Chapter 90: Loving Orphanage

"You said you kissed a silver-blue-tailed mermaid living in a jar, and a ghost in a mirror about to explode on a burning train?" Little Bai Liu tsked in a Buming tone, "You sound like you have a slightly unusual emotional history."

Bai Liu was unconcerned, "It's just a character in a game, but you haven't hung up after listening to me for so long today, so what, you want to fight me for three hours?"

"If I may, I do want to play you for the full three hours." little Bai six said tersely, "After all it's billed by the minute, and it's a rare day when everyone is running to get the attention of that monstrous child, and so far only I, Muke, have managed to call and inform his investors of what's going to happen tomorrow."

"But that little blind girl Liu Jiayi is fast too, she can't see but she keeps walking against the wall, I just covered her a bit to lure away the deformed kid on her side, she should be back from her call soon."

"The two remaining children were quite fast runners, Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang as I recall, and although they called they kept crying and didn't give a clear explanation to the people across the street that they were going to invite the investors over to watch the ceremony tomorrow."

little Bai six ran and explained the situation to Bai Liu quickly, with some wheezing in his voice, but still very well organized: "And you can rest assured that I was more alert, when I didn't know that you and the two kids' investors had a grudge, Muke and I avoided them when we ran, so they didn't find out we were calling together. We've never been spotted together on the phone, and it's probably because they ran amok and attracted the monster's attention that it was so easy for the other three of us to call tonight."

"Oh yes, I forgot to tell you, there was more than one deformed child tonight." little Bai six added in a calm tone, "There were three, different deformities, not even the one from last night, one was crouching and crawling on all fours with purple lips, one had deformed limbs that were all folded inwards, his feet would turn inwards and limp when he ran, his limbs were in a strange proportion to his head, and another had abnormal white hair and skin, just now I hid on the slide and looked, and did not see very well, but this child's eyes but should be purple."

Bai Liu, who is still familiar with some of the common deformities from his time at the orphanage, ponders, "It sounds a bit like precordial, osteogenesis imperfecta, and albinism."

All are congenital genetic disorders and largely overlap with those of the five children who survived in the real world.

Bai Liu was quick to spot two peculiar points.

First: while it is true that there is a disproportionate number of disabled children in orphanages, it is already a very special point that those who die and those who survive are children with certain specific congenital genetic disorders, and what does this special point mean?

Second: Why do deformed children in the real world survive, while those in this world have turned into ghosts?

The first point Bai Liu needs more information to reason with, but the second point Bai Liu feels he has already come up with an answer.

Bai Liu played with the tattered coin on his chest with his fingers as if in a moment of understanding, lost in thought -

-- According to the information given so far in this copy, normal children, that is, children without deformities were attracted to the sound of the flute and disappeared, and have not reappeared since, and the way these deformed children currently die Buming, they can indeed turn into monsters after death and come out to roam and play.

But not without death.

From the rules that Bai Liu knows about this game copy of Love Welfare Home, these six children with congenital defects in reality, including Liu Jiayi, should exist as npc-like [deformed children] projected into the reality copy of Love Welfare Home, and all these deformed children npc in this Love Welfare Home died, so correspondingly back, these six The children who have not yet had an accident in reality are the ones who are likely to die in order to fit the pattern of this copy.

But the six children are currently under the close watch of Lu Yizhan in reality, and the likelihood of their death is very low; instead, the only one who could die and be turned into a monster is the dangerous Liu Jiayi, who has entered the game.

But judging from the system's usual planning - in order to fit the game logic of the copy - these real-life children will most likely still have to die.

The question then is if they were to die, how would they die?

"So it's quite possible that the deformed kids who survived reality will eventually die, but they were alive when I entered the game, and if they die, it will be because of what manner of death ......"

Bai Liu leans against the wall and mutters to himself.

The game loading cannot be out of the ordinary, forcing the data of [npc death] to be loaded, the [real world] will most likely be buggy, and it will be noticed by [Lu Yizhan ] npc who are observing this case closely that something is wrong, of course the system can use rogue means to delete the memory data of all npc who are concerned about this matter, but the [player's] memory cannot be deleted, Bai Liu will know that this There is a bug in the place, but if so the official version [of the real world] would be lost to many [players].

