Chapter 74: The Real World

After Bai Liu had finished his three guesses, he put his pen down, rolled it twice on the table and into the hands of Mu Sicheng, whose face was expressionless.

Bai Liu's attitude remained flat, as if he didn't feel he had said anything extraordinary, and finally Bai Liu looked to a numb-faced Mu Sicheng and added sincerely, "Of course, this is only my personal opinion, and it may not be so."

A long silence fell over the small rented room, with only the wind occasionally passing through Bai Liu's fingertips, blowing against the paper on which he had written the world's truth.

It's the height of summer, the sun is pouring in brilliantly through the window behind Bai Liu, it's midday, and you can hear the cicadas splashing noisily and the cars honking noisily outside.

But these visual and auditory experiences, which seem to be imbued with a sense of humanity, become black and white in an instant in Mu Sicheng's world, just like Bai Liu, who sits in front of his desk and watches him quietly and intently against the light, receding in the curling, data-driven multidimensional lines, disappearing in the gaps between his closed eyes.

The moment Bai Liu put down his pen, Mu Sicheng felt his ears ringing for a few seconds, as if for a moment he was not even breathing.

Reality is a game?

The promised land, which he had tried so hard to preserve from his vile desires, turned out to be nothing more than a game.

Mu Sicheng slumped back in his chair, the back of one hand resting on his eyes, the other dropping, and he remained in this position without speaking for a long time.

Bai Liu did not bother him.

After an unknown period of time, Mu Sicheng spoke with a sarcastic snort: " Bai Liu, I wonder if you made up such a horrible story to get me to join the league with you? It's a lie, isn't it? It's not true, is it?"

"Most of the real things in this world are horrible, where else would we get the material for our games?" Bai Liu got up and folded the paper with the words in it and put it in a book, turning to Mu Sicheng.

Mu Sicheng looks slyly at Bai Liu.

Bai Liu shrugged, "But it seems you're not quite ready to accept it, so emotionally I feel as though I should give you a buffer of escape and acceptance, so I'd say it's possible that this isn't the case, after all it could indeed be the first and second scenario too."

Mu Sicheng: "......"

Damn you, but what's the difference between that and just telling me it's the third case!

Mu Sicheng sat in his chair for a long time before he looked at Bai Liu in a bit of confusion and asked, "Bai Liu, if the reality we are in is just a game, then where is the real reality? Is there a real reality? What has real meaning for us? Why aren't you afraid of this game-like reality?"

Bai Liu was not dumbfounded by Mu Sicheng's barrage of questions and took a moment to ponder them.

"I've been asking myself questions like what reality really is and what makes the most sense to me since I was a teenager." Bai Liu spreads his hands, "But most of my peers couldn't understand me, except for one of my closest friends, and I've since realised that they probably won't think about it for the rest of their lives and can survive just fine in this false reality."

"Whether reality is a game or real, believe me, for the vast majority of people it doesn't really have any effect on them, to interpret it from an objective idealist point of view, one's objective perception of the being and the world constitutes the logical chain of human values, that as long as [I] am real and the things [I] seek are real, that world for [me is real."

Bai Liu says calmly, "It doesn't matter if the world is a game to me or whatever."

"As long as human currency exists, my desire for money will never be extinguished, and that is my truth and meaning."

"If you can't find your own meaning for a while, do you want to try using mine? " Bai Liu picked up the key hanging behind the door and looked back at the baffled Mu Sicheng, "Try chasing a visible currency, like the five hundred million points for winning a game competition?"

"In time, you might be able to buy as much reality as you want with your money." Bai Liu pushed open the door, "For five hundred million points, I think you could buy an Earth to use to create the kind of [real world] you want."

Mu Sicheng is silent for a moment with a twisted expression.

" Bai Liu, you're really an eloquent salesman, aren't you?"

Once again, he was convinced by this psychopath's bizarre logic!

"So your answer is?" Bai Liu asked with a raised eyebrow, "Join the league?"

Mu Sicheng gritted his teeth, "I'm in!" Then he quickly inquired, "But you have to get at least five players together, right? How else can we participate?"

