The central hall of the game, the core screen area.

Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang's small TV positions were slightly inferior to Bai Liu in the previous duel, so the small TV data of these two people declined, resulting in a slight decline in their promotion positions, from a position close to the [King Promotion Position] to the core promotion position, while Bai Liu's small TV ranking rose slightly, but his small TV data is not good enough to rush to the [Nightmare Rising Star Promotion Position].

The current situation is that the two groups met at the [core promotion position], and Bai Liu still had a slight advantage, as his promotion position happened to be directly above Miao Feichi and his son.

The flow of audiences among players in the same promotional position is very large, because the audiences can see each other's situation. When a player performs well, the audiences on his small TV will cheer and get nervous and excited. Although the audiences on the small TVs of different players cannot hear each other's voices, that kind of atmosphere can easily attract the surrounding audiences, causing one side to absorb the audience of the other side, one flying higher and higher, the other falling lower and lower. At present, Bai Liu and Miao Feichi, father and son, are in this stalemate.

This stalemate can easily lead to audience loss.

Fortunately, the audience loss on Bai Liu's side was not serious. The big guys who were rarely seen standing in front of Bai Liu's small TV did not leave. Wang Shun couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief when he saw this situation - mainly because Bai Liu's playing style was too deadly. The kind of playing that was so thrilling that one could easily fail if not careful was very arousing.

A player from the Kabbalah Guild (ranked fourth) commented to Bai Liu with a smile: "It's really suspenseful. This guy's play style is really suitable for the [Death Comedy] area. No wonder it is said that he fell into that area the first time."

The high-ranking members of the Kabbalah guild all wear a green pendant in the shape of a growing tree branch on their hair. It is very easy to spot and Wang Shun recognized it at a glance. The darker the color of the branch pendant on the hair, the higher the rank. The pendant on the hair of the spectator who commented on Bai Liu was almost dark green, and it seemed that he was a high-ranking guild leader of a high rank.

"Indeed, I rarely see such reckless players." A spectator wearing a neat white uniform with a winged lyre embroidered in gold thread on the right chest nodded.

The spectator had a handsome and elegant mixed-race face, with bright golden hair combed back, and a somewhat indifferent expression when he spoke. Wang Shun recognized that the uniform was the league team uniform of the Golden Dawn Guild (the third-ranked guild).

But Wang Shun had never seen this person in the arena before, and he was a little face-blind to the members of this guild, many of whom were foreigners. However, this person should be a substitute player who just joined the team this year, and has the same status as Zhang Kui before he died.

"But Bai Liu should also find it difficult to deal with this situation. He is now walking on a tightrope. If he takes a wrong step, Miao Gao will kill him." A lazy-looking spectator commented. The spectator was dressed in a very shabby and ragged manner, like a beggar on the street. In the entire game, there is only one guild with such a bad taste in dressing - Heavenly Freemasonry (the seventh-ranked guild).

This is a very strange guild. The founder of this guild was a very rich beggar who has died in the game. However, under his spiritual influence, the entire guild has this strange style of wearing tattered clothes. The names of the players of this guild appear most frequently on the [Bulletin Wall] in the game. Every day, players report that the players of this guild have exhibitionism and are tattered.

The Masonic player who just spoke was on the verge of being reported for his attire, but he didn't care. Instead, he raised his finger and pointed at the white willow on the small TV, saying with interest, "So it's true that newcomers have a halo. The small TV in this game is designed to avoid the situation where newcomers have no points to use, resulting in an extremely high mortality rate. Newcomers can get points rewarded by the audience in time to buy props to use."

"The small TV reward points obtained by veteran players who have played the game for more than one year will be transferred to the system wallet. Only after the game is over, after a tax ranging from 5% to 20% is deducted according to the number of points obtained, can they be received by the live broadcast players."

"The newcomers who are currently broadcasting the game can judge whether their operations are correct based on the number of points they are rewarded, but the old players do not have this benefit. They can only continue to move forward based on their own experience." The audience member continued, raising his eyebrows, "But in this stalemate, this newcomer halo is ineffective because he will not receive much reward."

"Once they find that their mistakes have caused their reward points to drop drastically, many newcomers will lose their balance and end up in a dead end." The audience stared at Bai Liu on the small TV. "What would you do, Bai Liu?"

"How will you, a poor, penniless guy, take the next step?" He thought thoughtfully, "Miao Gaojiang and Miao Feichi are waiting for you at the hospital gate to tell them the [life-saving recipe]. They are saying that if you don't tell them, they will kill you. Miao Gaojiang is not a player who will easily tolerate unstable factors around him. Will you honestly tell them the mission clues you have worked so hard to get?"