So the question is, how should these six kids die in a way that is logical to the game and the world and not considered a forced loaded bug?

Bai Liu suddenly remembered the pile of corpses he had seen that day at the hospital and what Lu Yizhan had said to him with a gloomy expression.

[The group of children entered the hospital with baseline normal signs, but suddenly started having seizures a day later ...... Both the necrotic spots and the rigor mortis appeared too early, and it felt like the deaths were delayed long before they appeared later ......]

Yes, that's the point, delayed death.

Bai Liu suddenly thought of this point - it was the most logical, realistic and conventional way to load a death without arousing the suspicion of the NPCs.

It is not that the six children were not poisoned by the mushrooms, it is more likely that they were more resistant to the mushrooms than the other children and that the signs of poisoning were delayed until later in the game, so the children had not shown any signs until Bai Liu entered the game, but that does not mean that they would not have shown signs of poisoning.

Or rather they are in the process of dying, but medical tests don't work on them, so no one except Bai Liu in the game has found out about it yet.

The discovery of the six deformed children who had come back from the dead was still shrouded in the shadow of death.

Bai Liu's eyes narrowed - and if the real-world copy was a loading of the game copy, would these kids in and out of the game die the same way?

Little Bai six does not disturb Bai Liu's silence as he quietly waits for Bai Liu's next enquiry and does not hang up - after all, he is paid by the minute.

Bai Liu suddenly asked him after a moment of silence, "Have you had mushrooms at the orphanage today lately?"

"No." little Bai six was succinct, "I'm fairly sensitive to the taste of mushrooms, and I don't think I've ever eaten food that didn't have any bit of mushroom in it."

"Did those deformed kids running after you smell like mushrooms?" Bai Liu asked again in a different vein.

little Bai six answered quickly, "I don't know, we've been so far away from them, not close enough to smell them, do you need me to get close enough to confirm? Certainly not for free."

"No, not yet." Bai Liu quickly dismissed little Bai six's overly bold suggestion, "These kids aren't slow, and if no one else diverts their attention and you get too close, you could easily be caught."

Moreover, according to the monster book's description of these [deformed children], the player's children are completely missing when caught, and Bai Liu's life expectancy is now only six, and what he said to little Bai six earlier wasn't all a lie - he still has plenty of life expectancy compared to himself! Little Bai six is indeed far more important than himself, and Bai Liu will now do everything he can to ensure the safety of this overly money-grubbing child.

"But you do need me close, right?" Little Bai six spoke in a cool tone.

"Right." Bai Liu was honest, "Not only do I need you to get close, I need you to find the weaknesses of these deformed children."

He needs to unlock the weaknesses of these monsters in the monster book, and rely on them to control these monstrous children who wander out every night, which is much safer than letting them chase their own children every night, after all, this monstrous child's missing attack Bai Liu thinks is more unknown and scary than the plant patient's blood-sucking attack, which can be a one-hit kill.

There are no children missing yet, most likely simply because these deformed children are so targeted and spread out that once they are targeted, it would be easy to capture them.

What also strikes Bai Liu as dangerous is that last night there was one, tonight there are three, and the number of these deformed children seems to be increasing.

"I do need you to get close to these children to help me find out their weaknesses, it is important to me and of course I will pay you for it." Bai Liu said softly, "But not tonight little friend, tonight is too dangerous for me to sacrifice you for something like this, we'll do this tomorrow night after I find a way to protect you."

There was an eerie silence on the other side, and after about a minute, little Bai six quickly changed the subject as if he hadn't heard anything: "Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang are in the house, and the three kids are coming after me, Mr. Investor, the total call tonight is thirty-one minutes, so I'll give you zero thirty minutes, for a total of three thousand, you already owe me six thousand."

Little Bai Six's tone was polite yet aggressive: "It's not a good habit to owe underage escorts wages, so I hope you can pay me the six grand when we meet tomorrow, thank you and good evening, Mr. Investor."

As was the way yesterday, by this time little Bai six would have simply hung up a bit, but today he didn't hang up after he finished.

