Free Web NovelNight had fallen over Love Welfare Home.
Lying in bed, Bai Six silently opened his eyes.
He had been awakened by a burst of intermittent flute music. The sound was loud enough to rouse him, yet the others in the room remained asleep. After running around for an entire night, the children were utterly exhausted. Aside from Bai Six, who maintained a constant degree of vigilance, the rest of them were sleeping deeply.
Bai Six moved very quietly as he got out of bed and put on his shoes. He glanced at the clock hanging on the wall.
Two o’clock in the morning.
In the deep night, inside the collective dormitory, only the children’s faint snores could be heard. They hid in their little beds, wrapping their soft bodies tightly beneath blankets. Xiao Mu Ke had even pulled his blanket over his head, as if that thin layer of cloth could protect him.
But in truth, if someone wanted to, these children could be crushed with ease.
Bai Six watched as the dormitory door was slowly pushed open. freewebnoveℓ.com
Following the rhythm of the flute music, the wooden door creaked as it turned inward, revealing the pitch-black, empty, and eerie corridor outside.
No one stood beyond the door.
It had opened on its own.
The flute music gradually became continuous, drifting in with an elegant, almost cheerful melody. The children sleeping in their beds began to frown, tossing and turning uneasily as though they had fallen into some enchanted dream. They muttered indistinctly, their hands and feet twitching beneath their blankets.
Seeing this, Bai Six calmly shook Xiao Mu Ke awake.
No wonder he hadn’t been affected by the flute music.
The music’s method of influence was through children’s dreams. But Bai Six had only been in this welfare home for two days, and in unfamiliar places, he always slept lightly. The moment the flute began playing, he woke up, and so he had not been hypnotized by it.
Under Bai Six’s pushing, Xiao Mu Ke slowly woke.
He rubbed his eyes, his forehead covered in cold sweat, and took a dazed, shuddering breath. After waking, he looked distractedly at Bai Six standing beside his bed, as if he had not yet realized he was awake—or that someone was standing there.
With his eyes half-lidded, Xiao Mu Ke dizzily stretched his feet out of bed and put on his shoes. Then he began walking toward the corridor.
As he walked, he murmured blankly, “We have to leave this welfare home. This welfare home will draw our blood. It’ll kill us...”
“Wake up. You were dreaming under the hypnosis of the flute music.”
Bai Six grabbed Xiao Mu Ke’s wrist and pulled the boy, who had almost walked out, back to face him.
Then Bai Six narrowed his eyes.
Xiao Mu Ke’s eyes were clear.
He was still trembling, his face flushed from sleep, his expression somewhat dazed, but his gaze was lucid. Because of fear, there was even a thin shimmer of tears in his eyes.
“That wasn’t a dream...” Xiao Mu Ke said shakily.
That dream had clearly terrified him.
“I saw a lot of nurses tying us to beds. They stabbed so many syringes into the backs of our hands and feet. Then red blood flowed out through infusion tubes and dripped into stainless-steel canisters. Later, when they couldn’t draw any more blood from us...”
Xiao Mu Ke was so frightened that his shoulders curled inward. He hugged himself tightly.
“They... they used those thick black needles meant for livestock and stabbed them into our scalps and faces. They tied rubber tubes around our necks and squeezed the blood vessels in our faces so it would be easier to draw blood.”
“We were tied down until our faces turned purple-black from suffocation. No matter how hard we struggled, we couldn’t escape those hospital beds...”
Crying, Xiao Mu Ke looked up in panic at the calm, unmoved Bai Six. He anxiously stepped forward and grabbed Bai Six’s hand, trying to pull him away.
“I swear, that really wasn’t a dream! I saw what’s going to happen tomorrow after our baptism! Those investors are all bad people! They baptize us and sponsor us because they want the blood in our bodies! They aren’t sponsoring us for free! Let’s run! Let’s get out of here!”
“Of course they aren’t sponsoring us for free,” Bai Six said coldly. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch in this world. Especially for young humans like us, who don’t have much value.”
“Our only value is naturally our bodies. What they want from their investment is whatever exists inside our bodies. Is there anything surprising about that?”
“Isn’t it only natural?”
Xiao Mu Ke stared blankly at the utterly calm Bai Six, then took a small step back in shock and fear.
“You already knew those investors were bad people?”
“They aren’t ‘bad people.’ They’re simply consumers with the ability to purchase our bodies.”
Bai Six looked at the visibly frightened Xiao Mu Ke with eyes as still as stagnant water.
“And humans like us, who have no purchasing power of our own, fall into the category of goods that can be bought and sold at will.”
“We can only be purchased.”
There was no expression on Bai Six’s face. He spoke as though stating an objective fact.
“We only possess value as commodities, so being purchased is perfectly normal.”
“But the people here want to suck our blood!” Xiao Mu Ke shouted in a low, anxious voice.
