The next morning, Monday, 6:30 a.m.
Bai Liu had no intention of sleeping on the mushroom-stuffed straw bed. He spread several books across the floor as makeshift bedding and spent the night there instead. When he got up the next morning, the pages had fused together. The humidity in the room was so extreme that the paper pressed against the floor had become completely soaked and glued itself to the ground. Beads of condensation clung to the walls as well. Bai Liu frowned at the sight. With three humidifiers running nonstop, the room was more damp than the height of plum rain season.
But the nurses had ordered that the humidifiers remain on at all times. They absolutely could not be switched off. Like the ban on strong lighting inside the ward, it was one of the hospital’s regulations.
Bai Liu sat quietly atop the scattered books, waiting for Bai Six’s call. That child would definitely contact him in the morning for the sake of money. After all, the charges were calculated by the minute.
At exactly 6:45 a.m., the walkie-talkie crackled to life.
This time, Bai Six was not running. His breathing and footsteps were light, almost silent, as though he had slipped out on tiptoe.
“Good morning, Mister Investor,” Bai Six whispered softly. “The child who chased us yesterday is gone. When I came out, I heard the teachers in the hallway discussing today’s ‘witnessing ceremony.’ They said it symbolizes how we children, after enduring hardship, have officially entered a protected place and been reborn.”
The children had only entered the welfare home yesterday, and today just happened to be Monday.
At once, Bai Liu thought of the nursery rhyme:
[Born on Monday.]
Then, according to the rhyme—
[Baptized on Tuesday.]
Which meant tomorrow would be the baptism ceremony.
“Tomorrow, Tuesday, we’ll be baptized,” Bai Six continued quietly. “They’ll wash away all the suffering we experienced outside. Normally, children’s parents must attend the baptism, but none of us have parents except Liu Jiayi. So the investors will act as witnesses instead. Tuesday is Parent Open Day, so you’ll be allowed inside. I heard the teachers say they’ll send invitations to all of you investors, inviting you to watch the baptism at the welfare home.”
Bai Liu asked, “Did anything happen on your side last night?”
“Some children went out to make phone calls. In my room, besides me, there was also Xiao Miao Feichi. Both of us made it back safely. Xiao Miao Feichi cried all night, though he seems fine otherwise. He runs pretty fast. Even while crying nonstop, he still didn’t get caught.”
Bai Six’s tone remained utterly flat.
“But something strange happened early this morning. I heard children crossing the hallway, following the sound of a flute.”
Bai Liu’s gaze sharpened slightly.
“They were humming along to the nursery rhyme the flute was playing,” Bai Six said. “I got up to look. They didn’t seem asleep or delirious. They were conscious—talking, laughing, just like the children in the fairy tale, lining up and skipping after the flute. But dawn’s almost here, and none of them have come back.”
That matched the information Bai Liu already knew from reality.
A group of children had vanished from a completely sealed welfare home after following the sound of a flute in the early morning hours. No trace of them had ever been found.
“Do you think the flute has some kind of hypnotic or hallucinatory effect?” Bai Liu asked thoughtfully. “Did hearing it make you want to follow it?”
“No,” Bai Six answered immediately. “It sounded awful. Listening to it just made me want to go to the bathroom.”
“...”
Given Bai Six’s natural resistance to psychological suggestion—and the fact that even real-world psychiatrists had rarely succeeded in guiding him—Bai Liu asked another question.
“What about the other children in your room? Were they affected?”
Silence lingered on the other end for several seconds.
Finally, Bai Six replied, “Probably not. Other than Xiao Miao Feichi crying all night, everyone else slept very soundly.”
A flute with no hypnotic or hallucinatory effect...
Then why would the children willingly follow it?
Bai Liu fell into thought.
Could there really be a Pied Piper-type monster in this instance?
But if it truly was modeled after the Pied Piper, why did it only lure away a handful of children each time? In the original story, the Piper’s flute affected everyone within range and led away all the children at once. Yet this version behaved more like a precision strike—carefully selecting only a few children each time, and those children followed willingly.
How exactly was that happening?
Bai Six suddenly lowered his voice further.
“The teacher’s coming to inspect the rooms. This call lasted twelve minutes and thirty-seven seconds. Rounded up, that’s thirteen minutes. One thousand three hundred yuan total. Together with the one thousand seven hundred from last night, your current balance is three thousand yuan.”
He paused.
“Thank you for your patronage. See you next time, Mister Investor.”
Then he hung up coldly.
Bai Liu was now completely certain that Bai Six made these calls while holding a stopwatch.
At nine o’clock sharp, the hospital broadcast echoed through the wards and hallways.
“Good morning, patients. You may now leave your rooms for daily activities. Patients who have already found their medication will receive it from the nurses within five minutes. Patients who have not yet found their medication should proceed to the first-floor cafeteria for breakfast. After your meal, please continue searching for your medication as quickly as possible.”