Bai Liu could hear his breathing as he ran across the open ground, the giggling of the children chasing him behind him, the gasps and cries that little Muke was trying so hard to suppress, the sound of running feet gradually going from rapid to slow, the texture of their footsteps changing from the feel of rustling sand to the hard stomp of concrete, the eerie laughter of the children behind them fading away --they should be heading back to their rooms.

Little Muke was struggling to run after little Bai six, a little boy who had been pulled by little Bai six all night and whose face was purple from a bad heart, but who continued to run with good grace, clenching his teeth and not crying, as if he knew it was for his own good that little Bai six was pulling him along.

Because little Muke knew he wouldn't make it to the end of the night to call his investors if little Bai six didn't pull him along.

If there is no way to inform the investor, he will not be able to attend the christening tomorrow, which is a very serious matter for the children entering the orphanage and they may be punished for it.

And if it wasn't for little Bai six's investor who said he wanted little Bai six to look after him tonight, a kid like little Bai six, who is so aloof, would not have cared about little Muke.

Little Muke stole a glance at the phone in little Bai six's hand, but why did this kind investor gentleman want little Bai six to help him?

And little Bai six, why haven't they hung up yet? They are already running into the room where they are sleeping and the teacher will see them and scold them.

"Is there something else you want to say?" Bai Liu made a sagacious start, "You're going back to your room, aren't you? Why haven't you hung up yet? You want more of my money that badly?"

"...... These minutes don't count towards your money." little Bai six The breath hadn't yet passed evenly and the tone of his voice had an unspoken low tone as if he was hiding something he said as fast as he could, "The two horror games you talked about tonight are great, you can get credit for them."

Bai Liu raised an eyebrow in surprise, "Being so nice to me tonight? Another zero wipe and offset..."

"Beep beep beep-"

The person on the other end hung up the phone without hesitation.

Bai Liu: "......"

This is clearly meant to compliment him on how well he plays the game, was he such a twisted persona when he was 14?

Wow, how disgusting.

Bai Liu put away the phone and his eyes fell on the overly damp straw bed and his eyes suddenly narrowed.

Tonight he had been smelling a faint odour of decaying plants on the patient, he had been so focused on fighting Miao Feichi and the others that he hadn't tried to identify what the smell was, except that it was a humus-like plant smell, much like rotting straw, but there was something else that lay beneath the strong smell of straw.

Bai Liu touched his neck where he had been bitten, where the mucus of the plant patient's mouth still remained. Bai Liu scraped a bit of it off with his fingertips and placed it on his nose to smell it carefully - the smell of his blood, the smell of damp decaying straw, and underneath the smell of straw there was a very light... ...

Bai Liu calmly puts his finger in his mouth.

--There is also a very light hint of mushroom flavour in the mucus.

You can't smell it, but you can taste it.

Here the children are not eating mushrooms, instead the patients are eating them?

The only thing the patients in the ICU ate was the [medication] that that nurse brought into each ward.

But [the drug] is clearly not a mushroom, because [the drug] is a liquid, and although it cannot be ruled out that this liquid contains mushrooms, Bai Liu feels that the other scenario is more likely than that possibility.

Bai Liu's gaze is fixed on the bed of straw in front of him.

He went up and circled around the straw bed, and the more he looked at it, the more he felt a very strange sense of vestigiality. The thing did look like a bed, but such dim lighting, the 24-hour vapour, and the thick, overly thick and mouldy straw - all these conditions combined made Bai Liu think that this place More like a standard mushroom culture room than a bed, and the straw bed is the mushroom culture medium.

Bai Liu's hand lifted the white sheet to reveal a large, yellowish straw, and with a couple of flicks you could see mushrooms sprouting from the roots attached to the rotting straw. -Bai Liu's orphanage also had a child who almost didn't survive after eating them.

Bai Liu's fingers rummaged through the mushrooms sprouting from the straw, and after confirming that the mushrooms growing in the bed were some common species, he pondered.

The patients weren't eating the mushrooms Bai Liu saw - so what were they eating?

Bai Liu's eyes fell on the straw bed. When he was in the ICU, because the plant patient had been lying on the bed, motionless like a vegetable, and Bai Liu's life expectancy was not high, Bai Liu did not disturb the patient alone, looking to confirm whether the mushrooms growing under the straw bed where he was sleeping were also common mushrooms that grew on their bed. The mushrooms were of a common species.

