level 2 game right from the start meant that even with Liu Huai protecting her, this little girl was likely in grave danger.
After all, Liu Huai himself could barely protect his own life in a Level 2 game. The only players in this dungeon with strength to spare were likely the league players, Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang. But this father-son pair had already heard plenty about Bai Liu’s skills and would be extremely wary of him. It probably wouldn’t be easy for Bai Liu to control them.
In other words, it was highly likely that there would be no other powerful players Bai Liu could control and use as shields in this game. His room to maneuver was extremely limited.
An audience member who had some goodwill toward Bai Liu sighed.
“We can only hope God Mu cooperates well with him this time. Maybe then he’ll have a slim chance of surviving.”
Another audience member, clearly here to kick him while he was down, sneered.
“Mu Shicheng as support is outrageous, sure. But Bai Liu as the main damage dealer? He’s mud that can’t even stick to a wall. The Carrion Zombies’ damage dealer is Miao Feichi, an S-rank player. You’re comparing an elementary schooler to a graduate student.”
But very soon, after scanning all five active small TVs, several viewers asked in shock:
“Wait. Out of the five small TVs for this game, why isn’t Mu Shicheng’s there?”
“Bai Liu entered the game alone?!”
Once they confirmed that Mu Shicheng truly wasn’t among the players this time, everyone froze—Bai Liu’s worried fans, the spectators who had come to watch the fun, and even Bai Liu’s haters.
After several seconds, these onlookers of every stance shouted the same plant-related word in unison:
“Fuck!!!!”
—
Bai Liu logged into a somewhat backlit room on the second floor of the welfare institute. The room was locked, so Bai Liu simply smashed the door open and began searching the map room by room.
However, his refusal to follow the game’s intended process soon brought consequences. After circling the entire second floor from beginning to end, he unexpectedly completed a loop and returned to the room where he had started.
Without a doubt, he had either encountered a “Ghost Hitting the Wall,” or the game was forcing him to finish this section of plot before allowing him to leave the floor.
Bai Liu walked back into the room where he had first logged in.
A small stool sat in the middle of the dark, gloomy room. The twilight outside stretched the chair’s shadow long across the floor. Other little stools were piled messily on both sides of the room. It seemed to be a classroom during a holiday, with all the desks and chairs put away, making the lone stool at the center appear especially conspicuous.
On the classroom podium directly opposite him sat an old-fashioned radio, the kind from ten years ago. A tape was playing inside, turning by itself. From the speakers came the buzzing, slightly distorted sound of a young girl humming a nursery rhyme:
“Born on Monday,
Christened on Tuesday,
Married on Wednesday,
Took ill on Thursday,
Grew worse on Friday,
Died on Saturday,
Buried on Sunday,
That was the life of Bai Liu—”
Bai Liu raised an eyebrow.
After hearing it once, he recognized it. This was one of the famous dark Mother Goose nursery rhymes, Solomon Grundy. It told the story of a person’s tragic life. The final line was supposed to be “That was the end of Solomon Grundy,” but here, the name had been changed to his.
As he listened to the song play over and over, a figure gradually appeared in the shadow the chair cast beneath the dim sunset light. Judging from the shadow, it looked as though someone were sitting on the stool. But when Bai Liu looked from the side, there was nothing there—only an empty little chair.
Suddenly, the shadow stood up from the stool and rushed straight toward Bai Liu.
Bai Liu didn’t dodge. He felt this was likely the same as in the previous game, an opening animation meant to introduce the game’s content. He watched calmly as the shadow rapidly approached and merged into his own.
Under the glow of the setting sun, Bai Liu’s shadow continued to lengthen. It stretched through the crack beneath the door and out into the corridor, then suddenly snapped off outside the room.
At that moment, the nursery rhyme stopped abruptly.
At the same time, someone knocked on the door.
