Free Web NovelMu Ke was dragged down from the fifth floor by Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang. They hauled him all the way into Miao Feichi’s room, and the door slammed shut behind them under the hook of Miao Feichi’s foot.
Outside, nurses in high heels had begun their nightly patrol. The crisp click-clack of their steps echoed through the depths of the corridor.
Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang stood on either side of the trembling Mu Ke, blocking the exit and leaving him nowhere to run.
Squatting down in front of him, Miao Feichi stuck out his tongue and slowly licked his dry lips. “Alright. Interrogation time. Tell us where Bai Liu is.”
Mu Ke clenched his teeth. His shoulders shook violently as he kept his head lowered, refusing to speak.
Already losing patience, Miao Feichi grabbed Mu Ke by the chin and viciously forced his head up. “I’ll ask you one more time. Don’t think that just because you’ve only got six health points left, I can’t torture you. I’ve got plenty of ways to keep you hovering at death’s door while making you beg for it. Or you can save us both the trouble and open your system panel so we can see exactly what you and Bai Liu have been talking about through that keyboard.”
Mu Ke’s jaw creaked painfully under the pressure. It felt as though his temporomandibular joint was about to dislocate. Tears spilled uncontrollably from his eyes as he forced out a slurred reply.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about—”
Miao Gaojiang crouched down beside him as well, wearing the same false gentleness as a slick middle-aged man coaxing a younger person into drinking more at a banquet table.
“Mu Ke, if you were just an ordinary player seeking shelter with us, we really wouldn’t want to hurt you.” His tone was soft and patient. “We’re in the support season too. Killing you would affect our support rate. As long as you cooperate honestly, everything can still be discussed. But if you insist on this ‘rather die than submit’ attitude and won’t even let us see your panel, then we truly won’t have any other choice.”
Mu Ke’s breathing turned ragged and uneven, but he still said nothing.
“Forget it. Bai Liu probably has him under control already. We won’t get anything useful out of him.” Miao Gaojiang rose to his feet and tapped Miao Feichi on the shoulder with one finger. His tone flattened completely. “Kill him. Once he dies, the keyboard in his backpack will drop. Even if we can’t decipher it, it doesn’t matter. At least Bai Liu loses a useful pawn.”
What do I do?!
Mu Ke’s heart hammered wildly against his ribs, so hard it felt ready to burst.
LFG.
Bai Liu’s intention should have been for him to cooperate with Miao Gaojiang and the others. But cooperating would inevitably expose the keyboard he used to communicate with Bai Liu.
Still... even if they obtained the keyboard, they might not necessarily understand the information on it.
But if he refused and died, the keyboard would drop anyway.
“I’ll show you,” Mu Ke said hoarsely as he raised his head. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com
Doing his utmost to steady his trembling hands, he opened his system panel and pulled out the keyboard.
Inwardly, he prayed desperately that Bai Liu would not send any new message at this exact moment.
But the instant the keyboard appeared, Mu Ke closed his eyes in despair.
Three additional keycaps were missing.
Miao Feichi leaned forward with interest. “I can figure this much out. The missing keys should be 9, 0, and 6. A room number.”
“The room number for Bai Liu’s ward.” The hypocrisy vanished from Miao Gaojiang’s smile, replaced by genuine satisfaction. “Mu Ke, did your master tell you to meet up with him?”
Miao Feichi pressed a hand against the back of Mu Ke’s neck. “Reply to him. Tell him you’re coming upstairs immediately.”
“There are nurses outside right now.” Mu Ke’s hands shook uncontrollably. He was terrified to the point of panic, yet he still forced his voice to sound calm. “How are you planning to get up there?”
“Kill the kids and use the emergency stairwell.” Miao Feichi tapped Mu Ke’s cheek lightly with one of his twin blades, grinning. “Did you forget? My stamina’s recovered. I move faster than the nurses now.”
Under their coercion, Mu Ke used the keyboard to send Bai Liu a reply saying he was on his way upstairs immediately.
Miao Feichi turned to ask Miao Gaojiang whether they should kill Mu Ke now.
After a brief moment of consideration, Miao Gaojiang rejected the suggestion.