Now it seems likely that everyone's [cultures], i.e. beds, don't grow the same mushrooms.

But the question is why are these different? And what variety of mushroom is growing?

Bai Liu felt that the answer to everything was hidden in what the system said was the [recipe for renewal].

" Muke ." Bai Liu muttered to himself as if with a low sigh, "Now it's up to you to find out, overnight, exactly what the [life-renewal remedy] these patients are taking is."

------

ICU ward.

Muke crawled morosely out from under the chaotic bed and stood up with a gasp, holding onto it.

He was still a little dizzy when he stood up and sat down on the hospital bed again with a gasp before taking a few steps.

Muke sat on the bed where Bai Liu had been before, and he collapsed in a heap, burying his head under the blanket with Bai Liu's scent, like a stillborn chick burying its head under the wings of its mother, an act of security.

His hands and feet were trembling with fear from his death, and although Muke had just drank a few bottles of psycho-bleach under his hospital bed to restore his mental strength and basically his sanity, Muke's vitality was so depleted that he was in a very poor state of health.

He had had so much blood sucked out of him that he fell into a cold and almost shock-like state of blood loss, and his arms and legs just kept shaking as if in convulsions.

Muke gritted his teeth and curled up under the Bai Liu smelling duvet, shaking his left hand and pushing his right hand down, trying to recover as quickly as possible, his eyes were red, he really thought he was going to die when the creature kept sucking blood, and by the end Muke's eyes were glazed over, the veins on the back of his hand were deflating.

But he had to be sucked in to such an extent that he and Bai Liu presented themselves in a similar state, and Bai Liu was able to successfully impersonate him and enter Miao Feichi's team.

Muke closed his eyes as he recalled the plan Bai Liu had explained to him earlier, which would distract him and make him feel better.

Bai Liu's plan was simple and bold: a game of paper cups and oranges.

The investors' identical shells are the three paper cups, and the Bai Liu underneath is the orange that Miao Feichi is trying to guess.

But this simple plan has many complications that need to be addressed.

First of all, Muke's eyes fall on the three paper cups of varying sizes Bai Liu has placed on the table and he frowns: "You don't look exactly the same as the patient in the ward, he's more slender than you."

"Yes, that's right, and it's not just that, Miao Feichi and his son are S-rank players, they can totally disobey our rules of the game." Bai Liu rotates the three paper cups in his hands quickly, his tone unhurried, "They have the ability to just crush all three of them and then check who's the orange they want underneath - which is me."

Bai Liu calmly squeezed the three different sized paper cups in his hand, revealing the orange bursting underneath, and then tossed them into the bin as if nothing had happened.

Muke swallowed slowly, "...... What about that?"

"So as a first step, we have to make them think that these three paper cups, which they don't have the ability to easily pinch flat, before they will follow the rules of this game." Bai Liu tapped his finger on a paper cup and wrote an A+ on it, "I'll disguise myself as a monster with A+ abilities and pretend to be three monsters at the same time, the nurses here only have fifteen minutes to change shifts, even if they are S-rated panel players and are faced with three A+ rated monsters at the same time, I think they will be more inclined to kill one. "

"But you only have one, how do you pretend to be three at the same time ......" Muke's unfinished sentence came to an abrupt halt.

Bai Liu rotated the paper cups in front of him with a dizzying speed, for a moment only stigmata could be seen, and the one with A+ written on it seemed to have this A+ mark on all three cups at the same time because of the stigmata, Bai Liu smiled and raised his eyes, "By shift speed."

"As for your question about appearance, the sicker the patient here is, the more slender he is, and for us players, there are two indicators to measure [the sicker he is]." Bai Liu looked straight at Muke with his eyes raised, "These two indicators are life value and spirit value, and in terms of objective logic, we just need to adjust the life value and spirit value down to about the same as this monster."

"The life value drop is easy, and the spirit value drop, just use this patient monster."

