Chapter 203: Real-World Inquiries
Wen Xing: ?
Xiao Xiao: Where on earth did you hear a claim like that? Don’t believe it—you still have to enter instances regardless.
Bai Peach Oolong Tea: Then how come I’ve never bumped into a pregnant woman before?
Xiao Xiao: How many instances have you even cleared so far? Pregnant women are exceptionally rare, and sometimes roleplaying requirements necessitate it, so outsiders can’t tell if a player has a baby bump.
Xiao Xiao: And if there truly are pregnant women, they’ll be careful on their own to avoid being exposed as such.
Wen Xing: Exactly. Most female players in the game are relatively weak to begin with. If someone is pregnant on top of that, many players who encounter them in an instance wouldn’t choose to team up with them at all, because they would be a liability.
Xiao Xiao: It’s not that most female players inside are relatively weak, but rather that many female players perceive themselves as weak. Game skills are generated based on a player’s personal condition, so female players end up with comparatively fewer combat-oriented skills.
Xiao Xiao: In reality, however, no matter what kind of skill it is, as long as it’s used effectively, it can be insanely powerful. They’re simply limiting themselves.
Wen Xing: So weak is weak—saying all this changes nothing.
The atmosphere between the two sounded far from pleasant.
Bai Peach Oolong Tea: You both make total sense! Take me, for instance—I’m super weak, sob sob…
Wen Xing: …
Xiao Xiao: =_=
Bai Peach Oolong Tea: Hee-hee, anyway, thank you both for clearing things up for me, Big Sisters! Actually, I have one more question.
Bai Peach Oolong Tea: Do the children born to these pregnant women end up entering the game as well?
Wen Xing: No idea. Never really heard much about that.
Xiao Xiao: Mm… they’re probably just normal children. Even if they enter the game, it would likely be after they grow up. In a game where players die as a matter of course, many players’ children naturally don’t remember having parents, simply viewing themselves as orphans.
Xiao Xiao: Under such circumstances, even if they enter the game, it seems unlikely they would recall their parents?
Wen Xing: However, if they enter the game before their parents die, their memories of their parents won’t be erased.
Which meant if memories were wiped, recovering them was an absolute impossibility.
Unless they were never forgotten right from the very beginning.
Bai Peach Oolong Tea: Thanks a bunch, Big Sisters! Love you lots~ Mwah~
Reaching a loss for words, neither replied to her further.
Bai Cha set her phone down.
Preparing a quick, simple bite to eat for herself, she turned in after grabbing a meal.
Falling asleep was completely out of the question, however.
A chaotic mess of affairs churned through her mind.
After a moment’s thought, she pulled out her phone.
Browser search: Xingfu Nursing Home.
A vast array of Xingfu Nursing Homes scattered across various regions instantly flooded her phone screen.
Scrolling through a couple of times, Bai Cha was forced to refine her search by adding City P Xingfu Nursing Home.
At the very top of the search results, a line of bold, glaring characters greeted her eyes:
[Fire Breaks Out at City P Xingfu Nursing Home; Fortuitously, No Casualties Reported]
Date: April 28, 2020.
Bai Cha sat up in bed.
This date couldn’t possibly be a mere coincidence, could it?
The exact time the new instance was discovered inside the game was April 28, 2020.
And the fire in the news occurred on this exact same day as well.
Tapping on the news article, she discovered it returned a 404 error page.
Only a few fragments of text remained visible from the search result preview:
On April 28, a fire broke out at City P Xingfu Nursing Home, destroying an entire building. Reportedly, the destroyed building was a under-construction facility intended for elderly…
Elderly what, she had zero clue—the news link refused to open entirely.
Thus, Bai Cha searched further for information regarding the fire at City P Xingfu Nursing Home.
Indeed, several news outlets had reported on it back then.
Without exception, however, not a single link could be opened.
The only accessible link led to a page filled with repetitive, meaningless filler text: Why did a fire break out at Xingfu Nursing Home? Follow our editor below to find out! followed by a mountain of hollow drivel, concluding with It appears this fire might have simply been an accident after all—what do you all think?
Not a single user comment lay beneath it.
Thoroughly absurd.
Even more absurdly, without knowing where she had accidentally clicked, a customer service bot from a pop-up advertisement sent a message:
“Hi there! We noticed you were inquiring about information regarding nursing homes. Ping’an Nursing Home welcomes you! If there’s anything you’d like to know, feel free to consult me~”
Bai Cha returned her phone to the home screen and tossed it straight onto the bed.
Instead, she powered on her computer.
She intended to check local forums, tieba boards, and similar platforms in City P.
This was likely her very first time obtaining concrete, proper leads regarding an instance—at least leads that could be investigated in reality.
Searching through a sweep of pages, she discovered someone had indeed discussed this topic in a thread that had long sunk to the bottom, devoid of replies from anyone save for the original poster himself:
[I just want to know what on earth that destroyed building at Xingfu Nursing Home was actually used for?]
Don’t Want to Name Myself: Did any of you see that a whole building got burned down at our city’s Xingfu Nursing Home? An entire building burned to the ground—did seriously nobody notice? Someone only reported it to the police the next morning upon seeing smoke still billowing from the building, but it had already burned to ash by then.
And the most absurd part is, they claimed zero casualties occurred, yet a while later, someone passing by the nursing home heard blood-curdling screams emanating from that abandoned building. No idea if it was vengeful spirits or what, but I suspect it was swept under the rug.
In any case, word has it that everyone locked inside was insane, but I recall that nursing home used to focus primarily on elderly care, didn’t it? So were the ones who died all elderly residents? Yet those elderly residents seemed perfectly fine?
Not a single reply lay below the post.
After a moment’s thought, Bai Cha logged into her account.
Bai Bai Bai Bai Bai (Floor 2): OP, are you still around? I’m really curious about the news you mentioned too.
Then she navigated back.
Searching for other leads yielded nothing further.
Glancing at the time, it was already approaching ten o’clock.
Bai Cha shut down her computer and went to sleep.
Just as she was drifting off to sleep, she felt a heavy, crushing sensation pressing down upon her in a haze of semi-consciousness.
She attempted to move, yet all four of her limbs were pinned firmly in place.
As if tightly bound by someone.
Yet she felt far too exhausted, her eyelids heavy and unopenable.
Only amidst a daze of confusion could she vaguely catch a glimpse of the ceiling—an intense, blinding white.
Human figures paced back and forth beside her.
Along with voices that sounded muffled and distinct.
“The injection has been administered to her. She’s falling asleep fast now.”
“Good. Keep a close eye on her.”
Bai Cha’s consciousness plummeted into a storm of chaotic darkness in an instant.
Inside the darkness, countlessly hideous, fierce ghosts seemed to lurk, shrieking and wailing as they lunged toward her, entangling her, yet she remained utterly immobile, incapable of dodging.
Her heart began pounding frantically against her chest, and under that extreme, suffocating oppression, breathing turned increasingly difficult as well.
A piercing sound echoed beside her ears once more.
That same muffled, indistinct voice sounded again, incapable of being identified as male or female:
“The patient’s heart seems to be having an issue.”
So was this a hospital?
Or that Xingfu Nursing Home?
Bai Cha continued struggling with all her strength.
Finally, her eyes snapped open from her bed.
Her heart was still beating wildly inside her chest cavity, the sound so loud it nearly proved deafening to her own ears.
Clutching her chest with one hand, she took deep, steady breaths, doing her absolute best to calm herself down first.
