Free Web NovelIn Wednesday’s nursery rhyme, the event was Marriage.
And marriage also represented a kind of one-on-one matching.
The feverish-faced Investors went up one by one, submerging the trembling children into the water before fishing them back out again. Afterward, someone would step forward with a blood bag and draw blood from the children.
The Investors descended from the platform carrying bags filled with blood, satisfied smiles on their faces.
Soon, it was Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang’s turn. They were directly ahead of Bai Liu.
Xiao Miao Feichi had been crying and kicking up a fuss. An impatient Miao Feichi shoved him into the water, then held him down while his blood was drawn until his face turned pale.
Xiao Miao Gaojiang was also trembling all over, but he was far more obedient. He seemed to have realized that resistance was useless. His eyes carried a desperate grief as he looked at the surrounding Investors, and he shakily stretched out his arm to let them draw his blood.
After stepping down, Miao Feichi casually weighed the blood bag in his hand.
“About a hundred milliliters. Tsk. If I didn’t need to take it back to the hospital for testing, I’d want a sip myself.”
Miao Gaojiang scanned the surroundings, then concluded, “These children correspond one-to-one with the Investors seated below. If we touch another Investor’s child, that critically ill Investor will lose their child and soon die from their bloodless illness, turning into one of those monsters in the ICU wards.”
“We’d likely be locked onto by the corresponding Investor-monster’s hatred and attacked.”
Miao Feichi frowned.
“Then it’s best not to touch the children belonging to NPC Investors. Hatred-locked monsters that chase you down are the most troublesome kind. They can easily ambush us or finish us off in the later stages.”
“Besides, we were planning to target the players’ children from the start anyway.”
Miao Feichi tossed the blood bag back and forth between his hands, his eyes fixed on the blood sloshing inside.
“I want Bai Six. You want that little blind one. How about it? We’ll leave Mu Ke’s child to him.”
As he spoke, Miao Feichi casually turned his head to look at Bai Liu, who was sitting silently behind them, and grinned.
“Since you told us the reward for the Life-Saving Remedy, we won’t touch your child.”
“But if more than one child’s blood is needed to clear the game, you’ll have to figure that out yourself.”
“Bai Six and that little blind one are ours.”
“But you do have another way.”
Miao Gaojiang patted Bai Liu on the shoulder in hypocritical comfort.
“You can try letting child Mu Ke escape the welfare home alone. As long as he isn’t caught by any monsters along the way and successfully escapes alive, completing the main quest, then you can also clear the game.”
Although Miao Gaojiang “comforted” Bai Liu this way, it was clear that neither he nor Miao Feichi thought such a plan had any feasibility at all.
From the very beginning, those two had never placed any hope of clearing the game on the children.
The probability of success was far too low.
This was a Level 2 game. Letting a group of children who knew nothing and could do nothing successfully escape from a group of A+ rank monsters was difficult even for A-rank players with skills, let alone children.
It was a plan with a success rate close to zero.
Bai Liu lowered his head, pretending his shoulders were trembling.
“Okay. I’ll try.”
Seeing him like this, Miao Feichi sneered disdainfully and turned back around, continuing to play with his blood bag.
The moment Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang looked away, Bai Liu’s face returned to its usual calm.
Letting the child act as the main executor of the game was indeed a highly risky strategy.
But after Bai Liu’s calculations, it was still the option with the best cost-performance ratio and the lowest risk among all available choices.
Even if that risk was already quite high.
“Mu Ke’s Investor, please come forward to baptize your child,” the Dean announced loudly. ƒreewebηoveℓ.com
Bai Liu raised his eyes and looked at Bai Six, dressed in white and expressionless.
Through the candle flames, they exchanged a very brief glance.
Bai Six was the first to look away. He was not used to being stared at directly.
Bai Liu suddenly curled his lips into a smile, lazy and certain, as if remembering something.
After all, when he was fourteen, one of the things he had been best at was escaping the welfare home.
Bai Liu walked forward unhurriedly.
His current identity was Mu Ke’s Investor, and the child he was meant to baptize was Mu Ke.
Under the Dean’s summons and guidance, Bai Liu stopped in front of Xiao Mu Ke.
Xiao Mu Ke swallowed hard and looked at him nervously. He handed his candle to the Dean, then opened his arms toward Bai Liu, his body trembling uncontrollably.
Xiao Mu Ke really was terrified.
So terrified that he couldn’t even tell this was not his actual Investor, even though all the Investors looked the same.
Following the Dean’s instructions, Bai Liu slid one hand beneath Xiao Mu Ke’s knees and lifted the boy completely into his arms.
Xiao Mu Ke clung tightly to Bai Liu’s neck.