“For someone like Bai Liu—fast-thinking and absurdly intelligent—if he contacts Mu Ke again during this process and gets no response, he’ll become suspicious immediately,” he explained calmly. “Keep Mu Ke alive for now. We’ll dispose of him together with Bai Liu later.”
Hearing those words, Mu Ke sank into complete despair.
When the nurse took the elevator to patrol another floor, Mu Ke was dragged swiftly out of the ward. The three of them headed straight for the emergency stairwell leading to the ninth floor.
But the stairwell was crawling with Deformed Children.
Mu Ke watched in horror as Miao Feichi dealt with the monsters that had chased them through the hospital all night yesterday as casually as chopping vegetables.
The twin blades flashed repeatedly through the darkness.
One Deformed Child after another was sliced apart. The severed blood vessels writhed hungrily at the cut surfaces while the shrill screams of the children echoed through the stairwell.
Miao Feichi clicked his tongue impatiently.
Another flash of steel swept through the air.
A child’s head rolled to a stop at Mu Ke’s feet. Its eyes remained wide open, filled with resentment and unwillingness, but its gaping mouth could no longer produce a sound.
The difference in strength was overwhelming.
Mu Ke recalled the terror of being completely dominated by Miao Feichi’s twin blades the previous night, and his fear only deepened.
He didn’t even know anymore whether his interpretation of LFG had been correct.
...Was Bai Liu really telling him to surrender to Miao Feichi and the others?
At this rate, they would storm straight onto the ninth floor.
Mu Ke could only pray desperately that Bai Liu was not in Room 906.
—
Meanwhile, at the welfare home—
Bai Six crouched low as he slipped outside to make a phone call, scanning his surroundings vigilantly as he moved.
“I followed your instructions and removed the keycaps for 9-0-6. That’s your ward number, right? Are you really in 906 right now?”
“Yes,” Bai Liu replied calmly. “Someone contacted you through the keyboard earlier. How did you respond?”
“I told him to cooperate with them.” Bai Six frowned slightly. “In this situation, whether he lives or dies, the keyboard will eventually expose him as a spy anyway. Better to surrender for now and survive as long as possible.”
He paused.
“But you said those two would probably come after you tonight. I thought you had me send 906 to lure them into an empty room. If you’re actually there... won’t they run straight into you the moment they arrive?”
“You don’t need to worry about my side. I’m deliberately baiting them upstairs.” Bai Liu’s voice remained steady and composed. “What matters is your side. Are you prepared to escape the welfare home?”
Bai Six spotted several Deformed Children roaming the playground and immediately slipped into hiding before they noticed him.
After two days of constant pursuit, he had become exceptionally skilled at concealing himself.
Earlier that day, Bai Liu had gone out to scout the area. Before leaving, he instructed Bai Six to take the children and escape tonight, because tomorrow was Wednesday—the matching day.
“Between nine and midnight, Deformed Children wander the playground while the teachers still aren’t fully asleep.” Bai Six calmly described the situation over the phone. “Under normal circumstances, escaping during this period would be too dangerous. The chances of getting caught by either the teachers or the Deformed Children are extremely high.”
“But today is Baptism Open Day, so the gates to the welfare home still haven’t been locked.”
“After midnight, the gates will close completely. Then, before dawn, the flute-playing child will arrive to take away the remaining children. So we have to escape before twelve.”
“But escaping before midnight means we also have to avoid both the teachers and the Deformed Children.” Bai Liu paused thoughtfully. “That’s the difficult part, isn’t it?”
“Correct.” Bai Six’s tone stayed cold and emotionless. “But the later we wait, the harder escaping will become.”
“There are five Deformed Children tonight. Their numbers increase by two every night. Coincidentally, there are exactly five children we need to take out tonight as well.” ƒreewebɳovel.com
“If there were only three or fewer, I’d consider having Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang lure them away while I escaped with Mu Ke and Liu Jiayi. But with five of them, each of us would still end up pursued by at least one Deformed ⊛ Nоvеlιght ⊛ (Read the full story) Child. Even if Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang drew some away, it wouldn’t make much difference.”
Bai Liu sounded faintly amused. “You got Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang to cooperate with you that quickly?”
“It wasn’t difficult to persuade them,” Bai Six replied flatly.
“How did you convince them?”