"You don't have to worry about that, I'll sort it out, just wait for my notice." Bai Liu turned to Mu Sicheng and asked, "I'm going out for a hotpot dinner with my friends, are you coming?"

Mu Sicheng: "......"

Why are you in the mood for hotpot when it's so late?

Perhaps Mu Sicheng's overly grim expression gave away his questioning, Bai Liu pulled two discount coupons out of his pocket and waved them around, explaining briefly, "Because I have two discount coupons for a hot pot restaurant and they're going to expire if I don't eat them today."

Mu Sicheng: "......"

Mu Sicheng is no match for Bai Liu's psychological strength, and after declining Bai Liu's invitation to join him for hot pot, Mu Sicheng and Bai Liu exchanged contact details and school addresses and went back to the dormitory alone to think about life.

Bai Liu walks out with two hotpot discount coupons in his pocket, looking happy, not at all like he's just come out of a game of life and death or just revealed the truth about the magical world in front of Mu Sicheng.

Mu Sicheng sighed, unbelievably and breathlessly, "You look like you're actually in a good mood?"

"Right." Bai Liu nodded in acknowledgement and he arched his eyes and smiled, "It's sort of my off time, I'm certainly in a good mood."

Mu Sicheng: "......"

He was reminded again of Bai Liu's horror game theory of going to work.

FUCK!!! This guy really thinks he's off duty!!!

This brawny mentality - what kind of environment does this guy have to be in to raise a monster?!

But Bai Liu said goodbye to a dazed Mu Sicheng and then went to Lu Yizhan.

Bai Liu woke up to find that Lu Yizhan had called him twice, but since he didn't answer either time in the game, Bai Liu sent Lu Yizhan a text message asking him what was wrong, and Lu Yizhan said he would talk to him in person.

When it came to talking to him in person, Bai Liu thought that he was likely to be out of contact for the next two months, and if he disappeared without a word, Lu Yizhan, a police officer, would definitely report him. He then asked Lu Yizhan to meet him at the hotpot restaurant by text message and was ready to talk to Lu Yizhan face to face.

When Bai Liu arrived at the hot pot restaurant, it was still early and the restaurant was not crowded. He ordered a pot base and some dishes, checked with the owner that the coupons were still valid and waited honestly.

Before the owner went down to the shop, he turned on the TV for Bai Liu, which was broadcasting a news programme at noon.

The male presenter in a suit on the TV crossed his arms in front of the table in a serious manner and broadcast the report in a very formal voice.

"Welcome to the Midday News column, recently, the key evidence of the crime of the major suspect in the case of the crushed body of a senior girl, Li Mou, was finally found ...... Li's crime, if true, can be sentenced to a maximum of up to the death penalty, but before the trial came down, yesterday, Li was in prison, suddenly by a similarly guilty of The murderous crime was committed by a fellow prisoner, Wang Mou, who was knifed to pieces ......"

The male presenter lowered his head and flipped through the script on his desk and continued to look up to broadcast.

"Recently, a small-scale food poisoning incident suddenly broke out in a privately donated orphanage in our city. A large number of children from the orphanage were admitted to the hospital in an emergency, and the police intervened to investigate and found that the orphanage was on the verge of closing down due to poor operations, so many cheap ingredients were purchased, many of which were rotten and spoiled, causing the children to suffer from diarrhea and vomiting after eating them, and serious cases of dehydration and shock ...... We are calling on the community to donate to the orphanage ......"

Bai Liu is watching with great interest when Lu Yizhan arrives with a tired and dusty face.

Bai Liu's standard social animal face tells me that this man has been up late a lot.

Lu Yizhan sat down and poured himself a couple of sips of tea before looking at Bai Liu and starting to complain incessantly and painfully: "I've lost it! You don't know how busy I've been! I'm dying! I don't even have time to have a sip of tea in the morning!"

"It hasn't been more than a few days since I last had dinner with you, has it?" Bai Liu's eyebrows rose, "Is getting ready to get married so horrible?"

