Bai Liu put down the pen after speaking about his three guesses, and rolled the pen on the table twice before reaching Mu Sicheng, who had no expression on his face.
Bai Liu's attitude is still plain, and he doesn't seem to feel that he has said something terrible. Finally, Bai Liu looked at Mu Sicheng with a numb face and sincerely added: "Of course, this is just my personal opinion, and it may not be. Such."
The narrow rental house fell into a long silence, only the wind occasionally brushed Bai Liu's fingertips, blowing the paper on which he wrote the truth of the world.
It is midsummer, and the sun shines in brilliantly from the window behind Bai Liu. It is already noon. You can hear the noisy screams of cicadas, and the noisy horns of cars can be heard outside the window.
But these visual and auditory experiences that seem to give the world a pyrotechnic atmosphere instantly become black and white in Mu Sicheng's world, just like the white willow sitting in front of a desk and looking at him quietly and intently against the light, curling digitally multi-dimensional lines. Li kept backing away, disappearing into the gap where he closed his eyes.
The moment Bai Liu put down the pen, Mu Sicheng felt his tinnitus for a few seconds, and he seemed to breathe falsely for an instant.
Reality is the game
He tried all he could to keep a promised land free from his despicable desires, which turned out to be just a game.
Mu Sicheng slumped and leaned back on the chair, with the back of one hand resting on his eyes, and the other hand hanging down. He remained silent for a long time.
Bai Liu didn't bother him.
After a lapse of some time, Mu Sicheng laughed hardly and said, "Bai Liu, I wonder if you made up such a horrible thing to fool me in order to coax me to participate in the league with you? Is this fake? Isn't it true, right?"
"Most of the real things in this world are horrible, otherwise where do we make the game materials come from?" Bai Liu got up and folded the paper with these words into a book, then turned to look at Mu Sicheng.
Mu Sicheng looked at Bai Liu faintly.
Bai Liu shrugged: "But it seems that you are reluctant to accept it. So emotionally, I think I should give you a buffer space that you can escape and accept. So I said this may not be the case. After all, it may indeed be. The first and second cases."
Mu Sicheng: "..."
Damn it, but what's the difference between you and telling me directly is the third situation!
Mu Sicheng sat paralyzed in his chair for a long time before looking at Bai Liu blankly, 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 is the real meaning to us? Why don’t you feel scared by this game-like reality?"
Bai Liu was not stunned by Mu Sicheng's continual questions, he thought for a moment.
“I’ve been asking myself what reality is and what matters most to me since I was a teenager.” Bai Liu Tanshou, “but except for one of my best friends, most of my peers are Unable to understand me, I later discovered that they may not think about this problem for the rest of their lives, and they can survive well in this illusory reality."
"Regardless of whether reality is a game or real, believe me, for most people, it has no effect on them. An objective idealist perspective is used to interpret the composition of people’s objective cognition of the ontology and the world. The human value logic chain, as long as [I] is real and what [I] pursues is real, the world is real to [I]."
Bai Liu said calmly: "For me, it doesn't matter if this world is a game or anything else."
"As long as human currency exists for one day, my desire for money will not go out. This is my truth and meaning."
"If you can't find your own meaning for a while, do you want to try to use mine?" Bai Liu picked up the key that was hanging behind the door, and looked back at the dazed Mu Sicheng, "You try to find the visible currency. , For example, try the five hundred million points of the game champion?"
"At that time, you may be able to use money to buy the reality you want." Bai Liu opened the door, "500 million points, I think you can buy an earth to create the kind of [real world] you want. 】NS."
Mu Sicheng was silent for a while with a distorted expression.
"Bai Liu, your eloquence really did a pyramid scheme, right?"
He was once again persuaded by the strange logic of this neurosis!
"So your answer is?" Bai Liu raised his eyebrows and asked, "Will you participate in the league?"
Mu Sicheng gritted his teeth: "I will participate!" Then he asked quickly, "But you have to make do with five players at least? Otherwise, how do we participate?"
"You don't have to worry about this, I will solve it, you just wait for my notice." Bai Liu turned around and asked Mu Sicheng, "I'm going out to eat hot pot with my friend, are you together?"
