Free Web NovelWhile Bai Liu held the doll modeled after himself and sank into thought, the teacher had already gone to summon the remaining five children.
The five children still left in the welfare home stood in a row, cramped and numb-faced. Not one of them dared to look up at Mu Ke; their eyes seemed glued to the tips of their shoes.
Among the five, some were lame, some had twisted spines or hunched backs, and all of them had some kind of disability to varying degrees. Like nestlings that had never flown, the five children crowded together, nudging and squeezing against one another.
They looked like cheap goods being inspected by others—fully aware they were not worth much, and therefore humble, timid, and silent.
The moment Bai Liu approached them, he frowned.
The smell of mushrooms on these children was even stronger than what he had smelled on the corpses at the hospital.
Mu Ke couldn’t stand it. He waved a hand in front of his nose. “Do you eat mushrooms for every meal here? Why is the smell so strong?”
The teacher hugged the five children awkwardly. “Actually, we don’t eat them that often.”
Bai Liu’s gaze swept over the teacher and the five children. “Did you eat a lot of mushrooms that day?”
The teacher froze for a moment. “The five children and I all ate them. We... we ate quite a lot.”
“Among the children who were poisoned, were there any who ate very little?” Bai Liu asked. “For example, someone who only had a mouthful of mushroom soup?”
The teacher thought for a while, then gave him an affirmative answer. “Yes. Some children liked the taste of those mushrooms, and some didn’t. A few only ate a tiny bit, but they were still poisoned.”
Bai Liu withdrew his gaze.
Those who ate a lot were not necessarily poisoned, while those who ate very little still were. It seemed the poisoning had no obvious relationship to dosage.
But why mushrooms?
Why did every incident in this welfare home seem to involve mushrooms?
And what exactly were the conditions for these eerie mushrooms to kill someone?
Lu Yizhan had said that the blood tests and other results from the surviving children at the welfare home showed no obvious abnormalities. Just like Liu Jiayi, they only had mild anemia.
On the surface, the only thing these five surviving children had in common with Liu Jiayi at the hospital was that they all had congenital genetic defects. Liu Jiayi was blind, while these five children each had different disabilities.
Bai Liu fell into deep thought.
The teacher continued leading Bai Liu and the others through the welfare home until they arrived at a room filled with photographs, trophies, and children’s drawings.
She turned back and introduced it to them. “This is our welfare home’s exhibition hall.”
It was an exhibition hall that had not seen visitors in a very long time. Many trophies and certificates displayed in the cabinets were covered in dust.
One could tell that this had once been a fairly well-developed children’s welfare home. The walls were covered with children’s paintings and various awards. Group photos from the Children’s Day performances held each year also hung there, the colors in them shifting from distorted and faded to clear and recent.
In the last photograph, more than forty children wore obedient, gentle smiles. frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓
Now only five had survived.
Those five children were currently following behind the teacher with numb expressions.
The fact that most of the objects displayed here belonged to dead people gave the exhibition hall a lingering chill.
After sweeping his eyes around the room, Bai Liu seemed to discover something. He looked at the teacher. “Can I take down some of the photos and drawings?”
Normally, things like this should not be moved casually, but the welfare home had already fallen into this state. There was not much left to be particular about.
The teacher nodded in agreement.
Mu Ke watched curiously as Bai Liu removed several children’s drawings from the wall and arranged them on the floor.
He leaned closer and asked quietly, “Bai Liu, did you find something?”
“Mm.” Bai Liu answered softly without looking at him, his hands still busy arranging the drawings.
Mu Ke followed Bai Liu’s movements with his eyes.
These children’s drawings were quite good. One could tell they had been made by a child with some foundation in art.
The subjects included portraits as well as still lifes. Some were drawn with colored pencils and crayons, while others were simple black-and-white sketches. The styles varied greatly. Most used colors so intense and saturated they made one’s eyes uncomfortable, and the things depicted seemed to lack any clear logic.
A little girl so thin she looked deformed, sitting on a hospital bed with white cloth covering her eyes.
A beautiful small fish with silver-blue scales kept inside a jar.
A broken wooden mirror placed atop a scorched and melted toy train.
They seemed to depict things that existed within this welfare home.
Mu Ke stared for a while before suddenly noticing something. He said in surprise, “Were these... all drawn by the same person? The signature is ‘W.’”
Although the styles of the drawings Bai Liu had taken down were completely different, the “W” signed on each one was written in the same peculiar, curly copperplate script.
Bai Liu finally deigned to glance at Mu Ke.
His voice was low and light, almost a whisper.
“That’s my signature.”
Mu Ke froze. “Yours?! Why would your signature be here?!”
Bai Liu did not explain. Although Mu Ke clearly wanted to know, seeing that Bai Liu had no intention of speaking, he obediently shut his mouth.
The first letter of “White”—[W]—was Bai Liu’s habitual signature on his paintings.
Bai Liu recognized at a glance that these were his drawings.
Although the technique was immature compared to his current work, they had indeed been drawn by him.
The little girl with cloth over her eyes was clearly Liu Jiayi. The hospital gown she wore was the same style he had seen at the hospital that morning.