Lu Yizhan waved his hand wearily as he looked up to see the news on the TV, his face changed and he approached the waiter to lower his voice: "It's not just about the wedding, waiter, can we get a different private room?"

The waiter was quick to give Bai Liu and Lu Yizhan a smaller room as the crowd was still small.

Lu Yizhan's face is stony as soon as he enters the room, and he takes a cigarette out to smoke.

Bai Liu has not seen Lu Yizhan smoking for a long time, after he got a girlfriend, he has become a 24-year-old boyfriend, smoking, playing games and cards, all these bad habits have been quit, out for a bottle of coke are sneaky, because his girlfriend, no, now I'm talking about his fiancee.

Lu Yizhan's fiancée was so convinced that Coke was a spermicide that she forbade Lu Yizhan to drink any carbonated drinks.

Bai Liu says it's a good thing Lu Yizhan's fiancée doesn't know that beer is a type of carbonated beverage, or Lu Yizhan would have been deprived of his only pleasure in life, drinking and eating barbecue.

Bai Liu smiled calmly and asked Lu Yizhan, who was smoking with a bitter look on his face, "Should I now ask with concern, what's wrong Lu Yizhan, why are you smoking? Didn't you swear that you would never touch a soft drug like cigarettes again except when the world collapsed? What, your world collapsed in a matter of days after I left?"

"Cough, cough, cough!" Lu Yizhan choked on his cigarette as Bai Liu teased him, and he couldn't hold back his laughter, Lu Yizhan is a very standard and very old-age friendly kind of young man with a very square and airy look, and his smile is a bit naive and handsome, " Bai Liu, just ask the question! You don't have to bring up my black history of middle-agedness!"

"Go ahead." Bai Liu poured Lu Yizhan a cup of tea and pushed it over, "I'm off work now and can waste a little of my precious time listening to the life troubles that brought your world crashing down."

"It's true that there are a lot of things to worry about when you get married." Lu Yizhan took the cup of tea Bai Liu handed him and was silent for a few seconds, "But it's not marriage that bothers me the most, you saw the news about the toddler orphanage on TV just now, right?"

Bai Liu nodded, "I saw it, why?"

"One of my colleagues is dealing with this, he said it doesn't look like normal food poisoning, many of the children are being rescued urgently, no concrete results have been investigated yet." Lu Yizhan wrinkled his eyebrows, "But mushroom poisoning, you and I have been in orphanages before, Mirror City is not a mushroom producing area, mushroom prices are high, orphanages here rarely buy mushrooms, a relatively expensive and accident prone vegetarian dish, and it's a privately donated orphanage on the verge of closing down... ..."

"All in all I don't think this is right, but the solution at the moment is still leaning towards keeping this orphanage, the children left inside it are not actually well secured until it's checked out ......"

"It sounds like it's quite complicated." Bai Liu asked calmly and rhetorically, "But then what's it to you Lu Yizhan, even though you're a police officer, it's not your job, is it?"

Lu Yizhan was silent for a while and said, "I volunteered to go and participate in the investigation team."

Bai Liu looked at Lu Yizhan for a moment and did not say anything.

"As you know I'm getting married soon, Sister Dot (Lu Yizhan's fiancée) is not in good health ...... the doctor said there's a good chance she won't be able to conceive, and we discussed adopting a child before we got pregnant ...... " Lu Yizhan's fingers clasped his glass and he smiled bitterly, " Bai Liu, I know you must think I'm too impulsive and I'm not in a very good financial position now ......"

Lu Yizhan breathes in: "But after discussing with my sister, I am going to adopt a child from this orphanage, after all, one less child in that unstable situation is better, after all, I also came from the orphanage, so it is considered giving back to the society."

"So what is your purpose in telling me something that you know I would not approve of?" Bai Liu inquired in a calm tone, "What do you want me to do for you?"

Lu Yizhan fiddled with the cigarette on his fingertips, without speaking.

The waiter came and served a fiery red pot that gurgled and bubbled between the two silent people.

