Chapter 77: Children's Home

While Bai Liu was contemplating with his doll, the teacher had gone to call the remaining five children over.

The five children left in the orphanage stand in a line with a shifty, slightly numb expression, none of them even daring to look up at Muke, their eyes seeming to grow on their toes, some limping, some with crooked spines and bent backs, all handicapped in one way or another, like a bunch of cubs still in the nest, five children pushing and shoving together.

They are like cheap goods to be scrutinised, cowering and reticent because they know they are not worth much.

Bai Liu frowned as soon as he got close to the children, who smelt of mushrooms even more than he had smelled from the bodies in the hospital.

Muke waved his hand over his nose in disgust: "Do you eat mushrooms all the time here? What's with the big mushroom smell?"

The teacher hugged the five children a little awkwardly: "It's not really eaten,"

Bai Liu's eyes swept over the teacher and the five children: "Did you eat a lot of mushrooms that day?"

The teacher froze, "We ate it with all five of these kids, and, well, it was quite a lot."

"And did any of the children who were poisoned eat less? For example, those who only had a mouthful of mushroom soup?" Bai Liu asked.

The teacher thought back for a moment, and then replied to Bai Liu in the affirmative: "Yes, because some children liked the taste of the mushroom and some did not, and some ate only a small amount, but they were still poisoned."

Bai Liu withdrew his eyes. Those who ate a lot were not poisoned and those who ate less were also poisoned, and it seems that poisoning has nothing to do with dosage.

But why mushrooms ...... Why is it that every time something happens to this orphanage it's mushrooms?

And what exactly are the conditions for this bizarre mushroom poisoning?

Lu Yizhan said that the children who survived the orphanage had no significant abnormalities in their blood draws and various results, and like Liu Jiayi, had only a slight degree of anaemia.

The five surviving children and Liu Jiayi, who survived the hospital, appear to have only one thing in common - they all have congenital genetic defects, Liu Jiayi is blind, and the five children have various disabilities.

Bai Liu is deep in thought.

The teacher continued to show Bai Liu around the orphanage, walking them into a room full of photos, trophies, and drawings of children.

The teacher sidled up to Bai Liu and introduced them, "This is the exhibition hall of our orphanage."

It was a long-unvisited exhibition hall, and many of the trophies and certificates displayed on the cabinets were dusty, so it was clear that this was a children's home that had developed quite well in its day. Only five survived, and these five children are following their teacher with numb expressions.

This sense that most of the things being exhibited are from the dead gives this exhibition room a lingering sense of sombreness.

After a general glance, Bai Liu seemed to notice something and looked at Mr. Xiang: "Can I take down the photos and some of the paintings?"

Originally they were not to be touched lightly, but now that the children's home is in such a state, there is not so much preoccupation, and the teacher nodded in agreement.

Muke watched with curiosity as Bai Liu took some children's drawings off the wall and laid them on the floor for observation, and he went over to him and asked him in a whisper, "Bai Liu, have you found anything?"

"Hmm." Bai Liu answered softly, not giving Muke an eye, fiddling with the children's drawings in his hands.

Muke's eyes follow Bai Liu's hands and the children's drawings are quite good, and I can tell that they are done by children with some drawing skills.

The drawings range from sketches of people to still lifes, from coloured pencils and crayons to simple black and white sketches, and the styles vary greatly, with most of the drawings being very colourful and saturated to the point of being unpleasant to the eye, and the drawings looking illogical.

A little girl who looks too thin to be sitting on a hospital bed with a white cloth over her eyes, a beautiful little silvery-blue scaled fish in a jar, and a broken wooden mirror on a charred and melted toy train.

The paintings look like all the things this orphanage has.

Muke stared at it for a while and noticed something, and he spoke with a little surprise: "All these, are they all painted by one person? They're all signed with a W."

Although the style of the paintings Bai Liu has taken down varies widely, the [W] in each painting is written in that peculiar two-sided scrolling flower style that remains consistent from painting to painting.

Bai Liu finally managed to give Muke a look, and his voice was low and soft, as if he were whispering, "This is my signature."

Muke was shocked: "Yours? Why is your drop here?!"

Muke wanted to know, but when he saw that Bai Liu was not prepared to talk about it, he just shut up.

The initials [W] for white are a customary mark for Bai Liu's paintings.

Bai Liu could tell at a glance that they were his paintings, and although they were more youthful and juvenile than his current painting technique, they were indeed his paintings.

The little girl with the blindfold over her eyes is obviously Liu Jiayi, the hospital gown is the same as the one he saw in the hospital this morning, the beautiful silvery-blue fish in the jar refers to the first game, Siren King, and the broken mirror on the melting toy train is Bai Liu's second game, Bursting Last Train.