Mu Sicheng: "..."
When is it all, why are you still in the mood for hot pot? !
It may be that Mu Sicheng's overly hideous expression revealed his question. Bai Liu took out two discount coupons from his pocket and shook it, and briefly explained: "Because I have two discount coupons for hot pot restaurants, I don’t want to eat today. It's about to expire."
Mu Sicheng: "..."
Mu Sicheng couldn't compare with Bai Liu, a person with a strong psychological quality that was so perverted. This college student who was shocked by Bai Liu's worldview was obviously still a little bit unrecoverable. After he refused Bai Liu's invitation to eat hot pot together, Mu Sicheng and Bai Liu exchanged contacts. Way and school address, I went back to the dormitory alone to think about life.
Bai Liuhuai went out with two hot pot discount vouchers. He looked happy. It was not like he just came out of a game of life and death, nor was he who had just revealed the truth about the magical world in front of Mu Sicheng.
Mu Sicheng sighed inexplicably, "You seem to be in a good mood?"
"Yes." Bai Liu nodded and admitted, he bent his eyes and smiled, "Now it's my off work time, of course I am in a good mood."
Mu Sicheng: "..."
He remembered Bai Liu's horror game theory about going to work again.
Hold! ! This guy really feels he is off work! !
This sturdy psychological quality—what kind of environment is this guy able to raise a monster? !
But after Bai Liu bid farewell to the dazed Mu Sicheng, they went to find Lu Yizhan.
Because Bai Liu woke up and found that Lu Yizhan had made two phone calls to him, but because he did not answer during the game, Bai Liu sent a text message to Lu Yizhan asking what was wrong with him, and Lu Yizhan said to talk face-to-face.
Speaking of face-to-face chats, Bai Liu thought that he would probably lose contact in the next two months. If he disappeared so silently, the police at Lu Yizhan would definitely report the crime if he couldn’t find him. Bai Liu felt that he would lose contact. It was necessary to report to Lu Yizhan in person, so he invited Lu Yizhan to the hot pot restaurant in a text message and prepared to chat with Lu Yizhan in person.
When Bai Liu arrived at the hot pot restaurant early, there was no one in the restaurant. He ordered a pot bottom and some dishes, and after confirming with the boss that the coupon could still be used, he honestly waited.
Before the boss went down, he turned on the TV in the store to Bai Liu. The TV was broadcasting a news program at noon. When Bai Liu looked at it, he saw a picture of Li Gou's eyes on the TV screen.
On the TV, the male host in suit and leather shoes folded his hands solemnly at the table, and broadcasted the report in a very orthodox voice:
"Welcome everyone to watch the "Noon News" column. Recently, the key evidence of the crime committed by Li, a major criminal suspect in the deadly corpse case of a senior high school girl, has finally been found... If Li’s crime is true, the highest sentence can be sentenced to death, but before the trial comes down, Yesterday, when Li was in prison, he was suddenly chopped into pieces by a cellmate Wang who also committed murder..."
The male host lowered his head and turned over the draft on the desktop, and continued to raise his head to broadcast:
"Recently, a small-scale food poisoning accident occurred in a privately-run children’s welfare home in our city. A large number of children were admitted to the welfare home urgently. After the police intervened in the investigation, it was discovered that the welfare home was on the verge of bankruptcy due to poor operation. Ingredients, many of these ingredients rot and deteriorate, causing children to have diarrhea and vomiting after eating, and dehydration and shock in severe cases... In this regard, we call on people from all walks of life to donate donations to the orphanage... ”
Bai Liuzheng watched with gusto, and Lu Yizhan came with a tired face.
Bai Liu saw his standard social animal face and knew that this person had stayed up a lot lately.
Lu Yizhan sat down and poured his own two sips of tea. Looking at Bai Liu, he started chattering and complaining painfully: "I lost it! You don't know how busy I am recently! I'm going to be so busy! I don't even have time to drink tea all morning. !"
"It's been a few days since I ate with you last time?" Bai Liu raised his eyebrows, "Are you planning to get married so scary?"