His fear showed clearly in his eyes and body language. His dangling feet shook violently, and his face was deathly pale.
Bai Liu’s expression did not change.
He offered Xiao Mu Ke no comfort.
Instead, he calmly leaned forward and submerged the boy in his arms into the clear water.
Xiao Mu Ke slowly sank beneath the surface.
He squeezed his eyes shut in terror and clenched his fists. Bubbles rose from his face.
He could feel his warm tears dissolving into the icy water, as if his body temperature was draining away with them, leaving him cold.
Am I going to die...
Xiao Mu Ke thought hazily.
My heart feels like... it can’t beat anymore.
A few dozen seconds later, Bai Liu lifted him out.
Drenched from head to toe, Xiao Mu Ke gasped violently for air, his lips turning purple. He instinctively clung to Bai Liu’s neck, coughing up several mouthfuls of water.
The person waiting to draw Mu Ke’s blood stepped forward, pulling the plastic cap off the syringe and revealing the sharp needle beneath.
Xiao Mu Ke shook his head frantically in horror and tried to retreat. In his panic, he nearly climbed onto Bai Liu’s head.
Bai Liu caught his struggling ankle.
He looked at Mu Ke, whose eyes had filled with tears.
“Be still.”
Then he looked up at the person drawing blood and said, “There’s no need to draw from him.”
Both the blood-drawer and the struggling Xiao Mu Ke froze.
The Dean asked, “Investor, are you certain you don’t want this child’s blood taken? If he carries any illness that affects you after you take him away, we will no longer be responsible.”
“Whatever his blood is like,” Bai Liu said, looking up at the Dean with indifferent calm, “there’s no need to draw blood for screening.”
“I’m certain he is the child I want to take away.”
“I’ll bear the consequences of any illness he may have myself.”
Soaking wet, Xiao Mu Ke curled up in Bai Liu’s arms and stared blankly at him, water dripping from his hair.
Bai Liu glanced down at the dazed child in his arms. He set the boy down, then whispered into Xiao Mu Ke’s ear:
“Follow Bai Six and leave this place.”
“I won’t take your blood.”
Then, as if nothing had happened, he patted Xiao Mu Ke on the shoulder, stood, and returned to his original seat.
Xiao Mu Ke stood there in a daze. He took his candle back from the Dean and returned to the line beside Bai Six.
It took him a moment to {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} react.
Then he leaned slightly toward Bai Six and whispered quickly, his voice tinged with excitement.
“Bai Six, he’s your Investor, right? He really didn’t want my blood, just like you said!”
“I told you,” Bai Six replied calmly. “He’s a strange Investor who’s risking his life to save us.”
But Xiao Mu Ke soon looked at Bai Six in horror.
“But he’s your Investor. Why did he baptize me? If he baptized me, then what about you?!”
“Next candidate for baptism: Bai Six. Please have Bai Six’s Investor come forward to baptize him.”
The Dean turned toward Bai Six.
Bai Six obediently lowered his head and stepped out of the line.
The Dean called out two or three times, but no one below responded.
Suddenly, someone let out a contemptuous laugh and slowly stood up.
“Dean, Bai Six’s Investor has unfortunately passed away. How about I baptize him instead?”
The person who stood was Miao Feichi.
“No, Investor sir. You have already baptized one child.”
The Dean shook her head and refused him.
Miao Feichi glanced at Bai Six, licked his lips with some regret, and sat back down.
The Dean walked up to Bai Six, looking him over with an obscure gaze, as though examining an unsellable piece of merchandise. Yet her words were filled with pity and mercy.
“What a pitiful Investor. What a pitiful child.”
“You’ve been abandoned.”
“Oh, of course, coming to this welfare home means you had already been abandoned by your parents. But now even the Investor willing to take you away and grant your life its only value has abandoned you on the eve of your baptism.”
Bai Six stood with his head lowered, silently enduring the Dean’s reprimand.
His dark eyes watched the candle in his hands, the firelight flickering over his expressionless face.
“You are a child abandoned by God.”
The Dean let out a long, theatrical sigh.
“The sin upon you is incomparable. That is why even God has chosen to let everyone abandon you.”
“Do you know where you went wrong, Bai Six?”
“I don’t think I do, Dean,” Bai Six replied calmly.
The Dean stared at Bai Six with a cold, sinister gaze and condemned him with righteous certainty.
“Child, your mistake is that no one is willing to help you wash away the sin you were born with.”
“You must complete the baptism alone.”
“You need to be punished.”
“You need to remain in this pool for a long time to cleanse your sins.”
The Dean shoved Bai Six into the basin filled with clear water.
Before Bai Six could even steady himself, the Dean had already taken the candle from his hand and pressed down on his shoulder, forcing him to sit inside the basin.