“I made a deal with them.” Bai Six spoke evenly and without emotion. “I told them I could lead them out, but they had to make a transaction with me first.”
Bai Liu raised an eyebrow. “You used my personal skill to purchase their souls? You adapted quickly.”
“No.” Bai Six corrected him immediately. “It wasn’t me paying to buy their souls. It was them paying me to safeguard their souls.”
“They gave me twelve dollars and fifty cents, then entrusted themselves—or more precisely, their souls—to me. In exchange, I would lead them out.”
“But the soul notes I received from Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang don’t match the description you gave me.” Bai Six’s voice carried faint dissatisfaction, like someone who suspected he had been cheated in a transaction.
Despite the fact that he had just earned twelve dollars and fifty cents and obtained partial ownership of two souls without spending a single cent.
Bai Six frowned.
“After completing the transaction with them, the coin system notified me that the deal was incomplete. I only possess partial debt rights over their souls. I can’t use their skills or access their system panels. I can only view their panels at most.”
“What can those soul notes do, then?” Bai Liu asked.
“Nothing.” Bai Six sounded irritated. “The system says I must collect the complete soul. Either the entire soul has to be traded successfully at once, or the remaining portion of the soul must die and return to the identity linked to the soul note before the transaction becomes valid.”
“Still, it’s not entirely useless. I can use it to place restrictions on Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang’s actions. That should make tonight’s escape somewhat easier to control.”
Bai Liu fell into thought.
That was precisely why he had handed the coin over to Bai Six earlier.
He wanted to test whether Bai Six could use the children’s side of the transaction to indirectly control Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang by acquiring their souls.
In the end, however, the result was merely this half-finished product.
A soul note holding only partial debt rights was like half of a banknote torn in two. It looked valuable, but as long as it remained incomplete, it could buy nothing.
To obtain a complete soul, there were only two possibilities.
The first was for both Miao Feichi’s and Miao Gaojiang’s bodies to willingly sell their souls to him simultaneously—what the system referred to as “collecting the complete soul.”
The odds of that happening were effectively zero.
Miao Gaojiang was no fool. After the incident with Zhang Kui, he had become extremely wary of Bai Liu. Even if he still didn’t fully understand how Bai Liu’s skill functioned, he had already realized it was far more dangerous than it appeared.
Throughout the entire day, Miao Gaojiang had refused to take anything directly from Bai Liu’s hands. He also avoided responding to any of Bai Liu’s leading questions or commands, speaking only through active statements whenever they conversed.
That was the greatest weakness of Bai Liu’s control ability.
Against someone maintaining absolute vigilance, it was extraordinarily difficult for Bai Liu to seize the initiative in a transaction.
As for the second possibility—
Miao Feichi’s and Miao Gaojiang’s bodies would have to die, allowing their souls to return to their corresponding sub-identity lines.
The odds of that were somehow even lower than the first.
But not entirely impossible.
“Bai Six,” Bai Liu said quietly, “don’t forget the warning I gave you about using this skill.”
“This transaction ability binds both parties equally. Since you promised to lead Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang out, you must fulfill that promise. Otherwise, you’ll also—”
“—turn into half a soul note and end up sealed inside an old wallet.” Bai Six finished the sentence calmly.
Bai Liu fell silent.
From beginning to end, he had never revealed any information about his own identity to the child.
The names they used in the game existed only as investor identities. No one knew their real names. The system itself seemed to deliberately prevent the children from learning the truth about who they were.
To these NPC children generated by the system within the welfare home, the investors were little more than distant, abstract symbols.
It was difficult to imagine that any child could realize those cold and terrifying “investors” were actually their own future selves.
And yet Bai Liu was not surprised that Bai Six had figured it out.
There was no emotion whatsoever in Bai Six’s voice as he continued:
“When you gave me the coin, you should already have expected I’d deduce it from the information attached to it. I’m an extremely curious person. Whenever I encounter information, I analyze it.”
“I understand now why you were willing to die for me.”
“Just like the other children, I’m one of your sub-identity lines. I’m half of your soul, aren’t I?”
A brief pause followed.
Then Bai Six spoke again.
“Future Bai Liu.”
“Or perhaps I should say... the anonymous ‘Kind Investor’ who’s been hiding in the shadows this entire time.”