“Hello. Are you the investor of this welfare institute?” a boy asked politely from outside the door. His voice still carried the faint rasp of a teenager whose voice had not yet fully changed. “I’m the child reporting here today.”
But Bai Liu keenly sensed the coldness and impatience hidden beneath the boy’s politeness.
He recognized this voice.
Or rather, it wasn’t merely recognition—it was familiarity. A familiarity so deep that the moment the other person spoke, Bai Liu could detect every emotion hidden beneath that seemingly calm tone.
After all, ten years ago, Bai Liu had lived with this voice every day.
Stepping on his own distorted shadow, Bai Liu slowly opened the door.
“Hello. I’m the new sponsored child.”
Standing outside was a young boy who only reached Bai Liu’s chest. A pair of calm black eyes looked up at him, holding a trace of scrutiny that wasn’t very well hidden. The boy also seemed to be assessing Bai Liu. After a brief pause, he chose his words carefully and politely extended a hand.
“Hello, Investor. My name is Bai Six. I’m the new child who was notified to move into this private welfare institute.”
“Let me think. At this stage...” Bai Liu rubbed his chin and looked over the excessively calm young boy. “I should be about fourteen years old.”
[System Notification: Player Bai Liu has successfully met and conversed with the Sub-Identity Line, successfully triggering the Child Identity Line. Player Bai Liu has entered Dual-Line Operation Mode.]
[System Notification: In “Love Welfare Home,” the player possesses two different identity lines. One is the adult you, and one is the childhood you. The adult you is the Main Identity Line, and the childhood you is the Sub-Identity Line. You are two halves of the same person. The Sub-Identity Line is a child NPC generated by the game. His memories and settings have been corrected by the system according to the game background; he is a character who perfectly fits the game background, with a personality similar to the player’s childhood self and roughly similar memories. Please explore and communicate for specific details.]
[Player Bai Liu’s Sub-Identity Line Name: Bai Six]
[Age: 14]
[Identity: An orphaned child sponsored by an investor to enter Love Welfare Home.]
[Characteristics: Shares 50% of the player’s health. He is the player’s pure and untainted half. He possesses no memories or skills related to the future and will enter the danger-ridden welfare institute. Player, please be sure to protect him from the monsters!]
[Main Task: Escape the Welfare Institute (Incomplete)]
—
[Player Bai Liu’s Main Identity Line: Player Bai Liu]
[Identity Name: Bai Liu]
[Age: 24]
[Identity: Terminally ill investor of the children’s welfare institute.]
[Characteristics: Shares 50% of the player’s health. However, because of the terminal illness, health will decrease over time as the illness worsens. Sponsored the child Bai Six after falling ill.]
[Main Task: Find a way to extend your life and survive (Incomplete)]
Bai Liu looked at the stack of panels popping up on his system interface and raised an eyebrow slightly.
His original identity was the investor. As for the child in front of him, Bai Six—
Bai Liu lifted his eyes and looked over slowly.
Fourteen-year-old Bai Six seemed to dislike being stared at so openly and turned slightly to avoid Bai Liu’s gaze.
Bai Liu naturally withdrew his eyes.
How troublesome, he thought. This was the age he hated himself the most—arrogant and difficult to deal with.
Standing in the corridor outside the classroom, Bai Liu looked around. After confirming the layout, he was certain.
This really was the welfare institute he had visited before.
This place also had three buildings, but the architecture was brand-new and beautiful, not at all run-down. The children’s drawings painted across the walls had not yet peeled. The children’s park in the center of the three buildings had relatively large equipment, including slides. From a distance, he could even see a separate cafeteria.
These were all things the dilapidated children’s welfare institute Bai Liu had seen before did not have.
Bai Liu looked at the dates printed on the various children’s certificates hanging on the classroom wall and confirmed that this should be the welfare institute from ten years ago.
It seemed his guess had been correct. The main plot of this dungeon was indeed set ten years in the past, when the welfare institute had just been completed.
