Bai Liu didn't stay in the children's welfare home for long. He was about to start a game with Mu Ke. After briefly scanning the entire welfare home, he was ready to leave.

But before Bai Liu left, he still had to give Lu Yizhan a brief explanation.

So Bai Liu asked Mu Ke to go home and wait for him. When the young master left, he looked back every few steps, reluctantly looking at Bai Liu, and asked Bai Liu when he would be back. Bai Liu simply asked Mu Ke to take the key to his house and go back and wait, which made Mu Ke's father look at Bai Liu with something strange in his eyes.

As soon as Bai Liu came out, he saw Lu Yizhang waiting for him at the door of the welfare home.

Seeing Bai Liu, Lu Yizhan couldn't help but tease him: "What about the young master? He drove a luxury car worth tens of millions of dollars and followed you around, and he kept staring at me. When did you become so charming?"

Bai Liu teased back calmly, "What's the point of being charming? I rejected him for your sake and let him go first."

Lu Yizhan couldn't help laughing, but he quickly stopped laughing and got down to business: "What do you think of the inside?"

Bai Liu said slowly, "In addition to the poisoned children, there are also missing children in this orphanage. I know almost all about the poisoned children, but as for the missing children, I guess this is not the first case in this orphanage, right?"

"How do you know?" Lu Yizhan was surprised.

"The attitude is wrong." Bai Liu analyzed calmly, "The teacher gave me a wrong feeling. Normal people would avoid places where missing persons have happened, but when she introduced us to the place, although we were scared, we subconsciously walked to the place where the missing persons went missing, the children's playground."

"This is not the first time a missing person has had such an attitude. It is likely that this has happened several times, which is why people are afraid but have become accustomed to this attitude."

"Yes." Lu Yizhan held the cigarette he had put away in his mouth a little irritably. "We have consulted the dean. It is said that this has happened almost every year in the past ten years."

Bai Liu asked back, "You should have records of missing persons cases like this that happen every year. Why haven't I heard about this before?"

"Because they are not missing, most of the time the children ran away on their own. Even if they were reported, they were treated as runaways." Lu Yizhan's teeth were gnashing on the mouthpiece of his cigarette, his eyes dark. "It may just be mentioned in the records, and it won't be noticeable if you don't pay attention."

It is a thankless task to spend a lot of effort to find the children who are missing in private welfare institutions. There are no parents or relatives to scold or urge you to find the children if you cannot find them. So the missing cases reported one after another are just left to gather dust, and the few lines of records are lost in the sea of ​​people along with these missing children.

"I found out that a group of entrepreneurs had invested in this children's welfare home. After the illness was cured, I checked the welfare home carefully." Lu Yizhan exhaled a puff of smoke, "But the registration of this private welfare home is not as strict as that of the public welfare home. It is more of a private self-management. It is hard to say how many children there are at a specific time and whether the records we have obtained are true records."

"For example, if a child went missing and the dean didn't report it for a few years, we probably wouldn't have known about it."

Lu Yizhan was silent for a while and then said, "I tend to suspect that there are problems with those entrepreneurs, but they are now famous and reputable, and it has been so many years. We have no evidence here, and there is no way to conduct an in-depth investigation."

Bai Liu continued calmly, "Suppose that even if these entrepreneurs really did something to some of the children back then, without knowing the names of these children and where they came from or where they went, they could very likely use a disappearance trick like this to make these children disappear quietly from this orphanage. You have no idea of ​​how to investigate."

"Yes." Lu Yizhan took a deep breath of cigarette and coughed, "But Bai Liu, this is a human life."

Lu Yizhan looked at Bai Liu with red eyes: "I am unwilling to accept that the lives of these children are classified as accidents. Even if it is really an accident, I will not accept it until all other possibilities are ruled out. But now——"

"You have no evidence." Bai Liu looked at Lu Yizhan calmly, "You can't rule it out, and this is not within your job scope. The fact that you can come to the scene is already a matter of meddling."

The Lu Station was quiet for a while, and soon the guy acted as if nothing had happened, or rather, he talked to Bai Liu about the missing case with determination.

Lu Yizhang has a very peculiar resilience. Bai Liu will not touch a thing if he knows it cannot be done. But as long as Lu Yizhang thinks that this thing can help others, he will try to do it no matter how much effort it takes.

And he will also bring Bai Liu along.

Lu Yixuan told Bai Liu about the specific circumstances of the missing cases he had learned about, and showed Bai Liu the missing children and photos of each year. The photos used were the Children's Day group photos taken by the welfare home every year. Lu Yixuan took photos and used his mobile phone to show Bai Liu which missing children were there.

When the first one came out, Lu Yizhan was strangely silent for a while.

Because Bai Liu is one of the missing children in this photo.

