Free Web NovelXiao Mu Ke didn’t react immediately. “...Why won’t we be taken away on the Day of Baptism?”
“Based on my understanding of how baptism works,” Bai Six replied, “we shouldn’t even qualify to have our blood drawn before baptism, because before baptism we’re considered sinful. Only the Lord’s blood can cleanse those sins.”
He yawned lazily as he spoke. After staying awake for two nights straight, he was genuinely exhausted.
“And haven’t you noticed yet?” Bai Six continued. “Those Pied Piper Children are saving people.”
Xiao Mu Ke froze. “Saving people?”
“Yes. Saving people.”
Bai Six closed his eyes again, folding his hands over his chest as he lay there peacefully, looking as though he might fall asleep at any second.
“They have IV tubes and infusion bags attached to them. They probably came from the private hospital. So my guess is that they know which children those terminally ill Investors are planning to draw blood from next, and they’re taking away the children who’ve already been chosen.”
“For example, the child taken from our room tonight—I saw the Dean register him today, saying an Investor wanted to adopt him.” Bai Six spoke with eerie calm. “And what happens after adoption... I think you saw that clearly enough in your dream, Mu Ke.”
The memory of the blood-drawing torture flashed through Xiao Mu Ke’s mind, making him shiver uncontrollably.
Without the slightest change in tone, Bai Six continued, “That’s why I think the children who are taken away first see their own future under the flute’s hypnosis. They see themselves being drained of blood. Then they see those grotesque Pied Piper Children—children who look exactly like what they themselves would become after repeated blood extraction.”
“The Pied Piper Children probably told them something like, ‘We were victims too. Come with us. We’ll take you somewhere safe, somewhere you’ll never have to come back from.’”
“That’s why those children followed them willingly. Why they walked away so happily.”
Bai Six paused briefly.
“As for us, our Investor has already given up on drawing our blood. So even after baptism, we’re safe.”
“Since we don’t need saving, they won’t take us away.”
Xiao Mu Ke turned over on the bed and stared at Bai Six, who already seemed half asleep. After hesitating for a while, he finally asked quietly,
“...Bai Six, how can you be so sure your Investor won’t secretly register you behind your back and take you away anyway?”
Bai Six’s breathing remained steady.
He gave no response, as though he had already fallen asleep.
Xiao Mu Ke sighed gloomily and muttered a few complaints about how naive Bai Six was for trusting his Investor so easily. Then, weighed down by anxiety, he gradually drifted off himself.
In the final moment before sleep overtook him, somewhere between dreaming and waking, Xiao Mu Ke thought he heard Bai Six’s calm voice whisper through the darkness:
“If he lies to me, I’ll kill him.”
In the pitch-black dormitory, however, two other pairs of eyes remained wide open.
Under their blankets, Xiao Miao Feichi and Xiao Miao Gaojiang trembled violently.
They had overheard everything Bai Six and Xiao Mu Ke said. They had also seen the horrifying Pied Piper Child that entered the room. Because both of them had still been awake at the time, the flute-playing child had lingered over their beds for an especially long while.
At this point, the two future S-rank players—who had yet to become infamous through countless horrors inside the game—were nothing more than terrified children drenched in cold sweat, too afraid to move.
At their core, they were still ordinary people.
Or perhaps not even ordinary people.
After all, these were the same people who would eventually murder their own mothers, or allow their sons to kill and devour their wives.
But murdering a terminally ill mother—or wife—someone they considered useless... how could that possibly compare to becoming the victim themselves?
Xiao Miao Gaojiang’s clothes were soaked through with sweat. He could barely maintain the appearance of composure after being frightened out of his mind.
And Xiao Miao Feichi—the boy who would one day pour boiling water over his terminally ill mother and burn her alive, the one who enjoyed eating children’s flesh—absolutely could not accept the idea of suffering the same fate himself.
Just imagining his future self being drained dry until he became nothing but skin and bones terrified him so badly his legs twitched uncontrollably beneath the blanket.
Even with his head hidden under the covers, he couldn’t suppress the muffled sobs escaping his throat.
Hearing the strained breathing and faint crying in the dormitory, a strange smile slowly curved across Bai Six’s peaceful sleeping face.
***
Tuesday, 6:15 AM.
Bai Liu’s phone rang exactly on time.