Seeing Bai Liu looking around as though searching for something, Bai Six quietly reminded him, “Today is Sunday. It’s the routine inspection day. The children and teachers aren’t here.”
“Sunday is inspection day?” Bai Liu turned to look at Bai Six. “Does this welfare institute conduct inspections every week? What do they inspect?”
Bai Six shook his head.
“I’m not sure. I just arrived, so I haven’t been inspected yet. It’s only written in my admission rules that every Sunday, all children must leave the welfare institute for a full-body checkup. Children who fail the checkup have to stay there for treatment.”
“But every week, many children who go for inspection end up staying there for treatment and never come back. That frees up spots in the welfare institute.” Bai Six raised his head and looked at Bai Liu. “The welfare institute doesn’t want those spots to go to waste, so they take in new children every week. I came in this week.”
Sunday was inspection day.
And many children who failed the inspection were kept there for treatment and never returned...
Bai Liu narrowed his eyes, remembering the line from the nursery rhyme:
“Buried on Sunday.”
It seemed most of the children who stayed there had been “buried in the earth.”
While Bai Liu was still thinking, the system suddenly issued a reminder:
[System-Delivered Prop: Each investor and their child possess a one-to-one walkie-talkie that allows only single-line calls.]
[Walkie-Talkie Usage Rules: Only calls from the child to the investor are permitted. Players are prohibited from purchasing other communication tools to contact the child. Calls from the investor to the child are prohibited.]
[Walkie-Talkie Calling Hours: 21:00–24:00 and 6:00–9:00. If the child calls outside these periods, the line will be busy and the investor will be unable to connect. Each child may call during these two periods every day. Players, please communicate with the children in moderation and give ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) them room for independent growth.]
As soon as the system announcement ended, Bai Liu saw a massive “Big Brother” brick phone appear in his hand, the kind with an antenna sticking out of the top.
Meanwhile, Bai Six had a children’s phone hanging around his neck on a pink Hello Kitty lanyard. It was only half the size of his palm and looked more like a toy.
Bai Liu smiled. “It suits you.”
He shook the brick phone in his hand.
“Every night from nine to twelve, and every morning from six to nine. If anything happens, call me. I’ll be available anytime.”
“I won’t call you,” Bai Six said expressionlessly. “It’s a waste of my time.”
Bai Liu had expected this. His forehead twitched slightly, and he sighed before offering a solution without hesitation.
“I’ll pay. If you call me, I’ll charge by the minute.”
Bai Six’s emotionless face showed obvious wavering. He turned his head toward Bai Liu and asked hesitantly, “How much?”
“By the minute. A hundred yuan per minute. How about it?” Bai Liu said unhurriedly.
Bai Six agreed immediately. “Deal.”
Just as Bai Liu finished speaking, the bell at the front gate rang.
The tightly closed iron gates of the welfare institute opened, and countless children chirped noisily as they rushed in behind the teachers. The teachers were frantically trying to settle these children, who were like little birds returning to the nest.
The two Bai Lius, one large and one small, stood in the corridor overlooking the innocent, carefree children running and jumping below.
Their eyes held the same indifference.
Bai Six suddenly glanced sideways at the adult Bai Liu and said, “You don’t look like someone who likes children. Why would you sponsor me to enter a private welfare institute with such good conditions?”
“What kind of investor do I look like to you?” Bai Liu asked, looking at this younger version of himself with interest. “Why do you think I don’t like children?”
Even though he indeed didn’t.
“You look a lot like Slender Man. Expensive suit, shirt, tie, pale face.” Bai Six calmly described Bai Liu as he saw him. “Legend says Slender Man hates children. He kills them, then digs out their organs and eats them.”
Bai Six’s description reminded Bai Liu of something. He lowered his head and found that at some point, he had changed out of the high school girl’s appearance. He was now wearing a very formal suit, complete with a black top hat.
