While Bai Liu stood there holding the doll in thought, a teacher brought over the remaining five children.
The five children left in the welfare home stood in a straight line, their expressions numb. None of them dared look up at Mu Ke; their gazes were fixed on their own toes. Some were lame, others hunched or crooked-backed. Each of them bore some form of disability.
They huddled together like chicks that had never left the nest, pushing and squeezing into one another. Under scrutiny, they resembled cheap goods laid out for inspection, humble and silent, as if they knew they weren't even worth a few yuan.
Bai Liu frowned the moment he approached them. The smell of mushrooms clinging to these children was even stronger than the stench he had noticed on the corpses at the hospital.
Mu Ke couldn't stand it and waved a hand in front of his nose. "Do you only feed them mushrooms here? Why is the smell so strong?"
The teacher awkwardly gathered the five children closer. "Actually… they don't eat that much."
Bai Liu's gaze swept over the teacher and the children. "Did they eat a lot of mushrooms that day?"
The teacher was startled. "We all ate together with these five children. Yes, it was quite a lot."
"And the poisoned children?" Bai Liu asked evenly. "Did they eat less? For example, just a mouthful of mushroom soup?"
The teacher thought for a moment before replying. "Yes. Some children like mushrooms, others don't. A few only ate a small amount—but they were still poisoned."
Bai Liu withdrew his gaze. Some children had eaten large portions and remained fine, while others had eaten very little and still been poisoned. The dosage didn't seem to matter.
Then why mushrooms? Why did mushrooms appear every time something strange happened in this welfare home? And under what conditions did these bizarre mushrooms actually poison someone?
Meanwhile, Lu Yizhan learned that blood draws and various medical tests on the surviving children showed no abnormalities. Like Liu Jiayi, they only exhibited mild anemia.
The five surviving children and Liu Jiayi shared one common trait—they all had congenital or genetic defects. Liu Jiayi was blind, and the other five children had various disabilities.
Bai Liu fell into deeper thought.
The teacher continued leading Bai Liu and Mu Ke through the welfare home. Eventually, they entered a room filled with photographs, trophies, and children's drawings.
"This is our exhibition hall," the teacher said.
No one had visited the hall in a long time. Dust coated many of the trophies and certificates, turning them gray. Even so, it was clear that this welfare home had once flourished. Children's drawings and awards still hung on the walls. Photos from past Children's Day performances were displayed as well, their colors faded and distorted with age.
In the most recent photo, over forty children smiled softly and obediently at the camera. Now, only six of them were alive—five of whom stood numbly behind the teacher.
Many of the displayed items belonged to children who were already dead, giving the exhibition hall a lingering gloom.
Bai Liu scanned the room and seemed to notice something. He turned to the teacher. "May I take down some of these photos and drawings?"
Ordinarily, moving these items wouldn't have been allowed. But the welfare home had deteriorated to such a state that few paid attention to the exhibition hall anymore. The teacher nodded.
Mu Ke watched curiously as Bai Liu removed several children's drawings and laid them on the floor to examine. He leaned closer and whispered, "Bai Liu, did you find something?"
"Yes," Bai Liu replied softly, not looking up as he sorted through the drawings.
The children had drawn quite well, far better than expected. It felt as though the artist had received solid training. There were character sketches, still lifes, colored pencil and crayon drawings, and simple black-and-white sketches. The styles varied. Some pieces were saturated with color so intense it felt almost oppressive. The subjects themselves were strangely illogical.
One depicted a thin girl sitting on a hospital bed with a white cloth covering her eyes, a beautiful silver-blue scaled fish floating in a jar beside her, and a broken wooden mirror resting atop a charred, melted toy train. Every object seemed to correspond to something connected to this welfare home—or to Bai Liu himself.
Mu Ke stared for a moment before blurting out in surprise, "Were these all drawn by the same person? They're all signed with a 'W.'"
All the drawings Bai Liu had taken down bore the same curling, distinctive "W" in the corner. Bai Liu finally glanced at Mu Ke. His voice was low, almost a whisper. "That's my signature."