A brief pause followed.
“You are already critically ill...”
Bai Liu opened his door.
Patients all along the corridor emerged from their rooms one after another.
Compared to yesterday, everyone looked noticeably healthier. It was as if they had absorbed enough moisture from the humidifiers overnight and no longer appeared so shriveled and desiccated.
The nurses moved rapidly through the hallways, pushing meal carts in a blur of clicking heels as they delivered medication to certain patients’ rooms.
Bai Liu tried to follow one of them to get a closer look, but the nurses moved too quickly. He only managed to glimpse a sealed stainless-steel container among the medicines. As the cart rolled past him, he also heard the distinct sloshing sound of liquid inside.
So the medication was likely liquid-based.
Bai Liu quietly stored that information away.
Before checking in, Bai Liu and Mu Ke had already agreed on a signal system. Both of them had been assigned to the ninth floor.
Mu Ke walked over with dark circles under his eyes so heavy he looked like a student cramming desperately the night before final exams. The two of them both looked exhausted, their yawns making it obvious they had stayed up all night reading.
The moment Bai Liu stepped outside, Mu Ke fixed him with an intensely eager stare.
The look was so focused it almost made one’s scalp prickle.
Like a cat that had somehow become even more energetic after staying awake all night, his entire expression practically screamed:
Praise me.
Bai Liu cooperatively asked, “Found anything?”
“This game wants us to search for a prescription inside the medical books. Because of my illness, I’ve read a lot of medical literature before, so I understand this kind of material pretty well. I originally planned to split the workload with you last night, but since patients couldn’t leave their rooms on the first day, I just started reading on my own.”
Mu Ke yawned again and rubbed at his tired eyes.
“I read twenty-one books last night.”
As he spoke, he tapped lightly at the corner of his eye and complained, “This game setup ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ is seriously bullshit. The room’s dark, damp, and doesn’t allow strong lighting. My eyes are practically ruined. Luckily I had a pen to follow the lines while reading, otherwise I’d probably have developed astigmatism overnight.”
Hearing the words twenty-one books, Bai Liu fell silent for a moment.
The books in this game were absurdly thick. Bai Liu hadn’t even considered trying to read them seriously.
Yet Mu Ke had somehow finished twenty-one in a single night.
“And you remember everything you read?” Bai Liu asked.
Mu Ke gave him a puzzled look.
“If I read it, of course I remember it. Why wouldn’t I?”
Bai Liu: “...”
He absolutely would not.
For the first time in a long while, Bai Liu experienced the quiet contempt of an elite student toward a complete academic failure.
“How many did you read?” Mu Ke asked.
Bai Liu, the academic failure in question, paused before answering honestly:
“About 0.01 books.”
He had flipped through two pages before giving up.
Mu Ke’s sleep-deprived brain lagged for a moment before processing the answer.
“...0.01 books?”
That was basically the same as not reading at all.
Then realization struck him. He hurried closer, glanced around to make sure nobody else was nearby, and lowered his voice anxiously.
“You’re not seriously planning to break into the ICU and steal the Life-Saving Remedy, are you?! Bai Liu, if you don’t want to read, I can do it all myself. I read quickly. I can finish the entire bookcase within three days at most!”
“But even if you finish reading everything,” Bai Liu asked calmly, “do you actually know what the Life-Saving Remedy looks like?”
Mu Ke froze.
He really didn’t know.
Even with his photographic memory and twenty-one books consumed overnight, the system’s description remained far too vague.
[Life-Saving Remedy.]
Was it a medicine?
A treatment method?
A surgical procedure?
Without clearer guidance, there was no way to determine what the system truly wanted them to find.
“The system only says the remedy can be found in the hospital’s bookcases,” Bai Liu said patiently. “It never specifically states the bookcases inside our wards.”
“But all the wards have identical bookcases.” Mu Ke frowned uneasily. “I checked other rooms before everyone closed their doors last night. The books were basically the same everywhere. If the answer’s hidden in the books, then breaking into the ICU just to see identical shelves doesn’t make sense.”
Bai Liu looked at him.
“What’s the difference between the books you’ve already read and the books you haven’t?”
Mu Ke stared blankly for a second.
Then his eyes widened.
“The notes,” he blurted out. “There must be notes left behind.”
“Exactly,” Bai Liu replied. “This hospital has no doctors. Everyone is treating themselves. Assuming previous patients followed the same process we are now—entering the hospital, reading medical books, trying to save themselves—then under these terrible lighting conditions, they would have needed pens to read properly.”
“That’s why there are so many pens in the drawers.”