Muke pursed his lips, his disapproval of the plan clearly visible on his face, he soon spoke up again disapprovingly, " Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang are two veteran players, it would be hard to fool them with such a simple trick, and even if I am not a veteran player, a game like Orange Paper Cup I can easily recognize from memory That paper cup is correct, but if we downgrade our life and spirit values to this point of sickness and weight, if the opponent once recognizes ......"

"You're going to die, Bai Liu." Muke even looked at Bai Liu with a little begging in his eyes, "You're really going to die."

"Muke, the point of this plan is not to keep me alive or dead, I am only fifty percent of my life." Bai Liu said to Muke in a calm, almost cruel tone, "The point of this plan is to keep you safe in the icu for the whole night to find a cure."

"After you have the [Life Extension Remedy] chip in your hand, your main identity line's quest is done, and the secondary identity line's quest, which is the child's side of the quest little Bai six is the fastest to complete at the moment, you just need to use the money to hang him to do something for you, he will cooperate with you, so you can grab and run to pass the level, and if I die, you will take my other fifty percent of my life to get through, got it?"

Muke sobbed and shook his head frantically, "I can't do it! I really can't do it!"

"If you can't do it, we'll die together, Muke." Bai Liu looked very shallowly and directly at Muke, and he even had a very indifferent smirk on his face as he said this.

Bai Liu is not threatening Muke, he is just calmly recounting the fact that if Muke fails to do so, they will probably die together in this place.

Muke winced at Bai Liu's smile, he lowered his head and bit his lower lip as if he was struggling with himself, and only after a long time did he raise his tear-stained eyes to look at Bai Liu: "I'll, I'll try my best ......"

Bai Liu eases his tone as he pats Muke on the shoulder, "But I'm dead it's really the worst possible scenario so we have to prevent it from happening, a simple orange cup game does show up easily in front of veteran players, someone like my hairdresser can already guess 100% after a dozen times, so we're not preparing a simple orange cup game for them."

Muke looked tearfully at Bai Liu: "Not just a simple orange paper cup game?"

Bai Liu: "Yes, the double paper cups for the orange game, just like the double identity line for this game."

"And we prepared the answers to the first round of the orange paper cup game for them." Bai Liu took six more new, identical paper cups and placed them on the table.

With his head bowed, he casually took a marker from the drawer and wrote [Bai Liu] on one paper cup and [Muke] on another, then with a calm face, he put the paper cup with [Bai Liu] over the one with [Muke].

Bai Liu put a paper cup with [Muke] written on it over the one with [Monster] written on it.

Eventually Bai Liu put a paper cup with [Monster] written on it, over the paper cup with [Bai Liu] written on it.

Muke watched Bai Liu's actions with bewilderment.

"This is the answer to the first round of the orange game." Bai Liu points to the words on the paper cups and explains them one by one to Muke, "These three paper cups are Bai Liu, Muke, and the monster, right? Then they must not believe it so easily, they will suspect my identity, so we have prepared the answer for the second round."

Bai Liu lifted the paper cup he had written on to reveal the bottom layer: "This is the second layer of answers they saw, and then-" Bai Liu began to rotate the cups in a quick circle with no emotion on his face, and then stopped to raise his chin and asked Muke Then he stopped and raised his chin, smiled and asked Muke, "Now guess where the orange that represents me is?"

Convinced of his memory, Muke placed his hand on the paper cup with [ Muke ] written on it, "It's this one."

"Wrong guess." Bai Liu hooked the corners of his mouth as he opened three paper cups, "The oranges are under [the monster's] paper cup."

"How?!" Muke was surprised, "I clearly saw you put the orange under the paper cup with [Muke] written on the second level."

"Man is indeed a creature that can be deceived by the instant information he receives, you are not mistaken, but I cheated." Bai Liu lowered his eyes, he smiled meaningfully Buming, his hand slowly opened [Bai Liu] the paper cup, at Muke's stunned gaze, Bai Liu's little finger and index finger caught the edge of the paper cup and with a gentle tug, he split the two paper cups into three.

Bai Liu lifted his eyes and smiled lazily, "Just a crude little trick in the hand, you actually remembered and guessed correctly, but I cheated - I put three paper cups on the paper cup belonging to [Bai Liu], what you see is only the second paper cup, but in fact There are three paper cups on this cup, so I'm actually hiding under the third paper cup identity as far as [Orange] is concerned."