Mu Ke froze. "Yours? Why is it here?!"
Bai Liu did not give a further explanation. Mu Ke sensed he wouldn't get one and fell silent. The "W" stood for Bai Liu's name, and it was his customary signature. (Bai= white)
At a glance, Bai Liu knew these were his works. The lines were younger, less mature than his current style, but unmistakably his.
The little blind girl was clearly Liu Jiayi. The hospital gown matched the one he had seen earlier that morning. The silver-blue fish referred to his first game, Siren Town. The broken mirror atop the melted toy train alluded to his second game, Exploding Last Train.
Yet the signatures dated back ten years.
Ten years ago, Bai Liu had not been in this private welfare home. Nor could the Bai Liu of that time have known any of this information.
There was only one possibility: at some point in the future, Bai Liu would return to ten years ago in some form, draw these pictures, and leave them here.
An ordinary person might panic at such a revelation. Bai Liu did not. Instead, it confirmed his suspicion that this welfare home was an "official" instance manifested in the real world. The timeline confusion could only be explained by the game instance's official narrative timeline—ten years in the past.
His fingers brushed over the signatures, his gaze darkening.
If his traces remained permanently within a game instance, it usually meant one thing: failed clearance.
Like Puppet Zhang, who had been transformed into a burning monster and remained forever in Exploding Last Train, a player who failed would become part of the instance itself. Their death marks would be loaded into reality along with the game.
Even so, the implication did not frighten Bai Liu. He remained calm.
There were two points that puzzled him. His gaze slowly settled on the face of the boy in the corner of the 200X group photo.
The boy's face was emotionless. His gaze carried a faint sense of disdain, as if he were silently thinking, You foolish mortals. He felt out of place in his surroundings. This was the fourteen-year-old Bai Liu. Bai Liu glanced back at the drawings—sharp lines, exaggerated colors.
The photographic posture and drawing style were identical to his when he was fourteen. He had long since abandoned that heavily saturated style after being criticized by his boss for "mental pollution" and poor market reception. He had decisively given it up and never returned to it.
These drawings and the photographed "Bai Liu" were undoubtedly his fourteen-year-old self. But the information depicted in the drawings could only have been known by the twenty-four-year-old Bai Liu.
If his current self had entered the game and regressed physically and mentally to fourteen, he wouldn't have known the future information. Yet if he retained the memories of his twenty-four-year-old self, his style and personality would have changed accordingly. Memory-shaped identity.
Logically, it was impossible.
And yet, both the fourteen-year-old Bai Liu and the twenty-four-year-old Bai Liu seemed to exist simultaneously within the game instance of the welfare home ten years ago.
That was the first puzzle.
The second—
Bai Liu's eyes stopped on a black-and-white character sketch. In it, a girl sat on a hospital bed, hugging her knees, a white cloth covering her eyes. A doll rested in her arms. The sketch was exquisitely detailed.
But his fourteen-year-old self had hated drawing portraits. At that time, he preferred bold colors and abstract intensity. Sketching in a restrained, documentary style repulsed him. He practiced mostly with still lifes and rarely drew people.
So why would fourteen-year-old Bai Liu draw Liu Jiayi?
Back then, Liu Jiayi should not even have been born—at least not in any way connected to him. Did that mean she would enter this instance as well?
Even if she did, as a newcomer, her first instance should have been single-player. This welfare home was clearly a multiplayer instance. The only explanation was that she cleared her first game quickly and then joined Bai Liu in a multiplayer round.
But Liu Huai was an experienced player. He would never allow his sister to enter such a dangerous game so easily. So why was she here?
Bai Liu's gaze slowly moved to the doll in the sketch.
The doll wore a white shirt and black pants. Its face was turned outward in a smile. At first glance, nothing seemed amiss.
But after staring for a few moments, Bai Liu noticed the problem. The doll's head was turned far too much. It wasn't simply looking backward. Its head had been twisted a full 180 degrees.
Bai Liu stared at the drawing, absently brushing the coin hanging over his heart. His eyes narrowed slightly.