Bai Six looked at him indifferently.
“So?”
“Do you think people outside are necessarily good? That they definitely won’t suck your blood? They might eat your flesh, or do something even more terrifying to you.”
“Do you have any ability to resist?”
“What’s the point of escaping? Before you gain the ability to purchase others, even if you escape, you as a commodity will simply have moved from the small shelf called Love Welfare Home to a larger shelf outside.”
Hearing this, Xiao Mu Ke was completely stunned. He opened his mouth to argue, but had no idea where to begin.
“You’re already...” Bai Six paused. “Sorry, how old are you?”
Xiao Mu Ke had nearly been driven to tears by Bai Six’s words. Twisting his fingers, he answered on the verge of sobbing, “I... I’m eleven.”
“Oh. You’re already eleven.”
Bai Six indifferently returned to his previous point.
“Don’t be so naive, Mu Ke. Every Sunday, a group of children disappears from this welfare home. Clearly, those children are selected and then made to vanish. Also, the children in our batch are all fairly good-looking.”
“At first, I thought we would be taken to...”
Bai Six looked at the overly delicate Mu Ke. His gaze paused subtly on the snow-white shoulder exposed beneath Mu Ke’s pajamas.
Xiao Mu Ke widened his eyes and asked in pure confusion, “Taken to do what?”
Bai Six naturally turned his head slightly, shifting his gaze away as he changed the subject.
“...Nothing.”
At first, Bai Six had indeed thought this welfare home was involved in child sex trafficking. That was why, when his Investor told him to protect Mu Ke and Liu Jiayi, Bai Six’s first reaction had been that kind of interpretation. Based on his experience, places that adopted children were indeed prone to such things.
But Bai Six had soon realized the purpose was not so simple.
These dying Investors wanted something else from them.
If it were for something as direct as lust, they could have begun “enjoying” the children on the first night after their arrival. But an entire day had already passed, and the Investors had not taken any obvious action against them. They had only maintained a one-sided connection through phone calls.
Bai Six guessed that perhaps this group of Investors had not yet fully figured out the purpose of purchasing this pile of commodities.
In other words, the Investors were still exploring the functions of these commodities.
Using them for charity publicity?
For psychological comfort before death?
Or perhaps for some feudal superstition, where people who had run out of options believed that doing good deeds could prolong their lives?
But those purposes were too obscure and indirect.
Bai Six felt that there was something more fundamental driving the Investors’ close observation and investment in them. And the hospital built opposite the welfare home made Bai Six think of one possibility.
For example—they could be used to cure diseases.
This “curing diseases” included psychological self-consolation. For instance, the church inside Love Welfare Home, where they were to be baptized on the second day, was decorated very elaborately and clearly carried a certain symbolic meaning. The Investors might have been seeking a kind of virtual treatment, praying for God’s protection through acts of charity.
However, compared with that, there was an even more direct method of treatment.
Using the children themselves to treat illness.
Bai Six looked at Xiao Mu Ke very calmly.
“On the first day I arrived here, I knew my function was probably that of a medicinal primer. I just didn’t know which part of me would be used as medicine.”
“Now it seems to be blood.”
Xiao Mu Ke shook his head in disbelief.
“If you know they want to draw your blood, then why aren’t you running? You were even on the phone with your Investor last night, chatting for half an hour. Are you insane?”
“He’s not a good person at all. He’s a monster who sucks human blood!”
Bai Six’s gaze toward Xiao Mu Ke grew colder.
“First, Love Welfare Home is completely sealed off. Aside from open days, we can’t get out at all.”
“Second, if my Investor hadn’t paid me to save you last night, I wouldn’t have spared you a glance even if you died right in front of me.”
“Even if he is a monster, he is the monster saving you. You’d better understand that clearly.”
Xiao Mu Ke was speechless for a moment, but he quickly retorted, “He’s only saving me because he wants my blood!”
“Impossible.”
Bai Six’s eyes were dark and unreadable, but his rebuttal was decisive.
“Although I don’t fully understand his purpose either, he has indeed given up his own life and prioritized the safety of me, you, and Liu Jiayi.”
“If he wanted to draw your blood, he could have simply paid me to do it for him.”
“You would have been drained dry by me tonight.”
Xiao Mu Ke’s face instantly turned pale. He stumbled back several steps, crossing his arms protectively over his chest in terror.
“You... how could you... say something like that!”
Bai Six swept his gaze over Xiao Mu Ke casually. Then, with a touch of malice, he suddenly stepped forward and opened his arms as if to frighten him.
“How could I be like what?”
“By your standards, I’m much worse than that Investor of mine who’s saving you, eleven-year-old Mu Ke-didi.”
The eleven-year-old Mu Ke-didi was so frightened that he backed up several steps and nearly fell. Tears burst from his eyes.