Bai Liu found a mirror in the classroom washroom and saw that his appearance had been modified.
His current look was exactly as Bai Six had described: a thin, pale face with two enormous shadows beneath his eyes. His fingers were long and slender, so thin they looked like nothing but skin stretched over bone. He looked as though he were about to die. Bai Liu also noticed that he had grown much taller, his limbs lengthened to an awkward degree.
He did indeed resemble the child-killing demon of legend, that terrifying creature known as Slender Man.
“All the investors here look exactly like you,” Bai Six added flatly. “All dressed in suits, all looking short-lived. You don’t seem like the type to perform good deeds before death.”
“Kid, you’ve got quite the foul mouth.” Bai Liu turned to Bai Six and raised an eyebrow. “How do I not look like someone who would perform good deeds before death? Isn’t sponsoring you a good deed?”
Bai Six remained unmoved and glanced at him from the corner of his eye.
“Are you sure sending me to a welfare institute where children keep disappearing counts as a good deed?”
[System Notification: Inspection day is about to end. The children and teachers have returned. All investors, please bring your sponsored children to the registration office on the first floor of Boai Building to complete check-in.]
“Let’s go, kid. I’ll take you to the first floor to register.”
Bai Liu was on the third floor of Boai Building. He was just about to head downstairs when he saw someone who looked like Slender Man standing in a second-floor classroom of the opposite building, staring at him gloomily.
That person was holding the hand of a little shota with straight bangs. He stared unblinkingly at Bai Liu from the other building. The little shota beside him looked rather cute to Bai Liu, though his head was lowered and he seemed gloomy and withdrawn. He looked eighty to ninety percent similar to the adult Mu Ke.
That investor was Mu Ke.
On the floor above Mu Ke, an investor holding twin blades was also staring at the child in his hand. This person dragged his long paired blades behind him, pacing back and forth along the corridor like a killer from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre roaming the map with a chainsaw.
Bai Liu stood in front of Bai Six and smiled as he looked at the investor opposite.
The Slender Man across from him watched for a while. Seeing Bai Liu constantly blocking the child behind him, the person crossed his arms and ground his blades together twice, as if threatening Bai Liu. Then he headed downstairs, though whether he was going to register or to look for Bai Liu was unclear.
Twin blades.
If Bai Liu hadn’t guessed wrong, this should be the famous Miao Feichi.
This person was clearly trying to find out which player was Bai Liu. Since every player’s original identity looked the same—all of them appearing as Slender Man-like investors—if Miao Feichi wanted to kill him, he first had to identify which investor was Bai Liu among the crowd.
So how could one determine Bai Liu’s identity among a group of investors?
At present, the most standard method seemed to be looking at the child they were accompanying.
Bai Liu narrowed his eyes and glanced at Bai Six behind him.
—
When Miao Gaojiang led his teenage self downstairs, he saw an investor waiting at the exit of his building.
This made Miao Gaojiang instinctively want to draw his weapon, but the other person’s next sentence quickly made him lower his guard.
He heard the investor grit his teeth and curse, “Dad! I saw a teenage version of myself! What the hell is going on?”
“Feichi?” Miao Gaojiang looked at the other person hesitantly, still somewhat wary and suspicious. “Is it really you, Feichi?”
In this game, where everyone’s original identity looked the same, impersonating someone else was far too easy. The only way to confirm another player’s identity was to look at their child.
But Miao Feichi wasn’t someone who liked children.
This person only liked eating children.
Though Miao Feichi was not so perverse as to eat himself.
However, the teenage Xiao Miao Feichi was precisely at the age when his cannibalistic tendencies had first awakened. He wanted to eat, but had nothing to eat, so he wanted to gnaw on everyone he saw. Therefore, after Miao Feichi logged in and saw his child, he probably had only one reaction—
“As soon as I opened the door, I saw a teenage version of me standing there. Scared the hell out of me,” Miao Feichi grumbled. “And he even insisted on following me. That little freak’s eyes looked wrong. I felt like he just wanted to eat human flesh, so I told him to get lost immediately.”