The Dean looked down at him from above, cold and expressionless.
Holding the candle in one hand, she pressed her other hand onto Bai Six’s head. Without hesitation, she grabbed his hair and shoved him down into the water.
“You need to be washed clean, my child.”
Bai Six was forced beneath the surface.
He was submerged face-up.
The instinctive reactions of coughing and suffocation made him reach for the edge of the bathtub-like baptismal basin, but he was soon forced to release his grip and sink completely to the bottom.
The Dean, still holding him down by the hair, smiled gently a few times.
She lifted the burning candle and looked down at Bai Six through the rippling water.
“Until this candle has burned out, Bai Six, you are not permitted to leave the baptismal pool.”
The candle flame flickered twice.
A drop of hot wax fell onto Bai Six’s hand where it gripped the edge of the basin.
The sharp, burn-like pain made Bai Six instinctively release the already slippery wall.
Clear water rippled across his vision.
Through it, he saw the Dean’s gentle smiling face above him distort with the movement of the water, becoming hideous and terrifying.
The white drops of wax solidified the moment they struck the water, turning into fragments that looked like children’s fingernails peeled from their beds.
His hair was still being pulled downward by the Dean, forcing Bai Six to arch his neck.
Because of the lack of oxygen, his chest heaved rapidly. He looked like a helpless little animal being led to slaughter.
Only his eyes remained startlingly calm.
Calm as if he were not the one being held beneath the baptismal water.
As if he had expected all of this long ago.
When Bai Six’s oxygen was nearly depleted, he would seize the chance to use all his strength to push himself upward and take a breath above the wax-flecked water.
Then, the instant he surfaced, the Dean would swiftly push him back down again.
Again and again, Bai Six struggled to breathe, as if he might die in the baptismal pool at any second.
It was the desperate sensation of drowning, of fighting upward with every last ounce of strength while teetering on the edge of suffocation.
Xiao Mu Ke’s eyes reddened as he covered his mouth and watched.
Miao Feichi, seeing Bai Six suffer, looked as though he were deriving pleasure from it. He craned his neck, trying to get a closer look at Bai Six’s pained face underwater.
Miao Gaojiang, however, had little interest in scenes of children being tortured.
It reminded him of the child Miao Feichi had once kidnapped. He turned his head slightly with a furrowed brow, his expression darkening.
Meanwhile, Bai Liu watched quietly from below.
His gaze seemed somewhat distant, yet excessively calm.
As though the person on the verge of drowning was not his fourteen-year-old self.
As though that boy was not his only bargaining chip for clearing this game.
Distant memories, like Bai Six struggling to surface from the water, rose from Bai Liu’s wax-sealed hippocampus.
Bai Liu hated water because he had once been punished like this for making a mistake, just like Bai Six.
It seemed he had also been fourteen then.
Bai Liu could no longer remember clearly.
Humans instinctively forgot memories that made them uncomfortable.
He had done something wrong.
He had taken an adult’s money and agreed to do certain things for him, just like Bai Six was doing now.
Soon, another child in the welfare home reported the matter.
The Dean of that welfare home had looked at him with horror and fear, as though he had committed something unforgivable.
Of course, back then, he had still been called Bai Six.
Because of his “unseemly” and bloody hobbies, the Dean and teachers both feared him and whispered about him.
The look they gave him said:
Ah, I knew it. You finally did something like this.
A look full of disgust and fear.
To be honest, Bai Liu had enjoyed those looks.
But he was punished soon afterward.
Bai Liu narrowed his eyes, remembering vaguely.
It seemed his head had been shoved into something.
He couldn’t quite remember what it was, only that it had been a container filled with water.
While they beat and scolded him, they screamed at him never to do it again.
He curled in on himself, choking on water, and obediently agreed.
But those panicked teachers did not seem willing to let him go so easily now that they finally had an excuse to punish the “little demon” they spoke of.
They took turns drowning him for quite some time before finally leaving, exhausted yet satisfied, as if they had successfully reformed a stray murderer.
Lu Yizhan, who had also been drowned for the entire afternoon, lay on the ground gasping for air.
Beside him lay Bai Liu—or rather, Bai Six—on the verge of death.
Back then, he had not yet changed his name.
Because Lu Yizhan, that world-class idiot, had stepped forward to take the blame for Bai Liu when the teachers demanded to know who had done the bad thing after hearing the report from the other children.
Lu Yizhan had taken the initiative to admit it was him and asked the teachers to punish him.
That guy hadn’t even known what Bai Liu had done.
Yet he had taken the blame with astonishing readiness.
Unfortunately, Lu Yizhan’s idiotic self-sacrificing kindness did not earn him a perfect ending.
The child who had reported them insisted that Bai Liu was the one who had done it.