Bai Liu on the small TV looked downcast as he hurried through the hospital corridor toward the place where investors gathered.

In addition to Bai Liu and other players, there are some other [investors] who are going to watch the ceremony. However, all the [investors] look the same, and if you don’t take the initiative to say hello, you really can’t recognize who is who when standing at the hospital entrance.

But Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang are still easy to recognize. After all, Miao Feichi likes to play with the two pig grass knives in his hands, and the one who usually stands next to Miao Feichi is Miao Gaojiang.

Bai Liu, pretending to be Mu Ke, walked over and greeted him respectfully, but when Miao Gaojiang saw him, he went straight to the point and talked about the [life-saving remedy].

Bai Liu couldn't hide this from Miao Gaojiang, nor could he deceive them, because these two people must get the correct [Life-saving Prescription] before the system will tell them that they have unlocked the main quest, otherwise the system will not respond. Bai Liu and Miao Gaojiang looked at each other - this man looked at him with a very scrutinizing look, Bai Liu needed to prove his worth in front of Miao Gaojiang.

Bai Liu simply handed the page he tore off to Miao Gaojiang, but mixed in some other pages as confusing information.

After Miao Gaojiang and Miao Feichi finished scanning the information at a glance, their faces froze for a moment. It should be because the system panel popped up to unlock the main quest. Miao Gaojiang's expression softened for a moment when he looked at Bai Liu: "It is indeed a [life-saving remedy]."

But even with the confusing information, Miao Gaojiang quickly figured out the whole [Life-Prolonging Prescription], and his face darkened a lot: "But they want us to kill children to get their blood. If we do that, we will lose half of our health points."

"It's the old second-level game mode, which is to force the player to eat half of his total health." Miao Feizhi used his little finger to pick his ear, not caring at all. "I also don't like my little brat. He's troublesome and useless. He kept staring at me and swallowing his saliva as if he wanted to eat my flesh. I hate him so much, so I'll just kill him."

"And that little Bai Liu." Miao Feichi rubbed his hands together, licked his lips, and showed a very obvious greedy look, "The design of this game to kill children is quite in line with my taste. I just like to kill children and eat their flesh. After drawing blood, I can just eat the skin and flesh. It's not a waste, just right."

"But it's best not to do it today." Miao Gaojiang looked at Miao Feichi with a warning, "It will take at least another day for your stamina bar to recover to the point where you can use stamina recovery potions. If you do it during the day, your skills will be severely blocked."

"Tsk." Miao Feizhi glanced at Miao Gaojiang with a sidelong glance, "I know, but even if the monsters here are A+, you don't have to be so nervous. We have played level 3 games so many times."

Miao Gaojiang gently advised Miao Feichi: "It's better to be careful."

Miao Gaojiang was too vigilant, and would not act rashly unless he was 80 to 90 percent sure. The things he had taken from Bai Liu before included points, but this guy was wary of Bai Liu's trading items hidden inside, so he did not put them directly into the system package, but wrapped them up with cloth - the one he used was the cloth-type prop [disguised cloth] that Du Sanying used in the previous game.

The item explanation given by the system for this cloth is [virtual reality], that is, a cloth that actually exists but cannot be touched. The things wrapped by this thing cannot be considered as the direct possession of the player, so Bai Liu's trading skill is invalid, because the other player did not [get] the traded item, just like the Taobao buyer who has purchased but not received the goods.

Moreover, Miao Gaojiang would intentionally avoid Bai Liu speaking to him in imperative sentences. He was very careful, and any ending sentence that Bai Liu spoke to him in a questioning tone would be responded to by Miao Gaojiang without a word. Bai Liu tried to talk to Miao Feichi several times, but was also blocked by Miao Gaojiang.

Bai Liu now somewhat understands the meaning of the symbol "mindful as dust, scheming deeply" in Miao Gaojiang's popularity vote.

Miao Gao Zombie was indeed a very difficult opponent to deal with. His observation and details were too dense, and even though Bai Liu had the upper hand, he could not find any loopholes for Miao Gao Zombie to exploit.

After several unsuccessful attempts to get the point across, Bai Liu had no choice but to pretend to be honest and keep her mouth shut under Miao Gaojiang's increasingly suspicious gaze.

I can only think of other solutions.