“Ahhh! Don’t come over here!”
After scaring Xiao Mu Ke for a bit of wicked amusement, Bai Six quickly lowered his arms and returned to his expressionless state.
“Even if all the investors here are bloodsuckers, my Investor is on our side. Because if he wanted to kill you, it would be far too easy.”
“He will help us. So you’d better follow his instructions and not act recklessly.”
Xiao Mu Ke nodded frantically. Bai Six’s abrupt change had startled him so badly that his heart felt uncomfortable, and even his speech began to stutter.
“O-okay. I understand!”
After confirming that Xiao Mu Ke was obedient, Bai Six turned and walked toward the corridor.
He stood behind the dormitory door that had been opened by some unknown force, then poked his head out to look into the hallway.
As he looked, Bai Six suddenly frowned.
In the corridor filled with drifting flute music, several dormitory doors stood open.
The hanging lamps overhead swayed gently in the night wind, thick with cobwebs. Somewhere deep within the corridor came the sound of children running and laughing softly. Their light, distant voices echoed through the empty hallway, creating a chilling, almost ghostly atmosphere.
But none of that was what made Bai Six frown.
“Something came in.”
Xiao Mu Ke was hiding behind Bai Six. He didn’t dare stay alone, and now that he was awake, there was no chance of falling back asleep. Gathering his courage, he mimicked Bai Six and cautiously poked his head out to peer into the corridor.
Hearing Bai Six’s words, Xiao Mu Ke looked confused.
“I don’t see anything...”
“Look up,” Bai Six said calmly. “At the ceiling.”
Xiao Mu Ke froze.
Like a rusted machine, he slowly and stiffly lifted his head.
The welfare home’s corridor was built in a narrow vaulted style, over a meter wide, with a high arched ceiling. Brightly colored animal oil paintings covered the arch overhead. In the darkness, those dimly visible animals looked strangely alive, like predators lurking in the shadows with glowing eyes.
Usually, those paintings were the thing Xiao Mu Ke feared most at night.
But now there was something far worse.
Clinging upside down to the ceiling among the oil paintings were children.
They hung there like bats.
Their bodies were wrapped in dried infusion tubes and bloodstained IV bags. Countless tubes coiled around them, while needles stabbed directly into the walls and ceiling. Using those constantly piercing needles like anchors, they crawled slowly forward across the ceiling.
These children looked exactly like the victims from Xiao Mu Ke’s nightmare.
They had been completely drained dry.
The skin on their faces was shriveled and wrinkled, stretched tightly over their skulls like dried orange peel. Their limbs were frighteningly thin, making them resemble grotesque, malnourished dolls with oversized heads.
Against those withered faces, their eyes appeared unnaturally huge—black and white bulging starkly from their sockets. Their eyelids had atrophied so badly that nearly half the eyeball protruded visibly outside.
Colorful translucent IV bags wrapped around them like grotesque clothing.
And they were playing flutes.
Except the “flutes” were not ordinary flutes at all.
They were enormous syringes.
Holes had been drilled through the syringe bodies, turning them into crude vertical flutes. Dark, dried blood still stained the transparent barrels, and beneath the children’s cracked, shriveled lips, they emitted bizarrely distorted flute music.
“The Pied Piper of Hamelin...”
Bai Six seemed to realize something.
“So that’s why I couldn’t locate the source of the flute music yesterday. It sounded like it was coming from everywhere because these things were moving through the ceiling above the house.”
Xiao Mu Ke’s legs nearly gave out beneath him.
He desperately tugged at Bai Six’s sleeve.
“L-let’s just go back to sleep...”
Bai Six ignored him completely.
He continued watching the flute-playing children overhead. After noticing them entering different dormitories, he quietly followed them out into the corridor.
Xiao Mu Ke felt like he was on the verge of fainting. But he was even more terrified of being left alone in the dormitory with the door hanging wide open.
In the end, trembling and on the verge of tears, he followed after Bai Six like a thoroughly incompetent sidekick.
After entering separate dormitories, the flute-playing children stopped on the ceilings above the sleeping children.
Their oversized eyeballs rolled downward as they stared.
Then—
crack.
Their necks twisted violently, turning their heads almost parallel to the floor as they tilted them to observe the children below.
Bai Six stood beside one half-open dormitory door without entering. Leaning slightly forward, he silently watched through the crack to see what the flute-playing children intended to do.
One of the ceiling children crawled slowly around the dormitory.
Tilting its head, it carefully examined each sleeping child from directly above.
Finally, it stopped over one child sleeping especially deeply.
As though it had found its target, the IV tubes dangling from its body slowly descended like tentacles and gently lifted the child’s blanket.
Xiao Mu Ke’s breathing instantly became ragged.
He clamped both hands over his mouth, terrified he might scream.
Soon, the sleeping child woke up.