The beautiful silver-blue fish in the jar should refer to the Siren King from his first game, Siren Town.
The broken mirror on the melted toy train was from Bai Liu’s second game, The Last Train to Blast Off.
However, the signatures on these drawings were from ten years ago.
Ten years ago, Bai Liu had not been in this private welfare home at all. It was impossible for the Bai Liu of ten years ago to know any of this information.
There was only one possibility.
The current Bai Liu had returned to ten years ago in some form, drawn these images, and left them behind in this private children’s welfare home.
An ordinary person would certainly panic upon encountering something so impossible, but for Bai Liu, this only further confirmed that this children’s welfare home had to be an [Official Game Instance] of the [Real World].
The only reasonable explanation for this distorted timeline was the official plot progression time of the game instance. Judging from the signatures he had left on these drawings, that time was likely not the present, but ten years ago.
Bai Liu’s fingertips brushed over the signatures on the drawings, his gaze darkening slightly.
It was very likely that he would enter this game in the future and leave some kind of trace inside the [Children’s Welfare Home] game instance from ten years in the past.
And when the [Official Game Instance] was loaded into the [Real World], those traces he had once left in the game were brought into the welfare home of the current timeline.
This was probably not a good thing.
A player’s traces being permanently left inside a certain game instance usually only happened after a failed clearance.
Just as Zhang Kui had died and alienated into a charred corpse monster, remaining forever in The Last Train to Blast Off, these traces left behind by death and failure would become part of the game and be loaded into reality together with the instance.
But this predetermined ending of death did not frighten Bai Liu.
He simply thought very calmly.
At present, two things confused him.
His gaze slowly landed on the face of a boy standing in the corner of the first group photo from 200X.
The boy’s face showed no emotion at all. The way he looked at people from the corner of his eye carried an infuriating sense of “you foolish mortals,” an aloof incompatibility with everyone around him.
It was Bai Liu at fourteen years old.
Bai Liu looked again at the drawings, at their sharp strokes and exaggerated colors.
The feeling in the photograph and the artistic style of the drawings were indeed exactly how he had liked to present himself at fourteen, including the habitual pose he used when taking photos.
Bai Liu had long since stopped using this kind of multicolored painting style because it was too flamboyant.
After his superiors rejected it several times, criticizing it as “mental pollution” with poor market acceptance, Bai Liu decisively abandoned the style and never painted that way again.
These drawings and the “Bai Liu” in the photograph were indeed consistent with his habits at fourteen.
What was strange was that the information revealed in these works belonged to the twenty-four-year-old Bai Liu.
That was where the problem lay.
If the twenty-four-year-old Bai Liu were inside this game, he was certain he would not paint like this.
And if the game’s setting had regressed his memories, body, and every other aspect to ten years ago, then he should not have known anything his present self knew.
This was a Bai Liu who possessed the memories of a twenty-four-year-old, yet retained the style and personality of a fourteen-year-old.
Logically, Bai Liu found this unlikely.
Memory was a crucial factor in determining a person’s style and character. If he possessed the memories of the following ten years, he absolutely would not be the same person he had been ten years ago.
The fourteen-year-old Bai Liu and the twenty-four-year-old Bai Liu existed in fragmented form within the [Children’s Welfare Home] game instance from ten years ago.
That was the first point that confused him.
The second point was—
Bai Liu looked at the portrait.
It was a black-and-white sketch of a girl sitting on a hospital bed, curled up with her knees hugged to her chest. She held a doll in her arms, and white cloth covered her eyes.
It was a very detailed character sketch.
But Bai Liu clearly remembered that his fourteen-year-old self had hated drawing sketches.
During that period, he liked things with heavy, intense colors and strongly disliked realistic sketching. He rarely drew sketches at all, and when he did, it was usually only still-life practice.
He almost never drew people.
Why would the fourteen-year-old Bai Liu draw a character sketch of Liu Jiayi, in a style he himself hated?
At that time, Liu Jiayi had not even been born. fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm
There should not have been any trace of her here.
Could Liu Jiayi also enter this instance?
But even if Liu Jiayi entered the game, she was a newcomer. Normally, her first instance should be a single-player game.
This instance was clearly multiplayer.
Unless Liu Jiayi rapidly cleared her first game and immediately followed him into this multiplayer instance, she should not appear in the drawing.
However, an experienced player like Liu Huai would probably never allow his /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ sister to act so recklessly.
So why had this little girl appeared here?
As Bai Liu pondered, his gaze swept across the entire drawing.
Finally, his eyes stopped on the doll held in Liu Jiayi’s arms at the center of the image.
The doll in the drawing wore a white shirt and black trousers.
Held in the little girl’s hands, its face was turned toward the viewer with a smile.
At first glance, nothing seemed wrong.
But after Bai Liu stared at it for a while longer, he noticed something off.
The doll’s head was turned too far back.
It did not look as though the doll had simply turned its head.
It looked as though its head had been twisted one hundred and eighty degrees around.
Bai Liu looked at the drawing and flicked the coin hanging over his heart, his eyes narrowing slightly.