Miao Gaojiang would never trust someone who came straight to him so easily, but what this person said was indeed something Miao Feichi would do.
Miao Feichi was frivolous and impatient by nature. His extremely high combat power allowed him to be willful even in a Level 2 game.
If he suddenly saw a teenage version of himself, his first reaction definitely wouldn’t be a friendly conversation to trigger the mission. It would be to harshly drive the other party away. If the investor and sponsored child failed to complete a friendly meeting, then in this strange game, the sub-identity-line missions naturally would not trigger smoothly.
Miao Gaojiang had always had a headache over Miao Feichi’s temperament. But considering that a highly intelligent player like Bai Liu was also in this game and might use the fact that everyone looked identical to play a role-swapping trick, Miao Gaojiang hesitated for a moment and did not fully lower his guard.
Still, he briefly explained the game rules to the other party and tested him with some information only the two of them would know.
After testing him with a few questions, Miao Gaojiang felt mostly reassured, but he remained relentless.
“I need to confirm that you really are Miao Feichi. Tell me something key about yourself.”
Miao Feichi was impatient. “Like what?”
“For example, how we entered the game in the first place...” The expression on Miao Gaojiang’s seemingly honest, simple face was dark and uncertain. His tone paused slightly. “For example, after you ate human flesh, who was the first person you ate?”
Miao Feichi licked his teeth, as though recalling a flavor. He narrowed his eyes.
“The first person I ate was the woman who gave birth to me.”
“She got seriously ill, and the family couldn’t afford to keep supporting her. After she was brought back from the hospital, she kept spending money on medicine. That money was supposed to be saved for me, but it all went to that dead woman. One night, she asked me to pour her some water. I poured her a cup of boiling water. After I forced it down her throat, her lips and esophagus gave off that smell of being cooked.”
“She died the next day,” Miao Feichi clicked his tongue. “Before the burial, I told you I wanted to eat her corpse. You were scared half to death, but I knew you wanted her dead sooner too. I’m your son. She was just someone who slept with you. I never understood why you spent so much money on her. After she died, I went on a hunger strike for a few days, so you cut off a piece and gave it to me.”
“But honestly, it didn’t taste that good.” Miao Feichi sounded somewhat disgusted. “She was too old. Because of the illness, the meat was dry and tough, and it tasted like medicine.”
“As for entering the game...” Miao Feichi said unhappily, “Wasn’t it because of that kid? You took me digging through mass graves for a while, and I ate dead human flesh for a while. It tasted awful. It was all rotten. I wanted fresh, tender human flesh. That kid was just some stray brat who ran out from nowhere, crying and saying the people in his welfare institute were doing bad things, begging me to call the police.”
“I thought, if I ate a kid who’d escaped from a welfare institute on his own, no one would know. In the end, you let him go. Once he got out, the police found him. I was being watched, and I entered the game because I was starving. I had just eaten one of that kid’s fingers raw. The kid cried so loudly that it drew you over, so you...”
“All right. You are indeed Feichi.”
Miao Gaojiang sighed deeply, cutting off Miao Feichi’s unfinished words.
“Everyone in this game looks the same. We need a secret signal.”
“Then let’s use the finger,” Miao Feichi decided. He clearly didn’t think this cruel signal was anything special. Instead, he sounded a little regretful. “That was the last bite of human flesh I had before entering the game.”
Miao Gaojiang disliked this signal, but in their team cooperation, he usually deferred to his son on harmless minor matters. He did not take the dominant position and was excessively indulgent toward Miao Feichi. Otherwise, Miao Feichi would never have been able to do all those things right under his nose with such reckless impatience.
So Miao Gaojiang sheepishly shut his mouth.