Like Xiao Mu Ke earlier, he had clearly awakened from the terrifying dream induced by the flute music. Panic and tear stains still lingered on his face.
The moment he saw the horrifying child hanging above him, he nearly screamed—
but several infusion tubes instantly covered his mouth.
The child on the ceiling seemed to gesture to him with the tubes.
Gradually, the frightened child’s tears transformed into a smile.
Then he quickly climbed out of bed, put on his shoes, and obediently followed the flute-playing child outside.
Bai Six immediately stepped back into his own dormitory and quietly shut the door, leaving only a narrow crack through which to observe the corridor.
One after another, each flute-playing child emerged from a dormitory with a smiling child following behind.
The children overhead played eerie flute music through their bloodstained syringe flutes, while the children below hummed softly as they followed in neat lines.
It looked exactly like the procession Bai Six had glimpsed yesterday.
Then suddenly—
the procession stopped.
Every child hanging from the ceiling simultaneously tilted their heads.
Their dead, protruding eyes turned in unison toward the crack in Bai Six’s door.
Toward Bai Six.
Toward the pair of eyes secretly watching them from behind it.
Behind Bai Six, Xiao Mu Ke frantically tugged at his sleeve. His expression was so terrified that he looked seconds away from bursting into tears.
Covering his mouth tightly to stop himself from crying out, Xiao Mu Ke slowly lifted a trembling hand and pointed upward.
At the ceiling above them.
Bai Six stilled.
Slowly, he raised his head.
A child was hanging directly above him.
Its head tilted unnaturally to one side. On its shriveled blackened face bulged a pair of enormous eyes the size of ping-pong balls, staring fixedly and blankly at him.
It must have slipped into the room from the ceiling while Bai Six had gone outside earlier.
Several infusion tubes still dangled beneath it, wrapped around the head of another child.
That child belonged to Bai Six’s dormitory.
Moments ago he had been asleep, but now he stood beneath the tubes with a strange smile on his face, silently looking at Bai Six and Mu Ke.
Bai Six slowly opened the door.
The smiling child immediately skipped out into the corridor.
Meanwhile, the flute-playing child hanging from the ceiling bent lower, studying Bai Six and the trembling Mu Ke carefully.
Its infusion tubes brushed lightly across them, as though confirming something.
Finally, after a moment, it withdrew the tubes with a rustling sound and crawled away expressionlessly across the ceiling.
Soon the flute music resumed.
The mournful wu-wu echoes drifted from the bloodstained syringe flutes, blending with the soft humming of the children being led away.
Gradually, the sound faded into the distance until it vanished completely at the end of the corridor.
Only after carefully confirming that no more monsters remained overhead did Bai Six quickly lock the dormitory door from the inside.
Xiao Mu Ke collapsed onto the floor in exhaustion.
Clutching his chest, he struggled desperately to regulate his breathing and calm his racing heartbeat.
Just now, he had genuinely thought he was going to die from fright.
But when Xiao Mu Ke finally recovered enough to look over—
Bai Six was already back in bed.
As though nothing at all had happened, he had pulled the blanket over himself and was calmly preparing to sleep.
He looked nothing like someone who had nearly been taken away by monsters moments earlier.
Xiao Mu Ke was both speechless and on the verge of emotional collapse.
He staggered to Bai Six’s bedside and whispered furiously, “We almost got caught just now! Can’t you think before charging out like that next time?!”
Bai Six kept his eyes closed beneath the blanket.
Even when Xiao Mu Ke came over to scold him, he didn’t bother opening them.
“They wouldn’t have taken us,” he replied indifferently.
“I noticed yesterday that the flute music targets children very specifically.”
He had realized this during his observations the previous night.
Although the flute music hypnotized all children indiscriminately, only a small number were actually taken away. Yesterday, Bai Six had wondered how those targets were selected. At the time, their dormitory door had remained closed, and he had only been able to observe the corridor through the dormitory window. His field of vision had been limited, so he had never seen the children crawling across the ceiling.
And because no flute-playing child had entered Bai Six’s dormitory yesterday, he still hadn’t known how they selected their targets.
But Bai Six believed uncovering that information was necessary.
After all, his Investor would definitely be interested in it.
That was why Bai Six had risked going outside tonight.
“But even if they’re targeting specific children, how do you know we weren’t among them?” Xiao Mu Ke argued.
He had noticed the same thing.
Those flute-playing children were clearly searching for children with certain characteristics. The problem was that neither of them knew what those criteria actually were.
“Our dormitory door opened tonight too,” Xiao Mu Ke said, frowning anxiously. “That means someone in our room matched the conditions to be taken away. How do you know it wasn’t us?”
“Because today is Monday.”
Only then did Bai Six finally open his eyes and glance lazily at Xiao Mu Ke.
“Today was only our baptism day.”
“So we won’t be ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) taken away yet.”