Lu Yizhan waved his hand tiredly. When he looked up and saw the news on TV, his expression changed, and the waiter's voice was lowered: "It's not just about getting married, but the waiter, can you change a private room for us?"
There are not many people now, and the waiter readily changed Bailiu and Lu Yizhan into small private rooms.
As soon as Lu Yizhan entered the private room, his face was very solemn, and he took a cigarette out to smoke it.
Bai Liu hasn’t seen Lu Yizhan smoking for a long time. After he made a girlfriend, he was treated as a twenty-four filial boyfriend. He gave up all the bad habits of smoking, playing games and playing cards. No, now I’m going to talk about my fiancée.
Lu Yizhan’s fiancee believes in the fact that Coke kills sperm and hurts the body, and Lu Yizhan is strictly prohibited from drinking any carbonated drinks.
In this regard, Bai Liu said that fortunately, Lu Yizhan’s fiancee didn’t know that beer was a type of carbonated beverage, otherwise Lu Yizhan’s only life pleasure, drinking and eating barbecue, would be deprived of it.
Bai Liu smiled calmly and asked Lu Yizhan, who smoked with a bitter and hatred face: "Should I ask worriedly now, what happened to Lu Yizhan, why did you smoke? You didn’t swear back then that the world would collapse. Wouldn't you touch soft drugs like cigarettes? Why, your world collapsed in just a few days after I left, right?"
"Cough cough cough!" Lu Yizhan was molested by Bai Liu's molesting. He couldn't help but smiled. Lu Yizhan is a very standard and flattering young man with a square look that the old people like. He smiles a little bit naively. Shuai, "Bai Liu, if you ask questions, just ask! I have to mention my history in the second and second blacks!"
"Let's talk." Bai Liu poured a cup of tea to Lu Yizhan and pushed it over, "I am off work now, so I can waste a little of my precious time listening to the troubles in life that made your world collapse."
"Marriage is indeed very annoying." Lu Yizhan took the tea cup handed to him by Bai Liu and was silent for a few seconds. "But my most annoying thing is not getting married. Did you see the news about the child welfare institution on TV just now?"
Bai Liu nodded: "I see, what's the matter?"
"A colleague of mine is dealing with this matter. He said that it does not look like an ordinary food poisoning. Many children are now being rescued urgently and no specific results have been investigated." Lu Yizhan twisted his eyebrows, "but mushroom poisoning , You and I have stayed in the orphanage. Jingcheng is not a place where mushrooms are produced. The price of mushrooms is high. The orphanage here rarely buys mushrooms, which are relatively expensive and prone to accidents. A privately donated orphanage on the verge of bankruptcy... ”
"All in all, I think this is not right, but the current solution is to keep the orphanage. In the absence of investigation, the safety of the children staying in the orphanage is actually not well guaranteed..."
"It sounds complicated." Bai Liu asked calmly. "But what does it matter to you? Lu Yizhan, although you are a policeman, this is not your job, right?"
Lu Yizhan was silent for a while, and said, "I took the initiative to participate in the investigation team."
Bai Liu glanced at Lu Yizhan and said nothing.
"You also know that I'm getting married soon. Sister Dian (Lu Yizhan's fiancee) is not in good health... The doctor said that she might not get pregnant. Before we became pregnant, we discussed whether to adopt a child..." Lu Yizhan's finger He clasped the cup tightly, and he smiled bitterly, "Bai Liu, I know you must think I am too impulsive, and my current financial situation is not very good..."
Lu Yizhan inhaled, "But after discussing with Sister Dian, I am going to adopt a child in this orphanage. After all, it's okay to have one less child in such an unstable situation. After all, I also came out of the orphanage. Give back to the society."
"So you tell me one thing, you know that I should not agree with what you did. What is the purpose?" Bai Liu asked calmly, "What do you want me to do for you?"
Lu Yizhan lowered his head and fiddled with the cigarette on his fingertips, without speaking.
The waiter took a bite of the hot red pot, bubbling between the two silent people.
Then Lu Yizhan muttered to himself: "Bai Liu, I actually don't want to get you into this kind of thing, but your mind is really good for this kind of thing."