"You think he looks a lot like me when I was 14, right?" Bai Liu pointed directly at Bai Liu's face and asked Lu Yizhan, commenting calmly, "I think so too."

"You two are not alike at all." Lu Yizhan said in a low voice. He looked at Bai Liu intently and refuted his friend in a rare stubborn way. "Because he is dead, but you are still alive."

——————————

"Have you ever encountered this kind of situation, Mu Sicheng?" Bai Liu called Mu Sicheng as he walked home. "In the future, as a [player], I was definitely dead in a game copy ten years ago, but now, ten years later, I am still alive."

"It sounds like the Grandmother Paradox to me?" Mu Sicheng's voice came from Bai Liu's phone receiver. He said in a suspicious tone, "Bai Liu, your luck is really amazing. Not to mention seeing it, I have never heard of such a situation in the game."

The Grandmother Paradox is a time paradox proposed by a science fiction writer. It means that if a person goes back to the past and kills his grandmother, then it is obvious that he will no longer exist in the future. So how did he go back to the past?

This is Bai Liu's current situation. If he enters the game in the future and dies in a game copy that takes place ten years ago, how is he alive now?

"Parallel universe theory?" Mu Sicheng tried to explain. "This is the most common explanation of the grandmother paradox. Assuming that the parallel universe you are in is A, it is very likely that what you saw was the failed Bai Liu from B loaded into our A spacetime's [game copy]."

"Then you'd better not enter this orphanage game." Mu Sicheng's voice became more serious. He advised Bai Liu, "As long as you choose not to enter this game, you will not die in this game. In this way, another possible space-time can be formed that is parallel to the space-time in which you died."

"I don't think it's the parallel universe theory." Bai Liu was very clear-headed. He calmly reminded Mu Sicheng, "Our [real world] is the [official version] of a game. The results presented are the final results of all the game algorithms that exist in the [public beta version of the game world]. Theoretically, there is no parallel universe derived from different events."

"Because the reality we are in is the conclusion of all possibilities. It is impossible to be parallel anymore."

"That's true." Mu Sicheng confirmed this, but he quickly reacted, "No, wait, but if the result presented is unique, doesn't it mean that you will definitely die in that game copy from ten years ago?!"

"But I'm still alive now, proving that I didn't die in that copy." Bai Liu's thoughts were clear. "Otherwise, the two propositions of [I'm alive] and [I'm dead] existing at the same time would form a paradox in the only real space-time that cannot be parallel."

"Then..." Mu Sicheng was confused, "What's going on?"

Bai Liu ignored Mu Sicheng's questions. He walked to the door of his house, took out the key and prepared to open the door.

Bai Liu held his phone between his shoulders and asked, "When are you going to enter the game?"

"What?" Mu Sicheng's head bald when he talked about this. "Fuck, I couldn't sleep all night after I agreed to let you participate in the competition yesterday. What can you do? I can still try hard to clear 26 dungeons in two months, but you at least get me all the people!"

"That's what I want to tell you. I want you to help me train a pair of new players." Bai Liu spoke quickly. "Xiang Chunhua and Liu Fu, they are the two players ranked first among the last batch of new players. They both have personal skills and a C+ panel quality. You can take them through a level 1 dungeon to practice their skills and teach them some basic knowledge of this game. Don't be too protective of them."

After coming back from eating hot pot yesterday, Bai Liu negotiated with Xiang Chunhua and Liu Fu. He asked the two middle-aged men whether they were willing to participate in the league, and honestly informed them of the dangers.

But Xiang Chunhua and Liu Fu barely hesitated. They held hands and agreed with tears in their eyes. They only asked Bai Liu two questions from beginning to end:

The first one was: "As long as we win, we can revive Guoguo, right?"

"In theory, yes." Bai Liu said, "But if you accumulate points through normal game play, you should be able to slowly realize this wish. It's not as risky as the league, but you can earn points faster in the league. You can think it over and reply to me tomorrow."

Xiang Chunhua looked at Liu Fu awkwardly, her hands tightly grasping her apron. The TV behind her was still broadcasting the news that Li Gou was likely to be sentenced to death.

This news was a rerun, the volume was turned up very loud, and the room was filled with the flat voice of the male host reporting [Suspect in high school girl dismemberment case to be sentenced to death].

Xiang Chunhua looked at Bai Liu anxiously:

"If we participate in this competition, we can help you, right?" - This was the second question they asked.

Bai Liu was silent for a moment: "Yes, but the mortality rate of this competition is very high, you might want to give it more consideration..."

"Let's go." Xiang Chunhua smiled. There were still tears in her eyes, which she wiped away with the back of her hand. "Don't think about it anymore. We believe in you, Bai Liu. Besides, it doesn't matter where you earn points. Isn't it just a game? I was on the women's volleyball team of our school, right, Liu Fu?"