Only after a while did he ask, “Where is your sponsored child? Where did you drive him off to?”
“After I chased that little brat away, he was still following me at first. But there are too many kids in this institute, and every single one of them looks tender and juicy.” Miao Feichi narrowed his eyes maliciously. “I’m guessing he got lured away. That little brat hasn’t tasted fresh meat yet. These walking pieces of human flesh should be very attractive to him.”
Seeing that Miao Gaojiang was about to say something again, Miao Feichi waved his hand irritably and impatiently.
“Enough already. Can’t I even eat some kids and opponents in a game? It’s not like I’m eating them in reality. What, I can’t even touch a bunch of game data? They’re not real people. I think you just want to starve your son to death. If you can’t even manage my food and drink as my father and still insist on getting in my way, then you’re going too far.”
Miao Gaojiang looked at the lively children, who did not resemble data at all.
He opened his mouth, then finally closed it again.
These children were too vivid. For a moment, he even felt they weren’t NPCs in a game, but actual living people, no different from children in reality.
“Go find your child first, then go to the first floor to register,” Miao Gaojiang said.
—
The registration office on the first floor required players to enter individually.
When Bai Liu arrived, Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang had not come yet, which was normal. Those two first needed to find each other and confirm their identities. Miao Gaojiang should be fine, since he was with his child, which made him easier to identify.
Miao Feichi, however, would likely have some difficulty. That person probably didn’t value the little brat who had suddenly appeared beside him at all.
When Bai Liu had been upstairs, he had seen Miao Feichi’s little brat wandering alone through the welfare institute, following different children with a green gleam in his eyes, like a wolf that had yet to taste raw meat.
Bai Liu brought Bai Six into the registration office and discovered that two people had already registered before him.
One was Mu Ke.
The other was—
Seeing the name above, Bai Liu’s gaze darkened.
[Due to blood relation bonds, players Liu Huai and Liu Jiayi have activated the Sibling Identity Line. Registered identities: Elder Brother and Younger Sister. They serve as each other’s clones and alternate identity lines, activating Special Dual-Line Operation Mode.]
[Player Liu Huai — Gege Identity Line: Terminally ill investor of the Child Welfare Institute.]
[Identity Characteristics: Shares 50% health. However, because of terminal illness, health will decrease over time. Player, please quickly find a way to extend your life!]
[Player Liu Jiayi — Meimei Identity Line: A child sponsored by an investor to enter Love Welfare Home.]
[Identity Characteristics: Shares 50% health. She is the pure and untainted younger sister. She will enter the danger-ridden welfare institute. Player, please be sure to protect her!]
[Note: In the Sibling Identity Line, if either identity line’s 50% health reaches zero, death occurs immediately.]
The last time Bai Liu had seen Liu Jiayi, he had said she would probably enter the game soon.
He hadn’t expected to meet her in a game this time.
But how could a newcomer like Liu Jiayi directly enter a multiplayer game? Shouldn’t newcomers start with single-player games?
Did Liu Jiayi have some special connection with Liu Huai? Was that why the system had pulled a newcomer like her directly into the game Liu Huai was in?
Bai Liu pondered.
The mode these two had activated was clearly different from his own. It was no longer one person bringing their own childhood self, but an elder brother bringing a younger sister.
Bai Liu noticed that in the relationship-mode column, Liu Huai had written “Blood Siblings,” while Mu Ke’s entry read “Investor and Sponsored Child.”
However, Bai Liu also noticed that although this was a two-player mode, the health bars above their heads still showed only 50%. It seemed that if this 50% reached zero, the player would die immediately.
Bai Liu and the others had split health, but their total health was still 100.
Liu Huai and Liu Jiayi, however, had directly had their health cut in half. This was even more disadvantageous.
Moreover, from a game perspective, Bai Liu felt this wasn’t fair enough.
