Chapter 237: Information Alteration
Bai Cha paid a visit to Qin Fa’s room to take a look around.
Many documents remained inside the room, though some were strewn across the floor.
The most absurd part was that a lingering scent of salted fish still drifted inside the room.
Pondering for a moment, Bai Cha decided to return to reality first and let the building sit vacant for a while to air out the odor.
Originally, when she entered the game, she had just gotten off work in reality.
No telling what the situation was right now.
Returning to reality, before her eyes could even process her surroundings, a familiar scent of disinfectant hit her nose first.
Ah, she was in the hospital.
“You’re back?” Shen Qingchen was sitting right beside her.
Bai Cha looked over at her; she was the sole occupant in this ward, the neighboring hospital beds all vacant.
Daylight shone brightly outside now; it had to be the next morning at the very least.
“You slept through the night. It’s nine in the morning now.”
Shen Qingchen handed her her phone.
“Since you fainted in full view of everyone, I couldn’t bring you directly home—it wasn’t really appropriate either—so I brought you to the hospital instead.”
Shen Qingchen patted her head.
“Since you were brought here anyway, we might as well run an examination. It was nothing serious; the doctor said you suffered from hypoglycemia and malnutrition, and that a good night’s sleep should resolve it. They put you on a glucose drip, but to be safe, you were kept overnight for observation.”
Bai Cha nodded, saying, “Thank you, Sister Shen. Sorry for troubling you.”
“I watched your live stream,” Shen Qingchen said. “Because I wasn’t sure when you would be back.”
Bai Cha looked thoughtful.
“At any rate, I’ve caused you trouble. I’ll head back to work in a bit.”
Shen Qingchen pondered briefly. “That’s not impossible, but you genuinely need to pay attention to your physical health now.”
“Additionally, I noticed quite a few people were watching your live stream. There might be all kinds of individuals among them. Although there are countless instances and the probability of encountering viewers from your live stream isn’t that high, as your viewer count grows, the probability will increase.”
“Of course, while the game protects player privacy so viewers entering an instance won’t remember your skills, it’s only your skills they forget. That won’t stop them from intentionally entering instances to target you, so keep your guard up.”
Bai Cha had considered this issue herself previously.
Yet there was simply no way around it; live streaming inherently meant having zero privacy to speak of.
Even if she concealed her true appearance every single time, anyone paying close attention would discover it all the same.
“Alright, I’ll go call the doctor over.”
The doctor questioned Bai Cha once more.
“You need to eat your meals on time. Young people nowadays always love skipping meals properly—when health problems catch up to you, you’ll be weeping.”
Bai Cha nodded like a woodpecker.
Her eating habits were indeed somewhat irregular, mainly because she always skipped breakfast due to lacking an appetite early in the morning.
Yet her fainting this time hadn’t stemmed from a physical issue either.
After settling the bill and stepping out of the hospital doors, Shen Qingchen brought Bai Cha back toward the company.
On the way, Bai Cha stole a glance at Shen Qingchen, asking, “Sister Shen, can I ask how you negotiated with the game back then?”
“Oho, held it in for so long and finally asking?”
Shen Qingchen cast a amused glance at her.
“Because the game was desperate for me to hurry up and rank up to S9, but ever since I entered S8, my evaluations consistently hovered at D. EF was impossible—for an S-tier instance, as long as you survive, it won’t be EF.”
“Right around then, I discovered I was pregnant. After giving it thought, I intended to keep the child, so I negotiated with the game. If it permitted me to properly rest in reality to nurture the pregnancy, I would clear instances earnestly and rank up to S9 once I re-entered the game.”
“The game agreed. I signed a contract with the game: once the child passed their one-month milestone, I would go in to clear instances, with evaluations no lower than A, until I reached S9.”
Bai Cha felt a touch surprised, yet upon further thought, it proved thoroughly logical.
“For the game to be so desperate for players to grow stronger quickly… it must have ulterior motives, right?”
