Chapter 120.1: Love Welfare Institute
Before Mu Ke could react, Bai Liu grabbed him by the back of the collar and made Mu Ke stand firmly. Then he turned and used that hand to half carry Li Huai, who had lost both arms. Bai Liu held the fish bone whip and quietly exhaled. He took shallow breaths as he said, “Open the door, Mu Ke. The game isn’t over yet.”
Liu Huai, whose face was as white as paper, suddenly interrupted Bai Liu’s words. His shaky gaze stopped on Bai Liu’s face for a few seconds. “Wait, do you promise that you will save Jiayi if you live?”
Bai Liu answered, “I promise.”
Liu Huai closed his eyes and a wrist brace appeared in front of him.
[System notification: The item ‘Cynic Wrist Guard’. After being hurt, the cynic can delay all damage by 14 hours. However, if the player hasn’t passed the instance after 14 hours then the damage will be stacked on the player.]
“This item was originally for Jiayi to use when she ran away. Now it seems…” Liu Huai smiled bitterly. “She won’t need it.”
Little Witch had healing skills and truly didn’t need such low level items to delay damage.
Liu Huai turned to look at Bai Liu, the smile on his face becoming more bitter and relieved. “I also have no arms to use it. I will give it to you, Bai Liu.”
Bai Liu didn’t say much. He took the wrist guard directly and glanced at Mu Ke at the door.
Mu Ke looked back at Bai Liu. After confirming that Bai Liu didn’t waver at all, he took a deep breath and opened the door with trembling hands.
At this time, 8:40 a.m. on Wednesday.
The emergency stairs on the first floor.
The slightly cowering nurse stood at a fearful distance from the emergency passage. She didn’t lean over and just gulped as she pointed to the dark passage. “Just over there. There is a tunnel entrance at the corner of the first floor. From there, you can go directly to the church of the welfare home. I won’t go there.”
After this, the nurse saw Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang approaching the passage without hesitation. She was unable to hold back and shouted, “Don’t leave the ward until 9 o’clock. I’m just showing you. You can’t just—”
Miao Gaojiang turned and approached the nurse. He took a few quick steps and arrived in front of her. Then Miao Gaojiang grabbed her neck and twisted it. There was the clear sound of the interlocking bones of the nurse’s neck breaking.
She opened her eyes in shock, her pupils dilated as she fell down slowly.
“Dad?!” It wasn’t only the nurse who was shocked before her death. Even Miao Feichi was surprised. “Why did you kill the NPC? It is easy to cause a backlash!”
Miao Gaojiang’s chest moved violently up and down. His eyes were bloodshot but there was no expression on his face. It was clearly very easy to kill someone but sweat dripped down his jaw and the muscles of his shoulders were still moving. This made Miao Gaojiang look irritable and aggressive. He turned his back to Miao Feichi and took deep breaths, his expression a bit horrifying.
Then Miao Gaojiang soon calmed down. He paused and cleared his throat. “We can’t delay for even a minute. If this nurse NPC is here, we will have to wait until 9 o’clock. The children over there must be plotting to escape. We have to hurry over.”
Miao Feichi was reluctantly persuaded by this reason. He drew out his double knives and moved to the emergency passage step by step. Just as he was about to step into the passage, Miao Gaojiang abruptly asked in a soft voice, “Don’t you think this nurse looks like your mother?”
Miao Feichi paused and glanced at the dead face of the little nurse lying on the ground. This was completely different from the face of the woman who gave birth to him in his memory. Miao Feichi retracted his gaze and looked at Miao Gaojiang a bit strangely. “Dad, what’s wrong with you? This NPC looks completely different from that dead woman.”
“Is that so?” Miao Gaojiang muttered to himself. Then he looked back at the face of the nurse who had fallen to the ground. “Maybe I misread it.”
The nurse’s young body had strangely old, heavy bags under her eyes. She looked seriously ill as she smiled strangely at him. This was a face that he knew well. It was the face of his wife, Miao Feichi’s mother, whom Miao Gaojiang had slept beside for countless nights. He saw this face the moment he opened his eyes.
This face appeared over the nurse’s face. In Miao Gaojiang’s eyes, the nurse would exaggerate every time she spoke. Her mouth was so wide open that it affected the mandibular joint and made a distorted displacement sound. Then the open mouth made it easy for Miao Gaojiang to see that there was no tongue in her talking mouth.
Miao Gaojiang retracted his gaze. He raised a hand to wipe the sweat flowing down his face and looked at the exit. “Feichi, you are the main attacker. I will defend from behind.”
8: 45 a.m.
Due to the bombing incident last night, the nurses didn’t have the energy to patrol every floor and manage the patients. Bai Liu and the others took the elevator and rushed to the first floor, only to find that the emergency passage had been cleared and there was only a mess left.
This represented good news and bad news.
Mu Ke sighed with relief. “We don’t have to face those monsters.”