He continued evenly, “Without using a pen to follow the text, reading in these wards is nearly impossible. And once people start using pens, they naturally leave marks behind. Important passages would definitely be underlined or circled so they could find them again later.”
Bai Liu lifted his eyes toward Mu Ke.
“According to the nursery rhyme: ‘Sick on Thursday, Critically Ill on Friday, Dead on Saturday.’ The illness worsens over time. The ICU patients are the sickest people in the hospital and the ones who’ve been here the longest. Which means the notes in their books are the most likely to reveal what the system refers to as the [Life-Saving Remedy].”
Mu Ke frowned deeply.
“But even if that’s true, we still can’t break into the ICU.”
Too many nurses guarded the place, and Miao Feichi was nearby watching them. Any attempt to enter the ICU would immediately draw suspicion.
And whatever was inside the ICU...
It clearly wasn’t human anymore.
Most likely, it was already a monster.
“I was worried there’d be too many notes for me to memorize,” Bai Liu said lightly. “But with you here, I’m not concerned anymore.”
“I can memorize them for you!” Mu Ke nodded immediately, though worry still lingered in his expression. “But Bai Liu... how are we supposed to get inside?”
Bai Liu reached out and patted Mu Ke’s head.
Then he lowered his gaze slightly, voice calm and quiet.
“You’d do anything for me, wouldn’t you, Mu Ke?”
Mu Ke looked up hesitantly.
Bai Liu’s eyes were peaceful as always, yet the darkness in those pitch-black pupils resembled a bottomless abyss beneath the sea—a silent well capable of swallowing everything whole.
Mu Ke felt a faint chill crawl over him.
Still, he bit his lip and answered softly:
“I would.”
“Then,” Bai Liu said with a gentle smile, “would you be willing to kill me?”
He drew out the snow-white bone whip and pressed it into Mu Ke’s trembling hands.
“Use my fishbone whip to strangle me,” Bai Liu coaxed softly. “Wound me badly enough that I lose a great deal of blood.”
“Can you do that, Mu Ke?”
Mu Ke went completely rigid.
—
Ten minutes later, an emergency alarm blared throughout the entire private hospital.
At the time, Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang were eating in the first-floor cafeteria.
They were in no hurry to hunt Bai Liu down yet. Clearing the game came first.
But the instant the emergency alarm rang out, both men immediately assumed a major story event had triggered.
Miao Feichi shot to his feet and drew his weapons.
Elsewhere in the cafeteria, Liu Huai instinctively pulled out his Nightblade as well while anxiously worrying about his sister.
Then a blood-covered patient came stumbling down the emergency staircase.
He clutched a snow-white bone whip in his hand while running frantically, panic written all over his face.
That unmistakable weapon instantly caught Miao Feichi’s attention.
Moving at astonishing speed, he vaulted across several cafeteria tables and landed directly in front of the fleeing player. His twin blades slammed into the floor with a sharp metallic clang, startling the other party badly enough that he lost his footing on the wet tiles.
The player crashed onto the floor hard.
Tears burst from his eyes immediately as he hurled the whip aside and screamed hysterically:
“Bai Liu, don’t come after me! It was that monster that killed you! I only stabbed you afterward because I wanted to loot your corpse!”
The player’s entire body was soaked in blood. His breathing was ragged and chaotic, as though he had been terrified beyond reason by whatever he had just witnessed. His hands shook violently; his pupils were blown wide with panic.
Curled on the ground clutching his head, he sobbed uncontrollably.
“Pathetic trash.”
Miao Feichi clearly had no interest in ordinary players like this.
He kicked the player hard enough to send him flying backward into one of the cafeteria pillars.
“Get up,” he said coldly. “Answer my questions.”
The player crashed painfully into the pillar and cried out.
Mu Ke’s eyes overflowed with tears.
Fear.
Terror.
And overwhelming guilt.
The moment he had personally injured Bai Liu, his mind had nearly collapsed.
Earlier, Bai Liu had physically guided Mu Ke’s hands, wrapping the whip’s sharp, thorn-covered coils around his own pale throat.
Mu Ke had shaken his head desperately the entire time, almost begging Bai Liu not to force him into this.
“Kill me instead,” Mu Ke had pleaded through tears. “If I die, I can still enter the ICU too, right? Let me be the injured one instead, okay?”
But Bai Liu had only smiled and refused.
“My memory isn’t good enough,” he had said calmly. “I can’t memorize that many notes. So the injured person has to be me. You’re the one who needs to stay conscious.”
Then Bai Liu had looked at him quietly.
“If you want to stand beside me in the league, you can’t rely on me forever, Mu Ke. You have to grow up. And the first step is learning how to act independently.”
He had tightened Mu Ke’s grip on the whip himself.
The fishbone spines pierced into flesh. Blood spilled rapidly from the wounds, soaking the straw mattress and staining the white sheets scarlet.