“Naturally.” Shen Qingchen let out a cold laugh.
“It wishes for every single player to rank up to S9, and then figures out ways to let players die so it can harvest powerful souls to serve as energy!”
“That’s why I mentioned earlier that you’re prone to attracting unwanted attention. However, I watched this live stream of yours—though the screen turned heavily distorted at the very end and made it hard to discern what transpired, I can roughly guess… it seems you’ve already attracted attention long ago, so a bit more changes nothing.”
Bai Cha fell silent.
That was indeed true.
“The game exists solely to obtain players’ souls as power?”
Shen Qingchen let out another soft laugh.
“Who knows? These are merely my speculations after all. Certain matters that can be spoken aloud are all permitted by the game to be uttered.”
The game never cared about players’ attitudes or perceptions toward it.
It would lay everything out crystal clear on the surface.
Yet countless players had no choice but to take the bait regardless.
Arriving downstairs at the company, Shen Qingchen brought Bai Cha to grab a meal first.
“I’ve really troubled you.” Bai Cha felt somewhat apologetic.
Even if the other party claimed she was watching the live stream, it still meant she had spent the entire night accompanying her there.
It was truly…
“It’s nothing. Back when I first entered the game, I wished nothing more than for someone to cover for me!”
Traversing between the game and reality alone made it exceedingly easy to abandon reality, simply because it was far too troublesome.
“After eating in a bit, head upstairs on your own. I’m going home—I need to enter the game as well.”
Bai Cha nodded.
“Though I possess the right not to stream now. The sole perk of S9 is probably being able to turn off live streams.”
Shen Qingchen twitched the corner of her mouth—it was merely to allow one to die without a whisper, nothing more.
Returning to the company, Bai Cha’s appearance genuinely caught everyone off guard.
“You came over already? Didn’t Sister Shen say you were still in the hospital?”
“You don’t need to be this dedicated to work.”
Bai Cha offered a soft smile, brushing off their concern with casual responses.
Sitting at her workstation, she experienced a fleeting moment of absentmindedness.
After a brief thought, Bai Cha opened her browser and searched for Xingfu Nursing Home once more.
Regarding the previous instance, there was a question she had been pondering all along.
One was the issue of time: after the instance formed, the timeline jumped across two years directly.
And those patients had passed away long ago, all turned into lingering spirits.
So what did Qin Fa and his cohort count as?
Was it because they entered the instance that all NPCs turned into ghosts and monsters?
In truth, this question tied into the players themselves as well.
Upon entering the game, it felt as though one’s physical body entered directly.
For instance, after all her power inside the game was completely drained right now, that sensation of exhausted frailty proved far more intense than in reality.
It was quite painful, in fact.
And previously, when she fell ill in reality, the illness would be carried into the game as well.
It appeared as though her physical self had entered, while in the eyes of people in reality, she had merely fainted.
So had the game altered people’s memories and perceptions, or was a player entering the game truly not their physical body?
The browser soon popped up a massive heap of search results.
Unlike before entering the instance, far more relevant news reports surfaced this time, many of which had been nowhere to be seen previously.
For instance: [Xingfu Nursing Home Mysterious Fire: On-Site Visits Reveal Numerous Young Patients Once Received Treatment Here]
This had definitely not been present before.
[Xingfu Nursing Home Haunting Rumors: Did Truly No One Perish Inside During the Fire Back Then?]
[Rumors Claim Patients Inside Xingfu Nursing Home Died Long Ago; Whole Ward Building Torched to Cover Up Crimes, Management Actually Fled Long Before]
[Mass Deaths Among Elderly Residents at Xingfu Nursing Home: What on Earth Caused It?]
Bai Cha knitted her brows in deep thought.
It was like this once again.
As if the instance had affected reality and subsequently executed modifications.
Yet if one argued that these events had originally transpired in reality—merely shielded by the game when she searched back then because she was about to enter the instance—that made complete sense as well.
