Chapter 109

Chapter 109

A coin was tossed high into the air, then plummeted back down like a shooting star. Bai Yi caught it with his left hand and quickly covered it with his right.

“Snap!”

He crouched down, smiling at the child standing before him. “It’s your turn. Guess – heads or tails?”

“Tails?”

“Ta-da! Congratulations... you guessed wrong!”

Bai Yi slowly opened his palm, announcing with the excitement of revealing a lottery prize. “It’s heads.”

As the child looked on in disbelief, he casually tossed the coin into his pocket and held out his open palm to the youngster. “A bet’s a bet. Your wager is mine now.”

The child’s eyes widened, suddenly full of reluctance.

Unwillingly, the child extended his hand, conflicted about placing the candy he was clutching into Bai Yi’s open palm. His fingertips, still gripping the sweet, hesitated to let go. He kept stealing glances at Bai Yi, his round eyes clearly saying, “Really, no take-backs?”

“Nope, no puppy dog eyes allowed,” Bai Yi said as he snatched the candy from the child’s fingers with a speed the youngster couldn’t follow. He unwrapped it and popped it into his mouth in one swift motion.

“Waaah!”

Seeing his candy disappear into someone else’s mouth – a scene almost as cruel as NTR happening right before his eyes – the child could no longer hold back his tears.

Just as he opened his mouth to wail, Bai Yi suddenly slipped something inside. A sweet taste spread across his tongue, abruptly cutting off his cry.

His eyes grew even rounder with surprise.

Those round eyes reflected the smiling face of the young man. Bai Yi stood up, casually ruffling the child’s soft hair. “Just kidding. Do I look like the kind of immature person who’d steal a kid’s candy just to watch him cry?”

“You don’t just look like it,” a voice sounded from behind. Bai Yi turned to meet the newcomer’s gaze. “You are that kind of person.”

The newcomer wore casual gray clothes and a baseball cap. The strands of hair visible under the brim were slightly damp, clearly having just returned from a jog. His face was flushed from exercise as he bluntly criticized, “If you didn’t dislike sweets, you definitely would have eaten it. No way you’d have faked it and given it back to him.”

“Ah, while I’d like to honor the bet, sacrificing my taste buds is a bit much,” Bai Yi didn’t refute the latter part of the statement, but took issue with the first. “However, it’s not because I find it amusing to see children cry. I just wanted to teach him that carelessly wagering something precious can lead to heartbreak when you lose it.”

At this point, Bai Yi spoke earnestly. “I’ve properly taught the child to stay away from gambling. After this profound lesson, he’ll surely remember it in the future.”

Watching the lucky child he had randomly picked from the street (out of boredom while waiting for others) scamper away, Bai Yi’s gaze held equal parts satisfaction, expectation, and contentment.

At that moment, he seemed to radiate the light of righteousness.

“Sounds reasonable,” the other person nodded, seemingly convinced by Bai Yi’s philosophy. But in the next moment, he changed tack and continued his criticism, “But after all that talk and grand reasoning, aren’t you just refusing to admit you’re childish?”

As he spoke, something seemed to catch his eye, and his expression turned a bit strange. “What’s this? You’re carrying a fairy tale book? You’re even more childlike than I thought.”

Bai Yi glanced down at the fairy tale book tucked under his arm.

“Oh, this isn’t my book. It’s my mom’s.”

“I see, it’s not yours... Wait, your mom’s?”

The other person’s expression suddenly cracked. He incredulously pointed a trembling finger at the worn fairy tale book.

“You’re saying this is your mother’s book?!”

Bai Yi narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “Yes, it’s my mom’s book. It was a gift given to her when she was in the orphanage. Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?”

“No, no, no, this is even scarier than seeing a ghost!” The other person instinctively took a big step back. “You didn’t suddenly contact me just to investigate the origins of this fairy tale book, did you?”

A mix of emotions surged within him. Longing, he instinctively parted the bushes, about to approach that person.

But at that moment, he witnessed an incredible scene.

As the woman’s gentle voice continued, the fairy tale’s scenes seemed to materialize in reality...

“The rose said, ‘Please let go, kind little miss. Don’t pluck me from my stem, or I’ll bleed to death’...”

Accompanying her voice, countless flowers in the garden fell from their stems, as if plucked by invisible hands. Endless streams of blood gushed from the “wounds,” flooding the entire garden and engulfing the little boy hidden in the bushes.

“Have you ever experienced the feeling of suffocating in the deep sea?” Xu Jian’s eyes flashed with lingering fear. He had truly been traumatized, and to this day he disliked going near the sea and suffered from severe hemophobia. “And it wasn’t just any sea, but a sea of fresh, crimson blood with its metallic smell... I truly experienced that then.”

“But when I struggled to swim out, the suffocating feeling vanished. The sea of blood disappeared. Everything before my eyes became bright, and all the flowers were still blooming nicely on their stems. That person had fallen asleep on the lounge chair... as if everything I had seen before was just my illusion.”

“Maybe it was just my hallucination. Later, I stumbled away and told the doctors and nurses at the hospital about it. They all said it was my imagination and diagnosed that my condition had worsened.”

Xu Jian shook his head with a bitter smile. “Even now, I wonder if it was just a hallucination caused by my mental state at the time. But the psychological trauma was so severe that even knowing it has nothing to do with your mom, I can’t help but panic a little when I recall that incident. So if you want to hire me to investigate anything related to this, I’m really powerless to help.”

“Not necessarily,” Bai Yi interjected.

“W-what do you mean?” Xu Jian’s face suddenly turned pale. His vivid imagination made him feel uneasy.

Bai Yi raised his index finger and shook it. “It might not have been a hallucination.”

Xu Jian laughed stiffly. “Stop joking. You’re not trying to get back at me for teasing you about being childish earlier, are you?”

“Oh?” With his finger still raised, Bai Yi’s pitch-black eyes stared silently at him, his gaze inexplicably mysterious.

The surrounding atmosphere seemed to grow eerie.

“Hey, don’t scare me. I’m afraid of this stuff...”

“Snap!”

The crisp sound of a coin being flipped rang out. The coin was tossed high, fell heavily, and was caught in Bai Yi’s palm.

The eerie atmosphere instantly shattered. The corner of the young man’s lips curled up, revealing a mischievous smile. “Haha, of course I was just scaring you.”

“You...” Xu Jian let out an almost imperceptible sigh of relief.

“Since nothing in the garden changed, what you saw before must have been your hallucination,” Bai Yi said casually, as Xu Jian glared at him with a desire to punch him. “It’s not like scenes from the fairy tale materialized in reality and then disappeared instantly due to lack of energy, right?”

“Ah—” He sighed deeply, like a father looking at his son who was lost in fantasy and refusing to wake up. In an incredibly annoying tone, he said, “Although the revival of spiritual energy has made the extraordinary no longer a legend, you’re not still a grown man believing in such unreliable fantasies, are you?”

As he spoke, twisted characters silently appeared in mid-air, invisible to Xu Jian.

They were silently reflected in the young man’s pitch-black pupils.

[Obtained 1 Important Clue for Special Reality Task.]

[Please continue to search for related clues.]

[When clues are gathered, a Special Reality Task will be triggered.]

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