At about ten o'clock, the director of the welfare home who had brought these investors here yesterday came over. It was also this director who led them to the welfare home to watch the baptism.

Following the path they came from yesterday and walking back from the classroom that Bai Liu entered, they could see a church with a large scale and well-built structure. This was the building that no longer existed in reality after it was reduced in size several times due to financial constraints.

This church was a very typical one, with a pointed roof made of pure white marble. The bottom was carved with many runes that Bai Liu was not familiar with. He glanced at it twice more and confirmed that it was not from the New Testament or the Old Testament. It was a very strange rune prayer, not any of the words that Bai Liu was familiar with that would appear on the walls of a church. It was a twisted and weird hieroglyphic.

On the tallest buildings, you can see many little angels in the niches. These angels are the size of life-like children, with lifelike looks, as if they were sculptures copied from real people's faces. Their eyeballs are incredibly large, as if they will roll off their faces in the next second. There are strange expression lines on the faces of these angels, like dark blood vessels behind wrinkled and raised skin, or like cracks caused by paint peeling off the face due to wind and sun exposure.

But the rest of the church is quite new, so the sculptures haven't aged to this extent.

Bai Liu calmly withdrew his gaze and followed the other investors into the church.

The interior of the church was spacious, tall and wide. The sound of people's footsteps could be heard on the ground. Light shone directly in from the tall windows on both sides of the church, falling on the pale faces of these terminally ill patients whose faces were filled with the breath of death. Their seats were facing an altar with a cross more than one meter high on the altar. It was a very common church building, but Bai Liu squinted his eyes and found something wrong after looking at it for a while.

In fact, they often use some religious elements when making horror games. Bai Liu has seen at least 800 sculptures of Jesus being tied to a cross and suffering, but this one is obviously wrong.

This is obviously an inverted cross, and the figure tied on top of this inverted cross is not the statue of Jesus that Bai Liu remembered, but a statue of a teenager.

The teenager on the inverted cross looks about the same age as Xiaobai. He has his eyes closed, and his hands and feet are tied with thorns. The cross of Jesus is also called the bitter face, but this cross is different from the traditional crucifixes in which Jesus has a painful expression on his face. There is no expression on his face, and an almost innocent indifference, as if he has no feeling at all that he is suffering.

The thorns on the wooden cross entangled his ankles and neck, and then around his face. Bai Liu could almost see the shadows cast by his long eyelashes on his face, which was scarred by the thorns - but this was just a pure white statue, without such detailed carvings.

But even if it hadn't been carved so meticulously, it would still be a beautiful sculpture.

His limbs were smooth and graceful, and the proportions of his face were astonishingly superior. He lay in a bush of thorns growing in an inverted cross, his face slightly tilted to the side, leaning on his bound arms. Light from the side window fell on his peaceful sleeping face, casting a holy glow in the dim church.

Like a sleeping god.

The dean stood in front of the sculpture to block Bai Liu's gaze. She looked at all the patients who had already taken their seats and said, "Today, we come here to welcome a new life, but baptism is only the beginning. Killing children is prohibited in the church. Investors, please be patient. Wait until you are truly sure that this is the child you want and that the child can indeed bring you a new life, then you can take them away."

"Not all children can bring you new life." The dean looked at the people in the seats with a deep gaze, and she raised her arms and shouted, "Only children with pure blood can bring you new life!"

The investors below couldn't help but excitedly agree: "A brand new life!!"

Bai Liu was sitting in the back row with Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang. After hearing this, Miao Feichi leaned over and complained to Miao Gaojiang: "Why does this game have a safe house for children? It's forbidden to kill children in the church. It will be very inconvenient if we catch all these children and they run to the church."

"Normal. After all, it's a level 2 game. You can't pass it so easily." Miao Gaojiang analyzed clearly, "But I think the key to this game is to catch your child. That's what blood relationship means. Only children who meet the conditions can be used as the main medicine to infuse the blood ganoderma we want."

But Miao Gaojiang paused for a moment, and quickly added: "But according to the usual nature of second-level games, I think the blood of a child should not be enough to save a player. This will not limit the death rate of players. To be on the safe side, we should capture a few more. One player for two children should be about the same."

Miao Feichi and Miao Gao were chatting about how to deal with these children. After learning about the [life-saving remedy], the two of them divided the children into their enemies without hesitation. Now they were already talking about how to draw blood from their childhood selves. Miao Feichi even laughed and said why not buy an extra-large juicer from the system and throw these children in to juice it, would that produce more blood?

Bai Liu listened silently in the back.