Then Lu Yizhan spoke up as if to himself, " Bai Liu, I actually hate to get you involved in this kind of thing, but your brain is just too good at this kind of thing."

"If something involves a lot of criminal interest, you can almost immediately guess what the other side is going to do next, you're a genius at this."

Bai Liu took an expressionless sip of his tea, "I'll take that as a compliment, it's not the first time you've been nosy and approached me, just say what's on your mind."

"Can you help me with this one?" Lu Yizhan looked up at Bai Liu, "My colleague's side of the investigation is stuck on the idea, before about this kind of thing to you you gave me all the right ideas to break the game, so ......"

The land station seems to have a few difficult to open: "I know I am meddling, but I know, there is no way to watch and not care, are some children ......"

Bai Liu raised his hand and unwrapped a pair of disposable chopsticks with a "pop", interrupting Lu Yizhan before he could finish his sentence: "I can help you look, but I won't do it for free. "

Lu Yizhan nods, already familiar with Bai Liu's request for remuneration.

"And I only have one day to help you with your nosiness. " Bai Liu said, "I'm going on a business trip tomorrow and won't be back for two months."

Lu Yizhan was shocked: "Two months? That long? What exactly do you do in this job? If it's an acting job like you said last time, it doesn't take that long, does it?"

Bai Liu paused for a moment, considering the game's shielding mechanics, and said it differently, "This time I'm going to take a monkey and a little young master some people team up and play a game on stage to perform for the audience for two months."

"......" Lu Yizhan's expression was very mixed, "Is this really a legitimate job for you?"

Bai Liu said, "It's legal."

"A monkey and a young master, and games for the audience, and legal, and a show for two months ......" Lu Yizhan thought for a moment, slapped his thigh in realization, looked at Bai Liu and made a firm judgement. "You're a circus team, right? You're going on tour in two months, right?"

"......" Bai Liu was silent for a few seconds, "Yes."

------

Bai Liu went home and looked at some of the information Lu Yizhan had given him about the private orphanage.

Most of the children's homes in their world are public orphanages run by the government, and Bai Liu and Lu Yizhan both came out of such public institutions.

Lu Yizhan was raised to be a kind-hearted and grateful young man, who aspired to be a police officer and serve society from a young age.

If Lu Yizhan hadn't kept Bai Liu on a tight leash to keep him on the path of compliance, it's hard to say what Bai Liu, a psychopath, would have done for money.

But this time the orphanage was not a public one, but a private one set up by a large group of corporate philanthropists who joined together ten years ago.

Many of these entrepreneurs were said to be terminally ill, and in accordance with the traditional practice of "when one is about to die, one does good", these people donated a large sum of money to build this private orphanage, saying that they wanted to do something good before they died, which won a lot of praise at the time, and Lu Yizhan also praised this act.

Coincidentally, shortly after the construction of the children's home, the entrepreneurs' illnesses improved as if [good deeds were rewarded].

The entrepreneurs gradually became less interested in the home and it fell into disrepair within ten years.

After reading the information given by Lu Yizhan, Bai Liu understood why he felt something was wrong.

The poorly run private children's home has been the scene of all sorts of accidents, most of them involving mushroom poisoning of various kinds, only this one was the biggest.

Lu Yizhan said that all these food poisoning accidents piled up together did not look like accidents at first glance, but after investigating, there was indeed no trace of any crime, either deliberate poisoning or simple accidental food poisoning, the same as in this case.

It was as if some higher being had erased all clues beyond "accidental food poisoning".

Lu Yizhan even wondered if there was a problem within their ranks and some trace of the crime had been deliberately erased.

Bai Liu From the point of view of an inhumane game designer, this is just natural material for a horror game - an endangered children's home, and a wacky accident with food poisoning, and children dying horribly from it.

Bai Liu was more suspicious of the erasure than Lu Yizhan's suspicion that someone inside had erased the traces of the crime, and if his previous suspicions were correct -

-- He felt that this children's home was most likely a [copy of a horror game] that was being dropped into the [real world].