“Good morning, Mister Investor,” Bai Six greeted politely. “Last night, I discovered—”
“The Pied Piper Children?” Bai Liu interrupted as he opened his system panel with interest.
[“Love Welfare Home Monster Book” updated — Deformed Child (1/3)]
[Monster Name: Deformed Child (Post-Blood-Draw Frenzy Version)]
[Characteristics: Appears late at night to take children away]
[Weakness: ??? (Pending Exploration)]
[Attack Method: Injection Blood Draw (A+), Phone Positioning (A+)]
[Triggered Attack Method: Flute-Playing Brat — A-rank skill capable of luring away players’ child identities through flute hypnosis]
[Congratulations to player Bai Liu for collecting the Deformed Child’s attack methods.]
Bai Six fell silent briefly. He didn’t ask how Bai Liu already knew.
“Yes,” he continued evenly. “It appeared around 2:00 AM. The attack works through dream hypnosis. The children are shown visions of their future selves having their blood drawn by Investors...”
Bai Liu listened quietly, thoughtful.
“So the Deformed Children are on your side. That makes sense—you’re all victims.”
“The monsters chasing you every night are probably the same as those Pied Piper Children. Even if they make you disappear, their goal is still to take you away and hide you. They’re trying to stop me from finding you.”
But where exactly were the children being hidden?
For a group of dead children to conceal living children so completely that no one could find them... whether they had been hidden among the living or among the dead was hard to say.
Bai Liu suspected the children taken away by the Pied Piper were experiencing another form of death—a gentler kind, perhaps even a form of euthanasia.
Following the original story of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, the children were most likely drowned.
Only this time, they died smiling to the sound of the flute.
Bai Six’s thoughts aligned almost perfectly with Bai Liu’s.
“I don’t think it’s protection,” he said coldly. “I think it’s death.”
“If children disappear every night, there’s no way a group of wealthy Investors wouldn’t notice. And I don’t believe a bunch of dead children are capable of properly taking care of living ones either.”
“True,” Bai Liu admitted. “But there’s something useful here.”
His eyes narrowed slightly.
“These Pied Piper Children clearly know how to leave that completely sealed welfare home.”
Bai Six fell silent again.
“You want me to escape from the Love Welfare Home?”
“Yes,” Bai Liu answered. “But that creates another problem. If you follow the Pied Piper Children out, how are you supposed to protect yourself from them?”
“And escaping alone isn’t enough. You have to take the others with you too.”
His finger tapped lightly against the edge of the bed, countless ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) unreadable emotions hidden in his eyes.
“When I say everyone,” Bai Liu continued, “that includes Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang. You need to lead them out with you, and then—”
“Kill them and get their blood for you?” Bai Six finished flatly. “That’s fine. I can make them follow me. But you’ll need to pay more.”
“One hundred thousand per person.”
Bai Liu paused for only an instant before smiling lazily.
“Deal.”
“But there are two conditions,” he added casually. “Break either one, and the deal is off.”
“First: escaping is the core objective, but your personal safety comes first. Mu Ke’s safety and Liu Jiayi’s safety come second. If you can’t guarantee that, don’t act recklessly.”
“Second: killing Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang is not mandatory.”
Bai Liu lowered his gaze slightly, his voice quieter now.
“If possible, leave them to me, Bai Six.”
“You’re only fourteen. I’m twenty-four. Maybe I’m better suited for this kind of thing.”
“The two hundred thousand will still be yours.”
This time Bai Six remained silent for a long while before finally asking, genuine confusion threading through his voice:
“What difference does it make whether a fourteen-year-old does it or a twenty-four-year-old?”
“In reality?” Bai Liu paused. “None.”
“But I still don’t want you doing it.”
“Wait until you’re an adult—until you’re capable of taking responsibility for your own choices—before deciding whether you want to become a bad person.”
“For now, leave something like this to an adult like me.”
After the call ended, Bai Liu stared out at the dark, windowless view beyond the hospital room and exhaled slowly.
He really had been influenced by Lu Yizhan’s endless lectures.
The moment Bai Six casually said he would kill someone, Bai Liu’s first thought had been:
Instigating a minor to commit a crime.
A serious offense.
Lu Yizhan had always been terrified Bai Liu would end up doing exactly that, because Bai Liu was frighteningly good at manipulating people.
