Free Web NovelChapter 542: Chapter 159: The Person Corresponding to Alpha
The room of the Ten of Spades became quiet.
Bai Wu did not much care about what the Ten of Spades might be thinking.
Bai Wu also asked about something he was interested in, but in front of him, this Ten of Spades seemed even more suspicious.
Jing Liu asked:
"What did you think of?"
Bai Wu did not immediately answer the question, but instead said to the Ten of Spades:
"You said you deceived K, can you tell me where exactly K was deceived by you?"
"How would a magician reveal his own magic?" the Ten of Spades said with a smile, rejecting Bai Wu’s request.
Bai Wu did not mind and changed the subject:
"If I want to leave this place, can you manage that?"
"I’m just an ordinary person," replied the Ten of Spades.
The Ten of Spades still avoided the question, and since that was the case, Bai Wu had nothing else to say.
He gave the Ten of Spades a meaningful glance and asked his final question.
"Ten of Spades, if I consider the creatures sealed within High Tower and Jing Yi as my enemies, are you truly my enemy or my ally?"
After saying this, Bai Wu added:
"This question, I want to hear the truth. In the series of answers you’ve given me, I cannot fully distinguish between truth and falsehood, but in the end, I want to receive some truth."
"I will find my own way to leave this world, but I need to know which side you’re truly on."
The Ten of Spades did not expect Bai Wu to ask this.
"There is only one answer to this question, yet you make it seem as though I have a choice," said the Ten of Spades.
Bai Wu nodded seriously:
"Of course there is a choice, because you always have the right to lie, but even just once, I hope you will not lie. You do not need to worry about what I will do, because the future me, upon discovering you, will already be incapable of doing anything."
"And the causality before discovering you, I cannot change."
"I come from the future, I know the past, but as I continue to explore the past, it becomes more and more blurred." fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓
"I just want to know your true stance. If our stances align, I don’t mind being deceived by one of my own."
Bai Wu was ready to leave. The question before leaving was not any kind of calculation.
He genuinely wanted to know, to which side this person truly belonged.
Among the Golden Generation’s four Ks, he had not yet met Xiaoyugan’s real body.
But he always felt that the Ten of Spades was the most mysterious of them all.
He knew that he must have been deceived by the Ten of Spades at some point, but if it was by one of his own, then being deceived was no big deal.
The Ten of Spades felt a bit bored, as if the image of himself as a swindler could no longer be shaken, to the point where Bai Wu couldn’t be bothered to guess between his truths and lies and directly employed an emotional appeal, hoping for a truthful answer:
"I would’ve thought that Bai Yuan’s son should have the ability to discern the truth from my words."
"If I had enough time, I wouldn’t mind dragging this out with you, but my time is urgently limited, the sealed entity in High Tower has already broken through the seal."
The Ten of Spades furrowed his brows.
The two fell silent once again.
About half a minute later, the Ten of Spades spoke:
"The tea has gone cold. Since you have a plan, go ahead and execute it. You have your plans, and I have my arrangements."
"You’re here because you know that your conversation with me won’t change causality."
"And since your conversation with me won’t change causality, even if a liar tells you, ’I haven’t lied to you this time,’ you won’t fully believe him, right?"
"So you need to think, if I were your enemy, would you have been able to make it this far alive?"
Bai Wu experienced a sudden realization.
The Ten of Spades was hiding within his own Inner World, in a location not even Bai Yuan could detect. freewёbn૦νeɭ.com
This had been the case ever since Bai Wu entered the High Tower World.
At that time, he didn’t have the Full Moon Fragment, and Bai Yuan was not yet the guardian of the Inner World.
So, it was Spades Ten who truly ruled over his Inner World.
Had Spades Ten wanted to do something, he could have done it long ago.
Thinking this through, Bai Wu stood up and said:
"I call you four, the Golden Generation. It’s truly a pity that you four can’t truly join forces."
Bai Wu uttered these words with genuine sincerity, respect, and a hint of regret.
"Is that so? Who knows what the future holds."
The smile on Spades Ten’s face was quite playful.
"I should go."
"Go then. It’s the same as I’ve said before, you do your thing, and I’ll do mine, and we won’t interfere with each other."
"It’s a deal."
...
...
Bai Wu left.
After he stepped out of Spades Ten’s house, each of his steps covered vast distances as he walked towards the town.
Jing Liu knew very well that both Bai Wu and Spades Ten were old puzzles, always speaking in ways that clouded the minds of others.
Along the way, she asked:
"You just said that you understood—what exactly did you understand?"