------

The next morning, early in the morning, Bai Liu was woken up by Lu Yizhan's life-threatening series of calls, and when he picked up the phone, Lu Yizhan's tone was more serious than ever: "Bai Liu, come to the First People's Hospital in Mirror City, the child brought to the hospital last night... The child brought to the hospital last night -"

"A lot of dead people, huh?" Bai Liu stated the following calmly.

Across the table Lu Yizhan breathed in and then exhaled slowly as he spoke, "Did you find out anything?"

"Not yet." Bai Liu said quite frankly, "But I gather from the information you've given me that if someone deliberately poisoned the mushrooms, and the other party repeated it so many times, the aim would have been to kill people, and this time it was so serious that I think the mushrooms consumed by these children brought into the hospital would have been lethal amounts."

"...... Yes, many of them died in resuscitation." Lu Yizhan's voice was hard and dry, "but one child is still alive."

"There's a living child?" Bai Liu clearly sensed that something was wrong.

If this children's home was a [copy of a horror game] that [the system] was dropping into the real world, the odds are that the group of children in the background of the game would have been wiped out, just like the passengers in that carriage in Bursting Last Train.

Bai Liu asked softly, "Can I come over?"

Lu Yizhan: "Yes, you can, come over here."

By the time Bai Liu got dressed, the hospital doors were packed with journalists from all walks of life.

Bai Liu was picked up by Lu Yizhan from the operating theatre lift. As he passed through the operating theatre, he could see the corridors lined with tiny bodies with their heads covered in white cloths, so many that some of them hadn't had time to be taken away, piling up in twisted heaps in the corridors of the operating theatre, turning it into a mini-morgue.

Every now and then a numb-faced nurse would come up and push the dead children's bodies down, occasionally hitting the wall and a small, bruised hand with various corpse spots would emerge from beneath the white cloth.

These spots and some haematomas bulge on the surface of the child's body, as if they were patterns of mushrooms spread across the back of the corpse's small hands, as if a mushroom would break out of the corpse's skin in the next moment.

A disgusting smell of fermented mushrooms filled the operating theatre, as if the mushrooms, which had been accidentally eaten by children, had been fermented overnight using the freshly dead bodies as a medium, decaying and full of the vitality of the fungal species.

Bai Liu withdrew his surveying gaze without moving, and he looked sideways at Lu Yizhan, waiting past the operating theatre before speaking softly and asking, "Are you sure these children died only last night? The decomposition of these bodies doesn't look right."

"Yes." Lu Yizhan rubbed his forehead, "The corpse spots appeared densely too early, and the timing of the stiffness was wrong."

Bai Liu squints at Lu Yizhan: "What's wrong with that?"

Lu Yizhan paused at these words of Bai Liu, leaning against the wall and lighting a cigarette, taking several large puffs, the whole corner of the staircase was filled with smoke, indicating that Lu Yizhan was in an extremely bad mood.

"The corpse spots all emerged from the child's body within minutes of establishing death, appearing and spreading rapidly, which is usually the case when death is more than 24 hours old." Lu Yizhan used the thumb of his cigarette-lit hand to dislike his brow, trying to dislike the tight frown, but it didn't seem to have much effect, "The corpse ...... also hardened rapidly after death and was already in the soft decay stage in the early hours of this morning, which is usually the case more than 24 hours before it occurs."

"It's almost like ......" Lu Yizhan said after a pause, "the group of poisoned children died before they got to the hospital."

As they walked, they reached the stairs of the ward on the floor of the children's emergency ward and could see the bodies of the children covered with hoods on the beds in the corridor of the hospital ward through the half-opened door of the emergency exit, and the nurses who were putting the bodies into body bags.

The faces of those children's corpses were not the greenish white of the dead, they were also colourful raised spots.

Bai Liu knew that some mushroom poisoning could cause this allergy-like ringworm phenomenon, but the spots on these children's faces were so dense that they looked like a colour blindness test and raised on the surface of the skin, and Bai Liu was not afraid to look at them with a mild discomfort.

It feels like a human face full of mushrooms that haven't sprouted yet underneath.