Which was why Lu Yizhan nagged him constantly—not to drag minors into pyramid schemes, scams, or criminal activity.
Apparently the conditioning had worked so thoroughly that Bai Liu instinctively avoided it now, even inside a game.
Still, objectively speaking, it really was better for him to handle it himself.
Bai Six already had enough on his shoulders. Killing those two wouldn’t be easy for a child.
Bai Six’s main objective was escape. Tasks that could complicate that escape were better left to Bai Liu.
***
9:00 AM.
The hospital broadcast informed all patients that free activity time had begun and instructed the newly admitted patients to attend their children’s baptism ceremony.
[System Notification: Side quest triggered.]
[Players who received phone calls from their children are invited to attend the baptism ceremony of their invested child at the Love Welfare Home.]
Bai Liu was currently inside Mu Ke’s ward.
Today was the Day of Baptism.
But the “Investor” Bai Liu had supposedly replaced was already dead. Out of the five Investors attending the ceremony, one would inevitably be missing.
Which meant Bai Liu and Mu Ke had to abandon one side quest.
And naturally, the one giving it up would be Mu Ke.
Mu Ke’s condition was terrible.
He hadn’t slept properly in two nights. Between nonstop memorization, repeated blood draws, chase sequences, and crying through the entire night, his mental state had deteriorated badly.
His eyes were swollen like goldfish eyes as he lay limply on the straw bed without moving.
The young master hated this filthy, damp bed.
But he no longer had the energy to care.
Clearly, Mu Ke needed rest.
So Bai Liu decided to attend the baptism under Mu Ke’s Investor identity.
The problem was that needing sleep and being able to sleep were two entirely different things.
Mu Ke couldn’t sleep at all.
Every time he closed his eyes, chaotic fragments and images flooded his mind. His overstimulated brain pounded painfully beneath the pressure of fear and exhaustion.
Even though Bai Liu had given him the bed while sleeping on the floor himself, Mu Ke still couldn’t rest.
When he saw Bai Liu stand up and prepare to leave, Mu Ke immediately struggled out of bed.
“Maybe I should go instead,” he said anxiously. “I’m the real Mu Ke, after all. If they have lie detectors or special items, I can deal with it.”
“No need.”
Bai Liu straightened his hospital gown. Having slept on the floor with books as a pillow, he looked tired himself.
Then he turned toward Mu Ke.
“There’s something I need you to do here at the hospital. Something only you can handle.”
Mu Ke froze. “What is it?”
“I need you to help me check some medical records.”
The timeline of the welfare home instance was set ten years in the past—the exact period when those real-world entrepreneurs first began funding the welfare home and selecting children from it.
These two welfare homes were clearly different manifestations of the same dungeon.
Based on previous examples like The Last Train to Blast Off and the Jingcheng Explosion Case, Bai Liu knew that although dungeons differed from reality in form, their core events were usually identical.
Which meant those terminally ill entrepreneurs had most likely done the same thing in reality:
Extract children’s blood to cultivate Blood Lingzhi and prolong their own lives.
Yet despite Lu Yizhan investigating for years, he had never found solid evidence linking those entrepreneurs to crimes against children.
Ten years had passed.
Most investigative trails had long since vanished.
Most of the children involved were probably dead already.
Finding proof now was almost impossible.
And even if evidence had once existed, Bai Liu believed it had already been thoroughly erased by those powerful people. freёwebnovel.com
Otherwise, they would never have abandoned control of the welfare home so easily.
But Bai Liu had accepted Lu Yizhan’s request—and his payment.
He preferred finishing transactions properly.
What couldn’t be found outside the game might still exist inside it.
What reality had erased, the dungeon might still preserve.
Bai Liu looked at Mu Ke.
“I’ll give you several names. During the day, the nurses barely monitor the patients. Sneak into the archive room and find those people’s medical records.”
“Especially the names of the children used as medicinal primers and the dates of each blood extraction.”
“Memorize everything you can and tell me when I come back.”
Medical records were dense and complicated.
Memorizing several complete files within the short time before the nurses discovered him would be extremely difficult for most people.
But for Mu Ke, it was easy.
“I can do it,” he answered immediately. “Tell me the names.”
Bai Liu listed several names.
After hearing them, Mu Ke frowned slightly.
“These are all real-world entrepreneurs... ordinary people. Why would their names appear in the archives of a game?”