This time, Bai Wu replied very directly:
"Your Causal Phone Booth requires a great deal of obsession to activate and can even change time and history. This is also your greatest masterpiece in seven hundred years."
"Why bring this up? Clearly, I haven’t grasped causality deeply enough," said Jing Liu, her eyebrows knitting together slightly.
Bai Wu shook his head and said:
"I’m not trying to ridicule you for helping me. I want you to remember something. The calls I received later were all from the High Tower World."
"In the High Tower World, where distortions are everywhere, anything that happens can be explained."
"Whether it’s Food City Harbor, Food City’s Blood Mist District, or the farms, powerful obsessions can use your Causal Phone Booth to change causality."
"But the first call was strange, wasn’t it? There are no distortions in this world."
Suddenly, Jing Liu understood:
"You mean, a child like you couldn’t have sent their will through from this world, which is isolated from distortions."
Bai Wu nodded:
"You must know, Yin Shuang who answered the phone at the time truly crossed time and space to meet me and Bai Yuan."
"Bai Yuan was one of my secrets back then, and that secret was directly exposed to Yin Shuang."
"Although you are at Well Level, and although you wield the Power of Causality, you don’t believe that your Causal Phone Booth could allow a world without distortions... to let a human child like me make such a call, do you?"
Jing Liu was taken aback.
Indeed, this was very strange.
At that time, she hadn’t thought too much about it, merely considering it a fluke, as she would occasionally encounter some strange causalities in the process of her observations.
It was difficult to explain, as if influenced by some external force.
But clearly, this matter wasn’t so simple.
The call Yin Shuang received wasn’t just a matter of crossing time and space.
"The more I think about it, the more I find this call to be eerie, as eerie as if Alpha himself could ignore the restrictions of the High Tower and communicate with those outside of it."
Jing Liu found Bai Wu’s analogy quite apt:
"You confirmed this is a tower from your conversation with Spades Ten."
"Then you think, like the High Tower, this tower is imprisoning someone."
"This person might just correspond to the Twisted Master?"
"And the call you received was from the person corresponding to the Twisted Master, conveyed through you."
"The reason it was through you, rather than the person themselves acting directly, is because... their very existence is a secret. It’s possible that once it’s known, it could completely change the distortion wars of the High Tower World."
Jing Liu, although accustomed to the Power of Causality, the direct way of copying answers to obtain information, was also not lacking in her own thinking ability.
Bai Wu nodded slightly:
"Your answer is entirely correct. Now, what I need to do is to find that person."
Jing Liu added:
"And that person is very likely hiding in this small town. Since he has made that call, it’s highly probable... that he will reach out to you voluntarily."
As he spoke, Bai Wu, moving at full speed, had already arrived at the outskirts of the town.
The town had very few people.
So few that Bai Yuan’s medical record cabinet listed nearly eighty percent of them.
With his head down, walking on the streets of the town, Bai Wu, after disguise, generally wouldn’t be recognized.
But seeing a familiar SUV driving out still caused some minor emotional fluctuations in Bai Wu.
The owner of the car was Bai Yuan.
Bai Yuan seemed to have received a call from someone, intending to head somewhere.
This wasn’t an uncommon occurrence; Bai Yuan enjoyed making house calls.
Usually, after Bai Yuan’s visits, the patient’s household items would be arranged more neatly.
The patient’s illness would improve, and a small portion of the patients’ "causes" of diseases could also disappear altogether.
At least when Bai Wu was young, he often saw men or women from a patient’s family mysteriously disappearing after Bai Yuan’s house calls.
But the police could never trace anything back to Bai Yuan.
And no one ever reported it, nor would anyone reveal that Bai Yuan had visited for a consultation.
They were perhaps hypnotized or maybe, like Li Xiaorui, truly believed that Bai Yuan was a god.
A god who would lead them out of suffering.
A god to be grateful to for helping oneself "clean up" the scum around, with no need to remember anything else.
In any case, there was never a shortage of "materials" in Bai Yuan’s morgue.
Bai Wu had no particular suspicions; he merely guessed that Bai Yuan was probably making a house call somewhere.
Bai Yuan in the car, and Bai Wu on the sidewalk, their gazes met briefly.
Their gazes touched and then separated in an instant.
Bai Wu noticed something seemed off about Bai Yuan’s expression but didn’t think too much of it.
After the SUV dusted away, Bai Wu went into the town to start looking for that key individual.
The town wasn’t actually small, but the only familiar buildings to Bai Wu were limited.
A few grain and oil shops, two convenience stores, a small supermarket, four or five restaurants, a rural credit cooperative, a post office, a gas station farther away, as well as a church, and even a row of vacant storefronts.