The system had previously come up with all sorts of insane schemes to weaken players for the sake of fairness and game balance. As someone who had been heavily nerfed by the system twice, Bai Liu didn’t believe the system would present players with an unfair horror game.
That meant reducing Liu Huai and Liu Jiayi’s health by half should be relatively fair and balanced for all players involved in the game.
But for Liu Huai and Liu Jiayi, the unlucky siblings who had triggered this special mode, having their health halved while Liu Jiayi was both blind and a newcomer made the unfairness obvious.
Furthermore, despite also being blood-related, the father-son pair Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang had not triggered any Father-Son Identity Line. Bai Liu had seen Xiao Miao Feichi, so that father and son definitely had not activated this special form of blood-related identity line.
This was probably related to Liu Jiayi.
This blind child entering a multiplayer game for the first time—
Bai Liu didn’t know what her wish or desire had been, but he felt Liu Jiayi’s wish did not seem to be regaining her sight.
When Bai Liu had interacted with the child before, he had actually felt that Liu Jiayi’s desire to see again was not as strong as Liu Huai’s. Her emotional tendency was very direct. Liu Jiayi seemed to think that being unable to see was fine. She was far more attached to her Gege. If Liu Jiayi’s desire was tied to her Gege, then in this game where everything was connected to the player’s desire, it might very well lead to this situation.
But other possibilities also existed.
This child, Liu Jiayi, was special in too many ways, and Bai Liu could not jump directly to a conclusion.
For the time being, Bai Liu made note of this inconsistency.
After Bai Six finished registering, he was led inside by the director.
Before leaving, Bai Six looked back at Bai Liu. Expressionlessly, the child raised his thumb and index finger and rubbed them together at Bai Liu, his eyes carrying an obvious hint.
Bai Liu almost laughed.
It was a gesture asking for money.
Because Bai Liu had told him he would pay for phone calls, this kid had remembered it all the way until now.
He hadn’t done a single bit of work yet, but he was very efficient at keeping accounts.
The child was taken into the welfare institute, while Bai Liu, as the investor, was led by the director to a building near the institute.
This building looked like a hospital ward. There were nurses and a nurse’s station inside, but no registration desk and no doctors’ offices. There were only floor after floor of inpatient rooms.
The director told them that most investors were in poor health, so they lived here and occasionally visited the children during the welfare institute’s open days.
Bai Liu observed for a while and determined that this place was a private hospital not open to the public.
Or rather, it wasn’t quite a private hospital.
It was more like those recovery buildings for retired wealthy people Bai Liu had once seen. They only needed nurses to manage and serve them; doctors were summoned when necessary, so there was no need to station many doctors in the recovery building.
But the people living here were not healthy retired rich people.
They were a group of terminally ill patients in urgent need of treatment. For a hospital in such critical condition to have no doctors was very strange.
Without doctors, who was treating them?
This private hospital was full of patients who looked exactly like Slender Man. Some were so thin they could barely lie on the beds. Others leaned on chairs and moved slowly through the corridors. Their faces were wrapped tightly in bandages, without even their eyes exposed. How they could see the path was a mystery.
Only the faint airflow of their weak breathing, slightly puffing the bandages covering their faces, proved that they were living people and not monsters from urban legends.
The farther inside they went, the longer and thinner the limbs of the patients lying in the wards became.
Bai Liu estimated that the patients in the intensive care unit were all over two meters tall. Their feet hung helplessly off the ends of the hospital beds, and their skin was bluish-purple and mottled, reminding Bai Liu of the mushroom-like skin of the dead children he had seen before.
These stiff, sluggish, dying investors moved slowly through the corridors and wards. They turned their faces as if watching Bai Liu as he passed through the corridor. Their long, thin hands and feet dangled on either side of their bodies like spider limbs.
Someone even grabbed Bai Liu’s ankle.
The patient who grabbed him seemed to be doing it only for amusement. He quickly let go and let out a strange, neurotic “ge-ge-ge” laugh.