"If a matter involves great criminal interest, you can guess the next step of the other party almost immediately. You are a genius in this regard."
Bai Liumu took a sip of the tea without expression, "I'll take you as a compliment. It's not the first time you have come to me for nosy, just tell me if you have something."
"Can you help me see what happened this time?" Lu Yizhan raised his head and looked at Bai Liu, "My colleague’s investigation thoughts are stuck. The previous ideas you gave me about this kind of thing are all right. so… "
The land station seemed to say something inexplicably: "I know I'm nosy, but when I know, I can't watch it. It's just kids..."
Bai Liu opened his hand and opened a pair of disposable chopsticks with a loud "pop", interrupting Lu Yizhan's unfinished words: "I can help you see it, but I won't do it for nothing, the old rules—please please. "
The head of Lu Yi's site was already familiar with Bai Liu's request for compensation.
"And I only have one day to help you take care of your nostalgia." Bai Liu said, "I'm going on a business trip tomorrow, and I won't be back in two months."
Lu Yizhan was taken aback: "Two months? So long? What exactly does your job do? If it's the kind of performance work you mentioned last time, it won't take as long as two months, right?"
Bai Liu paused for a moment. Considering the shielding mechanism of the game, he changed his view: "This time I will bring a monkey and a young master to team up and play games on the stage to show the audience. Months."
"..." Lu Yizhan's expression was very complicated, "Is your job really legal?"
Bai Liu said: "Legal."
"It's a monkey and a young master. It's legal to show the audience. It's legal. There's still two months of performance..." Lu Yizhan thought for a while, suddenly patted his thigh, and looked at Bai Liu to make a firm judgment. "You guys It’s a circus performance team, right? You are going to tour for two months, right?"
"..." Bai Liu was silent for a few seconds, "Yes."
———
After returning home, Bai Liu looked at some relevant materials and information about this private orphanage that Lu Yizhan gave him.
Most of the children's welfare homes in the world where they are located are public children's welfare homes established under the auspices of the government.
Lu Yizhan was educated to be a kind-hearted and grateful contemporary young man who is full of gratitude to the society. He has been determined to serve the society as a policeman since he was a child.
And Bai Liu, a freak, had never come out of the money all the way. If it hadn’t been for Lu Yizhan who had been vigilantly pulling Bai Liu to let him walk on the path of observing discipline and law, what could Bai Liu’s neurosis do for money? It's really hard to say.
However, the children’s orphanage in this incident was not public, but a private children’s orphanage founded by a large number of corporate philanthropists who joined hands and donated money ten years ago.
Many entrepreneurs here are said to be terminally ill. According to the traditional practice of [people are dying and doing good], these people donated a large sum of money to build this private orphanage, saying that they have to do it before they die. Doing good things to accumulate virtue at that time also won a lot of praise, and Lu Yizhan has always praised this behavior.
It's also a coincidence that not long after the construction of this children's orphanage, the illnesses of these entrepreneurs got better, as if they were [good for good].
But [people are going to die and they are doing good], people don’t want to spend a lot of money to do good deeds if they are not about to die, and then these entrepreneurs gradually became less caring about this orphanage, so This private orphanage slowly failed in ten years.
After reading the information provided by Lu Yizhan, Bai Liu understood why he felt something was wrong.
There have been various accidents in this poorly managed private children's orphanage, most of which have been poisoned by various mushrooms, but this time it was the biggest one.
Lu Yizhan said that these food poisoning accidents were piled together, and it didn't look like an accident at first glance, but after the investigation, they did not find any clues of crimes, either deliberately poisoning or simply accidental food poisoning, and this time. The events are the same.
It's like having a higher level of existence erased all clues other than "accidental food poisoning".
Lu Yizhan even suspected that there was something wrong with the people inside them, and some traces of the crime were deliberately erased.
From the point of view of an inhuman game designer, Bai Liu is simply a natural good material for designing horror games—an endangered children’s welfare home, an odd food poisoning accident, and a tragic death due to poisoning. Child.
Compared to Lu Yizhan suspected that someone inside had erased the traces of the crime, Bai Liu was even more suspicious that it was not the person who erased the traces. If his previous guess was correct—
—He thinks that this children’s orphanage is very likely to be a [horror game copy] that is being put into the [real world].