Bai Liu’s gaze fell on the chopped deformed children and the syringes everywhere. His eyes twitched slightly. “The Miao Gaojiang duo has entered the tunnel.”
He lifted up Liu Huai, who was sliding down his body due to a lack of energy. Then he quickly walked in. Mu Ke followed closer. In a corner of the first floor, there was a yellow trash can filled with medical waste. It was filled with all types of blood transfusion bags and syringes. There were also very simple child-sized fixed bandage beds, which should be to prevent the children from moving when their blood was drawn.
It appeared that the children who were sent over in the early days had their blood drawn here. Then the corpse and blood drawing equipment were thrown into the medical waste bin together.
Investors who drew the children’s blood weren’t willing to see this cruel process. They allowed the nurses to quickly deal with it in this dirty and small corner for the compassionate investors.
The trash bin had been roughly kicked open by someone. Below it was a square, cellar-like entrance. It wasn’t big. The size of it was around 40 cm by 40 cm. It was basically the size for a child to pass through. Fortunately for Bai Liu, they were all slender and thin right now. They could still pass through this entrance.
There were some messy footprints next to the entrance. This should be left by the Miao Feichi duo. Bai Liu asked Mu Ke to help hold Liu Huai. Then he stepped forward to grab the ring buckle of the door handle. He pulled it and opened the cellar door.
For a while, flying dust, soil debris, the strong smell of blood and the warm and moist smell of fungal decay and fermentation spread. It wasn’t known how long the door boards hadn’t moved and how many people’s blood had fallen on it, revealing the thick, moldy wood underneath.
The dust was like tiny particles that could only be seen by people who almost drowned. It floated around the dark hole.
Bai Liu held his breath. He raised his head and glanced at the nervous Mu Ke. Then he jumped down without hesitation, not giving Mu Ke any chance to stop him.
“I’ll go down first. Wait until I say there are no problems before coming down.”
Mu Ke panicked and looked down.
It didn’t take long to hear Bai Liu’s reverberating voice. “There is no problem. Mu Ke, you put Liu Huai down first. Then you come down by yourself.”
Mu Ke carefully moved the armless Liu Huai. He first transported Liu Huai down. Then he supported his arms on the narrow edge of the hole and went down.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then Mu Ke let go with his hand. He felt himself slipping through a wet and sticky passage before finally touching the ground. The texture of the ground was very strange. It was soft and swollen and there was the strong bloody smell of mushrooms. It felt like stepping on a mushroom field.
Mu Ke opened his eyes and the sight in front of him made him take a breath.
The four walls of the tunnel were densely packed with various mushrooms. They were colorful, different in size and fluorescent. They were like infected gastric mucosa. They were swollen and seemed like they would explode juices that would corrode a person’s arm.
These mushrooms had blood-red threads mixed inside them, like the blood ganoderma lucidum hyphae growing abnormally. The whole tunnel was filled with the strong smell of secretions and fermented products. It smelled like mushrooms soaked in inferior wine for 20 years. It made people dizzy and want to vomit.
Liu Huai and Mu Ke both showed slight vomiting reflexes. Only Bai Liu was slightly better.
Mu Ke retched and covered his mouth. “Why are there so many mushrooms growing here?”
“It is damp and dark. In addition, this path has corpses discarded. The humus is very suitable for the growth of mushrooms.” Bai Liu walked forward with one foot deep and one foot shallow. The soft and moist mushrooms didn’t go past his ankle. He looked around the tunnel. “If I’m not mistaken, they are inferior blood ganoderma lucidum that were bred from those who weren’t wanted by investors and dumped here.”
“Inferior blood ganoderma lucidum? Isn’t this thing treasured?!”
“It is the blood ganoderma lucidum grown from the blood of ‘pure’ children that is cherished.” Bai Liu’s eyes glanced over a slightly pulsating blood ganoderma lucidum on the wall that was around the size of a heart. “Our current timeline is 10 years ago. This group of investors hasn’t perfected their child screening mechanism or it is in the early/mid-stage of screening. Failure will inevitably occur in this process. The failed product might be ineffective or toxic. It can’t be used by the investors so it was thrown here.”
Bai Liu looked toward the other end of the tunnel. “If I’m not mistaken, this tunnel should be the location of the ‘buried on Sunday’ part of the song.”
The tunnel was like a corridor growing and proliferating inward that carried a strange vitality. Along with Bai Liu’s breathing, it slightly stretched and closed. A closer look showed that it was these blood ganoderma lucidum beating slowly. There were also the bodies of the deformed children lying on the ground with their eyes open, phones scattered by their hands.
Bai Liu came forward to pick up a phone. The system notified him that it was unusable due to the owner’s death and loss of energy.
Many of these deformed children were cut into incomplete chunks by Miao Feichi’s double knives and scattered among the mushrooms.
Some mushrooms on the ground were cut or trampled. Bai Liu looked down at the trampled traces. “Go, they are already inside. We have to hurry up.”
7th anniversary celebration event
Proofreader: Purichan