But the paintings are all dated ten years ago, and Bai Liu was not even in this private orphanage ten years ago, and there is no way that Bai Liu could have known this information ten years ago.

There is only one possibility then, that Bai Liu, ten years later, has somehow gone back ten years and then painted over these children's drawings and left them in this private children's home.

Ordinary people would have panicked when they encountered such an unthinkable thing, but this only further confirmed to Bai Liu that this children's home must be some [official game copy] of the [real world].

The only plausible explanation for these timeline mismatches is the time of the official plot progression of this copy of the game, which, judging by the fall of these paintings he left behind, I fear was not now, but ten years ago.

Bai Liu's fingertips skimmed over the inscriptions on these paintings, his gaze sinking slightly.

It is likely that he would have entered this game in the future and left some sort of trace inside this [copy of the Children's Home game] from ten years ago, and with the loading of this [official version of the game copy] into the [real world], loaded Bai Liu's trace that he had left in the game into the Home in the present timeline.

This is not a good thing.

The player's mark remains forever in a copy of the game, something that usually happens when you fail to pass a level, just like Zhang Gui's death and alienation into a scorched corpse monster that remains forever in a copy of Burst Last Train, these marks of death and failure become part of the game and are enshrined in reality with the copy.

But the doomed end did not deter Bai Liu, who thought calmly.

There are two other things Bai Liu is currently wondering about, and his eyes slowly fall on the face of a boy in the corner of the first children's group photo from 200X.

There was no emotion in the boy's face, a sense of [you foolish mortals] in the way he squinted at people, a sense of aloofness that was out of place, a fourteen-year-old Bai Liu looked again at the paintings with their sharp, colourful strokes.

The feeling of this photo shoot, and this style of drawing, is indeed the look he liked to use when he was fourteen years old, the usual pose when taking pictures.

Bai Liu stopped using this colourful style a long time ago, because it was too flamboyant and was criticized by his boss after he was stuck a few times for being mentally polluted and not well accepted by the market.

The paintings and the [Bai Liu] pictured on them are indeed the style he was used to when he was fourteen, and the strange thing is that the information revealed on them is indeed, again, information that only a twenty-four-year-old Bai Liu would know, and now the question is - if it were a twenty-four-year-old him in this game, then Bai Liu is quite sure that he would not have painted in this way.

And if the game is set up in such a way that Bai Liu's memory physically regresses in every way to ten years ago, it is unlikely that he would know information that only he knows now.

This is a Bai Liu with the memories of a twenty-four year old, but with the style and personality of a fourteen year old. Logically Bai Liu finds it unlikely because memory is an important factor in determining a person's style and personality, and if he has the memories of the latter ten years, he will never be the same as he was ten years ago.

Bai Liu, aged fourteen and twenty-four, exists in the game copy of [The Children's Home Ten Years Ago] in a fragmented manner, which is the first point of Bai Liu's confusion.

The second point of confusion is - Bai Liu looks at the figure sketch, a black and white figure sketch of a girl sitting on a hospital bed holding a doll, curled up holding her knees, with a white cloth over her eyes, a very finely drawn figure sketch.

However, Bai Liu clearly remembers that he hated sketching at the age of fourteen, because he was fond of strong colours at that time, and sketching, which was a relatively strong documentary style, was something Bai Liu rejected at that time.

Why did fourteen-year-old Bai Liu give Liu Jiayi a sketch of a figure he hated, when Liu Jiayi was not even born yet and should not have had any marks.

Does it mean that Liu Jiayi will also enter this copy?

But even if Liu Jiayi had entered the game, she would have been a newcomer, and normally her first copy would have been a single-player game, and this one is clearly a multiplayer copy, unless Liu Jiayi had quickly cleared her first game and then entered the multiplayer game Bai Liu was in, where she appears in the painting.

But Liu Huai, a veteran player with some experience, would not have allowed his sister to be so adventurous.

So why is this little friend here?

Bai Liu thoughtfully scanned the entire painting, finally stopping to look at the doll held in Liu Jiayi's hand in that face -

--The doll in the painting, white shirt and black trousers, is held in the hands of a little girl, her face turned back towards the outside and smiling, and at first glance there seems to be nothing wrong with it, but Bai Liu notices something wrong after staring at it for a while longer.

The doll's head was turned back too far, not like a turn back, like the head had been twisted a hundred and eighty degrees.

Bai Liu looked at the picture and fiddled with the coin that hung from his heart, his eyes slightly frozen.