Of course, there was also a cafe. Inside the Inner World, Bai Yuan’s favorite pastime was sitting in the cafe, ordering a cup of coffee.
And chatting with the waitstaff.
Bai Wu observed every person, every store, from the periphery to the center.
Everything Bai Wu, Jing Liu, and the Ten of Spades had mentioned before—
It was all speculation.
The Ten of Spades also had no concrete evidence that this world was a tower.
Everything was deduced backward from the conclusion that "this world is a tower."
Now, all they needed was to find that person, the one Bai Wu believed could correspond with Alpha in the Well World and the real world, to prove the correctness of their previous speculations.
He passed by every spot in the town, observing the people around him.
At the same time, he pondered who might be the most likely candidate to correspond with Alpha.
The people in the town appeared very ordinary.
In the end, he saw himself from a distance.
When Bai Yuan made house calls, a younger Bai Wu temporarily forgot about the torment of the previous night and began to wander around.
The people in the town were all very fond of Bai Wu during his childhood.
From afar, Bai Wu watched his younger self—let’s call him Little Bai—as he walked slowly and somewhat lonesomely, which ultimately caused some emotional turmoil within him.
"The you from your childhood... seems different from what I had imagined," Jing Liu also looked at Little Bai’s figure.
"What did you think I would be like?" asked Bai Wu, devoid of expression.
"It’s hard to say, probably... very indifferent, uninterested in anything, especially these people."
Bai Wu paused for a moment and said somewhat indifferently:
"In the following years, he will become what you’ve described."
Jing Liu was slightly startled.
She had never seen Bai Wu like this before.
Even without any emotional expression, she could feel a sense of loneliness and sorrow.
Most people here really liked him.
"He looks very lonely, he shouldn’t be this lonely."
Bai Wu maintained his mild tone:
"Because his world was only as big as this small town. But in the eyes of people in this town, his primary identity was never Bai Wu, but the son of Bai Yuan."
What kind of person was Bai Yuan exactly?
What was he truly up to?
Even though everyone saw him as a perfect man, why would he torment his own child like that?
Jing Liu of course knew that the erosion of Bai Wu’s emotions was largely related to Bai Yuan’s methods.
The existence of Bai Wu was an anomaly to the High Tower World.
But she had not felt the pain of Bai Wu’s childhood; not experiencing it firsthand naturally made her think that everything Bai Yuan did had profound meaning.
At this moment, Jing Liu, like countless others in the town, unconsciously leaned towards Bai Yuan.
Even when Little Bai complained that Bai Yuan wasn’t the least bit good, people would instinctively make excuses for Little Bai.
As if in all the hero movies, no matter how much the father tormented the son, as long as the son eventually became a hero, the father’s actions were understandable, or even... filled with foresight.
But what people didn’t consider was that many sons tormented by their fathers would perish under such torment.
Little Bai wandered around and eventually stayed in the café.
Bai Wu followed Little Bai from a distance the whole way.
Bai Wu had experienced everything Little Bai had.
It was like a bystander’s recollections overlapped with a first-person memory.
He clearly knew that Little Bai would soon approach the fast-food section of the café, which was called Freshness, but they didn’t only serve coffee.
They also offered some fast food, like fried chicken and burgers.
Little Bai liked it, although he would stop liking it after a few years.
Today, Bai Wu remembered, if you bought a children’s meal, you could get a Salty Egg Superman toy.
He did get the toy.
Everything was just as Bai Wu had remembered, Little Bai got the toy. Even though his intellect was far above his peers, Ultraman was something that was still worth loving, even in middle age.
So Little Bai was very happy.
Bai Wu couldn’t help but show a smile; perhaps it was only the employees of the café that made him feel less isolated during his youth.
Because that employee had slight intellectual deficits, he wouldn’t see Bai Yuan as perfect; instead, he thought Bai Wu was the one who understood him the most.
It’s hard to imagine, the smartest child in town would have an unnoticeable friendship with an adult seen as somewhat ’slow’.
Later, as Little Bai grew up and experienced more and more, he began to forget about the employee.
The town, Bai Yuan, were forbidden areas in Bai Wu’s memory.
Only at this moment did Bai Wu suddenly realize that back then, he also had a buddy, though not the kind that he could pester all day during his childhood.
But after all, he was another outcast of the town, an existence that he did not dislike.
Bai Wu subconsciously glanced at the employee, who was standing not far away watching Little Bai.
As Bai Wu looked at the employee, the employee also turned his head and met Bai Wu’s gaze.
At that moment, the prompt in Bai Wu’s eyes left him utterly astonished.