Bai Liu picks up the orange: "In other words, at the end of this orange game, I will use other information to put a shell over my own identity as a third layer [of paper cups] to protect myself, as well as to confuse the old players, Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang, a father and son."

"And they definitely don't doubt the information they're getting." Bai Liu peels the orange in half under the paper cup and hands it to Muke .

Bai Liu smiled, "Because the other half of the orange called and told them, Muke, to eat the orange?"

Muke shook his head a little dumbfounded and refused the orange Bai Liu offered him, he was already dumbfounded by Bai Liu's actions and was still a little confused.

The moment he bit down, Bai Liu's face twisted slightly, and he slowly spat the orange into the paper cup with [Bai Liu] written in black marker: "...... Tsk, these hospital oranges are so sour."

The most successful paper cup identity swap of the scheme was - the monster patient died as [Bai Liu] and Muke spent the night safely in the icu as [monster patient].

And Bai Liu, the orange, in his capacity as [Muke], stays under the nose of the most dangerous Miao Feichi father and son.

To achieve this, Bai Liu made more than two layers of [identity paper cups] for all three, or rather for all three [monsters]

After Bai Liu's first round of [Swap Paper Cups], he gave Miao Gaojiang a simple answer to each monster's corresponding identity - the monster that was killed was [Bai Liu], the monster hiding under the hospital bed was the real monster, and the monster he took away was [Muke].

But Miao Gaojiang certainly did not believe the obvious answer given to him by Bai Liu.

So Bai Liu prepared for Miao Gaojiang and the second round of the [paper cup orange game] began.

In the second messy game, Bai Liu dared to give Miao Gaojiang the second round of the [paper cup swap], and he and Muke only used various ways to suggest to Miao family that their identities were abnormal, such as Muke obviously helping Bai Liu, Bai Liu helping the patient and other abnormal behaviours. The three monsters' identity cup labels are changed in Miao Gaojiang's mind, and eventually, Miao Gaojiang trusts Muke as much as he does in his own memory - he makes the same mistakes as Muke.

Believing too much in his own experience and the information he had received, Miao Gaojiang suspected Bai Liu of hiding the orange under the [Muke] paper cup, thus triggering a third layer of [identity paper cups] prepared by Bai Liu - one that Bai Liu had prepared long ago, from the little Muke 's self-incriminating phone call.

Muke looked up at the time with a gasp - it was currently half past nine and all the nurses had started patrolling, but Muke hadn't heard any news of dead patients or any sounds of fighting, so there was a good chance Bai Liu's [last layer of paper cups] layer of protective information had come into play.

He lay on his back, his eyes lost from over-stimulation, and let out a long, unconscious breath.

Muke's part of the plan was to introduce the Miao family into the ICU, to be psycho-altered and reduced to a life level consistent with the appearance of the monster patient, to stay awake enough to work with Bai Liu's plan after the psycho-alteration and, finally and most importantly, to stay perfectly safe in the ICU with the dead monster. The final and most important part is that he gets to spend the entire night in the dead monster's intensive care unit in perfect safety, following Bai Liu's instructions to find the cure for life hidden in the bookcase.

And all the rest of the dangerous parts of the plan - all of them are Bai Liu's responsibility.

Muke closed his eyes, his heart hadn't completely calmed down, he pressed against his chest and could feel the fragile heart thumping unbearably fiercely in his chest - out of fear, out of backlash.

--because this plan nearly flipped several times in the process.

Miao Feichi didn't follow Muke's initial plan at all. Miao Feichi kept trying to kill all the monsters with his high panel attributes and force value, and almost did so. If Bai Liu hadn't held Miao Feichi up for 10 minutes with his skills and props, Miao Feichi might have been able to achieve a triple kill in the ICU, and Muke would have been able to die by now.

After calming his heartbeat, Muke breathed a sigh of relief and, after a moment's repose on the bed, barely acclimatised to his current physical state, he gritted his teeth and staggered to his feet and began to tidy up the messy ward on the floor.

Time is running out and he needs to get on with the task.