Chapter 42 Secret
"So... what's going on now? Since Dad and Brother are coming to Tokyo, won't they just happen to run into our group robbing the auction and then come to get involved?"
Seeing Gu Qiye's back leaving, Ji Minghuan pinched his chin and thought in his heart.
He thought, "I'm really worried that my second character will be killed instantly by the eldest brother. He can't possibly compensate me with split points to let me create a new character." He sighed and gave up the thought, "Let's consider the welfare home first, or find clues to the laboratory."
He walked out of the room, closed the door, then stepped onto the second-floor terrace, approached the railing and looked at the welfare home in the distance.
Ji Minghuan leaned on the railing and stared at the library in the sun for a while.
As the morning breeze blew, carrying with it the heat, he recalled the past.
When Ji Minghuan was four years old, he was abandoned by his parents and sent to this orphanage. Over the years, he knew every building and every corner of the orphanage, especially the library in his sight.
He had loved hanging out in this library since he was a kid, reading all kinds of books, from astronomy and geography to humanities and history to philosophical theories by Nietzsche and Camus, and even a lot of books on psychology and religion. Of course, most of them were just random books. He didn't expect this library to have high-quality books, so he just read what he could.
To talk about how much Ji Minghuan likes this library, there is one more thing to mention.
The rules of this orphanage are very special. One or two specific teachers will be arranged in the orphanage to teach the children. They will use tests to distinguish the intelligence level of each child, and the children with outstanding performance will be given the right to go to school.
Children who are judged to be intellectually deficient are kept in the institution and symbolically receive basic education at the level of their intelligence tests.
Perhaps because he spent all day in the library, Ji Minghuan performed very well among the other children. He got full marks in every subject, far exceeding the standards required to be sent to school. However, he resisted this and was unwilling to go to school outside the orphanage.
The teachers and the dean of the college tried to persuade him many times, but he refused to give in. Later he even threatened to hurt himself.
After he resisted many times, the dean snorted coldly and said that you might as well stay here as a useless person for the rest of your life. Ji Minghuan just tilted his head and continued to read his miscellaneous books, not taking his words seriously.
Only Kong Youling knew why Ji Minghuan was reluctant to go to school, because he liked this library very much.
Whenever he was lonely or sad, he liked to stay in this quiet library, sitting alone in a corner and reading with mountains and seas of books behind him. This made him feel at ease more than anything else.
While other children were playing on the lawn, he was leaning against the bookshelf reading a book alone;
While other children were taking naps in the dormitory, he was leaning against the bookshelf reading a book alone.
Later, a computer room was added to the library, and Ji Minghuan's love for this place rose to a new level. Every day he would either play video games or read books. He was too lazy to attend any of the courses in the academy. After all, those were just perfunctory things. The purpose of their existence was to show off to outsiders so as to maintain the image of the dean.
Kong Youling often comes to accompany him.
The sun was setting in the west, and the afterglow of the evening fell into the library through the skylight. The two children sat down against the last row of bookshelves, she sat next to them drawing, and he kept his head down reading. Sometimes the two of them would be silent for a long, long time. The sun was sinking towards the horizon, and the library was quiet. They seemed to share the whole world through pictures and books.
But it happened that it was in this beloved library that Ji Minghuan found the most unfamiliar corner in the entire orphanage:
——That is the basement that is always closed.
The iron door leading to the basement was locked with several layers of locks. Once, Ji Minghuan walked down the stairs and tried to push the iron door in the dark. The dean, who was instructing the cleaners to clean the library, suddenly changed his face, ran down, scolded him, and punished him to be confined to the attic on the top of the library for three days.
When talking about this incident later, the dean claimed that it was an underground space built for refuge during the war and it had not been opened for a long time. He didn't know how dirty it was inside, so he didn't allow them to go in to avoid contracting any respiratory diseases.
Ji Minghuan suddenly raised his eyebrows and thought to himself, "Is there a possibility that... the laboratory is behind the iron gate? And my real body has been locked up in the basement of the welfare home from the beginning, and has not been moved by anyone."
At this moment, something strange happened in the distant sky. He looked up suddenly and saw a huge red exclamation mark standing in the sky.
"Card incident?"
Following the location of the exclamation mark, Ji Minghuan lowered his gaze and saw the library of the welfare home in the city. This meant that in the library of the welfare home, there seemed to be a special "game event" waiting for him to explore.
Ji Minghuan was originally curious about what was hidden behind the iron door, not to mention that there was an "event card" icon on it at this moment.
"It's already like this... There's no reason not to go. Let's first see what's hidden in that basement."
Thinking of this, Ji Minghuan walked out of the rooftop, quickly returned to the room, used the restraints to pull the swallowtail windbreaker out from the bottom of the closet, put on the mask, raised his hand and pressed the button on the side of his ear to fix the mask, and turned on the voice changer.
The restraints spread from his body surface like a tide, gradually wrapping his entire body.
When Ji Minghuan used the "restraint belt color change" to become invisible, he had to cover his eyes as well. Otherwise, in the eyes of others, he would still appear to be a pair of eyes floating in the air, just like a ninja in a nightgown, and he would not be able to achieve true and perfect invisibility.
Because the "restraint belt sense" can completely replace the vision of his two eyes, and can even be considered an optimization, there will be no problem even if his eyes are covered.
So when they were on the road, although other people couldn't see it, Ji Minghuan could basically be said to be in a "mummy" form, which was extremely weird.
Using the restraints to pull open the floor-to-ceiling window, he jumped up from the bottom plate of the air conditioner outdoor unit. His figure blended into the bright sunshine, and he shuttled between the tall buildings like the shadow of the sun.
In a short while, Ji Minghuan crossed half of the city and climbed over the fence of the welfare home.
He stood quietly on the fence, and what he saw was still a group of old, low buildings. Vines climbed up the yellowed old walls and spread to the quaint library.
The library is locked in the morning and no children come in.
Ji Minghuan diverted gravity to the restraints, and like dragging a piece of black rain, he jumped onto the eaves of the library attic. He steadied his body, approached the skylight of the attic, and fell silently.
The old floor made a creaking sound. When he turned his head, he was stunned for a moment, then he saw a girl sleeping in the attic. She must have gotten into some trouble and was punished by the dean to be locked up in the attic for a night, just like Ji Minghuan before.
Hearing the noise, the girl opened her eyes, looked around but saw nothing but a pile of books. So she closed her eyes again, turned over and fell into a deep sleep.
Ji Minghuan looked down at her, casually covered her with a quilt with a restraint belt, then turned and walked towards the attic exit.
Just then, a prompt panel popped up in front of him.
[The card event No. ① in Lijing City, China has been triggered - explore the "basement" of the welfare home library. ]
(End of this chapter)
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