———
Early the next morning, early in the morning, Bai Liu was woken up by Lu Yizhan’s deathly serial call. As soon as he answered the phone, Lu Yizhan's tone on the opposite side was unprecedentedly serious: "Bai Liu, come to Mirror City." The First People’s Hospital, the child who was sent to the hospital last night—"
"Died a lot, right?" Bai Liu said calmly.
The opposite Lu Yizhan breathed for a while, then breathed out slowly. He opened his mouth and said, "Did you find anything?"
"Not yet." Bai Liu said frankly, "but I see from the information you gave me that if someone deliberately poisoned me, and the other party repeated it so many times, the purpose should be to kill, and this time the situation is so serious, so I think the mushrooms eaten by these children in the hospital should be lethal."
"...Yes, many of them passed away without rescue." Lu Yizhan's voice was hard and dry, "but a child is still alive."
"There is another child alive?" Bai Liu clearly noticed something was wrong.
If this children’s orphanage is [system] being put into the real world [Horror Game Copy], the children who are the background of the game will most likely be wiped out, just like the passengers in the car in "The Last Train of Burst" Same.
Bai Liu asked softly, "Can I come over?"
Lu Yizhan: "Yes, come here."
When Bai Liu got dressed and went over, the outside of the hospital was crowded with reporters from various news media.
Bai Liu was picked up by Lu Yizhan from the elevator in the operating room. When he passed through the operating room, he could see small corpses covered with white cloth in the corridor. Because there were too many corpses, there were some corpses. Before it could be transported away, the corridors of the operating room were piled up awkwardly, turning the operating room into a small morgue.
From time to time, a numb-looking nurse would come up and push down the corpses of these dead children, occasionally hitting the wall, and a bruised hand with various corpse spots dangling out from under the white cloth.
These corpse spots and some hematomas bulged on the surface of the child's corpse, like mushroom patterns all over the back of the corpse's little hand, it seems that in the next second, a mushroom will burst out of the corpse's skin.
A disgusting smell of mushroom fermentation filled the entire operating room, as if these mushrooms that had been eaten by children were fermented overnight with these freshly-dead corpses as a medium. The rot was full of vitality of the fungus category.
Bai Liu calmly retracted his gaze. He turned his head to Lu Yizhan, waited after the operating room, and asked softly, "Are you sure these children died last night? The decay of these corpses is not so good. That's right."
"Yes." Lu Yizhan rubbed his forehead, "The time when the corpses appeared densely was too early, and the time of the dead body was not right."
Bai Liu squinted at Lu Yizhan: "What's wrong?"
Lu Yizhan stopped when he heard Bai Liu's words. He leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette, and took several puffs. The corners of the stairs were full of smoke. This showed that Lu Yizhan was in a very bad mood.
"The corpse spots all emerged from the children's body within a few minutes after the death was confirmed, and they appeared and spread very quickly. This is generally a situation that only occurs after the death of more than 24 hours." Lu Yizhan used his cigarette lighter hand. His thumb struck his eyebrows, and wanted to open his frowning brows, but it seemed to have no effect. "The corpse... also, the corpse quickly hardened after death, and it has entered the softening and decay stage early this morning. This is generally a situation that occurs more than 24 hours after death."
"It's almost like..." Lu Yizhan paused and said, "This group of poisoned children died before they entered the hospital."
They were talking and walking, and they had reached the stairs of the ward on the first floor of the children’s emergency room. From the door half of the emergency exit exit, they could see the corpses of the children covered with heads on the beds in the corridor of the hospital ward, and The nurse who was putting the body in the body bag.
The faces of those children's corpses were not the bluish white of the dead, but also colorful protruding spots.
Bailiu knows that some mushroom poisoning can cause this kind of allergy-like skin tinea phenomenon, but the spots on the faces of these children are so dense that they are like a color blind test, and they will bulge on the surface of the skin. Bailiu is not afraid to watch them. Kind of slight discomfort.
It felt like mushrooms that hadn't sprouted up underneath the human face.