Mu Ke had broken down like a fledgling bird shoved from the nest before it could fly.
Yet Bai Liu—blood trickling from the corner of his lips—had actually laughed softly.
Blood flooded his airway, making him cough violently, but he still reached up to stroke Mu Ke’s head as though calmly giving final instructions before death.
“Mu Ke,” he had said quietly, “whether it’s this game or the next, we have to win.”
“And we have to keep winning until the very end.”
“All of this depends on you.”
“You have to deceive Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang. You have to earn their trust.”
“Otherwise, we’ll really die here.”
Now, kneeling on the cafeteria floor, Mu Ke clenched his teeth against the agony in his back from Miao Feichi’s kick. It felt like his bones had cracked apart.
His heart constricted violently from the combined strain of emotional collapse and physical pain. He nearly vomited.
But he still forced himself to tremble like an ordinary frightened player who knew nothing.
Meanwhile, every nurse in the hospital was rushing upstairs.
Several pushed an emergency stretcher while speaking urgently among themselves.
“Which patient triggered the emergency?”
“Patient Bai Liu. He activated the emergency bell himself. The attending nurse confirmed a severe neck laceration and massive blood loss. Emergency surgery required immediately.”
“How did he sustain a neck wound?! Did he open his door last night?”
“We checked with the patrol nurse from that floor. He apparently did open it. Something likely entered his room because of that...”
“Hurry and prepare the operating room for transfusion and suturing! Do we have any nurses or patients capable of performing stitches?”
“Yes! Prepare a bed in the ICU immediately. He’ll be transferred there straight from surgery!”
Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang exchanged stunned looks.
Disbelief was written plainly across both their faces.
“Bai Liu opened his door and got attacked?” Miao Gaojiang frowned. “Is that really him?”
“It should be,” Miao Feichi sneered ambiguously. “NPCs don’t mistake players.”
Watching the frantic nurses rush upstairs while repeatedly shouting that the patient was in critical condition, Miao Feichi couldn’t suppress a trace of schadenfreude.
“Heh. Looks like Bai Liu’s about to hand us First Blood for free.”
Then he sighed theatrically.
“What a shame. I was planning to use him to boost my stream’s popularity. If he dies now, it’ll be such a waste.”
As he spoke, he used the tip of his blade to lift Mu Ke’s chin.
Mu Ke knelt trembling on the floor, face smeared with blood.
“Get up,” Miao Feichi ordered lazily. “We’ve got a few questions for you.”
His smile turned vicious.
“Answer honestly. Otherwise, things are going to get very unpleasant for you.”
Then he produced a scale-shaped prop from his inventory.
Mu Ke recognized it immediately.
[The Judge’s Balance.]
He had seen it before in the VIP footage from Bai Liu’s The Last Train to Blast Off. It was a common lie-detection item among professional players. Mu Shicheng had used one on Liu Huai before.
Many professional league players carried one specifically to deal with opponents who specialized in schemes, deception, and psychological warfare.
Opponents like Bai Liu.
Miao Feichi had brought it this time specifically to “guard against fire, theft, and Bai Liu.”
The moment Mu Ke saw the prop, his pupils contracted involuntarily.
Calm down.
He forced himself to steady his breathing.
This item only judged answers as “yes” or “no.” And emotional control could interfere with the results. Mu Shicheng himself had once been deceived by Liu Huai using that exact weakness.
“Don’t even think about lying.” Miao Feichi crouched before him with a smile that wasn’t a smile. “I’m not as stupid as Mu Shicheng.”
Then he paused deliberately.
“Of course, if you are Mu Shicheng, then my apologies in advance.”
The curved blades circled threateningly around Mu Ke’s neck.
“You’d better not play games with me. Sure, this scale can produce errors on complicated questions, but for simple ones, it never fails.”
Miao Feichi’s gaze turned ice-cold.
“If you lie, I’ll kill you.”
“It won’t even take a second.”
He raised the scale.
“First question.”
“Did you really ‘knife’ Bai Liu like you claimed?”
“Ye-yes...” Mu Ke raised his head shakily under the pressure of the blade. His voice trembled violently. “I personally used... used the fishbone whip to cut his throat.”
As he spoke, he held up the bloodstained white fishbone whip.
The balance wavered briefly—
Then tilted decisively toward [Truth].
“Good.” Miao Feichi narrowed his eyes. “But someone like Bai Liu loves dirty tricks. Self-harm and counter-espionage aren’t beneath him.”
He leaned closer.
“Second question.”
“Are you Bai Liu’s accomplice...”
Mu Ke’s heart slammed into his throat.
His fingers tightened instinctively around Siren’s Bone.
Then Miao Feichi finished the sentence coldly:
“—Mu Shicheng?”
—