Bai Liu lowered his eyes.
“They may not be ordinary people.”
“In this game, they’re probably monsters.”
“And if possible, memorize the names of every Investor-patient in the archive room.”
Mu Ke stared blankly.
“...All of them? Why?”
“A large private welfare home that operated for ten years before finally losing funding...”
Bai Liu paused briefly before continuing calmly.
“The operating costs for a facility that size are enormous. Without a massive chain of shared利益 behind it, there’s no way it could survive that long.”
“Multiple groups investing money for no return... unless an industrial chain had already formed around a product.”
“And the only products a children’s welfare home can provide are children—and the things produced from them.” freёwebnovel.com
“Normally I’d suspect child trafficking or prostitution first.”
“But here...”
“...the product is blood.”
Bai Liu’s voice was chillingly emotionless.
“A welfare home operating for ten years, housing hundreds of children at a time...”
“The amount of blood it could supply...”
“I doubt it only saved the handful of entrepreneurs we already know about.”
“I think there were far more terminally ill patients connected to this place than anyone realizes.”
He looked directly at Mu Ke.
“If I’m right, then everyone listed in those archives—excluding previous players—”
“—are all real-world Investors who used children’s blood to treat themselves.”
[System Warning: Player Bai Liu’s conversation involves the core relationship between reality and the game.]
[Relevant content has been automatically censored from the live broadcast.]
Mu Ke sat frozen in shock.
His mind struggled desperately to process what he had just heard.
“W-Wait...” he stammered, climbing off the bed in panic. “If I have to memorize all those records, I might not finish in time! And my brain really isn’t functioning well right now! And what exactly did you mean earlier—”
“I’ll explain later,” Bai Liu interrupted calmly.
“If you can’t memorize everything, prioritize the names I gave you. Crimes on this scale always involve tightly connected networks.”
“Once we catch a few of them, pulling out the entire root system becomes much easier.”
Bai Liu opened the door, then looked back at Mu Ke sitting dazed on the edge of the bed.
“Get some sleep.”
“I need your memory functioning at full capacity. There’s still a lot I’ll need you to remember.”
“I don’t need sleep,” Mu Ke protested weakly. “I can’t sleep anyway. I’ll go memorize the records now. If I’m too slow, I can just stay in the archive room longer...”
As he spoke, his eyelids drooped heavily.
He blinked twice in confusion.
Then his head suddenly slammed against the straw bed.
Dizzy and disoriented, he looked up at Bai Liu, who still stood by the doorway holding the knob.
Bai Liu gazed down at him expressionlessly.
“You need sleep, Mu Ke.”
[System Notification: Player Bai Liu has used high-potency inhaled sleeping powder on player Mu Ke.]
Mu Ke’s vision darkened instantly.
The entire room spun violently around him.
He struggled to force his eyes open and saw Bai Liu turning away, slowly closing the door.
Mu Ke reached out instinctively, trying to grab hold of Bai Liu’s retreating silhouette.
But his fingers twitched only twice before exhaustion dragged him under.
“I don’t want to sleep...”
“I want to work...”
The final thing he heard before losing consciousness completely was Bai Liu’s voice:
“The sleeping powder will wear off around 11:30. The nurses eat lunch then, and the archive room should be empty.”
“That’s the best time for you to wake up.”
“Sleep well, Mu Ke.”
Curled into a small ball atop the straw bed, Mu Ke finally fell into deep, even sleep.
After watching him for a moment, Bai Liu turned and locked the door behind him.
Mu Ke’s mental state had already reached its limit.
Since the previous night, he had been stretched tight with fear like an overstrained wire. Without proper rest, his memory would eventually deteriorate.
And there were very few genuinely safe opportunities to sleep inside this game.
Today was one of them.
Miao Feichi wasn’t present, daytime patrols were frequent, and the chance of monsters appearing was low.
There would never be a better opportunity for Mu Ke to recover.
Still, Bai Liu understood why Mu Ke couldn’t relax.
As soon as Bai Liu stood up, Mu Ke had forced himself upright too, bloodshot eyes fixed stubbornly on him, determined to follow no matter what.
Since Mu Ke clearly couldn’t fall asleep on his own, Bai Liu had simply drugged him unconscious.
At 9:30 AM, all the Investors attending the baptism gathered at the hospital entrance.