In the end, both Bai Liu and Lu Yizhan—who had tried to cover for him despite having done nothing—were severely punished by the teachers.
Even though they were both punished, Lu Yizhan was famously a good kid whom the teachers liked.
He should not have been punished so harshly.
But he refused to leave.
For as long as the teachers punished Bai Liu, Lu Yizhan insisted on staying beside him.
This honest, simple good kid squatted next to Bai Liu with red eyes like a stubborn little ox that could not be moved.
No matter who tried to make him leave, he refused.
He did not resist, curse, or stop the teachers from tormenting anyone.
He simply refused to go.
He stared straight at Bai Liu, who was choking on water.
When Bai Liu was shoved beneath the surface, Lu Yizhan would bury his own head in the water too, looking at the struggling Bai Liu and anxiously telling him that it would be over soon.
Hold on a little longer, Bai Liu.
It’s almost done.
I’m here, Bai Liu.
Under the water, Lu Yizhan seemed to be shouting at him.
I believe you didn’t do anything bad!
Beneath the surface, Bai Liu looked at Lu Yizhan, whose mouth kept producing bubbles as he spoke.
He watched Lu Yizhan’s anxious, panicked face as bubbles poured from his mouth.
Even while being tortured, Bai Liu suddenly felt like laughing.
And he did laugh.
He could not actually hear a single word the idiot was saying, nor could he understand where that idiot’s baseless trust came from.
If Bai Liu had possessed the strength to speak then, he would definitely have told Lu Yizhan:
Idiot.
I really did do something very, very bad.
Unfortunately, he had no strength left.
He had nearly drowned to death.
Lu Yizhan, that unlucky fellow, ended up suffering nearly as much as Bai Liu.
Now he was coughing up water as he tried to crawl up from the ground. He staggered forward, wanting to help up the equally drenched Bai Liu, who was gasping on the floor.
Then, as though his brain had short-circuited, Lu Yizhan suddenly squatted down and looked directly at Bai Liu.
He asked Bai Liu if he wanted to change his name.
To tell them he had changed for the better.
To say he would never again use the name [Bai Six] to contact people and do bad things.
Maybe then they won’t punish you like this again.
Lu Yizhan made an incredibly whimsical suggestion—one that, in Bai Liu’s eyes, was stupid and utterly lacking in constructive value.
This was not the first time Lu Yizhan had done something Bai Liu thought could only come from a brain full of water.
In fact, Lu Yizhan often had baseless ideas like this.
Such as insisting on becoming his friend.
Lying on the ground, Bai Liu’s eyes shifted slightly.
With his arm supported by Lu Yizhan, he turned his head and looked at that great idiot Lu through eyes still wet from being held underwater.
His soaked hair slid down, covering his eyes.
Then Bai Liu suddenly clutched his stomach and burst out laughing.
He didn’t know what he was laughing at, or why he wanted to laugh.
He simply laughed strangely and loudly there on the ground, soaked by the water dripping from his own body.
As he laughed, he curled up and coughed, spitting the water from his throat.
After spitting it out, Bai Liu became calm again.
He looked at Lu Yizhan, who had been stunned speechless by his laughter, and said indifferently:
Fine.
Since you say I should change it, I’ll change my name.
The baptism—or rather, the torture—of Bai Six on the altar finally ended.
The Dean finally released him and allowed him to leave the pool.
The church could not slaughter children, so Bai Liu had not been worried that the Dean would directly drown Bai Six.
She was merely punishing Bai Six, the child no Investor wanted.
Because baptism was also one of the children’s tasks, and punishment for failing to complete it was only natural.
Bai Six surged out of the pool, leaning against the edge as he coughed up several mouthfuls of water.
He raised a hand to wipe the clear water from his mouth, then staggered out of the basin.
Very quickly, Bai Six recovered from the suffocating state of near-drowning.
This child, who had almost been drowned in public, showed no real reaction, as though he were already used to it.
He calmly took the burned-out candle from the Dean’s hand, bowed politely to the woman who had just been gripping his neck and forcing him through the baptism, then returned to the line.
The prolonged lack of oxygen had left a flush on Bai Six’s cheeks.
His eyes were damp with physiological tears.
His hair clung wetly to the sides of his face, dripping water.
The oversized white robe was soaked through and plastered to his body, making him look thin and small.
Bai Six lowered his head and covered his mouth and nose as he coughed twice with restraint, his eyes red.
He looked...
A little pitiful.
Behind him, on the inverted crucifix, the statue that had been sleeping peacefully earlier now had its brow furrowed.
At some unknown point, its previously spread fingers had curled slightly inward.
It was as if Bai Six’s coughing had disturbed its sleep.
And the thorns wrapped around its body tightened even further.