He was not surprised that [investors] could not do anything to children today. According to the song and his consistent understanding of baptism, children before baptism were sinful and impure, and most likely could not have their blood drawn.

If they could attack the child directly today, with Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang, two high-risk players, coming to participate in the baptism, and the child having no resistance at all, then Bai Liu would find ways to let Xiao Bailiu take the others away this morning.

Soon, after leading all the investors in reciting a few prayers, the dean entered with a group of barefoot children wearing wide white robes that reached their ankles.

All the investors in the audience stirred slightly, and the same expression appeared on their identical faces - they looked at these children who were brought to them by the dean with enthusiasm and greed, these children who exuded an endless breath of life.

This is their new life.

Even Miao Feichi, who was lazily leaning on the chair, sat up straight. He stretched his head to look at these children with a look like a juicer looking at the fruit that was about to enter its cavity, with a kind of cruel excitement and greed that wanted to crush them. His nose twitched twice, and he revealed a slightly intoxicated expression.

"These little cubs smell so delicious." Miao Feizhi was like an animal about to eat. He kept licking his lips and stared at Xiao Bailiu who was walking in the group of children. "That Xiao Bailiu looks so tender. I haven't eaten a whole child in one go for a long time. Maybe he can do it."

Xiao Bailiu was wearing a wide white robe that dragged down to his ankles and was shoeless. He lowered his head and looked at the burning flat candle in his hand. The flame flickered on his calm face. He walked barefoot at the end of the children's team and stood on the platform under the guidance of the dean.

Under the direction of the dean, the children stood in a horizontal row on the stage, holding each other's hands. Xiao Bailiu raised his eyes slowly. There were many identical faces of "investors" in the audience, thin and pale, examining them with strange smiles. Under the flickering of the candles in the children's hands, the faces of these people seemed to be deformed and distorted in the high temperature air, turning into screaming shapes, and rushing towards them with their mouths wide open.

Xiao Mu Ke, who was standing next to Xiao Bailiu, only looked up secretly and lowered his head in fear, while Xiao Bailiu continued to glance at everyone below calmly. Finally, his gaze slowly fixed on Bai Liu and would not move away - it was obvious that he was looking for Bai Liu among this group of investors.

Bai Liu raised his eyebrows in surprise - this kid, all the investors here look the same, how did he recognize him?

Someone brought in a bathtub, or something that looked very much like a bathtub. The director explained that it was an altar used to baptize children. It was filled with shivering water, and there was a circle of bloodstains around it that seemed to be indelible.

The bathtub was placed in front of the children.

The director stood in front of all the children. She raised her hand and made a gesture, asking all the children to look up at her.

She smiled very kindly and said, "Okay, children, let's sing the hymn and then start baptizing you one by one. Remember to add your name to the hymn at the end."

The voices of children of different ages rang out. They sang with innocent and clear voices. The candle flames in their hands danced brightly in their innocent eyes:

“We were born on Monday.

We were baptized on Tuesday

We got married on Wednesday

We got sick on Thursday

Our illness worsened on Friday

We died on Saturday

We were buried in the ground on Sunday

This is our life—this is the life of Bai Liu (each child’s name).”

"Very good." After a weird opening song, the dean opened the registration list in her hand, lowered her head and began to read the names on it, "Next, I will let each [investor] baptize their investment children. It's very simple. You just need to immerse your children in this clean water pool, but the clean water can only wash away the bacteria these children brought from the outside world. Oh, sorry, it's not bacteria, I misspoken, it's sin. Clean water is far from enough to wash away the sins in them-"

The director raised her head, her eyes swept over all the children, and the smile on her face became sinister and harsh: "After washing with clean water, you can take some of the children's blood to wash away their sins, and then take some of the blood away to the hospital to determine if they have other sins. If not, you can come and take these children away on Wednesday, or adopt them."

Bai Liu's eyes moved slightly.

No wonder there is such an incongruous ceremony of baptism here.

It turns out that these [investors] are afraid that these children have some other viruses in their bodies, so they have to use this ritual in advance to cleanse the [diseases and filth] from the spiritual level of the children in these welfare homes, and take some blood back for examination to confirm from a physiological level that there are no problems with the blood of these children - for example, whether there are bacteria and infectious diseases.

These [investors] are quite particular. They think these children from outside are dirty both mentally and physically, so they set up this high-sounding [baptism] to screen the blood quality of the children in the orphanage.

This is equivalent to a [pre-matching] experiment, and we can officially start taking the children away on [Wednesday].